SpankyMcFarland

Iran has far greater potential for progress than KSA. The people are less hostile to the West. Look at the polls - you see ladies in black from head to foot but also girls with scarves, sunglasses and make-up. The election results indicate a strong desire for change.

Iran is changing, moving in the right direction. We don't want sudden transformation which could lead to war and more refugees, It's a bit similar to Cuba. Only the fanatics are unable to see that.

People may feel they are a burden.

I certainly would not like to see this for minors. Vulnerable populations like the physically and mentally challenged and the psychiatrically ill also need to be protected against subtle coercion.

A Canadian scandal.

Great. We can bring the planes home now.

A mixed system is best - public and private. One must keep a beady eye on unnecessary procedures in the private system. The US shows how easy it is to rip people off when health is at stake.

Have you a link?

What pecentage of Chnese immigrants to Canada speak Mandarin as their first language? If this continues, we will all have to learn Mandarin or get left behind. And that will be quite the challenge.

To me, that is disgracefully wrong. Such rules should apply to rich and poor alike. Equality before the law and all that. Unfortunately, this attitude is not confined to Canada and is at least as bad in Ireland and the U.K.

There is an enormous amount of data available on CIHI, getting bigger every year, and it gets loads of media coverage. Some of the extra detail people want is not valid because the sample size may be too small to provide reliable results and would give rise to huge fluctuations. Every country has wait times BTW and people complain about them everywhere. You can only have two out of three of fast, excellent and cheap service. I'd like to see CIHI co-operating with the industry leaders in Europe on key measures like wait time to produce simple annual league tables so we can easily see where we stand without any debate. One big challenge here compared to them is population density.

Four left-wing parties, one right-wing party is why. The true believers had no alternative.

Duffy quoting Flaherty was a bit much. There's no chance of being contradicted when you do that.

Surely STV is a type of preferential ballot? I would regard even a ranked ballot system as better than FPTP in that it reduces the possibility of the least popular of three candidates getting in through vote-splitting.

That is a pan-Canadian problem.

Could you clarify what you mean there. In a simple system like FPTP, it is very difficult to discern what people want exactly, let alone want least. In the last election campaign, there was a pretty clear fault line between the Conservatives and the rest which I thought went well beyond mere incumbent-bashing.

1000 'sleeper cells' is probably wildly out. I doubt if ISIS has anything like that organizational capability. However, there may be many potential jihadis out there who don't even know they could be radicalized.

What criticisms, if any, would you have of Harper? Did he really move as aggressively and cost-effectively on this issue as possible?

This topic and the results of this poll tell me all I need to know about the sort of people on this website.

The whole idea to build them in Canada has turned out to be an 'orrible mistake. I think we need to have something credible up there but a national debate should decide how much. I'd like to see more spending on the military myself.

Israel has good relations with Russia which has good relations with Iran. Iran, Russia, Turkey and Israel are all relating with each other, despite the threat of imminent war between some of them, in ways that would greatly surprise some of us. It is surely not beyond our capacity a continent away to get on with all of them. Harper just got carried away with his desire to support Netanyahu unconditionally and that is not in our national interest to do. We don't need to make enemies unnecessarily.

What? You don't need to travel far in Canada to meet Iranians.

The area that Russia violate is a salient on a salient, a tiny finger of land jutting into Syria. The Turks must have been preparing for this. It's worrying that they weren't able to control their allies on the ground either. One PRESUMES they did want a Russian aviator killed in this fashion.

Petrou has been so pro-Harper, I don't see why the new gov should listen to him at all.

Flying over Syria has just gotten a lot more dangerous for everybody. There could be chaos.