SpankyMcFarland

If we really need a monarch why not choose one that actually likes being here? Our traditional model has broken down in recent years with no visits from our head of state at all. Surely, we can find a person related to Charles who would want to live in Canada full-time? It’s not that awful.

For years, I could get absolutely nobody to help me in my garden until I mentioned the problem to my Filipina cleaning lady. Next thing she starts a gardening business and my place never looked so good. Those jobs would not exist without her.

In my town, we would have hardly any fast food outlets open if it weren’t for Filipino and South Asian immigrants. Our young people are either in the cities or their basements. They won’t do that work here.

Scientific claims are falsifiable. They must make a statement that can be proven either true or false. All swans are white is such a statement - it was correct until black swans were found. By contrast, a statement like all swans are magical is not scientific. The extraordinary success of science in building our modern world rests on this constant effort to correct and improve our knowledge. Scientists expect to be proven wrong eventually even as they edge closer to the truth. It’s in the nature of their wonderful and perpetually unfinished business.

The investigation would have to start with whether the reporter just made up the allegation. Unnamed sources are liable to disappear entirely under closer examination. Secondly, did the JPost confirm this allegation from a second independent source?

From the article: The report first originated from a Fox News article, which has since been taken down, citing a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida, which allegedly spoke to an unnamed source in Iran's Supreme National Security Council. So an unnamed source in the Iranian government is considered credible all of a sudden?

Given that our monarch visits so rarely but some of us really like that arrangement and its previous incumbent, why not declare QEII as the eternal head of state? This would be the ultimate lean system and she could never do anything to embarrass us in the future, not that she did anything like that while with us either. The Queen was as close to perfect as you could get in that position and I say that as a committed republican. Sudden changes in British law, as in our little succession legislation drama, or crimes/scandals by the Royal Family - imagine somebody like Randy Andy in the top job now - would never have to worry us again. If the monarchy is just a symbol, why does the actual monarch have to be alive? It’s not like numerous claimants will start raising armies across the GTA on news that the King is dead.

I’d be thinking along the lines of the German presidency for our GG. Since the Basic Law of 1949, they’ve managed to comport themselves well and have generally avoided partisan controversy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Germany

One way to reduce that possibility would be a secret ballot. I’d say there would be some surprising votes cast there across party lines. There wouldn’t be a campaign in the country because the votes would be confined to parliament and ordinary citizens unaffiliated with any party would be invited to apply as well. The GG must be seen to be completely independent of the PM. There are other ways of doing it but it has to be done somehow. Our head of state’s representative should not feel beholden to the head of government. On the Duke of Canada idea, I think that would have been a good role for Harry. He certainly seems to enjoy being in North America far more than the rest of them. Who knows, he might have ended up being our monarch if things had been different.

It’s hard to tell if Trump is lying at this stage, ie that he knows what he is saying is untrue, but the false claims just don’t stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

You seem to be confusing the word spending with the word speaking. I’m afraid I can’t help you there.

Thank goodness we have sensible limits on campaign spending in Canada. Most advanced democracies do. Once again, America is falling behind.

OK. I don’t agree with Bush’s ideas but her candidacy should have been decided on the basis of her policies, not on how much money could be spent in attack ads against her. If America doesn’t do something about this, its political candidates will be decided and controlled by an oligarchy of billionaires.

The US Supreme Court seems deeply confused on the issue, possibly because some of its members are being bribed on a regular basis by the same type of people who contribute massively to political campaigns. I just found out yesterday that Clarence Thomas’s special friend Harlan Crow was a big donor to the swiftboat campaign that destroyed John Kerry’s run for president.

75 is a reasonable cut-off for any public post - political, judicial, you name it. The former UK PM was 42 and the last two Irish PMs started at ages 37 and 38. That’s the right age for a senior executive post.

The money spent in these recent Democratic primary campaigns by AIPAC et al. is literally unprecedented in US history. Numbers matter at that scale. As the ads piled on, Bush saw her numbers falling. Democracy should not be for sale.

I can think of three arguments in favour of accepting the monarchy apart from stability. 1. Distinctiveness. It distinguishes us from the US. For anglophones this is a serious problem. We look and sound like Americans and are often mistaken for them. Had it not been for their Civil War I suspect they would have completed their conquest of North America. An eccentric arrangement with a European country gives us some reassurance we are not them yet. 2. Authenticity. A related issue. We are a young country, from all over the world, with shallow roots in our land. Our nationalism is decidedly civic rather than ethnic, the opposite of China or Iran. Monarchy connects us to a solid, tribal past. 3. Inevitability. We’re stuck with it. Barring a foreign invasion or the arrival of a decently sized asteroid, our constitutional arrangements are frozen for the foreseeable future. So what to do to freshen things up a bit? On the British side, I’d like to see some (probably obscure) relative of the monarch, preferably a young person, given ‘Prince of Canada’ duties, unofficially at first. The prime requirement would be a willingness to visit here frequently for extended periods of time to do lots of openings and general royal malarkey. Over here, we should make the GG more independent, a de facto head of state. Make it an elected post. The committee choosing the GG could ask the opinion of parliament on a candidate. After all the vetting etc. ten candidates are voted on in secret ballot by both chambers until a candidate is selected. We know what we are looking for - a safe pair of hands, a more independent version of David Johnston, willing to stand up to the PM if absolutely necessary and yet not looking for a constitutional crisis at the same time.

It should be up to any political party to choose its own representatives. That’s a basic principle of democracy. AIPAC’s spending in this election continues a disturbing pattern where critics of Israel are being purged from the Democratic Party by campaigns supported by unprecedented amounts of money, some of which originated with enemies of the party. Bush’s views are out there but AIPAC and its affiliates have no business interfering in these nomination contests. You can tell what they think of their own campaign when you look at the ads they financed. Israel is rarely mentioned. Let such contests be determined by debate, not money.

If we had the economic problems of Venezuela niceties like oaths of allegiance wouldn’t bind us the way people seem to think, and if we have to keep a monarchy we should have our own rather than someone else’s - our head of state hasn’t been here in over a decade, an absurd situation. Also, the GG should be appointed at arm’s length from the PM so that they have the appearance of being properly independent from them. We have the trappings of a constitutional monarchy but it is really rather threadbare.

We’ve been openly debating the origin of Covid for years. If convincing evidence emerges either way then I’ll be happy to believe it. Neither of the two leading theories reflects well on the PRC. They have failed to co-operate fully with outside agencies.

I think most of them do. Let’s not forget that young Russian men are fleeing from their country in droves.

I’m amazed Ukraine has managed to hang on this long against a former superpower. However, given that we know what happens to Ukrainians in territory taken by the Russians, we should support them as long as they want to fight for their freedom even though the odds are stacked against them.

There are 124 million of them. But it is a very poor country. In Britain there are stark regional differences of wealth across the country but nobody speaks of doing away with some of the provinces, aka non-sovereign countries, there. I suppose Canada’s size and newness make things feel more provisional. The way things are going the rest of us could end up in shanty towns around Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

A different set of skills was required in NL. I’ve never met so many people who are handy. Many build their own cabins from scratch and some of these places look like luxury houses. Planes too.

Sociology is a much derided line of work but it would be nice to know why so few Torontonians are being seen via the Internet by, say, doctors in Sudbury, ie, why are young doctors crowding into places that are both full of doctors already, a nightmare to drive around and highly expensive to live in? We’re not getting grown-up answers to these questions.