Civis Romanus sum

This is the theory that Harper created the oil industry, right? And that he focused Canada's entire economy on it? I read this a lot, but the thing which gets me is that the oil industry took a giant hammering at the beginning of the year, and the rest of natural resources did to, and yet things are still pretty good in Canada. The technical recession hasn't really spilled over into anything outside the oil industry, unemployment has hardly budged, and the rest of the economy seems to be working well. So would someone explain to me how Harper put all our eggs in one basket, and the basket got dropped, but our eggs still seem to be pretty much intact?

This seems an odd reason to evict Harper. Most of the election victories in the last century have failed to command a plurality of the votes.

I'm confused about what interest rates have to do with a balanced budget. Martin cut because he had a big deficit, and he got back into balance through doing so. You seem to applaud this, even while applauding Trudeau's proposal to increase the deficit. There's a strange contradiction in that.

You mean by increasing the GST to 7% again, increasing income taxes to where they were under Martin, and drastically slashing transfers to the provinces, public service jobs and federal programs? Is that what you think Trudeau is going to do?

I agree some of that is wasted. I doubt all of it is. Let's say you cut it by a third, or even half. That's not much on the scale of the federal budget. Martin cut many billions from transfers to the provinces, as well as cutting thousands of civil service positions, and many federal programs. You said you wanted Canada to go through what it did under Paul Martin. Well, that is what it went through. Oh yes, and we also need to raise the GST back up to 7% and increase income taxes.

I don't understand how crime statistics are going to help such a thing. All they will probably show is that blacks commit a lot of violent crime in Canada. That is what the statistics show in the US and UK, after all. I would expect complete crime statistics to show that aside from family violence, most violence in Canada is done by visible minorities, blacks, natives, asians, arabs, etc. How does this help make a case that police are treating black people badly?

So what programs would you cut?

From what I've read the gap has actually been closing, not widening. This is from the Conference Board if Canada, showing that income inequality has not been growing in Canada since the 1990s. Income inequality in Canada has increased over the past 20 years. Canada reduced inequality in the 1980s, with the Gini coefficient reaching a low of 0.281 in 1989. Income inequality rose in the 1990s, but has remained around 0.32 in the 2000s. http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/society/income-inequality.aspx This is from Andrew Coyne That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about them. But it’s simply not true that inequality is growing worse, or that incomes have stagnated. It was true in the past; it is not now. Yet in the 1990s they were a non-issue, and today we can talk of nothing but. http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/the-myth-of-income-inequality

It's also an American chart, and irrelevant to Canada.

So under the current system the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer? And so you want to keep the current system? Nor should we be. Assuming we make the flat tax relatively progressive, in line with existing tax rates, such a person would not be paying any tax. So what? If it's being invested in the economy that's a good thing.

Are you advocating the government drastically cut provincial transfer payments?

Okay, because you seem very confrontational and defensive. Would you not agree that the older people we bring in as immigrants the less effective the immigration program would be at combating Canada's aging population?

How am I misquoting you and how is anything I say 'self-serving'? You say that our immigration system is here to offset an aging population, and when asked about bringing over seniors, who will add to our aging population, you seem to be nothing but evasive. When I try to get an answer out of you your posts start becoming confrontational and insulting. Do you have a personal stake in this somehow?

Thank you for posting this. It contains a number of interesting figures, though it is sometimes difficult to reconcile the various charts. For example, this http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2014/permanent/04.asp seems to show that the figure for parents and grandparents is 7.6%. Then again, we can probably assume some of them are not yet 65, but are possibly only in their late fifties or early sixties. I found this http://www.vancouversun.com/Opinion+Aging+immigrants+expensive+problem+Canada/9257730/story.html which is a couple of years old but seems to summarize my concerns with regard to the pressure on the health care system of bringing in older immigrants. It speaks about the Conservative government's trying to curtail this, and I would not be surprised if making people wait a long time was part of that strategy. A backlog of more than 160,000 sponsored parents and grandparents was waiting to enter Canada by 2011. At existing admission rates, most would have waited years before being allowed to come here. The program is so popular it was estimated the queue could reach half a million by 2020 with a wait time of 15 years before entering Canada. But now my concern is that Trudeau has spoken of these delays and his intention to expedite the immigration of parents and grandparents, and Mulcair has also spoken of realigning our immigration system to allow more family class immigrants, and loosening the rules on who qualifies. I do not see how Canada is helped by bringing half a million older immigrants here. I do see the great cost of such a thing, however, and the additional strain on our health care systems.

I'm not aware we are having a difficult time persuading people to emigrate to Canada. Why would we adjust the immigration system so as to damage the whole purpose of the system in order to persuade people who don't need persuading to come here? It will cost us billions every year to look after the health needs of all these seniors and people who are almost seniors. Why would we do this? Why would the Liberals and New Democrats want to increase the number of such people coming here? And why are you unable to find a single flaw or fault, either about immigration policy or about the immigration policies of the Liberals and New Democrats?

If you sponsor a parent or grandparent you must promise to pay for their basic needs, and to reimburse the government for any social assistance the sponsored relative makes use of for the next 20 years. Under no circumstances, however, will the sponsored relative be deported merely because the agreement was not kept. The government's record on prosecuting people who fail to support relatives is poor. About the most they usually do is refuse to allow them to sponsor another relative. Regardless, the government, the taxpayer, is responsible for paying for all medical costs of the sponsored senior, which, since they are a senior, will be high.

We're speaking of seniors, here. ALL of them will wind up needing lots of health care and very soon and on a continuing basis. Further, just how much work and taxes do you expect to get out of foreign seniors who have been sponsored. Sponsored relatives do not necessarily have any linguistic or job skills, and are unlikely to be working at all. Why should Canadians be expected to pay for this? Further, you have continually danced around the issue of why Canada would choose to bring tens of thousands of seniors to Canada every year given the entire purpose of the immigration program is to counter Canada's aging population. It seems to me as though you cannot bring yourself to make any criticism of a part of this program which is supported by political parties you like. Don't you think this make honest discussion difficult?

But we aren't discussing family reunification broadly, but the specific idea of bringing over 40,000 seniors each year whose health care will be extremely expensive. Given the purpose behind immigration is to combat an aging population, where is the sense in bringing in tens of thousands of additional seniors each year? Where is the sense in increasing that number? How does this combat an aging population? I'm confused about why you are criticizing the Conservative plan when the plans by the New Democrats and Liberals which you evidently support without reservation call for increasing immigration higher than the Conservatives have, and focusing that increase on sponsored relatives. My understanding of how the sponsorship program works is that implicit in it is the expectation that the sponsored relative will be supported for a few years by the sponsoring person, and then be able to support themselves. That won't work with seniors. I would also say that sponsoring a relative who will work for probably decades and contribute to our social programs is entirely different from allowing people to sponsor relatives who will not be working and will almost immediately put a heavy strain on our health care system. So in fact, instead of helping ease the strain on our health care system brought about by an aging population it will increase that strain!

I'm not sure how these subjects are related. It might be, however, that those who feel antipathy for violence religious extremists would be opposed to importing to Canada a population which is heavily infected with the ideas which precipitate violence. Would that not be logical? Most of the turmoil which spawns refugees is the result of poor governance, and cultures rife with corruption. We can discuss the reasons for this poor governance if you choose. But again, I'm not sure of the relationship to of your statement to this topic. My understanding is that we drop bombs on extremist military combatants and in defense of civilian population centres which they are attacking. While it's true we also bomb the 'capital' of the extremists, again, my understanding is that since it's almost impossible for civilians to leave that area the refugees you are referring to are the victims of the attack upon their homes, towns, villages and cities, by the people we bomb. So you seem to be imputing a responsibility to us when logically the responsibility is to the local combatants. I'm confused again about where you're drawing the relationship here. This discussion is with regard to immigration, not the refugee program. The people who apply for and are granted immigrant status are not fleeing war in Syria. And as I said, even if they were, we did not cause the war and upheaval. We are merely trying to end it. Trumps suggestion of building a wall with regard to their southern border is due to Latin Americans flooding into the United States for a better life, not due to wars we caused. Similarly, those who want to immigrant to Canada want to do so for a better life, not because of wars elsewhere. You appear to be confused both about how immigration works, and the cause of refugees. We don't need a wall around our country, however, since we have the Atlantic Ocean. The only people who come here and stay here are the ones we allow.

How can you be bigoted against an idea? Okay. But you seem very determined about that even though no one has said we don't need immigration. I mean to say, no one is arguing to end immigration, are they? Implicit in my suggestion that it is foolish to be bringing over 40,000 seniors a year is criticism of the Conservative Party. However, according to the cite posted they had been making moves to make it harder to bring over seniors, which I believe is an intelligent move. Don't you think that parties which want to increase the number of seniors should come in for more severe criticism? You seem to find it wrong of me for not criticizing the Conservative party but I have seen no criticism of the Liberal or New Democratic Party plans by you. Do you believe it is wrongheaded of them to propose we increase the number of seniors coming into Canada?

This is not really a gun issue. It is a society issue. People focus on the guns due to their visibility. It's easy to grasp that a person used a gun to kill another person. It is less easy to grasp what in society caused them to believe they had the right to do such a thing. The US has a lot of guns. It had a lot of guns in 1950,as well, and such things did not happen then, except exceedingly rarely. The first public attack I am familiar with was the the Texas shooting in the nineteen sixties. Now they happen routinely. Why? It isn't because guns are more readily available. It's because of other factors. I have a hand gun. If I was fired, even if I thought it unfair, I would never consider shooting the people at work, if for no other reason than it would destroy my life. This person was thus suicidal. He didn't care if he lived or died, so he didn't care if others lived or died. What made him like that? What makes so many like that today? It's not the guns. I know, you think guns make it easier. They don't. I could kill far more people, far faster with my truck if I wanted to. Just find a crowd and drive into them at high speed, keep driving. I could easily kill dozens in the right location. Mental health is the issue, both on an individual and societal level.

I did not say "you" had, although reading the replies on this topic, I have not found anything about the present system you appear to take issue with. You appear to be the most vociferous defender of the system, in its entirety, on this topic, and highly resistant to any criticism of the system as a whole, or any individual component. So may we agree then, that it is foolish to be importing 40,000 or more seniors a year if the goal of our immigration system is to combat an aging population? And if we use that as a basis of agreement can we not also state that the proposal of the Liberal and New Democratic parties to increase this is also foolish?

A flat tax would be even simpler. The progressive taxation can come in the form of exemptions and refunds on the VAT. So get rid of them all.

I think any program has flaws and we should discover them and see how the program can be improved. This appears to be a flaw, don't you think? If the purpose of immigration is to positively affect our aging population we should not be bringing in older immigrants. I don't believe, having read this topic from the first page, that anyone has proposed eliminating the immigration program. That would be pretty extreme. At the same time, taking the position that the immigration program is above criticism and flawless would seem to the other end of that extreme.

Forty thousand seniors a year costing $1.5-2 billion sounds like a pretty strange thing to me. Why would the Liberals and New Democrats want to increase that? These people, unlike those who have lived their lives in Canada, have not contributed anything to the health care system but will draw large resources in their elder years. The more we bring over, the more cost to us, and the more crowded our health care system becomes.