icman

This is a looong thread, and I am late to it. Question... If we register every single car, and no-one really cares that the Government is being unduly intrusive into our lives to do so, why is it such an invasion of privacy or intrusion on our God Given Rights to register our firearms? The fact is, the cost is not the reason people object to the registry, it is merely the argument they use to fortify their feelings that the gun registry somehow harms them individually.

Yes. Someone would buy them. And then they would not "present" the news the best anymore. They would present as God's truth whatever the owners wanted them to say. If anyone does not believe that ownership of a network or news outlet provides you a soapbox to air your views and manipulate the "news" to best serve your interests, please watch Fox for 10 minutes. That is all it should take for anyone who tries to stay informed using multiple news sources. If you watch Bill O'Reilly, I swear you can see Rupert Murdoch's arm up his ass. CTV has leaned right hard in the last several years to the point that there should be no need for a Sun News channel. The only reason you hear people complaining about the CBC's left leanings is because the people complaining think that Fox News and the Toronto Sun are God's truth. Everything looks left to them. The CBC bends over backward to provide both sides of any story, and they criticize stupidity without regard for partisanship. Hell, Rex Murphy is as close to a Canadian Bill O'Reilly as can be, yet he works for the CBC - hardly an endorsement of their leftist leanings, more of an illustration that they work hard to give voice to many different views on issues. The CBC is the most balanced reporting agency in North America in a time when all broadcast companies and their news agencies are moving right as mouthpieces for their corporate owners. And since in our modern world public discourse is defined by the media that puts it in people's homes, I think the CBC, as an independent public broadcaster, is very important to our polity to keep some semblance of balance in the public's eyes and ears.

I agree. I think what any party stands for can change, but that change needs to be justified by changing circumstance. There are atomic principles that underpin a party's ideology that shouldn't change except after great consideration of the party electorate, and there are strategies to deliver on those core principles that can change as needed, so long as leaders can articulate those needs. Governing a party should not be that different from governing a nation in this regard.

Perhaps we do, but if so, then it's a mistake. MPs have access to information we can only speculate about, and it is their job to be informed and make informed decisions. While I consider myself well informed in Canadian politics and policy, it's not my job to be informed and make decisions for the country based on being informed - my job is to tell companies and governments how to secure critical infrastructure. So when I vote for someone, I have to place my trust in that individual to fight for what they say they will fight for. I also have to place my trust in that individual to know when to balance ideology with what is best for Canada, and sometimes let me know that I can't have what I want for various reasons, some of which they can't tell me. If I can't trust my representative to make good decisions informed partly on what I know of their ideology, but mostly on information they have that I don't, then I shouldn't be voting for that person, even if they share my ideology.

P-off, Tilter. So you can weigh in on mandatory minimums without a degree in economics and/or sociology, but no-one can comment on the stupidity of selling crown assets to foreign controlled corporation unless they're a CFO of a multi-billion dollar company? One that would kill to buy crown assets at pennies on the dollar and provide generous kickbacks to the politicians that let it happen? If all you plan to do is piss on other list participants, you can keep your comments to yourself.

Even if your idea was true, which it is not, your argument would still fail. By your own argument, judges are members of this monolithic society, so there is no reason to suggest that a judge has a WORSE concept of justice than you do. So judges, with their societally bred knowledge of justice, and years of training and experience in the law, and years of experience managing the space between law and justice, are pretty good people to make decisions on individual court cases based on the circumstances of the case. It's the reason we have judges, to ensure someone with good judgement, strong intellect, and long steeped in the law can manage the process of convicting people of crimes and sentencing them to appropriate punishment.

My father-in-law was a real estate agent, and he did the same thing. However, he was called twice more, and while they gave him a pass the second time, the third time he was told to report. What they did for him was put him on a case that was likely to wrap up quickly. However, I agree with the original poster - being a citizen has obligations as well as privileges, a property of citizenship conveniently forgotten by certain people when jury duty requirements come around or the census hits the mailbox, but curiously remembered when haranguing the governemnt about rescuing "Canadians of convenience" from Lebannon.

Bryan, the Privacy Act prohibits one government agency from sharing private information about citizens with other agencies except under very specific circumstances. This is to prevent things like denying social benefits to homosexuals, or providing better medical coverage to white folk, or following your voting patterns, or any other abuse of the information that those agencies can collect. StatsCan is the only agency that collects this detailed information about Canadians, and they take special pains to ensure the security and privacy of the data. I don't think you have thought this through. If every government agency shared every bit of personal information that they have with every other government agency as you propose, 1) it would cost more to administer than to collect it via the census, and 2) the security model would be so full of holes and there would be so many hands in the pot that there would be no way to keep the information confidential.

So, why don't we do a "Seal Team Six", and bust the guy out, maiming and killing a few extra Taliban in the process?

Because flash turnover of large organizations causes too much economic instability for a large region. And yeah. Any investor board that keeps executives that fail to properly manage their companies should be the ones who pay for the mistakes of their employees, and they should take appropriate action - like fire their executive team and get better managers in place. Wow, your prejudices are crystal clear. So when a company goes down, it's because of labour, labour, labour, but when it's successful, it's because of management, management, management. That is the dipshitiest thing I've heard since the last time Trump openned his mouth. I might agree if there was some kind of acknowledgement that the workers, not management, are the providers of the products that the company sells. You and your ilk claim that all this labour is unskilled. I defy you to remove all the line workers from the Ford plant in Oakville, populate the plant with new hires, and have it running at the same capacity and productivity numbers within 6 months, let alone the next day. All training has to be done by the management team - after all, they are the magic genies that make cars, the labourers are just a bunch of eyes and hands having their strings pulled by management, right? Changing conditions are the province of managers. If managers can't see changing times ahead, then they are bad managers, and the company should be taking the losses out of management salary, not the line workers. Perhaps if times tighten and a company's bottom line suffers, then at a minimum managers don't deserve those multi-million dollar bonuses.

You need to validate these statements with some facts. Perhaps you could put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and quote some stats from Stats Canada (assuming that the demise of the long-form census has not totally screwed our EI and re-employment statistics just yet).

This is an enforcement issue, not an illustration that EI as a concept is problematic or unsustainable. Perhaps if we didn't have to cut taxes ad infinitum so you could have your shiny, brand new Dodge Ram, there would be enough money in the kitty to, I don't know, hire some more investigators to put the quash on freeloaders like your friend's brother.

Then its a good thing you're not in our leadership. Canada doesn't make policies based on anecdotal evidence, nor by inferring behaviours on an entire group of people which are actually exhibited by only a few. Just because you see some people on injury comp playing volleyball at WCBeach in Tecumseh doesn't mean that 80% of people who are unemployed like to sit on their asses collecting pogie rather than get a job that fulfils their financial, intellectual and emotional needs. Canada makes policies like, whether we like those unemployeed lazy-asses or not, keeping the economy afloat means stabilizing the velocity of money, which means providing funds and services to try to put out of work people back to work (including training), and minimally supporting their needs in the interrim. Oh, and we fund this with EI, not with taxpayer dollars. In order to collect EI, one has to have worked, so please try to remember that the I in EI stands for insurance, and the people collecting that insurance paid premiums at some point. EI fraud is treated similarly to insurance fraud, with investigators, prosecuters, and everything else, and when someone is convicted of EI fraud, well, they get a nice vacation in a place where they also get a shiny new orange wardrobe. And don't give me any of that "if it's insurance, then I don't want to pay, and I will relinquish my claim to the benefits" crap. You pay mandatory auto insurance, you pay mandatory employment insurance. Don't complain about the one without complaining about the other.

No-one, not even a "pinko, socialist, commie-bastard", is going to advocate that people who are lazy deserve to get paid the same as someone who works their ass off. But that's NOT THE POINT. The point is, when someone is labouring their ass off in a skilled trade, trying to live in a city where the average house price has risen over $350K, and rents are over $1000/mo for something that will barely house a small family, there is something wrong when corporate leaders are making 100+ times their salary and giving themselves huge bonuses, and second level management is pulling down over $80K plus benefits. For the most part, the complaints from the "commie" crowd are not about small businesses (<100-150 employees) struggling to get by, or even medium sized companies making some modest coin for their investors while gainfully employing a bunch of people. It's about huge companies posting record revenues and record profit percentages at the same time as they slash employee benefits, raid employee pension plans, slash health and safety budgets, and hand out multi-million dollar bonuses to the executive team, all the while complaining to the public that times are tight and pressuring politicians to bust organized labour. That is the type of stuff that pisses people off. What pisses me off is people like you deliberately conflating the two issues so that you can shoot down legitimate complaints about misuse of corporate power by appearing to fire at the socialism boogeyman.

No, they are not saying that they support whatever outcome. They are saying that they don't care about the outcome. Apathy is neither support nor opposition. It is apathy. One can easily imagine an individual who was apathetic until the results were tallied, then said to him- or herself "What the sh!t? I guess I should have voted!"

Well, that will depend on the wording of the pension charter and contributor agreements, won't it? If the government was stupid enough to sign a contract saying that they will cover losses and take no surplus, that's how the cookie crumbles, aint it? (Not saying I like this, though).

I shall answer in reverse order. Free market economics are great... to a point. If we had a completely free market, well then, murder would be illegal, but murder for pay wouldn't, because it generates revenue for someone. Markets need regulation. If not, you will have armies of con-artists robbing old ladies of their pension checks, and defending their actions with "caveat emptor". You think Enron should have been allowed to continue operating as they were? You think that the most recent financial crisis was just fine with you? My problem with people like you, sir, is that when con-artists (aka cold-calling mortgage brokers) swindle someone, you blame the mark for their ignorance rather than the con-artist for being a predator. Most of the people who went upside down on their mortgages were swindled into it by a mortgage originations business that makes its money on volume, and thus will sign anyone that they can, regardless of that person's ability to pay. The homebuyer can't make an intelligent decision on affordability when there are low payments for 3 years before the payments rise 30%, or there is a balloon payment in the future keeping initial payments low. These mortgage brokers preyed on peoples' hopes and their belief in the American dream. Once the debt was securitized and sold, they didn't give a shit because their risk was out the door and the money was in their pocket. It doesn't bother you that the financial institutions picking up mortgage-backed securities didn't do their due diligence on the quality of the debt they were buying? This latest financial debacle in which the free-wheeling US specifically has embroiled the entire world is a perfect example of why free markets should not be left alone without some reasonable oversight. As for Harper and Martin, they didn't do essentially the same thing. That's like saying a tabby and a lion are the same animal. Martin slashed taxes and spending. Harper slashed already low taxes, and increased spending, a combination that any businessperson will tell you doesn't work. If you think slashing taxes is always better under any and all circumstances, tell me how we build roads if we don't have any taxation? How do we provide universal education without any taxation of any kind? How do we provide universal health care without taxation of any kind? Where does the money come from to supply our military? Go ahead. I'm listening

Read the post more carefully. I was very clear about the cause.

The Ontario PR proposal was ridiculous, and it was ridiculous on purpose to prevent Ontario from ever considering PR again.

How? There are PR systems that use the percentage vote of the local riding, where a "riding" has multiple MP slots to fill - say 5. The national ratios will be determined by the makeup of the MPs selected in those ridings, which themselves are proportional, so the national overview will also be roughly proportional. This method achieves proportionality at the national and riding level, without using national numbers to override local voting. So, again, how is it that PR means ipso facto that national numbers will override local voter desires?

Um, no. Canada's recession was caused by the financial meltdown in the US, which occured primarily due to lack of regulatory oversight on mortgage originations. Our dependence on the US to buy our shit caused Canada's recession. The global recession was caused by the world's dependence on the value of US currency, which tanked when their economy cracked. Canada only survived beter than everyone else as a result of strong banking regulations, which reduced much (not all) of our exposure. I never said that Harper caused the recession. I said that his policies were not what kept Canada insulated from the worst of the recession. This is the classic partisan issue of "if it were my side it would be better, and if it were your side it would be worse" without any objective measure. Harper's surplusses in 2006 and 2007 were because of Martin's policies prior to Harper taking office. Harper's policies didn't start taking effect until 2008, and they worsened the economy for Canada, in my opinion. But then, you'll credit Harper with Canada's emergence from the recession, whereas I will not. I will credit improved performance in the US, the pressure in 2007 on Ontario manufacturing causing improvements in productivity, and the great soaring price of oil for the creation of a new petro-state (which we now are). I can't speak to Carville or bond vigilantes. What I can say is that much of Clinton's positive impact on the economy happened when he began implementing economic policies in his first two years, when he enjoyed a Democratic Congress. Those policies placed the US in a position to balance the budget in later years, when he happened to have a Republican Congress. I absolutely blame Bush and the Banks, and Clinton, for the recession. Decoupling the mortgage process into separate silos, and then defunding regulatory oversight over the myriad companies that now could originate paper, was practically an invitation to repeat the savings and loan scandal. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, it wasn't practically an invitation, it WAS an invitation. Allowing securitization of these poorly or improperly validated loan originations dragged all the stock market players into the mess. I blame Clinton for allowing deregulation to happen (even though he was under pressure to let it happen by a Republican Congress), and I blame Bush and all the free-market imbeciles out there simply for their being stupid financiers. Well, they weren't stupid. If they were attempting to do better for the USA, then they were stupid. But the fact that they are not stupid leads to a different conclusion. Do you think Bush and his administration and his friends suffered in the bloodbath? They profited handsomely in the mess. No-one with a brain could have overlooked the inevitable crash, which indicates that Bush and his administration weren't working for the USA when they reduced regulatory oversight on the financial markets. They were working for the people who profited from the disaster.

If I misunderstood your posts, then I apologize. Most of the posters arguing your side hold simple arguments like "I can pay, so screw everyone else" and I took your comments within this context. Can you acknowledge that most of the people on this board advocating for fundamental change in the health care system use arguments like "people who can pay more should be able to aquire better/faster service than those who can't?" Yes, our system needs some tweaking, its not perfect. But that's not the same thing as adopting a system that will definately make more poor people suffer from lack of access to reasonable care.

Saying that we will create a support system within our economy to help people in need is not the same as socialism. Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled co-operatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system. - Wikipedia It is very stereotypically "American" of you to label the desire to lift as many people as possible out of squallor as Socialist and then sniff at the ideas because of the label you put on them, rather than debate the merit of the idea and the ability to provide it. Again, rights are not determined by divine decree - we decide what a right is or is not as a group and move forward from there. If we decide that basic health care is a right, then it is. If not, then not. Currently Canada does not protect the right of health care in our Charter, but we have acted similarly as though it were through the CHA and our Provincial health insurance apparati, and it has done us well so far.

I admit, not many, though the percentage is much higher in our youth. Even in cooking, we use Imperial still, and in construction. However, for long distance measurement, grocery shopping, and anything to do with engineering and scientific research, metric is the rule here.

You make this statement as though it is an axiom, and it is not. Poor people have inherent claims to the producs and services born of other people's labour if, as a group, we say that they do. If we say that we will take care of the basic health of our citizens because it benefits Canada to do so, then guess what - poor people get health care disproportionate to their contribution to the fund. This is the way of all insurance, by the way, so what is your beef?