icman

You are only picking examples that support your notions, and ignoring those that don't, and in doing so, you made a factual mistake. During Martin's cutting of taxes, which was minimal, unemployment dropped and GDP rose. But during Harper's cutting of taxes, much deeper cuts than Martin, GDP has fallen and unemployment has risen. And our decoupling from the US economy has occured because of the changing US dollar against world currencies, not because Harper worked any magic. Canada survived because of solid regulations in banking kept in place by Martin (as FM and PM), regulations that Harper vigourously opposed until now (when there has been vivid illustration of their value). Harper's stated intent is to increase our dependence on the US economy, and nothing he has done in his 6 years to date says different. Quebec's debt problems are only partially related to high taxes. Companies left Quebec due to the FLQ and violent separatist movement first, then, ironically, due to the enforcement of language laws that impacted not just businesses, but many of the owners' personal lives. Their insane regulatory requirements stem mostly from their misguided efforts to protect their culture. (Not that I think protecting French Canadian culture is misguided, just the methods.) Leaving aside the regulations about cultural protection, Quebecs regulatory regime is similar to that of Ontario's, a province that was prosperous until the recession killed its manufacturing industry. Do you think that we should repeal workplace safety requirements so that we can compete with Taiwanese labour, with its high mortality and poor health services? The US, under Bush, attacked regulatory regimes and slashed taxes, and thereby took a huge budget surplus left to him by Clinton and turned it into a huge deficit, setting the stage for the financial meltdown. I am not arguing that higher taxes and stricter regulations are always good. I am arguing that national prosperity is not inversely related to taxes, and "taxes bad, ugh!" is not sound fiscal policy.

Health care may not be a right in Canada, but since the adoption of universal health care, we have operated as though basic health care IS a right. Hence the Canada Health Act. The question is not whether or not health care can be a right. It can. If Canadians want it to be a right, we can make it one. The question is whether or not we want basic health care to be universally accessible. And if we decide that it should be, then triage should not be predicated on wallet size, and rich people getting boob jobs and botox should not drain resources from poor people getting kidney transplants.

This direction makes it more likely that rich people will control the national debate, and people without means will lose their voice. Votes are the key to winning power, but the powerful know that money buys votes. And I am not talking about directly moving money to groups to gain their support. I am talking about who can spend the most on marketing. Whoever can spend more on marketing is more likely to win elections. This is a fact. It is also true that while voters pick representatives, money, power and influence selects the candidate roster from which voters must choose. Control the candidate selections, control the vote. Democracy is supposed to allow everyone a say in government (at least as I understand democracy) - we should be finding ways to ensure that everyone has a voice, not using costs as an excuse to put even more power into the hands of the elite few.

The problem with this discussion is that it is too limited. The benefits and detriments of free-market economics is bigger than whether or not unionized public servants are a drag on economic growth. The entire discussion contains... 1) Do we (Canada) want to attempt to ensure that no Canadian is left in squallor if there are Canadians with more riches than they can count, and how do we do that? 2) Do we (Canada) believe that Canada is supreme over its parts, and that we allow companies to work within our borders and earn their profits on the condition that they correspondingly improve the standard of living for Canadians? Or is each individual Canadian more important than the whole of Canada? Is an unencumbered market the end in itself, or is it the best way to serve Canada and the needs of its people? 3) Which products/services are best provided by the public sector and which by the private sector, and why? And what do we use to measure this? 4) Does a government have a mandate to protect the weak from the strong? Or is might always right? (This is in the context of organized investment vs organized labour.) This is a complex, multi-headed hydra of an issue, and is poorly served by simple discussions sniping at unionized public sector workers. Most of the posters here can't agree to such axioms as what is important in Canada, what does it mean to be Canadian, what is the purpose of business in Canada, or what is the purpose of government in a Canadian context. I think those are the discussions that must be had, and agreed to by most, before anyone moves on to claim that labour unions are evil.

Yes, I can tell from the Socialist epithet (not very original, FYI) that you are American. The one place that has a widespread misunderstanding that Socialism is an economic system where people don't have ownership rights. The one place that happily labels fair treatment and egalitarian thinking as socialism.

If security of the populace should be the first objective of our government, then lets jail everyone, and only let out those who can produce, and only during production hours. Then we'll all be safe. Or make everyone join the military, and all production will go toward military objectives. The military will then take on the objectives of building wealth and allocating resources. Government's job is more than to secure a population, my friend. In our western society, its primary job is to protect our freedoms and rights, a list of which includes (but is not limited to) our right to life and security from harm. But there are a whole bunch of additional rights and freedoms, like http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Flaws-lois.justice.gc.ca%2Feng%2Fcharter%2F&rct=j&q=charter%20of%20rights%20and%20freedoms&ei=LknCTazWEcWWtwfB3qGxBQ&usg=AFQjCNEUtYNO0WCydIds-RmZNAi4ccVWFg&cad=rja

So why not disband any and all publicly funded health care, and completely deregulate the health care profession? Where are you from, the 12th century? You do recognize that in a feudal society, you'd have been killed for your ambition to rise above your station by now, right?

If they (Japan, France, et. al.) have private financing for basic health care, how is it a public system? When you say "In the non-US model everyone gets basic coverage from the public system", do you mean that there is a set of basic care procedures that are not allowed to be funded out of private insurance, and only elective items are allowed to be funded privately? That roughly equates to the system we have here in Canada now, does it not? Not saying that. I want to encourage any system that gets the most care for the most people. At the end of the day, Canadian policies should benefit the most Canadians. Canadian health care policies should create a Canada filled with healthy people. Currently, the system we put in place to achieve that goal is based on the idea that everyone gets the same basic care, regardless of their means - aka universal access. If you want to keep universal access, then our discussion can become nuanced, and we can compare and contrast the different public/private mixed methods to meet the goal. If you don't want to keep universal access, you will have a steep uphill battle to convince me that a healthy Canada need not include healthy Canadians.

Actually, the justice system has ONE goal - to transform chaos into order, constrained by the maintainance of individual freedoms. The balance between the activities of rehabilitation, deterrance and retribution should be oft tuned to maximize the goal of transforming chaos into order. Alas, it is typically tuned on the basis of voter passions rather than the expertise of knowledgable professionals. I don't have a problem with the idea of mandatory minimums where professionals tell us it makes sense. My issue is with many of its proponents, whose desire is to punish people they don't like, rather than to find a balanced set of activities that will maximize order. And I am not saying that the current system slaps people on the wrist and sends them on their way. I am saying that Harper and his supporters say that rehabilitation is a failure even when they haven't tried it. Harper and his supporters prefer punishment to rehabilitation because they like to punish people they don't like, whereas we should all prefer rehabilitation to punishment because it costs less in the long run. (I accept that some rehabilitiation can come in the form of punishment, but rehabilitation should be the goal, not punishment for its own sake.)

Nonsense? Not everyone has $400 lying around to donate to their prefered political party. If you believe in "one person, one vote", then no-one should have more influence on elections just because they have more money in their pocket. And money is influence, if only because it buys air-time and other marketing techniques. Frankly, we should disallow all private donations and go entirely with a funding model based on the number of ridings in which a party fields a candidate. Each candidate would be handed exactly the same amount of money with which to run their campaign, and parties would receive an additional amound based on the number of candidates fielded. The other option is to limit party campaign spending to a reasonable cap in order to level the playing field. Why does the playing field need to be leveled? That should be obvious, but I will make an example. A popular party which represents the interests of the poor can be supported by 5 million voters and still not be able to raise enough money to battle the marketing machine of a party funded by a few hundred thousand people who have donated $400 each. Should those 5 million people have a softer voice in their polity than a few hundred thousand because they don't have so much disposable income and can't find the money to donate to their party?

Critics on the left aren't worried about private clinics. They're worried about private funding. Canada already has private delivery. Every GP is a private health-care delivery agent. But private funding is another matter. Private funding causes poorer service for those with fewer resources, and there is no better illustration of this problem than our sibling to the south. The purpose of Canada's public health care system is to keep Canadians healthy as whole. It is not to provide market opportunities to investors wanting to take advantage of the returns in the health care sector, nor is it to ensure that people with means can get an MRI every time they get a sniffle. To ensure that Canadian's are healthy as a whole, Canada has adopted minimum care standards for everyone, and that means that no matter your huge bank account balance, you have to take your place in line behind the poor, unemployed, lowly and unworthy person ahead of you in the queue. Too bad for you. It seems to me that, other than long wait times for some procedures which could be improved by investing in equipment and human resources in those areas, the main complaints about our health care system are "It isn't good enough for me!" and "I'm important enough to get special treatment - how dare they make me wait in line with the unwashed masses." Well, the health care system is not for "you." It's for all Canadians, regardless of means, because Canada accrues great social and economic benefits from a healthy population.

No investor is going to give up investing in a region because of high taxes. They will move their money out of a region that has higher risk-reward ratios. We can work on either the risk or the reward side of the equation to make Canada attractive to investors. The Conservative rhetoric has always been to lower taxes - etc ad nauseum - because it attracts businesses. Unfortunately, it is not true. There will always be investors willing to invest in Canada and there will always be businesses up and running in Canada because there is a market here to be serviced and a highly educated and skilled labour market to draw from. All the chanting of "reduce taxes, draw business, reduce taxes, draw business" is bullshit. It is an example of chasing the same money and money-managers that ran the global financial system into the ground. Frankly, those are investors and investing ideologies best tossed on the trash heap of failed ideas. As a Canadian, I would prefer to chase investors interested in safe, moderate returns than those hell-bent on easy money. But the Conservative rhetoric, if believed, will scare Canadians into thinking that if we don't adopt American-style, deregulated, free-market fiscal policies, no-one will invest in building Canadian businesses. That's crap. We may not turn over a buck as fast as our cowboy neighbours to the south, but we'll also not lose our shirt chasing the next get-rich-quick scheme. As Canada has shown in this latest recession, we will still have most of our money when everyone else has gambled it away. Reducing corporate taxes and reducing social spending is NOT sound fiscal policy. It is merely one tactic, and one that the Americans have proved doesn't always work very well. Taking the time to determine the best investments for future growth, and then investing in them and nurturing those investments - THAT is sound fiscal management.

Funny, I'm the opposite. I'm much less anti-Conservative than anti-Harper.

Pliny, in majority governments, force and ideology are on the same side. One does not override the other - they go hand in hand. THAT's the problem with majority governments.

A belief that is in many cases indeed best jettisoned. Really? Many cases, or most cases? Because we shouldn't be jettisoning the idea of criminal rehabilitation because in "many" cases it doesn't work. I would point out, as well, that we don't exactly devote significant resources or effort to rehabilitating criminals, even though the investment to do it right pays huge dividends. So, those "many" cases you speak of, which isn't even "most" cases, are not because criminals can't be rehabilitated - they are because we haven't even tried.

The voter subsidy is the only method of party financing that even attempts to keep the playing field level and prevent monied interests from taking over the political process. Removing it encourages a reduction in the number of parties available (and therefore ideas available) to vote for on election day. I don't know anyone who thinks about democracy beyond the thinnest surface glance, and truly believes in "one person, one vote" who would place private donations above voter subsidy on an ordered list of how to most equitably fund political parties. Unless your goal is to destroy parties in general and remove them from the political process. But that's a different discussion.

Mandatory minimums express, in my opinion, the jettisoning of any belief that criminals can be rehabilitated and made productive members of society. We might as well change the name of the Ministry from Corrections to Punishment.

Yes, Scotty. And what is a "radical" comment? Why should the police have instant access to every anonymous blogger's personal information at their whim? It's not like the police have a pristine history of self-restraint. Without some kind of oversight, I guarentee that this power will be abused. Regularly. Regular folk will run afoul of the law simply for expressing opinions not shared by the police apparatus, and you won't care because you'll never hear about it except in the most outlandishly eggregious cases. The notion of freedom that many on the right espouse as unassailable is predecated on the ability for people to criticize the government or the police or any public or private institution without fear of being persecuted for that criticism. So, while it is important to provide police with the tools to find real criminals, it is MORE important to ensure that the average person can criticize institutions without feeling afraid to do so. THAT is the balance that is disrupted with this kind of legislation, and this balance is exactly what Benjamin Franklin was referring to when he said "those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security." I find it incredible that the people who most strongly shout "freedom or die" are the ones that most often support changes in our laws that will reduce everyone's freedoms.

I get the feeling that you don't understand how government in the public eye works. Harper has at least, AT LEAST, 3 years to do whatever he wants to do. He will have 1 or 2 years after that to clean up public opinion to garner a new majority. He has shown that he is a master of spin - despite repeated demonstrations of him wanting to increase the prison population (= drain on resources), increase defense spending without appropriate oversight, divide Canadians (2nd class Canadians), divide Canada (kick Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes at every opportunity), ignore the wants of more than half of Canadians (as illustrated by his cooperative approach with Parliament in a minority government), and move Canada to a more militant and imperialist foreign relations posture, he still got a majority. He managed to do all that, with a minority, because Canada has the memory span of a gnat. You don't think that he could run Canada into the ground, and then find some way to blame the NDP that enough Canadians would believe to give him another majority? That he got one at all with his track record shows that most Canadians can't be trusted with something as sacred as a right to vote.

It will take decades to reverse the damage, if it will be reversible at all. Harper's minority has been disasterous, a majority can only be 10 times worse.

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It seems that too many people on this board are not sufficiently educated to stop labelling all thoughts of socio-economic progression as "socialist". Socialism is about state control of the means of production. Canada is about as socialist as the US. People who want national economic plans to benefit the most people are neither "socialist" nor "evil commie bastards". But I suppose it's too much to hope that anyone in Canada would even desire to step beyond their conditioned thinking, let alone have the capacity to do so.

Harper has proven with a visible track record that he will overspend. Jack has never overspent on anything, so you can't claim that you know how Jack would do anything. You choose to discard experience and replace it with supposition. Could you be more mindlessly partisan?

Perhaps if there hadn't been a second victim involved, and the likely target of the attack, I would be more sympathetic. Does your point include crinimally insane murderers getting a pass because their mental/emotional state is punishment enough? And if not, please explain how this woman is so special.

I am not suggesting any particular solution at the moment. Just asking if there is any recognition that the cultural differences between French, English, and Native are similar in their scope, form, or flavour to, say, regiional differences. If so, regional differences were recognized as requiring protection in our government by representing them roughly equally in the Senate. Should we not therefore provide some form of representation in our government for each major culture? Its a tall order, and different enough that people will resist the notion reflexively. But conceptually, at a high level, (and to dismiss what I said in the last paragraph about not proposing any particular solution at the moment) adding a new Legislative body or some other type of organ to our goverment is an elegant solution, and normalizes how culture is recognized in Canadian politics. It creates one place where cultures are given political power, and so how cultures have power in Canadian politics is controlled by the new body's roles and responsibilities, and relative power is controlled by its composition. It recognizes that cultures are not necessarily geographically discrete, and that therefore the Senate cannot so easily represent them using its orientation toward regional representation. It also has the added benefit of simplifying the argument around Senate reforms - no more need to provide Quebec with 1/4 of the Senate simply to protect their culture, as that is dealt with in this new House of government. The Senate could then be changed to X seats per Province. Quebec would get their say in the Senate as a province, and French Canadians would get their say in this new body as a cultural nation. It would recognize English Canadians as a cultural nation within a broader definition of a multi-cultural Canada and on an equal footing with French and Native cultural nations, rather than assume that the French and Native populations are exceptions in an English Canada. English Canadians wouldn't be able to complain that it is unfair, and neither would French Canadians or Native Canadians. It brings us closer to our roots at Confederation with regard to the French, and includes Native populations equally for a change. I won't accept the counter that such a move would necessitate recognizing every 3-person culture to find its way to Canada - we have large regions represented in the Senate that were never divided into individual households as neighbours disagreed with one another. We can take what we have now (3 major cultures) and either hold it there, or create criteria for adding new ones as they grow to the point of being similar to those already existing. Of course, I also recognize that the devil is in the details. The people involved in the proposed Constitutional changes over the last 30 years are pretty smart folk, though. I can't imagine I am the first person to propose such a structure.