sk1d

40,000 of those jobs are low paid part time jobs. Unemployment amongst younger workers and immigrants are around 15%. All of the parties promised they could eliminate the deficit in the same time frame. As for train wrecks, I'm hoping it's my MP, he talks a lot in the House of Commons about abortion related issues. http://howdtheyvote.ca/member-quotes.php?l=10&m=411&s=341

The government does have a lot of this information already, but you're right in that the Privacy Laws prevent them aggregating all of these little pieces of information into one giant database. I've worked for the Federal government before, and if they were to combine all the data they have on you (tax/financial data, health records, government services you've used etc.) you would be giving up a lot more privacy than if you were to simply answer the questions on the census.

Good question, what's the over/under on the length of time it takes before all the nut jobs in the conservative party start speaking up?

There's already a credit union here in winnipeg offering an islamic mortgage, they charge a "fee" instead of compound interest. As for sharia law, wouldn't that essentially mean changing the constitution? And last time they tried to do that, they couldn't even get all of the provinces to agree that quebec was 'special'.

You guys do realize that 2/3 of Canada, that's 20,000,000 people, live in the 1,100 km between Windsor and Quebec City right?

http://www.projectdemocracy.ca/ This site shows the projected voting by riding. Enter your postal code and it will tell you how many votes they think each candidate will get get in your riding. There's also an option to show different projections based on different polls.

One theory I've heard a few times, it's borderline conspiracy theory, but it's plausible.... All of these neo-con, right wing, free market people all believe that the less government, the better; the market will take care of everything. One way to hamper the ability of the government to interfere in the market is to reduce the amount of money the government can spend... so they cut taxes. The whole trickle down and being competitive with other nations and creating jobs, are all excuses to justify their goal of reducing the role of government.

My political history doesn't go that far back, but as I remember Mulroney (Con) racked up some pretty big deficits. Chretien/Martin (Lib) balanced the budget and had surpluses. Harper (Con) increased spending and reduced taxes eliminating any surplus, preventing the government from paying down the debt. This also didn't leave any cushion for when the economy tanked. I'm not blaming him for having a deficit during a recession, but the deficit didn't have to be so big if he had maintained a surplus. Looking forward, The Conservatives and NDP appear to have platform numbers that don't completely add up, while the Liberals do, on their plans to eliminate the deficit. Compared to other countries, our debt really isn't that bad. But when 30-40% of every dollar in taxes you pay goes towards paying interest on that debt, it really does seem like a waste.

I really don't think there's much any Canadian political party can do about the increasing price of commodities. With Quantitative Easing in the US where the Fed is essentially printing billions of dollars. When those dollars enter the system, they end up going into the markets and especially the commodities markets pushing up the price of oil and food products. Couple of questions: How do the royalties to the government work? Do they get a fixed amount per barrel of oil they pump out of the ground? Or do they get an amount based on the selling price of that barrel of oil? Also, as far as I understand it, most of our raw oil and gas is sold to the US to be processed and then we buy it back as gasoline and fuel. Is that right?