CPCFTW

Yes we're all just conservative sheep. Please enlighten us oh great wise ones. Only all-knowing high school teachers, and regular CBC watchers (or 1st year university philosophy/history/social sciences/pol.sci students) could possibly have opinions supported by facts and evidence. No wonder you guys still think your party is entitled to govern after losing an election, you think everyone who doesn't vote your way is too stupid to vote. Get over yourselves.

The sad thing is you guys actually believe this stuff. Yup they were just working at McDonalds and invested their $500 savings and got lucky by finding an investment advisor that generated a 100000% return and now they are multi-millionaires. Those damn lucky elite bastards trying to keep the rest of us down!! Anyone who got wealthy from the stock market had to work hard to earn the money to invest.

Seriously? Your argument has come to this? So companies should go bankrupt unless they have a leader who leads by example? Execs are paid handsomely for their experience and education, and to make the tough decisions and be the bad guy to all the hippies out there. People should work harder and maybe one day they'll be at the top raking in 7 figures... Or just join a union and whine that someone who worked harder than them gets paid more than them and therefore the government should guarantee their pensions and give them money and rainbows and gumdrops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_by_riding_of_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2011 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/#/231 At least do some research and tell us how many ridings were won by less than a majority (and tell us how many of those ridings was the NDP + Lib vote greater than the Cons). I went through AB, SK, and MB (51 or almost 1/3rd of their elected MPs ridings) and there was maybe 3-4 ridings where the NDP + Libs held at most a 1-2% lead over the CPC. You're basically complaining that 1 in 10 MPs who were elected on a conservative platform aren't representing the interests of a slim majority (1-2% more of the vote). And you have unilaterally designated them as the majority by unilaterally uniting the parties and disenfranchising the voters who had differentiated between the parties for your own political opinion. Get over yourself. And while you're at it, get over losing.

What does executive compensation have to do with anything? We're talking about 4000 workers (or 40,000 in the case of CUPW). A few highly paid execs is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire labour force. To quote the typical union member's argument: If you're jealous of executive compensation, then why not just apply?

I agree. Mps are heavily overcompensated as well. New mps should be moved to a DC plan. Taxpayers would save a TON of money. What's your point? They're all overpaid. Got to start somewhere. When the publix sector cashiers don't have DB plans then we will have the leverage to argue that MPs are over-compensated too.

This is irrelevant to the discussion and has been addressed. We get it, you think the system is unfair now that it didn't go your way. This lefty whining point has been addressed in other threads. How many ridings does this affect? ie. How many ridings have more liberal + NDP votes than CPC? Please feel free to provide a detailed analysis of the numbers since you are the one complaining about this. Even for those ridings that were merely won with a plurality, I still stand by my point that it is impossible to represent the interests of the majority of constituents without polling them on every issue. A conservative MP can't just reason that all liberal and NDP voters would have the same stance on all issues and so he should vote in line with the NDP or liberal party. A conservative MP was elected on Harper's platform and yet he should vote in the interests of the liberal and NDP constituents in his riding. Sorry but that is some messed up logic. This all sounds like more boohooing from the left. "Boohoo the system is unfair now that we lost. Change the rules so that we win!! No? Ok then at least ignore the people and the platform that got you elected and vote our way on issues based on fuzzy logic that all non-CPC votes are united against the CPC policies!!"

Try looking at the ridings. I don't think your 40% figure holds for most conservative ridings. If that were the case, then the cons would have won 308 seats. The cons won very close to a majority, if not a majority, in many of their ridings. They were blown out in other ridings. The net effect was 40% of the electorate voted for them. You're blowing smoke like most of the left right now.

As far as I know, no one is asking to take away pensions. They are asking that new hires be moved to a defined contribution plan like the majority of private sector pensions. Unskilled public labour should consider themselves lucky enough to even get a pension compared to unskilled labour in the private sector. And yes I want to take that away from new hires that will be performing unskilled labour because the current pension liabilities alone are already underfunded. I don't think you have any understanding of the economic reality behind these underfunded pensions. You just like to cry murder whenever you detect something that appears to be unjust to you on the surface.

No one has lost sight of the fact that our labour is a commodity. You and the unions just seem to have lost sight of how a commodity is fairly priced. A commodity should be fairly priced by the supply/demand of labour. This means that when there is a recession and the supply of labour rises, while the demand for labour drops, wages should drop, not rise with inflation. Wages did drop in the real world, but not the public sector. Bank tellers get paid like $13-15/hr with no pension. I've never received better or more competent service at an airport or post office than at a bank. The fact that you are defending mail carriers making $24/hr just shows how out of touch with reality you are. I've worked as a courier for a newspaper making something like 15-20 cents per paper delivering from 3-6am every morning. Do you think I wouldn't have preferred to make $24/hr with a pension? You don't think the 7-8% of unemployed Canadians would love to be making $24/hr to carry mailbags around? If a newspaper was run by a public company with unionized couriers, we'd be paying $20 for a newspaper. Then we'd legislate that no private newspaper can charge less than the publicly funded newspaper. This is the kind of world you union supporters think we should live in. It is not reality. It is a fantasy world where money grows on trees and the corporations and executive bonuses are just holding us down from getting paid 100k and retiring at 55 to a home and a cottage and yacht for our mindless manual labour.

Are you Brigette Depape? In most conservative won districts the majority voted for the conservative platform. The NDP supporters really think they are entitled to all liberal votes and the votes of non-voters, it's sad. MPs don't have to vote in the interests of the majority of constituents. I have no idea why you would think that since that would require the MP polling the constituents on every decision. The MP was mostly elected through Stephen Harper's platform and campaign and so will represent the interests of the constituents by supporting that platform. It's a simple concept.

And 5 billion people would be in even more abject poverty. Free market capitalism created first world living standards for 100 million people in Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. What were we thinking!?! The good thing about multinationals is they aren't very discriminatory on who gets the right to work and improve their living standard, unlike you.

In that case I don't have an issue with it although I still hate unions.

Are you sure the unions are the ones footing the bill for the paid days off? And free money with a day off from work is pretty irresistable.

Are you serious? Did you even read the OP? These are public servants who are being compelled to campaign against a certain party while getting their time off paid for by taxpayers who have elected the very same party to a majority government. What if the CBC told its employees that they would get paid days off work for campaigning for the conservatives? I'm sure you wouldn't be happy.

This guy has an obvious agenda. He designs the test so that conservatives are placed near the middle, then places conservative leaders to the far right authoritarian and says "it's because they lie to us... I swear!"

More obvious bias: The question was something like "a significant advantage of a one party state is the ease in implementing policies". Obviously I agreed with that since it will be easier to implement policies in a one party state with no opposition. The creator of this compass obviously has problems with logic given his response to criticism of this question. There is no mention of "the best informed and most representative decision" in the question and yet he interprets it as such.

I "did not see" that? Are you serious? That is my entire argument for globalization. I still think humanity is the priority, so I can't disagree with that statement. But like I said, it is a false dichotomy that is biased to the left.

Whats your point? That post says that if I believe transnational corporations serve the interests of humanity, I should have responded that I "strongly disagree" that globalization serve the interests of humanity rather than the corporations. How can I strongly disagree with that? I believe that globalization benefitting humanity should be the priority but that serving the interests of the corporations has that result. The creator is obviously to the left of the political spectrum given the editorializing in that post as well.

Maybe, but I doubt they know much about Canadian politics. I also think maybe I was more centrist because the questions were stupid and presented false dichotomies. For example the first question: "If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations." What if you believe that serving the interests of the corporations serves the needs of humanity? I had to agree with this statement which probably incorrectly weights me to the left.

I would definitely place the NDP and 2011 Liberal platform that far left on the political spectrum. The old liberals might be something like -2 while cons are probably +2 IMHO. Far right Republicans are probably the right wing equivalent to the NDP in North America.

Not really. I think conservatives in Canada are pretty far left compared to the US (where this test probably originated). In the US I would be considered a centrist and you would be a far left communist just as these results indicate.

Yes the numbers are dubious because they didn't give you the results you wanted. Better hold up a "Stop The Political Compass" stop sign.

Pretty centrist: Economic Left/Right: 2.50 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.33 Of course I'm a far right kitten-eater on these forums.

So his leisure time should not occur anywhere outside of walking distance from 24 Sussex Dr.?