CPCFTW

You don't understand, 40% of voters who chose to exercise their right to vote voted for the CPC, not 25%. She can't just claim that anyone who didn't vote is against Harper (which she did). Sure you might be right that 60% of people who voted, voted for a left-leaning government. But that is not only absolutely irrelevant in our electoral system, it is even more irrelevant when only about 60% of the electorate voted. It's not up to a 21 yr old page to speak for the 40% of the electorate who didn't vote. This girl is the poster child for butthurt sore loser lefties everywhere. "Waaaahhh 75% of Canadians want change!!! I speak for them all!!!" Get over it.

And as long as she didn't "happen to pass by" while people were with her smashing windows in the Senate, she'd be fine.

How did she risk going to jail? As far as I know there are no laws in Canada about holding a sign up at work. This isn't China and she wasn't standing in front of a tank at tiananmen square. You guys are easily impressed.

Unless you work in the public sector.

What an idiot. Claims that "3/4 of Canadians are against Harper". Basically claiming that anyone who didn't vote is against Harper and on her side. Fucking moron. By that same measure, 81% of people are AGAINST the NDP and 89% of people are AGAINST the Liberals. But they should be in power because "75% of people are against the Cons". Retarded little child.

The point isn't who's worse off between countries, the point is the private sector workers are having their wealth transferred to the public sector. Public sector employees take their benefits and pay for granted and think every worker is entitled to that shit. The reality is that the private sector employees are the ones that pay for those benefits while not getting any themselves. There's about 5-10 professions in Canada (think lawyer, actuary, accountant, financial analyst, senior managers, etc.) that get comparable compensation to the public sector. All these professions require multiple degrees, professional designations, or significant work experience and outperformance of peers. In the name of equality, the public sector doles out these wages to high school drop outs working as post office workers and ttc fare collectors.

It's not a reality because it's a person you made up. Of course there are people out there in that situation. It's too bad you want to keep them down by spending our tax dollars on paying ttc collectors and post office workers 'a living wage', rather than letting the private sector generate more high wage jobs and allocating them to the members of the lower class who are the most competent and hardest working. I know you think arbitrarily giving $25/hr to one worker and $10/hr to another is more fair.

Yes, but why summon this large mass of underpaid humanity? They wouldn't agree with your argument; they would think such better jobs are good ones they wished they had, not something that should be eliminated. That notion comes entirely from the professional Business class, is disseminated downards through a process of making the middle class ideologically aligned with them via fear and resentment of "the government," including all its employees. It appears to have been an effective propaganda exercise. Yes it's just propaganda that cashiers at wal-mart who make $10-11/hr could do the same job as a "post office clerk" or "ttc token collector" do for $20-$25/hr plus benefits. Only the chosen ones get to feast on the taxpayers coin in your world. In the "professional Business class" world, everyone is paid a wage determined by their employability and the demand for their services. You don't get to luck out into a unionized public job with 2 to 3 times the compensation of that poor 30 year old cashier you hypothesized trying to raise her child on $1300/mo.

Hahahaha come on. I thought the left was past the whole "corporations are looting and raping our children" stage.

If you look at the federal government as a corporation, you'd have to say taxpayers are the shareholders, employees/managers are the employees/managers, and the DMs and MPs are the board of directors. The corporate world has already attempted to address the problem of aligning the interests of the agents (managers, execs, board of dirs) with the interests of the shareholders. How do they do that? By linking executive compensation to the success of the company through bonuses, stock options, etc. The problem in the public sector is that employees have no incentive to be productive. They don't get any more compensation and they have almost no risk of losing their jobs. Now how can we imitate the corporate efforts to address agency problems in the public sector so that the interests of the taxpayer are aligned with the interests of the agents (government managers/employees)? Here's my proposal: 1. Create a new department whose sole purpose is to set quality and productivity standards for the various departments and to monitor the departments to ensure they meet the quality standards. The National Quality and Productivity Standards Department of Canada is born. 2. Across the board salary rollbacks by 10% to align compensation with the private sector. Scrap the pay scale charts and unions, and give managers more ability to hire temporary workers at minimum wage for low level jobs. Hire students and the underemployed for these low level jobs and provide them with some sort of incentive to further their education like opening an education savings plan in their names and paying an additional 5% of their earnings into it. 3. Make it easier for managers to lay off unproductive employees. (FWIW, my mom is a regional exec in the federal government and frequently laments how difficult it is to lay someone off for gross negligence and incompetence. I've heard many stories of employees from hell working the system and the taxpayers for every dime they can.) 4. Give employees incentives for meeting their productivity and quality standards. If the department meets its productivity and quality standards, low level employees get bonuses in the forms of tax credits or small cash bonuses, and managers get a big cash bonus related to how much costs have been cut. Lets say that each department is given a yearly productivity target to cut costs by 6% - (pop. growth rate + inflation rate). Executives get paid a cash bonus of 10% of their salary for every 1% they surpass this figure only if they meet their quality standards. Executives must also prepare and provide annual reports on how costs were cut to the quality department for review. Productivity targets can be reviewed on an annual basis (ie. for departments that require expansion, the targets can be adjusted.) Watch how quickly the casual family-like environment of the government disappears and finally turns to business, and how the 'altruistic' government execs who "could make so much more in the private sector" start slashing costs for the taxpayer. The only problem is that execs might be making 7 figures in the first few years with so much fat to trim! Comments/suggestions? Lets work out the kinks and send this to Harper!!

Seriously?

It's cute that you guys believe that's what happened.

Feel free to cite the great entitlements of all these nordic countries you wish you lived in and also feel free to include in your analysis the relative sizes of the public sector, tax rates, and the debt/gdp ratios and budget deficits of these countries. It may be that they have more entitlements but are more heavily taxed on them, or that they have a relatively smaller public sector that delivers more value for the cost, or that these countries are pursuing your unsustainable model of taking on more and more debt, or that these countries have less regulatory impediments to free enterprise, or that they have a comparative advantage over Canada in that they have many markets competing for their goods while Canada is mostly bound to one export market because of logistics costs. Or the lack of economic diversity which can be a problem in Canada with fluctuating exchange rates (ie. Manufacturing industry collapses due to a higher exchange rate, but soaring energy prices ensures that the CAD remains inflated as there is demand for CAD to buy energy exports). Nordic countries don't face this impediment for the most part. It isn't enough to just point at a country where the grass is greener and say "SEEEEEE".

Do you happen to understand why the US's finances are such a wreck? Social security and medicare, plus the defense costs of policing the world. It has nothing to do with their focus on capitalism and everything to do with unrestrained spending (similar to your ideal society). Close to 75% of us expenditures are on the above 3 items plus debt service costs. Cue that Bushcheney guy to tell us to stop talking about his country!

Because it isn't sustainable. See Greece for an example of what your entitlements gone wild plan causes. Plenty of countries are also mired in horrible debt crises from printing money to sustain their bloated entitlments. The only difference between my scenario and yours is that mine is unsustainable at time 0, yours is unsustainable 30-50yrs from now when your grandchildren get to pay for your greed.

The problem is that we ARE paying people to be career cashiers but we label them token collectors and post office clerks and pay them 50k + benefits.

So then what is your point about you being able to "see the trends"? And I doubt that they will be doing either of those things to me unless they have reason to suspect I am involved in illegal activity or I am associating myself with people who are.

That's your substantiation?

I'm sorry what reality is that? The thing about democracy is that if the "trends" towards a police state become too obvious or pronounced, then we can just elect happy jack to trend us towards an economic collapse! The problem with your theory is that most Canadians don't have anything to hide from the "police state" so your cries fall on deaf ears. Most Canadians are more concerned about catching criminals, not hiding their own criminal activity.

Shooting them on sight would be way too harsh, and calling them freedom fighters is equally absurd, I think a reasonable compromise to keep the peace would have been to physically detain some of the protesters for a day or two, and then release them if no charges could be laid.

Ooooh scary.... Where can I order my tin foil hat? I'm pretty sure I took part in democracy when I was one of the 40% of Canadians who voted for another term for this police state.

I'm glad not all of you think that way!

Ah name-calling... The last refuge of the defeated.

No of course not!! You'd never say something like that. "Evil" is far too harsh and sinister. Perhaps "scum" would be a far more fitting way to encapsulate the inferiority of those with a different opinion than you!

Fine. If I followed the bank robbers around while cheering them on, and also chanting anti-bank slogans, waving hyperbolic anti-bank signs around, and singing kumbaya, I wouldn't be surprised if I was detained for questioning. Is that a better analogy?