dialamah

Following the law is always an option, and usually results in better outcomes than not following the law. Most Canadians seem to appreciate the efforts of public health officials to reduce the spread of this disease. The angry minority get lots of news coverage, but not much sympathy by Canadians.

Why are you so scared, Argus?

What are the issue 'related to immigration'; Argus says it's crime and umm ... driving down wages, I think? No doubt some would agree with him, yet the evidence contradicting those claims is pretty strong IMO. Japan, pretty famous for it's very limited immigration policy, realized that it's aging population and decreasing birth rate would result in not enough workers to sustain the economy, and has begun changing it's policies to allow immigration. Canada also has an aging population, and decreasing birth rate; why would it be exempt from suffering economically if there were not enough workers to sustain the economy? Argus claims that we let in too many 'unskilled' workers; facts demonstrate otherwise. Canada's immigration policy focuses on skilled workers, with good English or French skills. Eighty percent of these immigrants are working within 6 months. Refugees and perhaps family members may be less likely to become employed, but even most refugees get jobs. Argus thinks that we should only let people in who share our "values"; ie. Western Europeans. But I don't think there are enough "Western Europeans" who want to move to Canada to offset the effects of our declining birthrate and aging population. Again, this is pure ignorance talking, fueled by xenophobes and racists. In terms of values and lifestyle, immigrants take on those of their host country. Within about three generations, the 'immigrant' has become essentially indistinguishable from Canadians with several generations behind them. In addition, people who willingly leave their home to come to a new country are the least likely to hold medieval cultural beliefs. Anyway, my neighbor, who wears modest clothing (long dresses) and a hijab when out of the house would make xenophobe's hair stand on end in fear and loathing. Neither she nor her husband attend Mosque, and they could care less about other people's sexual or marital behavior, what they believe or what God they worship. They are more tolerant and less hate-filled than than the xenophobes that are triggered just by seeing them in public. Who wouldn't rather have a tolerant neighbor than an intolerant one, regardless of religion, skin color or ancestry? Now personally, I think Canada could do a much better job in terms of immigration. While we are on the right track with focusing on 'skilled' immigrants, we fail to offer a way in which these skilled workers can easily bring their certifications up to Canadian Standards. So we get people, highly trained, but lacking Canadian Certifications, taking low-paying and low skill jobs. Dismissing support for immigration and immigrants as virtue signaling is the only way xenophobes can discredit "leftists", since they can't actually do it with facts and evidence.

Why not? Should I call you unpatriotic because we don't agree all the time? If conservatives are all about free speech and opinions being heard, why would they also then call the people they disagree with unpatriotic? Why would you think that way?

I'd exchange any number of conservative xenophobic Canadians for open-minded and tolerant people, whatever their religion or origin.

Are you looked at with suspicion and distrust because of your skin color? Are a certain percentage of people actively and overtly hostile to you because of your skin color? Being a European immigrant with white skin is a bit different than being a brown-skinned immigrant. Or even being brown-skinned person born in Canada, whether you have a single generstion, or hundreds of years of ancestry in Canada.

And which ones were those?

How many of Trump's executive orders did you disagree with or object to?

Like I said, I don't know so I didn't include "all religions" in my statement, only included the ones I know. What is hard to understand about that? Individuals vary, so judging every individual by the worst of their group is wrong.

I know, right? What confounds me is that every right-wing forum I've been on immediately bans anyone expressing even the mildest disagreement, while busily championing "free speech" and criticizing the left for "cancel culture". Pretty big disconnect there.

News stories focus on what is unusual, not what is usual - so I have no idea if that reported violence is representative or isolated. Also, the Bible, Torah and Koran all have an unfortunately misogynistic, homophobic and elitist belief system permeating their social culture. Maybe whatever religious group referenced in those news stories do as well, but I don't know enough about them to have included them in my comment. But having said that, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they equalled Abrahamic religions in their atiitudes about and treatment of women, gays and non-belivers.

Imagine this: A pandemic hits a country. The government limits travel and closes borders to prevent virus spread. Citizens complain that the wrong borders were closed, weren't closed soon enough, and shouldn't be closed at all. The government limits business activity to prevent virus spread. Citizens complain that more businesses should have been closed, the wrong businesses were closed, no businesses should be closed. In the years leading up to the pandemic, government does nothing to prepare. Citizens complain that they want both low taxes and more/better government services. Government gives the citizens and corps lower taxes, quality of medical care decreases and more people are in poverty. When pandemic hits, government is scrambling, poor people are the most severely affected and citizens complain, complain, complain, complain - but are as unwilling as government to inconvenience themselves to ensure this situation won't repeat. So government may be "responsible" to the citizens, but the citizens need to have a clue first. Do you really think we do?

Yup. So where you "questioning" after the SARS virus and all the warnings then and since about the certainty of another pandemic and our lack of preparedness? Or did you relax into disinterest, like 99% of humans around the world? If we abdicated our responsibility to hold our leaders to account, we certainly can't hold them and the experts who've been warning of a pandemic for decades as solely to blame when we find ourselves scrambling to cope when that pandemic hits.

Why would you assume that someone who trusts experts over non-experts has "blind faith" in experts? Making the best of a bad situation and allowing that mistakes will be made when a brand-new virus hits town isn't "blind faith". It's reality.

Experts in public health and disease have far more credibility than some yahoo on the internet doing some armchair quarterbacking about a game he knows nothing about. Did you give up on yourself because you didn"t have all the right answers immediately, the day you started a new class or a new job, where would you be? Would you do that to your kids or friends? If so, your expectations of people are way out of whack.

I agree that religion should be taught in schools, as a practicum for critical thinking. With any luck, we'd run out of religious people within a generation (or two, to account for the home-schooled). And, if we didn't allow religious people to immigrate to Canada, we could make conservatives and aetheists both happy! Only the leftists would be sad. (Need that mwah wah sound effect here).

Thank goodness for that, at least! Abrahamic religions are cruel and oppressive to anyone not male and of the "ruling class".

Referring to people as "monkeys" is despicable. You ought to be ashamed, but no doubt your entitlement protects you from feeling any shame for such a racist comment. Is your given name Karen, by any chance?

How am I farther from the "public pie" than anyone else? Anyway, in effect we already have that. Politicians, movie stars, sports heros, corporation heads all get the lions share of whatever public taxes provide in the way of healthcare, education and tax cuts.

Religious folks don't have any kind of a better record, do they. Religious wars, 'Christian' countries invading other countries, Christians oppressing those 'savages' they come across in their travels, or oppressing women or gays, etc. Christianity and other religions have resulted in 100s of millions of death, and continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on millions of people around the world. Plenty of Christians and religious people in prison, you know. Religious people, including Christians, steal, assault, rape and murder just like non-religious people. The Bible (and the Koran and the Torah and any other 'holy book') teaches us that God's people can and should do whatever God tells them to, even if it causes death and unimaginable pain and suffering to other people. In order to make God's people feel better, the text is littered with aspirational instructions: "Love your neighbor as yourself"; "Do not covet your neighbors stuff"; "Do not murder", along with promises "If you do what I say, even if it harms other people, you get a special reward after you die." Of course, no dead person - religious or not - has ever corroborated the reward or lack thereof. Very convenient! My sister had a complete transformation when she discovered Q. Now she knows that the space beings are going to be coming to our rescue, and that the ills of our lives will be taken away when they get here; Trump will be announcing it at some point. We don't even have to die to experience all this goodness. If I'm going to believe in some 'all-powerful invisible savior' I think I'd choose the one who doesn't need me to die to get my reward. But in the meantime, I'm going to stick with the idea that humans can choose their own path, and if someone feels that only death will relieve their pain, then I think they should be able to choose that path. By the same token, if any physician does not feel this is something he or she can support, they should not be required to participate.

Prove it, with actual studies and statistics - not pictures from wanted posters.

That is not going to solve the issues you think it will. First of all, as poor as these places are, they are "home" for many First Nations. You get your ire up even thinking that your home will be removed or changed by immigrants; why do you suppose First Nations people would be any happier to have the descendants of colonists decide to kick them out of their homes? Secondly, generational trauma is real. Children of 4 or 5 are taken from their family, raised in a residential school, shamed for being a 'savage', experience sexual and physical abuse growing up, and are 'discharged' at 16 or 18 or whatever, learns to use alcohol to escape their emotional pain, have their own child. They have no parenting skills - other than that shown by their caretakers, which means heaping abuse and shame onto children. These second generation children grow up, having learned to use alcohol/substances to alleviate the pain of the abuse and shame their parents have shown them and they proceed to raise their kids as they were raised. And so the cycle repeats. Now, in your arrogant ignorance, you probably don't know that First Nations people could not leave their reservation, without permission, up until the 1940s; sometimes, they wouldn't be able to even leave to get to a job. If they left without permission, they could be put in jail. After that, they could leave the reserve, but if they did, they also had to formally give up their right to return - imagine, Argus, if you had to stay home unless given a day pass, and then were told you could leave, but if you did, you could never go back. How would you like that, eh? But hey, in your colonist genes, you think you should be able to just kick brown people out of their home, because - like all colonists - you think you know what is best for the lesser humans of the world. The idea held by so many conservatives that First Nations should 'just get over it' is remarkable in it's arrogance, especially given how vehemently they demand that their own world never change; seems everyone else needs to change to make conservatives 'comfortable'. Denying Canada's role in the past should have any effect on the situation with First Nations today is also remarkable given how often conservatives decry the lack of 'personal responsibility' of everyone else. Take responsibility conservatives: First Nations are still suffering today directly because of the policies of our Government throughout our history. Try to think about effectively helping them move forward, instead of blaming and punishing them for being where we, as a country, put them. Your first step to understanding the situation and how to help effectively, is to listen to what they tell us about their experience.

Maclean's breaks it down nicely for you. You can sort according to type of crime, or aggregate them. Examples: Thompson, MB has the highest homicide rate, 360 per 100,000 people; Essex, ON 34 per 100,000. Toronto has 66 homicides per 100,000 people. It may seem odd to you, but that means a person is safer in a large urban area with a lower crime rate than a small, rural area with a higher crime rate. Your error is in thinking that you hear about all the homicides across the country on the evening news. In fact, you do not - gang-related killings often make the news, or home invasion types, but many homicides and assaults are only mentioned in the local area. For example, in Fort St. John BC, last week, a man killed his girlfriend. I heard nothing about it on my news here in Surrey - did you? I only heard about it because it was next door to where my grandchildren live. (FSJ Homicide rate - 121 per 100,000). If your primary source of information is the news, it's not surprising you'd think that; I'm under the same impression regarding gun crime in the lower mainland, with the perpetrators being primarily of South Asian descent. But without actual data, there's no way to know how true that is, since the news doesn't report on every homicide that happens. Changing the social factors that lead young men into gangs would to a lot more to eliminate gang-related gun violence than 'taking their guns away'. The Border is ----> just over there, and guns come across pretty easily. Sadly, addressing social factors that would actually help isn't permitted by the right; after all, people who are poor and/or non-white must pay for their sins. Case in point: A simplistic answer that decides removing people from their homes is going to solve problems that have been decades in the making; issues of generational trauma and racist attitudes by the wider society ignored.

You think people become addicts so they can get money from the government? Do you live under a rock or something?

Sure. As far as I understand it, guns used in hunting are not targetted; the ban is for guns that are used to kill people. And, do people need to use those types of gun for "target practice"? Yes, criminals are the most likely to be shooting people, I agree. And it seems like common sense to me, if not you, that the fewer guns around, the fewer guns the criminals will be able to obtain illegally. If course, sharing a border with the States makes this challenging, but imo, that's no reason to throw our hands up in defeat. Most violent crime, per capita, happens in smaller and more rural areas. Most gun offences, per capita, happens in smaller and more rural areas. So no, most of these killers aren't in urban centers, they're spread out across Canada. The solution to gun violence isn't pretending it only happens to other people in other places by folks who look different than you. A lot of violence is rooted in social issues and addressing those would go a lot farther in reducing violence than any gun bans, or tougher sentencing. But that would require large segments of our society to stop blaming poor people and brown people for existing.