Renegade

In my view it falls to these in priority order: 1. Citizens themselves 2. Their friends and families 3. Charities I also only view the obligation as a moral one and only to be enforced by the consciences of the groups above.

It is only cruel if you presume that it is a governmental obligation to provide a guranteed standard of living for its people. From where do you draw this conclusion? You make a subjective judgment that cutting welfare rates is stupid. Why is is stupid? How can it be stupid when you don't even agree on the reason for having welfare?

The above is from the same site you quoted. If your argument is that the shelter system is inefficient. I agree. The governments (provincial and city) should stop funding the $41 per diems and remove the shelter system as an expensive duplication.

The case for ending the liquor monopolies If there was ever any doubt that selling off the LCBO was the right thing to do, this should help dispel them. It's too bad none of our provincial leaders (save Alberta) had the backbone to actually do this.

I have mixed feelings about a majority Liberal government. On one hand I really don't agree with many of the liberal spending policies and in many ways they have backed away from the fiscal restraint which has kept them in power. On the other hand, not supporting the Liberal's risks a minority government, and that minority is subject to blackmail from the NDP, which ended up costing taxpayers $5B this year. Is it better to support a majorty you dislike or risk a minority which is potentially worse?

You say that the correct measure of a government's fiscal responsibility is "how much it spends". What is a deficit or surplus if not a measure of how much the government spends on a yearly basis (above what it collects)? Of course it is also important what a goernment buys, but clearly it would bring ruin on the country by overspending, no matter what it purchased. "they never have to pay back tax money raised"? The don't unless the spend more than they collect then they have to pay it back with interest. That is exactly what a Government Bond is. It is a loan from the public to the government, for which the government pays interest. In that sense it is exactly like a family. Taxes raised is analogous to earned income of a family. A family only has to pay back what they spend beyond their earned income. Just as there are some people paying higher interest rates than 3.8%, there are plenty of people with cash sitting in the bank earning 0%, or even losing money in the stock market. Using your justification I can turn the question around to you and ask " Does it not make sense to retire debt first which is charging interest instead of having money earning no interest? Read this, please <{POST_SNAPBACK}> This author's suggestion that buying a bond as an equivalent to eliminating the debt is ludicrous. For the reasons below: 1. There is no good way of knowing how much any one person's share of the debt is. Simply taking the total debt and deviding by the population is nonsense. Not all of the population contributes to the debt, and even the taxpaying population pays at different rates and it will be the middle-class and the wealthy who will bear the brunt of paying down the debt. 2. Even if you knew how much your share of the debt was and bought a bond to offset it. Your bond would be taxed yearly on its interest payment, so yearly you would still be paying toward the debt via the taxes you pay on the bond.

Left a debt for future generations? Do you mean the past borrowed from us?On the contrary, it should be clearly obvious to you if you look around that Canada has alot more accumulated wealth now than it did 30 years ago. The present borrows from the past, and the future will borrow from us. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, I mean borrowed for the taxpaying generation of today and the future. It is obvious that when a govenment incurs a deficit and those yearly deficits accumlate into debt, that a government is not living within their means. The vast majority of taxpayers today, have for all of their working lives have paid interest toward the debt. It will be the fate of future generations to continue to pay the carrying charges for the debt for the forseeable future. The funds which are being used to service the debt could otherwise be used to fund benefits and services for the population. Your correct that the wealth of the Canada has grown but this has been despite the debt which was incurred by previous governments. There are countries which have incurred no debt yet they too have increased their wealth. I would agree that there are times where it make sense for a government to run a deficit and incur debt. These should be restricted to short term situation. Because some governments have abused that privilige and incurred yearly deficits and long term debt, the taxpaying population has become distrustful of government incurring ANY deficit. Since the 90s the Canadian fedral government has shown fiscal responsibility by breaking the habit of running deficit, and slowly paying down the debt. This is both prudent and nessary for our long term viability.

Wait and second here, Renegade. Your predecessors got the benefit of borrowing. If your predecessors didn't leave anything to you, don't blame cybercoma for that. And by the way, the world as a whole is a heck of a lot richer now than it was even 30 years ago. So if you personally feel burdened by debt, then it must be that others of your generation have got even more than you. You should have picked your parents better. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> August, yes our prececessors got the benefit of borrowing. They spent money which was not theirs but left a debt for future generations of taxpayers to pay. I am in no way blaming cybercoma for this, and I share his attitude of "living within our means" . Frankly the debts which were incurred in the 70s and 80s were not "investments" which yeilded a return, in fact they were a way of funding a lifestyle which was beyond the means of society. It is with good reason that the public abhors governmental debt today.

"Precluding men from this gym is a bona fide justification for preserving women's privacy, dignity, and their safety interests," Litherland said. I'll stand by the above But, I can also see the fellow's point if out of neccessity he wanted to access the women's fitness club and no other clubs are geographically within the same area & etc. and he was not accommodated, it is a real issue that has to be addressed. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> RB, since Litherland is the defendant's lawyer, would you really expect him to have a position any different than that? I don't really have an issue with the club having a perogative to exclude men, provided a double standard was not applied and men had the same privilege of having a similar club.

An all black high school as a solution to lack of recognition of blacks in the public school system? Seriously? Can people actually be this stupid and still remember to breathe? Will these schools be fashioned after the highly successful Aboriginal Residential Schools or the more enlightened model of WWII Japanese internment camps? Once these underprivileged (and now culturally segregated) kids graduate are they going to build all black towns for them to live in? Wow... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Even the Toronto Star and Mcguinty had the good sense to pan this idea Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty nixes idea of black-only schools

Interesting one of the scenarios we discussed in this thread has become an issue and is now before the courts: Equality battle of another kind It will be interesting to see the outcome

Don't be so sure. I'd vote for him again if he ran provincially or federally. Lots of people I know would vote for him again. (Some of the same people who voted agains Eves).

If you need a pacemaker, no longer have medical coverage, and cannot afford one, I exect that you need to appeal to charity or perish.

The price of freedom is personal responsibility. If we want the freedom to choose our own way, we should expect the personal responsibility for both the benefits and consequences that comes with that. So if someone loses everything because they did not purchase sufficient medical insurance they have no one else to look to for the cause but themselves. Why should the government be obligated to bear the consequences of their choices. You are painting health care as an insurance scheme run by the government. In many ways it is, however to be truly treated as an insurance scheme, I as a consumer should have the choice of deciding if I think that the price of coverage is worth the risk and benefit. I as a consumer of health insurance should have the option to opt out if I am willing to take the risk of being uncovered or I percieve the benefit not to be worth the cost. Alternatively I should be free to purchase health insurance from a private insurer if I deem the benefit relative to the cost is better. The problem with looking as public healthcare as "insurance" is it offers no such choices. So the factory which employs him has put him in the position of having to choose between unskilled labour and going hungry? Why don't we force the factory to pay him much more, say $7/hour, so that they can decide it makes more sense to close down and relocate elsewhere, or better still, replace human labour with machines. Of course now that labourer is umemployed, he now truly has no choice because his only source of employment has been taken away. Great strategy!!!

Interestingly, after Harris's first term in office, Ontarians decided they needed to be reminded again and re-elected him.

It is my responsibility to make sure I have a contingency should I need a pacemaker. If that contingency was not provided by public health insurance, I would purchase private insurance. If any worker freely sells his services, regardless of the price of those services, it is not fiscal enslavement. Even in Indonesia it is Indonesians who run the factories which employ these workers. Even in Indonesia, there are lawyers, doctors, and business men who earn considerably more than pennies per day. The point is, only those workers who lack the skills to undertake other occupations will end up with the lowest paying jobs and unless they change that, that will be their fate.

It really depends upon what you mean by fiscal enslavement. I don't consider the free exchange of either goods or labour to be fiscal enslavement. Personally I would only use the term enslavement where an action is forced under threat of violence. In that sense our government practices enslavement by forcibly extorting taxes under threat of violence. I freely accept the risk that under circumstances beyond my control I may end up poorer than I am now. That risk affects my behaviour today. For instance creating a "rainy-day" savings fund, or buying insurance to cover some of the risk. In addition the risk of losing wealth further motivates people to increase their skill, experience, and effort so that they do not end up poorer. Most people start with nothing and build wealth through life via the choices they make and the efforts they expend. The risk of losing wealth is simply the risk of starting over, and is an acceptable one in my view.

Both men and women are only necessary for biological procreation. You can still have a family without having necessarily both men and women. Society should not have a single and narrow definition of a family, but should be both inclusive and flexible in its definition. I'd like to understand your logic. Since you are against divorce/separation (and I presume single unwed parents), lets take teh example of a mother with a deceased spouse. Are you saying that such a family is one which you consider "normal"? Do the kids have a chance of being "normal"? If so, and having one mother still makes the family "normal", why should having two be any more determental and not benefical? How can a one mother family be "normal" but two mothers "absurd"

The love and care shown by parents toward their children is way more important than the gender of each parent. Having opposite gender parents gives a child no more chance of having proper role models than does having same-sex parents. In some ways the child is better off because they are raised in a more tolerant environment. I fail to see how this is an erosion of society.

eureka, my guess is no, we will always have a classed society, rich and poor, winners and losers, at least in societies on a large scale. Personally I think it is in human nature for each to act in its own self-interest. Successful societies have relied on this motivation.

cybercoma, for most of us, we did not have the choice to go into debt or to choose the level of our debt. We inherited the debt our predecessors foolishly incurred. So now that we have the debt, even if we only earn $20,000, we would be wise to continue to pay it down. What is the alternative, wait indefinately until we earn more and continue to pay interest on the debt? We are in a fortunate situation today that interest payments are relatively low, the economy has been expanding and we have made some headway in paying down the debt. Interest rates and the economy won't always be this favourable to paying down the debt.

mirror you would do well to heed the words of George Santayana "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Excessive spending policies by governments of mulitple parties got the country into massive debt for which we paid, and continue to pay a huge price. Let's not make the same mistakes again. What I don't like is excessive taxation. I'm fine with taxes I consider fair. How about instead of abandoning ship, I just stay here and try to change the system.

Sure go ahead. Please explain.

Maybe you are not aware but the idea of working for welfare was introduced by Bob Rae and Clinton. Harris just happened to be the one to implement it. The Tenant Protection Act, is better than the previous law but still very much favours the tenant, and it my view did not go far enough to level the playing field which was biased toward the tenant. There are more careers today and opportunities to earn a living today then there ever has been before. So what if you can't go off into the wilderness and build your own log cabin? I doubt that the large majority of people would even have the skills to survive without the infrastructure that has been put in place. Depending upon that infrastructure means they are also dependant upon the opportunities that society provides, of which there are plenty. You know nothing about me. There needs to be disincentives to be on welfare. The embarassment of being on welfare is just one of the disincentives. I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly would be embarassed and humiliated to even apply for welfare.

For the last time, I never said that. Show me where I said that. All I did was ask a question on what you meant by abuse. Pretty much as expected that you resort to insults when you have no argument to make. How the hell do you know who my ancestors are or what they decided? For al you know my ancestors are the same as your ancestors. I care not if you like my definition of right wing or left wing. I'm equally fine if you want to substitue the word "you" instead of "leftists". You're completely incorrect if your assumption is that I think we don't need poor people. There will always be poor in society, and in fact it is the poor who have the greatest incentive to increase their wealth by earning income. For the most part our society gives them ample means to do so, and it is up to them to use those means if they wish to move themselves out of poverty. immigrants take away opportunity???? Many immigrants are educated and wealthy before they come to Canada. In fact we benefit from their educatoin for which there was no subsidy by the canadian government. What are you proposing? That we ban poor immigrants? Maybe you can explain why you think the poor in other countries who wish to immigrate to Canada are less deserving of a job than the poor here. There is always a balance which needs to be met when there are conflicting forces. If a person is self-sufficient, he can make the choice as to what point his religious practices should outweigh his economic self-interest. When he loses his capabality for self-sufficiency he also gives up some ability to choose and must conform to the restrictions. You cannot have a situation where religious practices always takes precidence. What if I'm a non-practiciting Christian, do I still have to work Sundays and Christian holidays? What if my religion calls me to pray most of the day. Does that mean I never have to work? Well at least it is a start that you think that most rich people are not evil. How does my attitude fuel this idea? Here's a definition from Wikipedia: I disagree with you on what a democracy is, and neither our system of government, nor our Charter mandate that social services is a right. Social services is a policy implemented by the governing organization and policies are subject to change as are the governing organization.