?Impact

What about this?

Going skiing for a day is not a vacation. If we add up all the times Harper flew to Toronto to watch a Leafs game it probably is 2-3 times what the anti-Trudeau dipwads at Ezra's toilet paper rag are saying about Trudeau. This is nonsense.

What has deteriorated is the growth predictions. The rosy picture painted by the previous government is not materializing, they predicted 2.2 growth for '15-'20 and the current outlook is 1.7.

While that is true when you compare Canada to the USA, I don't believe it needs to be in a constitutional monarchy. As you point out, the biggest problem is the Prime Minister makes all the appointments that could provide any checks and balances in the system. I have been arguing for a number of years that those appointments need to be made by committee with a broader representation, including provincial representation where appropriate like for appointing Senators who are supposed to represent the province.

Very true, American late night television has been increasing in popularity the past few months. Canadians tuned out after Carson retired, and other than a brief stint about 5 years ago it was in sore need of revival.

The election garnered some coverage, but I doubt anybody cares about the inauguration. There might be a few second clip as he holds his hands on a burning Bible.

Yes, nobody is saying the election was hacked except Twump before the election.

From Statistics Canada I see we have about 450,000 international students in country, but not to worry only about 220,000 of them are singed in the current year as many are returning and I assume we don't have to screen them a second time. When you figure out the cost of screening immigrants, multiply it by 1.73 to account for students. You are ok with Temporary Foreign Worker Program, International Mobility Program and Work Permit holder for other purposes participants, or should we screen them as well. Perhaps you should do some homework on Statistics Canada to see how many temporary foreigners we let into the country. You didn't explicitly state it so please clarify you are ok with tourists not going through your extensive screening.

How many people will a couple of extra staff be able to screen? Your criteria of travelling to remote locations, and arranging and holding interviews with employers and neighbours could easily add several work days, lets put the average at 24 hours. That is about 80 candidates per employee. What is the acceptance rate, because that will affect how many actual immigrants it will be but obviously somewhere below the 80. Are you saying that an embassy is only responsible for 160 immigrants, and that is assuming a ingle employee can cover everything for a single candidate. You realize that is only about 9000 or so immigrants total or about 3% of our current immigrants. If you have better estimates, then please explain them and as your math teacher used to say: show your work.

I am assuming she is here on a student visa and is not an immigrant. Are you suggesting we also screen students and tourists?

Where are you getting that from? The on-line portal only has jan-apr 2016 information. I don't see a significant shift in age categories, but one thing that appears fairly clear is that those 60+ is only about 2-3% of the total.

I never said that is what they are paid. Do you understand what loaded cost means? These are overseas employees, and I assume you want Canadians to be the ones involved in these interviews. Did you want to hire some locals to do the investigations and reporting?

She sounds like a real winner. Took a look through her twitter stream, she seems to hate the world. From what I can garner, she is taking women's studies. My favourite tweet from her is: There's a special place in hell for ppl whose only interaction with your social media posts and activities is to say negative stuff Does she not get how negative she is in a lot of her own tweets.

Certainly nostalgia plays a part, but there would be many practical issues around abolishing it. Since the repatriation the Constitution 35 years ago, there is very little the monarchy can do and almost nothing it does do other that serve a ceremonial role. Even the Queens representative in Canada, the Governor General, is more an internal role with the Queen only making a ceremonial appointment based on the 'recommendation' of the Prime Minister. Canada has many alliances with other countries; military, economic, social, etc. Being a Commonwealth nation helps maintain and strengthen some of those links. Certainly we could do without it, but more interaction is generally mutually beneficial. In terms of cost, yes there are costs associated with being part of a constitutional monarchy but they are nominal. What people don't think about are the costs associated with breaking away from one. The most entrenched would be our legal system where the Crown is used to represent the state, after deciding on what manner we wished to change things there would be huge costs associated with changing legislation at least at the federal and provincial level. While this would be a one time cost, I expect it would be huge. Beside we all like to see pictures of cute babies and young prince and princesses, even you Yanks do.

Trump certainly has presence, but dominates is not right. For example on the CBC home page, Trump shares a headline with the Republicans on the gutting of the ethics office issue under the US Politics category. That is one of about 2-3 dozen stories on the home page.

Sorry, but the Conservatives had 9 years to fix the immigration system.

Agreed, but I don't think that the heads of the agencies are the ones doing the actual intelligence gathering or even the briefings. Yes Brennan did defend his agency from Trump's unfounded attack, but that is to be expected. Clapper did lead a review after the fact.

My apologies for my gruff response.

Yes, we could throw much more money at immigration services (and related agencies) and beef up the process. How much should we spend? 300,000/year * ?hours of overseas labour What do you think the loaded cost of overseas labour would be? My guess is $500/hour, and if these agents are travelling to neighbourhoods around countries then don't forget to include that travel time.

...and the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain - but what does that have to do with what I said? The books are finalized in October; yes the fiscal year is April-March but it takes the bean counters time to do their job.

Brian Mulroney got 58 (77%) of the seats in Quebec with 50.2% of the popular vote in '84 and 63 (84%) of the seats in Quebec with 52.7% of the popular vote in '88.

I think you have it the other way around. Trump is no conservative.

Assange may know his sources, but that doesn't mean his sources are the hackers or just middlemen.

I believe it is in Luke as well. If you consider that a vision, then what do you consider the 10 commandments? To me the burning bush seems to be Moses high on substance abuse. He went away, found some of the mineral lapis lazuli and proceeded to chisel it to two roughly 10"x20" rectangles, and then chisel through through them holes to represent lettering with the 10 commandments inscribed on each 'tablet'. We know that he was capable of doing that, because he later destroyed the originals and made new copies.

Trudeau is on a well earned vacation, and in fact he has been working while on vacation as evidenced by several statements he has made from there.