Thorn

Damn. I better sell my stock in Highliner.

This argument is silly. It's not like the Tories won and then said they were going to add seventy seats to Alberta just cuz. The pressure for more seat redistribution has been building for years as the discrepancies grew greater and greater, and only political cowardice (on the part of the opposition) kept this from going ahead years ago. As far as I know, under the Constitution, the addition of new seats has to be done for the purpose of equalizing representation.

You have more stuff. They have more time with family, more time on vacation, more time to enjoy life. I'm not sure you come out ahead here.

Why? Aren't we sitting on huge oil reserves too? Don't we have gold and diamonds? How about Finland? Are they a huge oil producer too? Switzerland? Austria? George? George Bush? Is that you? Didn't you learn anything when you 'set free' the entrepreneurs and investors on Wall Street, George?

We should guide all our taxation policy on how it will affect poorly run businesses? If the businesses in Sweden can survive at their high tax rates why would the taxes drive anyone in Canada out of business?

How do you define 'outrageous'? Their societies work better than yours. Their governments provide far and away more social services to their people, who lead generally better lifestyles than yours do. There is far less poverty, far less crime, and people have far more time off work to be with their families than your people do. Are you counting the cost you guys pay for health care as taxes, btw? You ought to. It's a cost people in other nations don't have.

It is Quebec which is fighting it. The NDP is pandering to Quebec, not to Manitoba or Saskatchewan.

It's completely unrealistic to presume everyone can start a business. The vast majority have neither the inclination nor the resources nor the contacts to start a business. Would you have everyone else working eighteen hour days and living in tin shacks?

How do you suppose businesses continue to operate in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, etc?

Norway has more generous benefits than Canada does, and it has a budget surplus. So perhaps there is more to this borrowing than what benefits and vacations and pensions people get?

If its unsustainable how come other countries have more generous benefits and seem to be able to sustain them quite nicely?

Agreed. Ideally what should happen is the seat distribution should be more or less equalized, with about 282 seats, no more, no less. How much longer can they keep expanding the walls of the House of Commons, anyway?

And do you think that argument is going to play well in BC and Toronto?

I recognize and accept the need for the government to let the smaller provinces have a little leeway in representation per population. But Quebec is not a smaller province. There is no justification for it getting more than it's proper amount of representation.

Given the power ratio between employers and employees, particularly in more difficult economic times, that's very unlikely to lead to a happy conclusion for the employee. In larger organizations, the amount of vacation is set, and can't be changed on the whim of a manager or employee. In firms where there is rapid turnover, again, the value placed on employees is generally minimal, and employers will get away with paying the least salary and benefits they can. The question I have is whether we as a society should consider this to be in our overall interests, or, if not, whether we ought to work to change it in the way the Europeans have.

The government, with minimum wage laws. I know you like the theory of each being willing to work for whatever the market will pay, but in practice this inevitably leads to a downward spiral of wages until most people, those not in jobs which have a scarcity of workers, are working for next to nothing.

There is nothing partisan about basic arithmetic. There is no comlex study needed to determine what the pop ratio is to seats in each province and then see whether they are over or under-represented. This ain't rocket science.

You are speaking of French Canada rather than Quebec. We don't assign seats based on linguistic group in this country. But if we did, given Quebec alone is already over-represented (with very few Anglo MPs), if we add in the Francophone MPs from other provinces that over-representation would only grow worse.

And I've already pointed out that's nonsense. There are a hell of a lot more French speaking MPs from outside Quebec than there are English speaking MPs from Montreal.

So you're saying that these provinces should continue to be underrepresented?

It's not like they're adding seats willy-nilly. The seat distribution is based on the actual population from the most recent census. The boundaries of the new seats will be drawn by boundary commisions seat up by Elections Canada.

I would think my point is clear in that the statement that the 400,000 Francophones in Ontario aren't represented is nonsense. Their MPs actually number a higher percentage of the whole than their population would otherwise justify. They are overrepresented, and given the trend line of population shifts that will only grow worse as their population diminishes in comparison with the other provinces. Growth in population is driven by immigration, and Quebec tightly limits its immigration - not to mention it isn't an attractive destination for most immigrants in the first place. Immediately after the realigment they might be temporarily under-represented but that won't last.

Oh right. Like you guys aren't basing your opposition on politics. And as I recall, the opposition didn't demand "study" last time around. When they had the majority, they didn't insist on "studying" the issue, they flat out killed it. Calling for study is simply a means of delaying as long as possible. There's nothing which needs to be studied. The arguments are spurious.

That's what, 3% of the population? Bernard Trottier, Glen Thibeault, Pierre Pollievre, Pierre Lemieux, Guy Lauzon, Claude Gravelle, Royal Galipeau, and Mauril Belanger are all MPs from Ontario. I don't know them all, but I bet at least a few of them are quite familiar with the French language. The NDP is opposed to any diminishment of electoral power for Quebec. Your leader has said as much. Even if you agree to give more seats to other provinces it will have to be counterbalanced by more seats for Quebec to continue it's high level of representation. And screw the other provinces.

When the bureacracy doesn't have a good argument to say no they call for more study. Hopefully, the studying can last long enough for everyone to forget the question.