I am Groot

This is an Americanism. Yes, in the US the putative conservatives party is definitely beholden to the rich. But that's not the situation in Canada. The Liberals are the party of the rich and corporate Canada and always have been. The rich don't want to waste their money on parties which are usually in opposition and powerless. The Liberals are in power about 80% of the time so that's where the money goes.

Maybe Poilievre will use it. God knows it would help him with the suburbs and exurbs of Toronto which are full of conservatively minded immigrants. Anyone have any doubt what Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities think of this?

I'm trying to go slow and keep things simple based on who I'm trying to communicate with. I get the idea complex ideas frustrate you. No, Ben. I believe your ideological blinkers have blinded you to more than just reality. It's kind of difficult to honestly misinterpret "Islam still espouses medieval social beliefs on women, gays, Jews, etc.", which is what I said, to "all 2 billion Muslims around the world agree on everything", which was your 'interpretation'. This is clearly untrue. You can lie to anonymous people on a web site, Ben, but don't lie to yourself. And yet what you call 'false' is merely that your ideological viewpoint puts a different spin on reality than most of the rest of us have. Well, but you have to understand, Ben, that the Enlightenment and Reformation were not instant changes in thinking. They played out over centuries. And I'm not doubting awful things were still done in the name of Christianity for some time. But I'm not comparing Christianity of the 1600s or 1700s with Islam of today. I'm comparing Christianity of today with Islam today. And while protestant fanatics might well have been burning Christians alive centuries ago they're not doing it today. And Islamic fanatics ARE. Sure, but every religion condoned slavery. And it was, surprise, the Christians who, because of the Enlightenment, began to realize slavery was a bad thing. They not only stopped it within their own territories they forced others to stop it, including the Islamic world, which had been bringing slaves up the east coast of Africa for a thousand years. And once again you're trying to compare the western Christianity of days gone by with the Islam of today. You need to use a more realistic comparison, Ben. And you really would do better not to get so upset merely because someone says something as obvious as that modern Islamic scholars and clerics still condone death for blasphemy and apostasy. Or that Islam is appallingly misogynistic. These are facts your ideological constraints may not be able to embrace, but facts nonetheless.

We should never select out people because we don't like their religion. However, there is something to be said about deselecting religious fanatics and fundamentalists because they would be least likely to adapt well or integrate into a secular, tolerant society. I've read several stories of refugees in Western Europe having their citizenship applications turned down because they would not shake hands with a member of the opposite sex, for example.

Yes, I'm aware. But they reflexively see it so. Which is why the Roman Catholic church's position on abortion angers them but they shrug off the anti-abortion views of Islamic mosques and organizations.

Anyone surprised the provincial tories haven't jumped into this with both feet? It's a great way to make political hay and show yourself as pro-family and the defenders of children. Especially since it's almost impossible to defend this person.

Well that's just silly. The idea of the separation of church and state is most notable as coming from the framers of the American constitution, though those people in turn took the concept from the Enlightenment, esp philosophers like John Locke, who, since he died in seventeenth century was unlikely to have been influenced by communism.

Tommy also believed in Eugenics. But never mind. The modern Left seems to have little time for Christianity because the most cherished polices of the Left clash so often with the beliefs of major Christian denominations on issues like abortion and gay rights. The Left are willing to ignore such policies from 'bipoc' religions but not from what they see as 'white' Christianity (it's not really)

Wow. What you're describing, Ben is called 'disagreement'. And as I recall I described you as being dishonest for making things up I hadn't said. It's not working, Ben. You should just stop while you're behind.

They do? Who is 'they'?

Then it will be our fault. Though I honestly don't expect Poilievre to be worse than Trudeau from any reasonable perspective.

Possible. Dunno. If he makes it and he sucks like Trudeau then four years later we can put in the Liberal, whoever that might be. They almost have to be better than Trudeau.

Ben, you haven't pointed to a single statement I've made that is wrong except in your woke hollywood mind. And let's be truthful here. You're not interested in discussion. You're interested in condemnation. Someone who disagrees with you has to be browbeaten into silence, right? Not gonna happen.

Yup. They were built to educate kids, not turn them white. And teachers were buried in those cemeteries too. As for notifying families, don't know enough to say.

Nonsense. You are making no distinction between what you see coming from the progressives who congregate in the arts and academia and the bulk of people who have no voice but who live out their lives and simply shake their heads in disdain at the silliness the progressives spout. The media is always on message, pushing the narrative. They won't allow anyone who doesn't have progressive thoughts on the air. So you don't know they exist. But the culture of everyday Canadians is not the culture of the Laurentian Elites and the urban media.

Mmm, yes, in a sense, but the difference is the clerics who are interpreting those holy books are quite different. Ours went through the reformation, which is why you don't find mainstream Christian clerics thundering fire and brimstone and demanding people be killed. It's why you don't have mobs of shrieking Christians trying to burn someone alive for Blaspheme. It's why we have a secular society and they do not. This discussion reminds me of when Bill Maher and Sam Harris were discussing Islam and Ben Afleck lost his mind because they were saying things he didn't like. Not that he knew anything about Islam, of course, or the Islamic world. It just offended his wokeness to have what he saw as a protected identity group being maligned. You are similarly outraged and for the same reason. No thinking is involved on your part. A protected identity group cannot be criticized for any reason. Amiright?

You're equally clueless about what country I'm from.

And you remind me of an effete French aristocrat smiling and making bad puns to Mary Antoinette about the peasants just before they crash through the door and take your head off. Not a clue what's going on but damned certain he knows it all.

Perhaps. I suspect since he's not the PM he'll have to be more open to suggestions from senior MPs. And one of the reasons he's not answering policy questions could be he wants to change policy and hasn't had a chance to. Of course, Trudeau just changed it on the fly and told his people about it afterward, but you can get away with more when you're PM.

The government only set schools up where there were enough students around that area to attend, as in towns and cities. The residential schools were built because big chunks of native kids were on tiny reserves without enough people to fill a school, and where you'd never get a schoolmarm to travel to and live.

I don't believe anything I've written in this thread/topic seeks to invoke nationalism. I simply point out inaccuracies in what others have written. I'm not a religious person but like Sam Harris I can easily see where some religions are worse than others. I am not really a nationalist, but I can certainly see where some cultures are worse than others. Insofar as that goes Canada is the beneficiary of the Enlightenment and the European Reformation and its culture and values derive from that. I won't argue about what the British Empire was or was not as I regard that to not be particularly profitable. I would point out that regardless of what you might say about its 'multiculturalism' the leadership of the empire was centred in Britain and its people were absolutely not believers in anything but the racial, ethic, cultural, religious, military, and every other kind of superiority of the people of their island over anyone else in the world, most especially 'wogs', which was the generic name given anyone with black, brown or swarthy skin. The Empire and its various peoples, existed to serve the economic and military needs of the British Isles, and for no other reason.

You'll pardon me if I say this reads like a disheveled man screaming into the night as he throws himself this way and that. It's built on a strawman and then goes on to burn it down while screaming angrily at the sky. Let's first discount that all 2 billion Muslims around the world agree on everything, for that's an obviously dishonest restatement of what I wrote. My statement was that "Islam still espouses medieval social beliefs on women, gays, Jews, etc." You then said it was only 'hardline fundamentalist islam' which did that, to which I replied. All of Islam does. You will not find any major Islamic scholars or clerics who have different interpretations. This is mainstream stuff. Now clearly I was speaking about Islam, the religion, not the body of people who make up the congregation, so to speak. I'm sure you'll find individual Muslims who believe that the earth is flat, Elvis is alive, and Jews bombed the world trade centre, among other silliness. But Islam, the religion as interpreted by religious scholars and clerics believes and advocates for a clear set of social behaviours as enunciated in its various religious books like the Hadiths and Quoran. Finally, I'd like to note the irony of someone who castigates me for not speaking from logic and reason yet produces dishonest emotional twaddle such as you wrote above.

But you're the one who dismissed the idea our culture was better. Did you do that without having any idea or criteria as to what facets of a culture are good or bad? You can say things are subjective only if you discard the ideas passed down to us by the age of enlightenment, including natural law. And I concede people who didn't grow up in the tradition of Western European culture might be inclined to do so. But I think it serves us well and most everyone who lives in the West would agree. Along with most of those who live elsewhere other than religious fanatics. How about this. A culture where people can speak their minds and give their views without the danger their fellow citizens will kill them is better than a culture where giving your opinion could lead to mobs of people beating you to death. A culture which has the idea of compromise built into it is better than a culture which has a winner-take-all view. A culture which values tolerance is better than one that does not. A culture which is demonstrably racist is worse than a culture which is not. How about that one? A culture which respects women as equals to men (save for the obvious physical advantages one has over the other) is better than a culture which is built on the belief women are inferior and must always obey men. Is that one good? I have a whole lot of these which I suspect you would agree with. So no, it is not impossible to determine which cultures are better than others,

There is a third way, which is how everyone else in the world does it. A public system supplemented by a heavily regulated private system. For example, Germany (maybe it was Austria, no matter) has everyone get private insurance. But the insurance has to be offered at cost by the companies. They can only make a profit by offering extras the basics don't cover. And those who can't afford it get funding from the government. Maybe that'll work. I don't know enough. All I know is ours is not working as well as many others in the world that pay comparable amounts into their healthcare systems.