Signals.Cpl

Because in the free market people don't want to make a profit and will therefore keep healthcare costs artificially low... Oh it has been done before, many times... precisely why people moved away from that and to government organized and led organizations. You might be more suited to live in Afghanistan where the people band together and form their own militia's and pay for their own healthcare... you know where an ambulance is a wheelbarrow. And what do you mean by free market? Someone charging you whatever they want for the service? And in Canada I have no worry that if I need healthcare for myself or my children I will be able to get it... If I had to pay out of pocket for the healthcare I might not be able to afford it and will be forced to watch my children die, which might be acceptable for you but to me not so much. Less bureaucracy? What happened to all the charities that spend three quarters of every dollar on on expenses related to their bureaucracy and only spend one quarter or less on the intended project? Doubt that we can achieve impartiality much less if it was in the hands of a few corporations. So do you Dispute that the British, French and Spanish were paying essentially bribes to the pirates to leave them alone while the US fought what was it two relatively small wars and ended up paying no bribes for protection of their ships? The Americans used force and the British used "diplomacy" the result was the British were found to be a much easier target even though they had a navy many times stronger than the US navy of the timeframe. For the moment until others realize that to use the seaplanes we need to bribe them and they will join in the practice, you pay off one group of people to leave you alone and others will see you as an easy target, why should we bother ourselves with work when we can capture a few of your ships and get you to pay us millions of dollars to leave you alone...after all with no military power you can't do much anyway and if you want to use the sea lanes you have to pay us to leave you alone. Be sure to explain how paying Pirates in Somalia will not give ideas to criminals in all busy shipping areas to start their own little operation because you will pay if you want to run your business... you don't pay they take your cargo you eventually go broke... That is exactly what will happen when idiots disarm and let themselves be pushed around by mere criminals. Money comes from you, if they have weapons and target your ships you will either pay up or it becomes their ships and their cargo... thats the business plan good luck running a business when you have to pay bribes to everyone and anyone with a rifle and a boat.

So why is treatment in the US so expensive? They have a good healthcare and competition yet their treatment is just as expensive... it must be the government right? Cant possibly be that all of the Research and infrastructure costs money... or that the people who spend their time,money and effort to learn expect to be compensated properly?

Sure worked out well for the Low countries in 1940 right?

And that is a good answer until its your ass on the line knowing that you cannot afford your healthcare bill of 400,000 dollars and unfortunately your child needs a transplant there go another 100,000 dollars... Of course they do, thats why over the last few hundred years we have seen police and fire departments take over from private citizens. You seem to be a fan of "solutions" that are proven to not work and have afield anytime some nation run by fools has tried. See answer to #2. See answer to #2. Not according to my bills, the free market keep giving me "more choices" which means they cut my coverage and increase my premium If you are one of the lucky few who will never need health care good, but most people will use it and need it at some point in their lives, and some people cannot see past the next month and think that since they haven't needed it yet they will not need it in the future... Apparently not. Really we can achieve immortality? So your solution would be to pay off the pirates in Somalia rather than use force to stop them? Back to the 1800 I see... and then we saw how that worked out right? The "super powers" paid off the pirates and the Americans beat the pirates, in the long run who benefited more?

That is until you need the healthcare and are going broke getting the treatment you need right?

You can let your family die, that is your concern and your problem. My position is that I will fight and if necessary die for my loved once and I believe that the vast majority of people in Canada agree with me on this point, they would prefer knowing that there is a small chance of an attack going through rather than a GUARANTEE that an attack WILL get through.

Why should I be taxed to provide healthcare when I have not required to use the healthcare for anything serious? Why should I be taxed for the fire department when I have never needed them? Why should I be taxed to support EMS when I have never needed an ambulance? Why should I be taxed to support police forces at the municipal, provincial or federal level since they seem unable to prevent 100% of the crime? Why should I pay for insurance for my car when I am a good driver and have never made an insurance claim? Why invest in doctors and healthcare if it is inevitable that we will die at some point? Why invest in fighting cancer seeing as soon as we rid ourselves of cancer another disease will replace it? Where does it end? Why work hard to increase the lifespan of people when we are guaranteed to die at some point in time? We can't get immortality so why don't we just give in?

Are you or are you not benefiting from Alberta's oil? Just because we may fail we will not stop trying to protect ourselves. Would you protect your family at any cost or let them die because you can't protect them from a few things? If you cannot guarantee 100% protection for your wife and kids would you stop trying to protect them? It stops where you can guarantee a reasonable level of security and where you can expect that mistakes of the past and gaps that were abused are now closed. Just like airport security, we cannot guarantee that 100% security in an airplane but that doesn't mean we should let anyone and everyone walk in with a bomb or a gun. You seem incapable of understanding that there is a middle ground here, it is not completely defenceless or a 100% of the GDP is spend on defence, there is a reasonable level of defence that should be maintained and improved on with lessons learned. Ask the people what they want, the knowledge that there are men and women out there protecting them and willing to give everything to protect them or would they prefer knowing that their lives are at the mercy of terrorists and the like? You seem to think that every terrorist and petty dictator is rational and could be pacified through business and diplomacy... well sometimes that is not the case, sometimes the stick is required.

So wouldn't the requirement be to add more pilots and aircrew to the ranks then the aircraft themselves?

Great, and I support the theory that as long as someone wants to attack me I will defend myself. I understand that some attacks will always get through but I would much prefer some getting through over all getting through it could be the difference between explaining to 10 families why their loved once died and explaining to 10,000 families why their loved once were not worth protecting. -Some Rapes will always happen yet this does not stop people from trying to prevent them. -Child Mortality rates are above 0% and most likely will always remain above 0% yet people try to prevent as many deaths rather then stop trying because some will die. What about the terrorist organizations, how do we engage those? Seeing as the US is our main trading partner and closest ally I would have to say that we will always be the enemy of those who see the US as their enemy and disarming will not change that. Thats an easy statement to make when safe at home but try to explain to people who are affected by an attack why you failed to protect them. The government has a job to protect its people, knowing that a few attacks will get through is not reason enough to stop defending yourself. There was a private members bill some time ago about people choosing wether to fund the CF with their tax money or not, I am all for that as long as there is a list of who opted out of the taxation so that when they need the military to evacuate them from a war zone or a natural disaster we could leave them there to their own devices.

Im glad you agree...

Out of curiosity, when deploying for a long period of time do we deploy pilots with their fighters or do we keep the same set of fighters in theatre and just switch the pilots and crews?

And what happens when we need the planes to police our airspace and don't have it? Do we look at the families of those killed and say well gee at least we saved some money right? You have an unrealistic view that if we were not a threat to anyone they would not bother us, when we consider that we have tremendous resources that will become more and more valuable as time passes your theory goes from childish to suicidal.

Yeah and in the mean time what do we do without airspace? Sit and hope noone decides to attack us, or cause harm to the US through us? Because lets be serious if we were to let something happen to the US from our soil we would be the once suffering the economic repercussions.

Explain to me how much we have to endure between the point we disarm and the point everybody loves us, you make it sound like we can throw our weapons down and everyone will automatically love us.

Seeing as Canada was in Afghanistan at the request of the Government of Afghanistan why would we need to declare war on Afghanistan?

And the fundamental problem with that is if we go down that route we will bear the full cost. Look at the cost of the F35 and the current situation, it is affordable because the research and development is spread out along over 3,000 aircraft, now imagine the same level of research and development being spread out on just 65 or 100 or even 200 fighters... and then you have to consider what happens with that investment when the RCAF gets its fighters, do we replace them every 10 years just to keep the industry going? How can we compete with the current established competition and sell enough to just barely break even? There is no point in setting up the infrastructure and the intellectual power in an industry just to research our own plane build it and shut the industry down or sell it off after the order is done.

So let me get this straight, they didn't want tuition increase and are shocked that when the tuition increase was cancelled the budget was cut to make up for the lost revenue. Are we sure we are talking about people pursuing post-secondary education?

Derek L, I would suggest you don't waste your time explaining it to login as he has a very tenuous of the military in general and the Air Force in particular... before long he will stomp his feet and call you a traitor because you do not live in his fairytale world.

Care to elaborate on those ways that we can protect ourselves without spending money?

And just because we can't stop all of them does not mean we have to let all of them through. There are a lot of situations where we cannot prevent or stop 100% of incidents but that has never stopped people from trying.

Because they get caught or it becomes too hard for them to do anything so they sit and talk but no action, if we disarmed ourselves the dynamic changes. Do you lock the door of your car when you park it? Take your keys with you? do you do the same with your house? How about the women in your life, if one were to face rape would you do something to prevent it or see it as inevitable and let it happen? Yeah, and when that hits close to home what happens then? What happens when someone hits the oil fields in Alberta? Are we going to go with login's idea of militia's now? Let anyone arm themselves to their hearts content? Just because it can't does not mean we should stick our heads in the sand and let anyone do as they please. You can defend yourself and have 1 out of 100 attacks get through, or you can disarm yourself because you cannot stop that one attack and let 100 out of 100 attacks get through its that simple 1 life lost or 10 or 20, vs 10,000 or 100,000 lost. Care to explain how that worked for the Dutch and Belgians in WW2? Or Luxembourg? Or Denmark? Or Norway? And refusing to defend yourself means that people will trust you even less mainly because you will be unreliable, you cannot ensure the security in your airspace or waters no one will invest. And where there is lack of defence or deterrent there is a greater likelihood of exploitation, if you don't defend it, someone will take it from you whatever "it" is. Or we can spend billions more when it does happen and we can't do anything about it. I would rather have it and not need it rather then need it and not have it. It is an insurance policy, you can pay in to an insurance policy and never need it once or you can save the money and get an insurance policy after you need it.

No I lock my door so that someone doesn't come in to my house and steal my property, I know I can't prevent all thefts but I will also not make it easy so that anyone can take my stuff. Just because we cannot make infant mortality rate 0% should we just stop trying and instead have more babies?

And the opposite is worse, knowing that no one is there to stop even the dumbest and least motivated bad guy. We have resources people want, we have enemies that would want to harm us and pretending that we don't all the while making ourselves defenceless is not a sound strategy. Well for example in the north, we have half a dozen nations contesting our ownership, if we completely disarm they could choose to do as they please and we have no discourse in the matter. And your view that they won't hurt me if I don't fight back or even have the means to fight back is so out of touch with reality that it is scary. What about the calls that were received a few months back that required fighter escort for passenger planes because of a threat? Do we ignore them and hope to god that its a hoax?

We will always have something to protect as long as there is someone out there to want it, I may be friendly with my neighbours but I still lock my door even though I know someone motivated enough will get in.