wellandboy

The only "deception" is you calling it a nefarious plot against Liberals. The rules will change and the Liberals and everbody else will adapt by appealing directly to average Canadians to finance their political party of choice. Of course if you want to make the argument that average Canadians can't afford it, they must have been over-taxed in the last 12 or so years.

I've lived in Peel, Halton, Waterloo, Haldimand Norfolk and now Niagara over the last 30 years. Only H-N has done the sensible thing and separated. I am involved in two issues in Niagara currently: 1.) The utter incompetence in managing the water / sewer infastructure leading to prohibitive increases of 10% per annum until 2010 to catch up. 2). The Region has proposed new road allowance under the guise of standardization. The problem is in older areas in the Cities and towns, this uncompensated land grab will allow them to take land literally up to peoples front doors. A few have protested and now much to the Regions chagrin the whole mess has to go to the OMB. The best story of the Regions stupidity concerns their new headquarters in Thorold. Somebody neglected to count the Social Services Dept. so now the project has gone way over budget to accomodate these 50 or so staffers. Oops another boneheaded and expensive move! The local rags scarcely cover the Region so all sorts of things can slide by undetected.

The problem is when raising any questions about this issue is that there is a segment of the francophone community that goes berserk. The situation in Welland has raised serious questions within the larger francophone community that has to live in Anglo Ontario. The concerns are real, such as why these people want to invest in bricks and mortar ($12 million) when the money would be much better spent on curriculum. As it is now the two relatively small student populations(Jean Vanier and Confederation) can't support diverse course programs to make the kids competitive to enter university and college. The choice is to send the children to English public or Catholic schools, thus losing (in their mind) francophone identity. One interesting alternative presented by the parents is amalgamate the two French School Boards, the CSDCCS with the CSDCSO into one school. It seems that neither Board is willing to sacrifice their autonomy to provide a rational and cost effective solution to this problem. In that regard your observations are accurate. As far as your assertions about the Chair/President from Welland, you are dead on.

iamcanadian2 your arguments are bit extreme, but I understand a bit where you are coming from. I live in Welland Ontario with a 12.8% of the population listed as French with a total population of 48,000+. There are two Public High Schools, one Catholic H.S., one French Public H.S. and one French High School operated by the CSDCSO. The three English schools are pretty much maxed out in terms of capacity and the two French schools operating at about 30% capacity. The cash rich (with public money) CSDCSO recently purchased a parcel of land to build a new state of the art High School for about 350 children. The parents don't want it, the City certainly doesn't need it, but the undemocratic CSDCSO is forging ahead none the less. Waste of time money and resources? You bet. We have created a monster that is taking advantage of the system we created to the detriment of the greater population of our children. If you dare open your mouth in this town the whining and indignation is unbearable.

I've been away from this forum for a while but its good to know the apologists and appeasers are still convinced this threat is some how our fault. First we don't know the full extent of the links to foreign Islamic terrorist groups, however we can say for certain the inspiration for these Canadian terrorists is clearly from foreign Islamic groups. This is Canada and we have a process for dealing with political change as part of the democratic process. The so-called anger of these young men should inspire them to change perceptions of Muslims not embrace terrorism as a means to change perceptions. What a niave and absurd argument. Responsible Muslims are doing just that; they must be encouraged and applauded for their efforts. What's truly sad is Canadians who believe our mission in Afghanistan to create a stable democracy in that sad and tragic country is justification for militant action here.

I guess the last 70 days has been unkind to you.

Argh. You keep ducking the fact he's not just controling the message, but he's restricting access. It's one thing to have everybody singing from the same songbook, as they say, another to slink out the back door. This is a perfectly acceptable practice at this point.

We have a guest worker program for agricultural workers used extensively in Norfolk, Oxford and Elgin Counties for the tobacco crop and in Niagara for fruits and nursery work. Several friends of mine have hired seasonal workers from the Barbados and Tobago for years on their tobacco farms and sponsored several who have since become Canadian citizens.

With all due respect or at least as much as I can politely muster, your reference to tales your Nazis grandfather told you and "the Jews were given a nice peice of land in the Middle East" demonstrates an utter lack of historical perspective. As for "IN other words this is a form of sanctioned genocide" an unbelievable statement as I've ever seen on this forum. FTA's analogy Nazis analogy is appropriate to Hamas, both elected government's founded and based on terror. Now it appears you're making an analogy between Nazis and Israel and what Hamas are freedom fighters?

I'm taking another 5 minutes of my busy day to fire a little broadside into your conspiracy theory. 1st did ya happen to look at Liberal donations. Funny but the same Demarais seem to appear there as well. Oh and your reference to Connaught Labs, let's see they dropped that name about 8 years ago for Pasteur Merioux, then Aventis and finally last year to sanfoni-Aventis. Not exactly current on the names and not exactly accurate research overall.

I don't have a lot time to comment on this latest conspiracy theory but I'll point out that Ms. Demarais' brother is married to France Chretien daughter of ex-PM Jean. So by your logic the Demarais off-spring attach themselves to the power players of the day in order to fufill their secret geopolitical mandate to undermine all that is Canadian or some other convoluted theory you're amassing "evidence" on.

Done

$13,000,000 gone for another useless Federal handout and a billion to go.

This comparison on paper may have some validity but in the context of todays political reality no way. Too bad he hasn't worked for the CBC because he'd make a great Governor General.

Paul Who?????????

Why don't you write or e-mail the Ministers (National Defence) office ot Foreign Affairs and inquire as to the the official policy. Post the answer here and we'll discuss it. It sounds like your looking for an argument based on no information.

Rae days was quoted on here, the reason he lost the election was that he dared to say that people should consider the good of Ontario and not claim more, more, more. It that is NDP policy I have never read it. Rae never was NDP and never will be, Ontario would do well to remember the "Common Sense Revolution" where the destroying of whole communities was common sense. I remember the Common Sense Revolution but in particular I remember Jean Chretien and Paul Martin drastically slashing transfers to the provinces. This severely hamstrung the provinces ability to provide the services to which we had become accustomed.

"Conveniently attacked"? - What was convenient about some of us knowing people who died on 9/11 Mother F'er? If you were in front of me right now, the cops wouldn’t be able to pull me off you. Somebody needs to teach you some f*cking respect. And yeah, to answer your question, if you did get attacked (God forbid) and your loved ones died, I think you'd see things completely different. In defense of Margrave, I took it as tongue in cheek. 9/11 certainly made Bush and his cronies very wealthy men, so it's natural for some people to feel that it was a little too convenient. This does need mean that we do not feel compassion for the victims. However, reports that came out after, clearly indicate that Bush knew in advance that an attack was imminent, but chose to let it play out. Enough said. I doubt Margrave requires defending and I doubt the comments were tongue in cheek if other posts are any measure of his/her particular beliefs. What did you say Margrave right after 9/11- "serve the bastards right". There was some intelligence about terrorist attacks, but nothing specific.

Uhh, that's not how I remember Captain Canada Martin spouting off about this during the election. Institutionalized more, private less as I recall, but then again it's easy to get confused listening to Captain Canada.

That settles it then...there's no need to waste time debating the issue since we're all in agreement. Better to spend the time discussing things that matter. Unless of course you want to have a debate because some people don't agree with the mission... Who decides what seek and destroy missions Canadians deploy on? What happens to detainees? Will they be turned over to the Americans in some cases? If so, with what assurances? See, there are things that need to be discussed. None of the old "trust me", no thanks. Not after what we've witnessed from the Bush administration. Harper thinks Canadians are idiots. He thinks he can throw out the old "support the troops" to imply that any discussion about Afghanistan is then by definition NOT supporting the troops. He should tell Karl Rove thanks but no thanks for the advice and start playing straight with Canada on this. Where does Karl Rove come into this? Can you provide a connection or is this more imagination and speculation.

If memory serves these boneheads were nailed by Michigan Fish and Game and Coast guard. The same rules apply when I fish the Upper and Lower Niagara, you simply get both New york and Ontario fishing licenses, plus make certain your boat is both Canadain and US Coastguard compliant. Safety is also a big issue on both waterways for different reasons. The Niagara obviously for the currents and whirlpools (the Falls) and in the Detroit because of the nasty 8 ft. wakes created by lakers and salty's plying the relatively narrow channel. Since Canadian resources either Coastguard and MNR are spread so thin, the US is fairly strict about enforcement on their side. Not unfair but strict.

Thanks for the insight because a friend of ours has asked for some assistance in such a case. She has been overwhelmed by the "hoops", she's been forced to jump through to move forward with her case. Since this was Ontario, I am assuming you are referring to the Ont. Human Rights Commission. In this instance, I've found some Labour Code violations and am suggesting these be addressed first. The strategy is if we can obtain a favourable ruling from MOL, it will substantiate the claims with the Human Rights Tribunal as to pattern, history etc.. The one thing I know for certain is this won't be easy or resolved quickly.

BE POLITE AND RESPECT OTHERS Mapleleafweb operates these forums in the hopes that they will promote intelligent, honest and responsible discussion. We encourage you to speak your mind on relevant issues in a thoughtful way. Please respect others using this board and treat them with respect and dignity. I guess this doesn't apply to you. No, I have very little tolerance for lazy, greedy losers who spend their days on the internet ranting about "everyone else spending their tax dollars". If you prefer living in a dump with sewage running down the streets and illiterate armed hooligans running around to paying taxes, move to Uganda or Ethiopia and SHUT UP! Evidently, you have no tolerance whatsoever for anybody who disagrees with you, angry little person. Too bad because any validity to your arguments is overshadowed by your immature tirades.

Mimas BE POLITE AND RESPECT OTHERS Mapleleafweb operates these forums in the hopes that they will promote intelligent, honest and responsible discussion. We encourage you to speak your mind on relevant issues in a thoughtful way. Please respect others using this board and treat them with respect and dignity. I guess this doesn't apply to you.

I hear it's a hit in North Korea.