normanchateau

Tightening up the criteria would require intelligence, creativity and self-discipline, not something one can expect from the Harper Conservatives. For this inept crew it's simpler to get rid of the entire program, create talking points about the most outrageous grant recipients and pretend to be fiscal conservatives. The incompetent and fiscally irresponsible Harper has now driven Canada into two consecutive months of deficit after squandering billions of the surplus in 2006 and 2007 through increased spending: http://andrewcoyne.com/columns/2007/03/fla...ig-spenders.php

I have no problem with mandatory sentencing for violent crimes. The problem is Stephen Harper who appears not to be able to distinguish rational reasons for mandatory sentencing from social conservative reasons for mandatory sentencing. By introducing absurd legislation like six months mandatory for one plant, respect for mandatory sentencing legislation per se will surely diminish.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/st...4d5&k=75332 How extremist are they? According to this url, they oppose what Stephen Harper opposes...homosexuality and abortion. Perhaps they are simply more honest about their beliefs.

Do you seriously believe that the public will in Canada is a mandatory sentence of six months for growing one marijuana plant? That's what the social conservative Stephen Harper has introduced as legislation: http://thefilter.ca/articles/canada/canada...arijuana-fades/

Back door?

You asked for evidence that the Harper Conservatives were a threat to civil liberties. Thank you for acknowledging that their futile attempt to take away certain people's right to marry was indeed a threat to civil liberties. Why do you suppose it is no longer Harper Conservative policy to oppose gay marriage? How about the following? (1) He has a minority government and not a hope of stripping away their right to marry in this parliament (2) He wants to win a majority so must pretend that he is no longer a social conservative (3) Religious nuts and homophobes will vote for him anyway as there is no serious political party in Canada to the right of CPC

What is far more likely to turn people off from the Green Party is to know the policies and campaign platform of the Green Party. For example, how many Canadians who plan to vote Green know that they propose a 12 cents a litre additional tax on gasoline? http://www.greenparty.ca/en/releases/06.06.2007

Now that the inept Harper Conservatives have captured the crown as being the biggest spenders in the history of Canada, they view it as a virtue rather than a vice: http://andrewcoyne.com/columns/2007/03/fla...ig-spenders.php The incompetent Harper government has now managed to finally spend more than they're taking in: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/25/...ce.html?ref=rss So much for fiscal conservatism. Instead of using the largest surplus in the history of Canada to reduce marginal income tax rates for all Canadians, Harper squandered it by giving billions to Quebec from the rest of Canada to correct the "fiscal imbalance" which Jean Charest shrewdly used to lower income tax rates in Quebec. And what does the incompetent Harper have to show for his multibillion dollar gift to Quebec at the expense of the rest of Canada? "In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois leads all parties with 37 per cent of support, but the Liberals are in second place with 27 per cent and the Tories are well back of that with just 18 per cent." http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.ht...52-796f0649a1be CPC made a huge mistake in selecting a social conservative rather than a fiscal conservative to lead their party. For CPC to elect a majority, Harper will need to be replaced with a fiscal conservative who is not a social conservative.

One of Stephen Harper's most outrageous campaign promises when he ran for election in 2005 was to strip away the legal rights of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Canadians to marry by "revisiting" previous legislation. Harper kept that social conservative promise when he introduced a motion as Prime Minister calling for the CPC government to introduce legislation restoring the traditional definition of marriage, i.e., stripping away the rights of hundreds of thousands of Canadians to marry. On December 7, 2006, MPs voted 175 to 123 against the CPC motion. Most of the 123 MPs voting for the motion were Conservatives. Most of the 175 MPs voting against the motion were not. Were it not for the fact that Harper and the CPC hold only a minority of the seats, Harper's social conservative agenda would have prevailed on this issue. With a majority government, Harper's religious-based, social conservative agenda would remain a huge threat to the individual liberties of Canadians. One needs only to look at Harper's voting history to see that his religious fundamentalism often interferes with his ability to reason.

You raise an excellent point, i.e., that Canada refused to grant entry to Jews who faced murder at the hands of Nazis and their collaborators. By contrast, those on the Komogata Maru were not fleeing genocide or even death but rather were merely looking to improve their financial resources through illegal immigration to Canada. What does it say about Harper that he publicly apologized to Sikhs in 2008 for Canada barring their illegal immigration more than 90 years ago but has no intention of apologizing to Jews for Canada barring their entry as they attempted to flee the Holocaust and certain death? Can Harper supporters explain why modern day Sikhs are more worthy of a Harper apology than modern day Jews? I suspect they can't and will simply ignore these questions as they must surely create cognitive dissonance in rational Harper supporters.

Here's a link to a thread I began more than two years ago about Harper's latest apology: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index....aded&start= Here's the first post in that link: Ottawa drops "no apology, no compensation" hard line Vancouver Sun Published: Sunday, June 03, 2007 OTTAWA - The Harper government has quietly dropped the previous Liberal regime's "no apology, no compensation" hard-line in negotiations with ethnic groups seeking redress for past wrongs despite warnings that it would open the door to a possible flurry of claims. In government documents obtained by CanWest News Service through the Access to Information Act, the federal government was recently advised that the new approach "may advance calls for apologies/redress" and that there was the "potential for other presently unknown communities to seek recognition." "A number of other communities are known to have been impacted by wartime measures and/or immigration restrictions including: Austro-Hungarians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Doukhobors, Germans, Hutterites, Indo-Canadians, Jews, Mennonites, Turks, etc..." says the briefing under the heading Other Impacted Communities. In an interview with CanWest News Service, Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multicultural and Canadian identity, said the terms and conditions of the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP) are still being finalized and will be made public "fairly soon" once the details are worked out completely. He acknowledged that the "no apology, no compensation" policy of the previous government has been dropped by the Harper government as it picks up where former prime minister Brian Mulroney left off in 1988 with the Japanese-Canadian redress case that involved a full apology and a $422-million compensation package. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized about a year ago to Chinese Canadians for the country's racist immigration policies of the past, including the head tax once charged by the federal government to newly arriving immigrants from China. The payments come out of the Harper government's $24-million CHRP, which drops the Martin government's "no apology, no compensation" policy. As well, consultations and a report by Conservative MP Jim Abbott, who is parliamentary secretary to Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda, have been completed for the government on the Komagata Maru ship incident in 1914 which saw 376 Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus forced back to sea by a Canadian warship at Vancouver harbour. The documents say the Conservatives have also created a new four-year $10-million National Historical Recognition Program to "provide a federal government narrative that presents an objective point of view on the history linked to wartime measures and/or immigration restrictions." "I shouldn't be made to feel culpable for what my great-grandparents may have thought, say about Asian immigration. But the Canadian state has a responsibility to face up to those moments in our history when we allowed unjust policies to focus on particular ethnic communities," said Kenney. Source: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.h...6c5&k=65329 Many in the Vancouver Sikh community are demanding that the government apologize for the Komagatsu Maru incident. Apparently the Conservatives are considering this according to documents obtained by the Vancouver Sun under the Access to Information act. But that incident involved Canada refusing to allow into Canada an entire boatful of illegal immigrants. Why does Canada need to apologize for not allowing illegal immigrants into the country? Why do we today refuse entry into Canada of illegal immigrants yet feel that we need to apologize for refusing entry to illegal immigrants in 1914? Beyond courting the Sikh vote, does Harper have any rational or principled reason for doing this? Shouldn't apologies be reserved for those who suffered racial injustice after moving to Canada?

http://www.trendlines.ca/electcanada.htm

I see that this excerpt above from the Telegraph was dispatched to Canadian journalists this week by Harper's communications rep Ryan Sparrow: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/t...13-67c86f108f13 Given that Harper is even lower in the polls than when he was elected, the Telegraph excerpt appears to be out of touch with Canadian reality and Harper's dismal and incompetent record to date. Does Harper's communications rep really believe that the Telegraph excerpt, with hilarious inaccuracies like Harper's party has "kept spending in check", will fool Canadians? Under Harper's "fiscally conservative" leadership, the biggest surplus in Canadian history has been squandered: http://andrewcoyne.com/columns/2007/03/fla...ig-spenders.php

The data do not support your claim that Canadian physicians go elsewhere. On the contrary, more Canadian physicians return from the US than move to the US: http://www.chsrf.ca/mythbusters/html/myth29_e.php http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/10/12/...rs-migrate.html The US, renowned for luring more physicians than any other country in the world, faces a shortage of physicians in the next decade.

Conservatives lose ground with women, Quebecers, Ontarians, poll suggests: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/AL...mf2qr6cF21dM1VA

Conservatives lose ground with women, Quebecers, Ontarians, poll suggests: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/AL...mf2qr6cF21dM1VA

You seem to assume that scriblett is a man. I've never made that assumption.

The Angus-Reid poll I posted above revealed that a majority of Canadians favour legalization and a majority of Canadians also opposed Harper's decision to scrap the Liberal government's decriminalization legislation. So the Greens ands NDP favour legalization and the Liberals decriminalization. Harper as usual is off to the far right of most Canadians, hardly what you'd expect of someone once described as libertarian.

That merely demonstrates inconsistency and rationalization, not unusual traits. For example, drug dealers are viewed as bad yet marijuana users, since they're likely to be one's peers, are good. It's the same sort of rationalization and inconsistency we see in people who see no problem with governments selling and taxing dangerous drugs like alcohol and cigarettes while outraged at the thought of government selling and taxing marijuana.

Gibberish is a valuable tool when attempting to defend Harper for his poor decision to tolerate bigotry.

How does one "disagree" with a sexual orientation? Is it the same as disagreeing with a race or an ethnicity? Are you not aware of the role of genetics in determining sexual orientation?

Someone else claimed it's because Harper keeps his promises.

Yes, he ranks number three so far.

I'm not saying that breaking the promise on income trusts was stupid. I'm saying that his promise to re-visit a lesbian's right to marry was. Others claim that this government has more important things to do than debate whether we should be honouring Canadian heroes by lowering the flag. Yet this government viewed it as worth debating whether they should take away a lesbian's right to marry. This government has very strange priorities.

I applaud Conservative Indian Affairs Minister Minister Chuck Strahl for contemplating cutting back on funding to the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations for reinstating the anti-Semite David Ahenakew. It would be nice if his government could acknowledge that bigotry based on sexual orientation is just as despicable as bigotry based on race, religion or ethnicity. But when homophobia arises from religious beliefs as it does in the religious right, such acknowledgment is not likely to be forthcoming.