normanchateau

What poll shows that he can't win a majority? All polls show a a trend towards an increase in Liberal support and a decrease in NDP and CPC support. If the trend continues, Dion certainly can win a majority.

It's not odd if you're motivated by religion and view the legislation as an affront to your religion's right to discriminate.

Yeah, those homophobic BQ constituents must be outraged at Duceppe. They'll vote for Dion, who allowed a free vote, next time.

In the last four federal elections, even if everyone who previously voted Reform, Alliance or PC now voted for Harper, the most Harper could hope for is 38% of the vote. But it's heartening to know that CPC supporters still view so-con Harper as the man to lead their party into the next election.

I don't see Harper making an issue about this, Whether Harper makes an issue of this will depend in part on his strategists and in part on whether he thinks it will make a difference to the election outcome. But it certainly has been an issue to Harper supporters on this discussion board. It would not be the first time that Harper was saddled with an issue which he personally might not have cared about. For example, I suspect Harper cares very little about whether lesbians marry or not but he was saddled with the issue because many of his supporters wanted to take away the rights of lesbians to marry.

No, no, no, let's have a referendum so that the one third of Canadians who want to take away the rights of lesbians to marry can remind the rest of Canada where so-cons like Harper stand on the issue. And let's not forget that the Liberals, NDP and BQ, with Bill C-250, took away the "free speech" and "religious rights" of Canadians who wanted to advocate or promote the killing of homosexuals. We need religious folks like so-con Harper leading the way to a referendum to restore that free speech which was taken away from religious folks by social moderates, liberals and socialists. This is far more important than same sex marriage which only affects gays and lesbians. C-250 takes away the religious freedom to hate from all religious folks who far outnumber the gays and lesbians who don't vote for Harper anyway.

Not quite no one. According to CanWest News Service results published yesterday, 29% of Canadians thought he should relinquish his French citizenship. Fortunately for Dion, that's even lower than the percentage of Canadians who plan to vote for Harper. So even if Harper attempts to make dual citizenship an issue, it will make no difference to the election outcome. And from a Liberal perspective, perhaps it's good that Harper waste his energy and flap his jaws on this anti-motherhood issue.

It's not surprising. The alternative would be for them to acknowledge that Stephen Harper is not the person to lead CPC into the next election. Personally I hope that Stephen Harper does lead CPC into the next election since replacing him with a social moderate might actually help the CPC defeat Dion. Don't you know the voting demographics of Canada? Are you referring to the fact that 65% of Canadians vote for social moderates and parties to the left of CPC, i.e., Liberals, BQ, NDP and Greens?

Maybe Rae just decided that he couldn't support an erratic, parachuted-in, carpetbagging Liberal leader like Ignatieff who had lived most of his life outside of Canada, supported the war in Iraq, torture of prisoners, extension of the Afghanistan mission and accused Israel of war crimes in Lebanon.

Since you are based in NYC, you might be biased in terms of how you define "most successful". Is it defined by number of handgun deaths, number of Americans in jail for drug possession, number of foreign governments overthrown or largest national debt (now $US8.6 trillion) in the history of the world? Deleted... my stats lie. Actually the US national debt is now $US8.7 trillion, still the largest debt in the history of the world.

I had assumed Leafless was a she. Do you know otherwise?

It's not surprising. The alternative would be for them to acknowledge that Stephen Harper is not the person to lead CPC into the next election. Personally I hope that Stephen Harper does lead CPC into the next election since replacing him with a social moderate might actually help the CPC defeat Dion.

If ever there was convincing evidence of Trudeau's evil, this was it. Imagine that...making us metric just like Holland. And how many countries in the world other than the US do you suppose don't use the Trudeau-imposed metric system? Here's the answer: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm Metricization was an important symbol. The practical fact is that Canada is tied to the US geographically and going metric imposed huge and unnecessary costs in the name of being more like Europe. The rest of the world extends beyond Europe. Africa, Asia and all of North and South America (except the US) also use the metric system. Are there actually Canadians under the age of 60 who have a problem with Canada being metric?

Thanks for pointing out that the Dutch do indeed have a Conservative type government. I think many of the posters on this thread are assuming otherwise. Typical of those tulip-sniffing, gouda cheese eaters to have a Conservative government and socially liberal legislation. Maybe Holland is really Canada 2006.

Dawkins would have been delighted to know that Canadian evidence supports his point. Almost all of the opposition to making it a hate crime to advocate or promote the killing of homosexuals came from religious groups or politicians influenced by religious groups. Here's what the Christian Heritage Party had to say when they feared that Stephen Harper, then leader of the Canadian Alliance, would not vote against C250 on final reading: http://www.chp.ca/arc-CHPSpeaksOut/ReHarpe...ingMarriage.htm

"December 9, 2006 - Weekend bits and pieces, this and that: * Personally, I have found this Stephane Dion manufactured citizenship controversy sickening and maddening. As the Globe points out this morning, precious few are greater patriots than Dion. As a student of politics, however, I was simutaneously intrigued by the fact that it was all manufactured. What does it mean? It means the Tory war room is already at work, and perhaps nervous; it means the Liberal war room needs to get up and running, and keep in mind that the Tories are working already to define Dion first. And are nervous, as all smart warriors always are." Source: http://www.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm

I hope you're right. There's no one other than Stockwell Day who I'd like leading CPC into the next election.

As others have pointed out, the CPC hasn't gone down much in the polls. If I were a CPC supporter, I'd only worry if the numbers dropped below 30%. Harper likely peaked in the last election when the Liberals were in the toilet in terms of voter support. The challenge for Harper in the next election will be to prevent NDP, Green and BQ voters from swinging to the Liberals. This will mean attacking Dion on issues like the environment, a topic on which Harper has no credibility (unless you count his appointment of Darrel Reid to the Environment ).

The last poll on the issue was an Environics Research poll which became available on June 19, 2006. It showed 59% supported ssm and 33% opposed it. But a poll is not a referendum and a referendum would be a great idea. It would remind Liberal, NDP, BQ and Green Party voters that Harper voted twice against same-sex marriage. It will give Stephen Harper a third chance to vote against it. Perhaps in the next election, he could campaign on a platform of a referendum on same sex marriage. He might also want a referendum on another issue that he voted against, Bill C-250. Maybe in a referendum, voters will, like Stephen Harper, show that they don't believe that advocating or promoting the killing of homosexuals is a hate crime. Or as Harper, the Christian Heritage Party of Canada, Real Women of Canada and the Canadian Alliance phrased it, C-250 is an attack on free speech.

I tend to agree with these conclusions. With the current numbers, the Liberals will win a minority but a majority government is still uncertain. Chretien won a majority with a mere 38.5% of the vote in 1997 but then the rightwing vote was split: 19% Reform, 19% PC. Chretien won far more seats and another majority in 2000 with 40.8% of the vote versus 25.5% for the Alliance and 12.2% for PC. After the two rightwing parties merged, Harper won 29.6% of the vote in 2004 and when the Liberals were at their least popular in 2006, Harper won 36.3%. So what's the conclusion? Even if everyone who ever voted PC, Reform or Alliance in the past 10 years now supported Harper, the best he could hope for is 38%. But despite the denials of his strongest supporters, his so-con credentials remain, so even 38% is elusive. Even if by some miracle Harper pulls off 38% in the next election, all that Dion needs to do is pull off more votes from the NDP, Greens and perhaps BQ. With Harper as CPC leader, that's achievable. At least some of the NDP and Green supporters I know would much rather take a chance on Dion than waste their vote and help anti-Kyoto, pro-Darrel Reid Harper.

"Ipsos-Reid president Darrell Bricker said the surge in Liberal support appears to be largely driven by gains in the traditional heartland of Ontario, where the party has the support of 45 per cent of voters, compared to 35 per cent for the Tories; and in Quebec, where the Liberals stand at 30 per cent, compared to 43 per cent for the Bloc Quebecois and 18 per cent for the Conservatives. In B.C., the Liberals would get the support of 39 per cent of voters, compared to 26 per cent for the Tories and 24 per cent for the NDP. "He would probably sweep Ontario," Bricker said of Dion. "It just shows you that what happened in the last election isn't that the Conservatives won it, but that the Liberals lost it. So there's a real desire to have an alternative to Stephen Harper, especially among voters in Ontario. " Moreover, Bricker says the poll appears to disprove the perception Dion would be a hard sell among Quebec voters." http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics...ac-eecf9259425b This is good news indeed for British Columbia Westerners. It's the first poll I've noticed since 2005 in which the Liberals are now ahead of the Conservatives in British Columbia. It also shows that in British Columbia, almost all of the huge surge in Liberal support has been at the expense of the Conservatives with much smaller losses in NDP support. It probably doesn't hurt Stephane Dion that his National Campaign Director is British Columbian Mark Marissen who also ran Dion's campaign for the Liberal leadership. Stephen Harper lost seats in both of the last two federal elections in BC. He's now poised to lose far more. Even in January, 2006, the number of seats won by CPC in BC was far greater than the CPC percentage of the popular vote because the Liberals and NDP split the non-rightwing vote. Other than Quebec, is there any province in Canada where the Conservatives are now less popular than in BC? Here's a prediction. Not only will the Liberals sweep BC, David Emerson won't run in that election. "De-elect Emerson" lawn signs remain throughout his riding. As a very strong proponent of increased trade with China, same sex marriage and government-funded heroin injection sites in Vancouver, he has distanced himself from Harper. And his betrayal of the BC softwood lumber industry won't win him or Harper votes in BC. And if Harper were to try to make softwood lumber an election issue in BC, it would receive the same incredulous response as his stand on permanent criminal records and jail time for marijuana possession.

Stupid flame bait. This kind of garbage is like spam. Try to reach for a slightly higher level of discourse C. Yes, I believe it's being fashioned after Holland. And do you believe that's the Liberal hidden agenda? Maybe Dutch-Canadians are the architects of this hidden agenda. Did you know that more than 400,000 people of Dutch origin are permanent residents of Canada? Source: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/canada-europa...n_nether-en.asp Let's investigate whether Dutch-Canadians vote for Liberals.

It's a matter of timing and location. You would have felt differently in Spain 500 years ago, in Germany 70 years ago or in Iran today. I live in the United States which, like Canada, has never brooked discrimination or violence against Jews. Thus, I find the Christian presence in and basis of both countries to be reassuring, not malignant. Canada has never brooked discrimination against Jews? Unfortunately you are wrong. Source: http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiho....html#_ftnref24 Here's just one quote from this source: "An example of the attitude of the Canadian Government to Jewish Refugees is that of a senior Canadian official who, when asked after the war how many Jews would be allowed into Canada, said, "None, is too many." From the book by Irving Abella & Harold Troper, None Is Too Many, Toronto, Lester & Orpen, 1982. As I said previously, it's a matter of timing and location.

Yes, Zaccardelli should have been fired long ago and one former officer did indeed refer to the top three candidates as "Zac-clones." Story: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/06/...ef.html?ref=rss But does that comment from a disaffected former officer disqualify all three? All three are deputy commissioners who would naturally have interacted with Zaccardelli in their line of duty. What exactly is wrong, for example, with Beverley Busson? Her CV looks good to me. What was she doing when the mounties were violating people's civil rights out there in BC? Was she involved in that? If she was involved, that should certainly disqualify her from consideration. However, she wasn't involved. Chretien's orders to the RCMP to violate people's civil rights during APEC occurred, I believe, in 1997. Busson was in Saskatchewan at the time and wasn't stationed in BC until 1999. Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/1999/03/23/bc...ency990323.html

Fair enough but I think it's premature to assume that the best inside candidate would be inferior to someone brought in from the outside. I meant nothing negative about any of the inside candidates. I'm saying that organizations which have spent their whole existence without having to compare themselves to others become inward looking and often resist change for no other reason than "we have always done it that way". Whenever you find that "we have always done it that way" is the only reason you can think of for not changing, it's time to think about changing. An outside influence might be refreshing and a good thing for a department, it's done all the time in police forces outside the RCMP. Bringing in a new chief from the outside is often a good thing for police departments that find them selves floundering somewhat. But when police forces bring in someone from outside their municipality, they still bring in someone with comparable police experience. I suppose if the RCMP did that, I can see the merits.