-TSS-

There is a loyal fan-base for ice-hockey all over Canada and also in the US in places like NYC, Detroit, Boston and Chicago but the question is whether people in Florida or Carolina will still remember that the sport exists.

Is the NHL going allow its players to participate next year's olymoics in Sochi? The timing of the olympics hockey-tournament is a bit inconvenient as it is in the middle of the season. As it happens, when the olymoic final is on a sunday, on tuesday the finalists are already playing for their teams in the NHL.

I also hope that this was the last ever lock-out there was going to be. So, this season each team will play 48 games before the play-offs. That is a much more sensible amount of games than the usual 82.

The last few posts made me more convinced about Canada. It is indeed like a giant version of Finland. Both have an arrogant neighbour next door.

Indeed, but the common European perception is that the US-citizens are losing out of something precious if they don't travel into Europe. As I previously pointed out, I can easily understand people in the US not bothering with the hassle and long flights if they can get the same in their own country quicker and cheaper.

This very topic made me think: If I were an American would I be interested in travelling outside the USA. Let's see. Depending on my income level, of course, there would probably be different options. I guess that travelling to Europe is quite expensive. I know for sure that with my mindset but if I were an American I would have zero interest in travelling south of the USA on the American continent. Depending where in the USA I would live I might have some interest in visiting Canada. If I lived in Detroit I would definetely visit Canada very often; if I lived in Phoenix I doubt I would never visit Canada. All in all, Europe would be some sort of luxury I may not be able to afford.

I think it is quite astonishing that Canada has become such a magnet for immigration from all over the world as about 2/3 of the country is like a giant version of Finland and the remaining third something of the north-pole. The early settlers certainly had some guts. After all, we must bear in mind that at the time there was no certainty whatsoever that anything worthwhile would come out of the settlement. I'm sorry that there have been conflicts with the first nations. One would think that Canada is a vast enough country to live n for both, or all, groups of people.

If we return to the topic of passport-free travel then I agree that if you have within your reach areas worth going to a holiday and don't need a passport to go there then it is understandable that you don't go through the onerous process of acquiring a passport. Here in Europe we have the Schengen-area which in principle is passport-free so tat an ID-card is the only travel document you need to travel from for Finland, for example, to Germany but the authorities strongly recommend to carry a passport with you if you travel outside the Nordic countries. There has been a passport-free travel within the five Nordic countries since the 1950's. Unfortunately for me, the only European country outside the Nordic countries which I am interested in travelling to is Britain and Britain is not in the Schengen and you still need a passport to go there. Understandable, however, from their point of view. They don't have a similar very accurate register of the population like Germany or France kincluding compulsory ID-cards. Therefore, maintaining a requirement for a passport to enter the country is their method of having some control which people are in the country.

If we start going down that route, we could say that everyone living outside Africa is an immigrant in his present whereabouts.

I think you know very well who I am talking about. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

Canada has very strict immigration-laws. Believe me, if Canada had lax immigration-laws you would be inundated with immigrants and the Canadian born people would be a tiny minority in Canada and as we are all aware that is not the case. Of course, it is easy to believe that Canada has lax immigration-laws because Canada is such a magnet for immigration, probably the 3rd or 4th most wanted destinations in the world after the USA and Britain. Even if you allow 1/100 people of all applicants in it is still a lot of people.

It can't be denied that religion still has a lot of influence in the US politics. Could you imagine the political leader of any other country saying in public that God spoke to him and told him to start a war?

I wonder how large a percentage are there among Canadians for whom the only foreign country they have ever visited is the USA.

This is what I've been saying all along. And not just me but anyone with any sense. But to no avail.

Usually second-term presidents waiting for their second term to begin can just chill out and enjoy. This time it is not the case. Imagine what the situation would be now if Romney had won and there would be a situation like there is today but with a lame-duck president and a president-elect just waiting to get in.

All societies will eventually become secular. That's the inevitable fact, be it good or be it bad but that's the fact. Even some societies which we today couldn't imagine as secular will one day become secular. In a secular society it is an individual's individual choice whether he/she believes in anything but the state will not have any part in it except respect the decision of that individual. I would say that none of the European countries today can be viewed as anything else than secular. The change has been fast. It was only 20 years ago or so when many European catholic countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Malta and some others were well-known for their high level of religiousness. Today none of those countries could be said the same thing. I'm not that familiar with the Central-American and South-American countries are they still fervently religious today but I'm convinced that even in those countries the development is heading towards secularism.

Canada has one of the strictest immigration-laws in the western-world, which of course is a bit of a paradox given the history of Canada but moving into Canada is a great deal harder than moving into almost any Western-European country. All of this proves which I have always said that the number of immigrants in any given country is a political decision. A country can have strict or lax immigration-laws. Immigration is not like some sort of force of nature that you can't do anything about except to adapt to.

Many Europeans ridicule the Americans because so relatively few Americans as a percentage of the population own a passport. However, it needs to be remembered that the USA is larger than Western-Europe in geographical size and travelling to Europe can be very costly.

There is a similar little brother-complex as is between Ireland and Britain or New Zealand and Australia. Or if we still keep looking for examples, Germany and almost any other European country.

In the Czech system the president is more of a figurehead than anyone with real power. It is the Prime Minister who is the political leader of the country.

The rest of the country.

Thanks for that. Funny how one province, in this case Quebec, has been chosen as a benchmark.

How large a percentage of the working-population in Nunavut work in the public sector?

I wonder who is going to win the Zimbabwe presidential election. It is surely going to be a close contest, don't you think?

What exactly is the formula used to define the number of seats in the Canadian House of Commons? I can see it has been 308 for the past four elections. I can also see that there seems to be no regard for odd or even number of seats as previously there were 301 seats and 295 but then again 282.