Wilber

A concept that seems to be forgotten is that we put people in jail to keep them from victimizing society. The victim gets the compensation and the criminal the sentence. The criminal does not get to negotiate and he certainly doesn't get to buy his sentence back with the proceeds of his crime.

It's what we do best.

How will sending money to Russia affect them? Buying hybrid or electric cars, converting to geothermal heating and investing in other more energy efficient things we use in our daily lives is not cheap. We don't make them any more affordable by taxing and lowering the incomes of our own citizens then shipping that money to other countries. August started this thread by proposing that provinces with higher emissions should send money to those with lower emissions like PEI. My question is, what the hell is PEI going to do with all that money to reduce GHG emissions? You need to invest money to combat the emissions at their source. The lower mainland of BC needs infrastructure (more public transit and upgraded access to the city by road to reduce some of the congestion) not to send money elsewhere. Even though our population has tripled, we are connected to the rest of the country by the same 4 lane highway and bridge that was completed in 1963. All truck traffic to and from the largest port in the country to the rest of Canada has to cross that bridge. We were driving back from Vancouver yesterday and west bound traffic for the Port Mann bridge was backed up for nearly two miles at 3 PM on a Sunday afternoon and that is fairly normal. Just getting rid of that road bottle neck and combining it with a LRT system would reduce our emissions considerably.

This would only be possible if there was an identifiable victim and even then you are basing the length of a persons sentence on their ability to pay. Not a good principle IMO. I do agree that the victim should be compensated before the government takes any share. If the criminals assets are from the proceeds of crime, they should all be forfeit with any identifiable victims getting the first share. We do have proceeds of crime legislation but of course being Canada, we have made it very difficult to enforce. When they are, the proceeds are often auctioned off, just as often to be bought by other criminals or even the same one.

I can't.

Why, they chose to victimize society. We did not chose to send them to jail, we are just defending ourselves. If they can't show that their assets aren't from the proceeds of crime, they should be used to pay for their keep.

Better idea. Invest the money we would blow on credits (international or provincial) in the technology and infrastructure to reduce our own emissions. We are not going to reduce our own emissions by taking money out of our economy to make guilt payments. We will just make ourselves poorer and less able to do so.

We are a trading country. Our standard of living depends on exports. How do you set up a market within Canada when exports contribute so much to emissions? Much of the West's energy leaves the country. So does much of Ontario's industrial production. Much of the petroleum Central and Eastern Canada consumes does not come from Alberta but from offshore. The greater growth in emissions will come from those parts of the country that are growing the most and producing the most. A credit system will just reward those who produce the least and contribute the least to the country's economy. It will do nothing to reduce emissions. If we are going to throw billions at this supposed problem let's at least spend it on solving the problem.

I dunno, I saw a feature on the news the other day about an internet boot camp for addicted kids in China. From what it said, the success rate wasn't very good.

My mistake, municipal elections are every three years. Even less pressure to vote.

Do you vote in school board and other local or provincial elections? Municipal elections, mayor, council, school and parks boards are every two years. Provincial and federal elections can go as much as four years in between (five years is actually the constitutional limit) so Canadians certainly don't have to exactly put themselves out to vote. Not voting is either laziness or apathy. It is pathetic and voting probably is less important for a lot of people. They just take what the country has to offer for granted, like it is the natural order of things.

Canadians only vote once every one or two years but nearly 40% of them are too lazy to do that.

I kind of subscribe to Carl Sagan's point of view. He said we live on a small planet orbiting around a medium sized star on the edge of a galaxy. We have only been sending radio signals out into the universe for a hundred years. A hundred light years is not very far in astronomical terms so why would anyone come here other than out of pure chance.

All systems have their drawbacks FPTP: A great way to elect individuals. One person per riding, you know who your MP is and who to go to if you have a bitch or need something. It tends to fail in Ottawa where an MP's conscience and his electors wishes often have to take a back seat to party discipline and partisan politics. It can also produce some weird results depending on voting patterns and the distribution of seats. Three elections ago in BC, the party which came second in the popular vote ended up with a slim majority in the legislature. STV: A better chance that your vote may count to actually elect someone but you have to rank your choices and your vote still may not go to elect anyone. Example: You live in Alberta and there are six MP's to be elected in your area. The CPC, Libs, and NDP all field six candidates, 18 in all. You are a diehard Liberal or NDP and rank the CPC's last or not at all. There is a good chance all your last or non choices will be elected. You now have six MP's so which one do you go to if you have a problem? PR: The worst. It ensures that many people would have representation who might not but. Say there are ten seats up for grabs in a region. There are enough raving loonies in the area to get the Raving Loony Party 10% of the vote and so it is entitled to one seat. The 90% of the population who want nothing to do with being represented by a raving loony are now stuck with one as an MP. You now have ten MP's, putting aside the raving loony, which one do you go to? In our present system party discipline and partisan politics after the fact will still apply regardless of what system was used to elect our MP's

That would mean the Liberals only got 25% of the vote. They actually got almost 41%. In the election of 2000 there were 21,243,473 electors The majority party received 5,252,031 votes or about 24.7% Sorry but you can't include people who didn't bother to vote. The Liberals got 40.8% of the ballots cast. Link

Please stop.

I'm not a big fan of artificial incentives, they generally just end up supporting non competitive businesses. If businesses can't get the labour they need, they will move on their own. It is already happening in BC. Two companies have recently moved their manufacturing facilities to Ontario because they couldn't get the labour they need here. They didn't need a government incentive to do it. I certainly don't think the feds should be in the business of helping one province poach from another. The Maritimes already receive equalization payments from other provinces. How they use it is up to them. I don't know what unions have to do with it.

How, in a Westminister-based system, in G-d's name can you have a "coalition government" when the majority of MP's are of one party, but elected by, oh say, 37% of the popular vote, as a result of FTPT? And what's so great about coalitions, except giving excuses to the lead party as to why they're not keeping promises? (i.e. blaming coalition partners). They are rare but have happened, usually in wartime. Canadian coalitions British coalitions

Move from where? Why should my tax dollars go toward subsidizing a business to move out of my town and across the country? I think one has to realize that governments do not create wealth. As a matter of fact, they have shown themselves to be incompetent at it time and time again. Governments only redistribute wealth. We already do that through equalization and by the Federal Government spreading around it's own spending to provide an economic benefit to specific regions. Ultimately, if a region is to be truly prosperous, it has to come from the people living there.

We don't have rep by pop in this country in order to give regions representation which would otherwise have none and we don't have a two party system, so I unless you change that you will never be able to guarantee over 50% for the party which forms the government. STV has some good things going for it but when you put a bunch of seats in one voting pool you could wind up with most of the MP's being from one part of a region (the most populous) and other parts having no representatives within hundreds of miles. I think it could be a good provincial system but it would take some convincing for me to think it would make a good national system in a country this size. Either way, as long as we have more than two parties there can never be a guaranty that the governing party will have a majority of the popular vote.

What does one have to do with the other? The idea is to make the most use of available daylight to reduce energy consumption. How will that make it more expensive to heat your house? If you want to spend less to heat your house, we should be trying to promote global warming.

Instantaneous run-off. The voter would rank the candidates in order of preference. The person with the lowest votes would be crossed off the list. The people who voted for this candidate, their second choice would now count. Continue until there is one person left, and they would have over 50%. This is similar to how parties choose leaders, I believe. The best part is, you could have as many parties as you like and it wouldn't matter, because you don't have to worry about "splitting the left" or "splitting the right". Instantaneous Run-off. Gee, I've seen a number of iterations of voting systems but as simple as it is, I've not seen it presented in that form - must have missed it along the way. Off the top, I can't see anything wrong with it at all - makes good sense. Before we had computers, it may have been a little complicated and prone to error but now - it would be a breeze to tabulate. It seems to embody what Canadians in general like to do - find a way to comprimise. If someone can offer valid criticism, I'd love to hear it. It would ensure that an individual was elected with more than 50% of the vote but it would do very little to change the percentage of popular vote going to the party which forms the government.

That would mean the Liberals only got 25% of the vote. They actually got almost 41%.

The point of asking this question as was this. Given Canada’s 140-year-old national economic policy that favours economic development in the central region but not Atlantic Canada, will there ever be a serious attempt by the national government to create a prosperous regional economy in Atlantic Canada? Why is it up to the national government to create a prosperous regional economy? The national government just shouldn't get in the way.

Unless you see EI contributions as just another income tax, the rates should be cut.