uOttawaMan

That's odd, I could have sworn Diefenbaker played the anti-american card in 1963 big time. Anti-americanism is not new.

I love how people call Canadian prisons cushy. You crack me up.

Could not agree more with you! I think you forgot one other defining Canadian characteristic: -Canadians like to think of their soldiers who are trained to eliminate an enemy as blue helmete wearing "peacekeepers" with big blue helmets standing around handing out cookies and blankets.

So across Canada, 795k people signed up on election day. So what? Those are people for all the parties. As for the 55k people registering on advanced polls, I did. I had turned 18 and was back from school, so i went to the advanced poll and registered. Much ado about nothing, and is just a further waste of taxpayers money and detracts from real buisness that needs attention.

I agree with Gerry, our PM should never talk about anything outside of strictly scripted statements in Parliament.

Good job trolling kid, you sound real tough. Now go home and let the big boys play.

Soapboxes are a wonderful thing.

Just to surprise those of you who remember me joining these forums a few short months ago, as a classic leftist university student. I have applied to the Canadian Forces, undergoing the whole recruitment process right now. How's that for a turn around? And to you people who say Canada's Army is a peacekeeping army.. open your eyes. Infanty means to close with and destroy the enemy. Not walk around with a blue helmet on and hand out cookies. Peacekeeping is an important part of a soldiers life, but it is a small piece of a much larger repetoire.

I thought you were becoming a cop? Is it reserves? I was considering joining reserves, as I can be taken in as an officer right away, the money is decent (for a student) and they pay for your school to some extent. Back on topic... We don't really have enough people to expand our troop levels. I'd like to see our role in more than Afghanistan expanded too. We should have people in Sudan as well. So I guess I'd like to see us take command and keep troop levels at around the 2,000 mark... that is, unless we can add a ton of new troops over the next little while. Yeah I'm joining the reserves for now, to earn money for while I'm at school. I'm also seriously looking at the military police route, because I'm going to need experience before I become a civilian police officer, they dont really hire 23 year old white males right out of school anymore. The troop shortage is very real.

I think we should concentrate on getting more troops period. I'm joining the Army , and I can tell through training already that the Army ground troops are seriously lacking in numbers. We have more than enough support staff... but noone doing the fighting.. And be very clear, its fighting. Not "peacekeeping", whatever vestiges of that we once had were lost long ago when our military was destroyed systematically.

All I have to say is.. NIMTOO

I always have found it odd to think that someone like Jesus, who by all accounts was a normal member of jewish society until his later years would have not married.

In this case I don't mind the whining, in my view its the opposition (not just the official opposition) keeping an eye on what the gov 't is doing. Not that it makes the slightest bit of difference in this case, but if the opposition didnt question what was going on with the money in the liberal gov't, we'd be in even bigger trouble than we were. As long as the "whining" is about concerns that are actually important to taxpayers, that's ok by me. But if they start whining about things like closed cabinet meeting or something just irrelevant, ill be mad.

I don't believe you. Frankly, that conclusion rests on a assumption or ratonality on the part of the criminal that is unwarranted. Most studies on criminal law and behaviour that I've seen show that harsh punishment only works in situations where certain prerequisites are met on the part of the prospective criminal, prerequisites which are seldom met in any criminal justice system. Basically, no one stops before they commit a crime to think of the consequenses or, if they do, nothing short of the threat of summary execution is going to stop them. In most cases, the prospect of getting caught, not the prospect of punishment, is the greatest deterrent. There is that general agreement, among classical criminologists. Among the classical school's primary theories is that : -Deterrence is based on a utilitarian idea that humans are rational beings, that weigh the costs and benefits of any action they undertake. (this school also denies that irrationality or unconscious motives or factors can cause a person to commit a crime.) -People ultimately have the free will to choose how to act, law or not. -and finally, to support Agrus, Classical criminologists hold the tenet that punishments if they are severe enough to outweigh the benefits of a crime can deter people from crime. Certainly it is not a ultimate solution, but the general agreement in that school is that it WILL act as A deterrent, not THE deterrent, in capital letters. The other major school of criminology, positivism, and recently, in specific social positivism holds a different perspective. Positivist thought basically centers on the concept that biological , environmental, psychological or social factors make people more likely to commit crime. At any rate, Durkheim the father of social positivism, along with the criminologists of his school, agree that: -Social factors like poverty, low levels of education, and membership of subcultures (such as gangs) make people more likely to commit crimes. So as you can see , the CPC and Liberals have traditionally favoured the "consensus" of classical criminologists, while the NDP and sometimes the Bloc favour the "consensus" of positivist criminology. That is a large reason why these two sides can never come to an agreement.. even the academic field that studies crime ( which i am a part of yay! ) are split as well.

I'm going to tell my little sister to eat her lunch at school with her bare hands. Then we'll be on the front page of the news somwhere in the world, and I'll have my own thread on mapleleafweb. com

I cried on the inside after that mockery.

Ottawa Senators in 6 over the Sabres I says. Now all I can hope for is one Canadian team to reach the finals.. or let alone the Conference Finals..

True, it was a rant.Yet you would never have read such a rant in a Canadian newspaper in 1966 or 1976, also census years, but people (such as you) can read my rant now, in 2006. What's different? Since 1966, has the Internet changed the way people express their opinions, or has the Census become more intrusive? And UOttawaGuy, you didn't answer my questions. Should I fill out the census form? And if so, should I fill it out accurately? Seabee has advised me to fill it out, but inaccurately. His advice is that I should claim to be a unilingual francophone. Seabee apparently has no advice about the size of my household. So UOttawaGuy, rants aside, what do you advise? Why should I advise you, (and who am I to advise you at any rate) on a subject in which you already seem to have your mind set on one course of action. It's a census, not the end of the world.

[/end rant]

Quoted for absolute truth. This is one time where I really don't care what everyone else thinks and how they are freely expressing themselves. What matters to me is what the soliders want and think.

I agree, going in without UN support is not a good idea for many reason. 1) We are already heavily commited to Afghanistan and need to evaluate our troop resources. 2) Continued in-action by the UN, (and countries going around the UN) will only lead to its destruction and the almost certain weakening of global solidarity and cooperation. 3) It would be a chance for Canada to regain some of its peacekeeping status.

What's with the "I'd like to save our surplus" and "its better than a defecit" mentality. You shouldnt be running massive surpluses or defecits. You spend what you take in, have a small emergency fund (in comparison to the huge surplus size..) and then if you have excess money taken from taxes, give it back to the population where it belongs.

This topic is not meant to lecture you. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if everyone end up relying on counselling for just about every traumas they face...aren't we rendering our own natural mechanism obsolete? The comparison I could think of would be as that of a child who cries everytime he falls down. If someone keeps running to him to pick him up and"soothe" him, he ends up expecting and relying on these soothings each and everytime he falls. Whereas he learns to pick himself up and resumes play if no one comes running to him. How many of our "natural" mechanisms have been replaced or improved already through techonology or new methods? Medicine is not a natural mechanism, neither is dentistry, perhaps people should just die young and have there teeth fall out, because that would be the natural way of things?

Are you kidding me? What a gong show. This is unbelievably ridiculous. The soldiers are NOT being disrespected by the government or even by the media at large ( although they are throwing gasoline all over the place in hopes of starting a massive fire), and then the Opposition goes and does this??? The flags are still lowered at home bases and hometowns as was the tradition. TRADITION. Not some chickenshit little anamoly that occured because our government wanted to make a poltical point to the US. Talk to any of the soldiers in Afghanistan or abroad, and they'll tell you they wish the media would actually ask them what they think instead of assuming. I've seen many personal soldier blogs saying that the way it was when our ancestors served in WW1 and WW2 and Korea and beyond was the way it should stay, and to stop trying to cause shit just to score publicity points. Absolutely unreal. And here i considered myself a moderate liberal to an extent.. **** that.

I think the thread was started as an attempt to understand those innate differences. Unfortunately August, not everyone even accepts that there are gender differences which would lead to a dominance of one gender over the other in certain roles. They attribute the different representations of genders to societal and economic pressures. Because of that reasoning, they advocate for artificial incentives and barriers in order to equalize representation. Their wrong premise leads them to wrong conclusions and thus to implement measures which are both unfair and futile. Men are from Mars.. women from Venus.. however you'd be making a large mistake to ignore social and economic pressures on the roles of men and women. Those pressures are a very large part of the picture. There is nothing in the gender differences (which although obviously physical largely translate into different ways of solving problems and expressing emotions) that would cause women and men to equally rise to the top of most professions. But somehow it does not happen... the reason? Those same social and economic pressures and constraints.