mar

shhhhhuuush melanie you're not supposed to do the math. You're supposed to say "Gee! A cheque for me? Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! This is way better than having affordable daycare nearby."

"One problem Sure Bush is a cowboy with no clue about foreign affairs and was given bad advice" is a misreprentation. Bush is a dimwitted stooge living in a bubble so, yeah, ultimately the repsonsibility belongs to Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the NeoCon cabal. However, Bush was the tool they used to accomplish this and they knew perfectly well what they were doing. I guess he could say "I was just following orders" in his defence. Second problem is the Russians and French were after the brass ring in the then Iraq merry-go-round. Course the U.S. had helped him retain power previously as well as build up his arsenal, but hey! Who's judging? "So Mar tell us how you feel about that Pakistani Nuclear scientist selling Nuke technology to North Koera, Iraq and Iran. Just leave it up to the UN ? Doesn't this concern you a little?" It concerns me a lot. Almost as much as the only country to ever use nuclear weapons on a civilian population having the world's largest arsenal of them. If my choice is the U.N. and the people who brought you (drum roll) Vietnam (Hey! So over 3 million Asians got killed...least we didn't nuke em!), the assassination of Allende, Bay of Pigs, Ferdinand Marcos, the Nicauraguan Contras, Noriega (both as best pal and hunted dictator and who cares if a few poor Panamians got killed in the process) Pinochet, that whole colourful cast of characters and Iraq, I'll go with the U.N. every time.

I think this is a pointless exercise, but really August, you saying that "Harper is a straight-arrow type guy. It is unlikely he would accept such money" means absolutely nothing. I say Paul Martin is a straight arrow guy. When He was finance Minister he knew nothing about Sponsorship and he is innocent of any involvement. There! I refuted the whole taint of scandal; lets turn the page. Another "Worse, ordinary Canadians pay higher taxes, get less public services, yet receive about the same take-home pay. Under the Liberals, Canada's official economic growth may have grown but it has gone to government, not ordinary Canadians." Unless you have some secret source of statistics unknown to the Canadian government, the international investment community and just about anyone else, official figures show that Canadians have a higher real income and pay less taxes than they did in 1994. "The ad: Harper claims Liberals only win in western ridings with Asian immigrants, or eastern migrants - living in ghettoes. Stephen Harper himself was a migrant from Toronto to Calgary. The issue here is really how the Liberals represent the country, and what it means to integrate into this thing called Canada. Canada surely is not superficial." au contraire. The issue is whether he said it and he is not denying it. The comment is racist and arogant. I know he suddenly claims to have undergone a metamorphosis and no longer believes what he did in the past. Kinda like the Kafka character, he's now a dung beetle or something. the phrase 'Atlantic Canada is a culture of defeat' is about the people of Atlantic Canada. I'm sure the people were happy he straightened them out tho. "Thanks, Steve. We'll do better from now on." "several years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher changed the way the world worked. There's no Cold War. Instead, people talk about freedom, including the freedom to travel and even to marry. In context, I too would describe such as an inspiration." Actually the West gradually and deliberately escalated the Cold War over a period of nearly four decades to the point the centralized ecomony of the Soviet Union collapsed, but why get technical. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had about as much to do with it as Goofy does with preparing the Disney economic plan. C'mon August, giving your opinions doesn't count as refuting something. The point is the statements made by Harper stand for themselves. He said them, he owns them. At the minimum it shows an amazing lack of judgement for someone who wants a career in public life, not something you want in a PM. On the one hand we have the opinions, on the other all we get are Harper's self-serving statements that he's evolved. "Well yeah, I did think that but I don't now. I did think we should sent tropps to Iraq but I don't now." Very comforting. As a judge, August, you'd apparently be the guy saying "Well Ms Homolka, I'm certainly glad to hear you've changed. That's good enough for me!"

For once some truth. Course like all those paternalistic right wingers they knew they couldn't go to the American people and say this. NOOOOOOOO . They said: tell em Sadaam was in on 9-11. Tell him he's gonna nuke us. Tell those dumb bastards anything that'll make them sit still while we bomb the crap outta them Iraqis.

Why is this view always offered by politicians? You know, the guys who get the lifetime indexed pensions for a few years service. The guys with expense accounts, flying around the country finding facts. The guys living in free housing like Harper. The guys who parlay their few years of government experience into board of director positions and lobbying jobs after they leave. The message is real simple for these guys: We're getting rich helping our rich friends. In order to get even richer we need schmucks like you who'll buy the idea that income redistribution is an evil thing. Keep up the good work, son. We got a baloon payment coming up on our Caribbean condo and we need allt he cash we can lay our hands on. as to the rest, um " if you're REALLY in need,we'll help" is by definition a paternalistic statement. try again. yeah, there's a lot of government teet-suckling going on. Ya knows those kids squeegeeing your windshield are all living in lakeshore condos and just do it for the glamour and chance to meet exciting people. Same with the guys sleeping in doorways: colourful eccentrics who take a break from all that comfy teet sucking to sleep in the bracing outdoor air.

Gee, "I miss Reagan", Hard to believe someone who writts such a reasonable and objective post as you would use a tagline from Karl Rove, a man so slimey he leaves a foetid, oily, reeking trail when he moves. August: "I would hope journalists are players in this election. And I would hope you are a player too. Whether you drop into a pub and discuss the news, or you do the same here, I would hope you take part. (I also recommend being a scrutineer.)" Perhaps its semantics. I do not see the mainstream media as having any role as "players" in the sense of manipulating public opinion to achieve a desired result. So far, we don't have the proliferation of single party allignedl media outlets like Faux News in the U.S. so both CBC and CTV at least claim objectivity. If they are going to simply be mounthpieces for one party or another, then we should simply get rid of them and let each political party operate its own 24 hour spin channel.

Canada post vs Fed Ex: Last time I checked I couldn't send spit across the street at Fedex for 50 cents. Air Canada vs West Jet: What the heck are you comparing? Air Canada now to Westjet now? Air Canada when it was a crown corporation to West Jet now? Case you didn't know, Air Canada is owned by ACE Aviation Holdings. When it was a crown corporation, it never went bancrupt Privately run education vs public education: um . . . can we include the Indian residential Schools run by the Catholic church? How about the Christain Right schools teaching everything you need to know to equip your children to succeed in the 19th. century? But yeah, great idea. Lets close all the public schools and return to the nineteenth century. I mean, since poor parents won't be able to send their kids to private schools anyway, lets get some value outta the little tykes and put them in work houses.

You can't corrupt someone who is already corrupt. I mean, c'mon you guys. I know he's your hero and all but this is a guy who has made a living out of bogus organizations, unsavoury political deals to take over the old PC party and - gasp! - living off the public purse. (remember the good old days when Preston Manning said he wouldn't live in the official opposition residence? Gee that lasted for what, 1/2 an hour?). He's a politician and the leader of a party. By definition he's corrupt.

This one's really below your usual standard. The entire point was that the U.N. did not agree because they felt there was insufficient reason. Had they thought there was sufficient reason, it would have been a totally different situation and Canada, France Germany and others would have been involved but NOT as a U.S. cowboy mission. So what you're saying is "had the member nations of the U.N. found a compelling reason to take military action against Iraq Canada would have participated. Because the U.N. did not find a compelling reason, they did not sanction it and Canada did not particpate." Gotta feel a "DUH" is in order. The courage of resolve on Cretien's part it was in resisting the combination of bribes, extortion and blackmail the U.S. used to try to force other countries to participate. None of this gets Mr. Harper off the hook for feeling scoring brownie points with Bush was well worth the lives of Canadian troops.

um . . . that's not cynical. A cynic would expect the worst from all parties. You're a true believer, accepting the Conservative Party on faith and rejecting all other without even considering the validity of their platforms. Its a attitude that's becoming more and more common. Some true believers listen to George Bush, some to Osama Bin Laden, some to many others thoughout the world. Interesting that both the strength and weakness of a liberal or, more generally, a progressive mindset is the tendency to actually listen to other views. The entire liberal tradition is an openness to different ways and viewpoints. The positive is the freshness and ability to survive through new ideas; the negative is that liberal parties are not very good at providing the certainty that true believers crave, tending to see most issues from multiple sides.

A real Canadian would have said "Good Day/au revoir" (and pronouced one or the other badly depending on their mother tongue). We're Canadians! We have 2.2 children and speak 1.2 languages! (yeah, yeah, I know . . . some us speak two additional languages badly) Kidding, been good

Well, I gotta add something, tho a lot of the previous posts are true (and funny). Liberals PROS: - Did not send Canadian Forces members the same age as you to Iraq to make us popular with George Bush. - Will not gut social prgrams (they might want to but their voters won't let them) - Did give you a nice income tax tax cut that the Conservatives plan to take away - Have produced one of the best economic growth records in the Western world over their tenure (including Cretien when Martin was Finance Minister). Canadians pay less taxes now than they did in 1994 and have higher incomes (you can look it up in Statistics Canda, Government accounts and other official sources). CONS: - Implemented (admittedly with the aid of other parties) an ill conceived and expensive program to combat Quebec separation that, because of inadequate controls or deliberate planning, allowed Liberal party members, Liberal appointed civil servants and Liberal political hacks to steal large amounts of taxpayers' money. No question this was wrong and in fact criminal in the case of individuals. Importance depends on whether you believe that the people from the former Liberal government (the Cretien one) have been purged from the party and Martin is as innocent as he appears to be according to the Gomery report. - May have created such dislike for themselves in Quebec that they will be inneffective in stemming separation if another referendum is sought. - Definitley do have an air of entitlement from being in power so long. They may have become too fat and lazy to mount an effective campaign this time. - Martin is not an especially skilled a politician and he may have discarded valuable people in his leadership fight with Cretien. Conservatives: PROS: - The current U.S. administration loves them. While this to me is a negative, it will probably have positive advantages as Washington may settle things like the softwood lumber dispute just to shore up Harper. - They will put small amounts of cash in peoples' pockets in the form of rebates and other giveaways. If you like that feeling of getting a cheque in the mail, you may like this. - if they have a minority they might be only minimally dangerous CONS: - If they had been the government in 2003, people your age would have been brought back from Iraq in body bags. - No track record in managing the country (there are very few party members left who ever served with any government). - They have obligations to the Christian movement whose policies on abortion, same sex mariage, etc. you may not agree with. Jury is out on how important this would end up being. - May attempt to erode social programs like heath care by underfunding them or otherwise compromising them NDP PROS: Last remnant of the party that was the principal group pushing for public health care. Many of their members are quite sincere (they have to be because they're never going to form a government). CONS: They will never form a government. Their time is past and they were unable to make the transition from "union party" to modern social-democratic party like the Labour Party in Britain did. Green Party Pick a political view, its represented somewhere in the buffet party platform. Maybe by the next election they will actually put together some coherent core beliefs.

LOL I actually think the swingers' club thing is a bad example. Its something that - I dunno - maybe 90% of the Canadian population finds repellent, whether on feminist, religious, ethical or family values grounds and if we are at the point where the Supreme court saying you can't ban it means that that the 90% of us say "WOW! Guess we better join up now! The SCC says its ok!" we have problems way, way beyond anything politics can fix. Ultimately its a protection of something most of us wouldn't mind being banned but as long as its not illegal (prostitution, underage participants, whatever) do we really want to use the hammer of the constitution to prohibit it? Other thing is, its always fascinating that most people who spend much time looking at government can see what's wrong and you could easily fix a lot of it. For example, you could - I mean there is nothing to stop a majority government who wanted to - pass a law that ALL parliamentary votes must be free votes. Would likely be good for us, but no party will ever do it. Same with proportional representation which I think can be argues to increase the power of the voter depending on the precise formula. One of the framers of the U.S. contitution - forget who - wanted to ban all political parties from the electoral process. He basically just didn't want then period. Now that was at a time when party politics was somewhat less entrenched and given how things have gone since then it seems unlikely it would have survived even if included, but who knows? If the U.S. consitution had banned parties would subsequent constitutional reforms in other countries have done the same? Be a very different world if we could embody the old spirit of the village where we all got together and selected out best and brightest to lead us, rather than, as Shaw (the writer not the cable company) said: "merely, have the meager satisfaction of not voting for the candidates we dislike most."

Hey! We Canadians said we were moral people - we didn't claim to be saints! I actually have no problem with the content in the thread, tho several threads might have been better. Problem is, you run up against a very human characteristic: Humans are very reluctant to abandon an opinion once they form it. I once heard this exressed by a nice analogy to cross threading: "Its like when you screw the top of the toothpaste tube on crooked. The grip may be wrong but its very tight." In this context it means those who dismiss this stuff will not even bother to look at it; those who don't already know most if it. One thing that does interest me and plays into this is the skill with which NeoCons exploit this in the current U.S. Administration. A quick example. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. We know that. Bush and other administration officials have admitted that on national TV. BUT he and Cheney continued to slip the accusation in during the 2004 campaign, not in formal addresses on national TV but in speeches where they knew clips would be shown on national TV. I think this accounts for a lot of the fact that as many as 50% of the U.S. public still believes the Iraq-9-11 connection. When their confidence in this assertion starts to waver, there is Bush or Cheney or whoever slipping it in somewhere and their reactions is "Yeah. Now he's telling the real truth! When he appears from the oval office he's got to be all politically correct and can't say it." Clever, no?

Short story, yes. They are still candidates for the party, they can't change this now (ballots are printed, all that jazz). However, there are definately ethical concerns for keeping that money, and I think we'll see both parties refuse the money for those candidates. Even the Liberals aren't that bad (other than Valeri ). Hey! We got the plot of "The Producers" here! Run a bunch of losers who won't get elected anyway all over the country and pocket the cash. Don't even need to spend money on offices, platforms or anything else that might eat into the profits. Oh oh! I think its already happening

LOL good response! I think we ultimately agree except that for me, the crucial issue in all elections is key policy issues which are seldom economic and, unless I'm wrong, you tend to vote more on economic issues. So if I can borrow your tag line "To err is human, to forgive is to accept utter incompetence...", that little aphorism alone prevents me from voting for any party with Stephen Harper as leader because of his position (subsequently disavowed . . .sort of) on Iraq. So yeah, they will all screw us one way or another and - re your food bank comment - I have known intelligent leftist economists who argue that raising the minimum wage has the effect of lowering overall wages (don't ask me to defend that, tho I think there is a plausible argument). So once every election cycle, we the poor, the semi-poor, the holders of maxed-out credit cards and monstrous mortgages get told that everyone will make us richer if we only elect them. I just ignore that part of all parties' platforms.

You make some very good points. In response to the above, I would say that the media's ability to do 180 degree turns is legendary so that if you brought up their opinion in summer to their opinion now they'd accuse you of bringing up ancient history. I also agree that the martin campaign has been one of the most inept I can recall, but I do remember distinctly news readers expressing surprise tht the Liberals were ahead from the moment they started presenting pre-election polls so I am not so sure they were as sure of a Liberal victory as you suggest. You may be right: that we have simply caught up (or regressed) with britain, the U.S. and other countries and now and forever more will get tabloid journalism where the biggest story is always who did what to whom behind closed doors.

- If I was a voter in a riding where the candidate was facing crinimal charges, I might be mad. However, I do not hold Stephen Harper personally responsible for the vetting of all candidates. f it happens another 5 times, maybe it should factor into voter decision making at the party level. - I do not care if Jack Layton used private health care before he was leader of the NDP. It has nothing to do with his party's platform which is what I would vote on. - I do not care that a Liberal candidate in one BC riding may (or may not) have been stupid enough to try and bribe an NDP opponent. If I lived in that riding it would determine my vote if I believed it. Its not a national story and that idiot (if guilty) no more represents the Liberal party than the one facing criminal charges typiifies the Conservatives. Are we being subjected to a deliberate policy of distraction from the real issues by all parties and their willing henchmen, the media? What is the outcome? Does the party who gets the last scandal story out on Jan-22 win? Is that what we are now?

You do realize that every government since the establishment of the EI fund has treated it as an abstract concept and monies designated for the fund have always been absorbed by the federal government and the fund maintained princippaly on paper in the federal balance sheet. It may not conform to anyone's idea of the spirit of the law but it certainly conforms to the letter of it and really, is pretty much SOP for all federal and Provincial governments. Gas taxes - who older Canadians have dim memories of being promised to go entirely for roads - disappear into general government revenue as does health care money and just about everything else. The reason nobody ever changes this is that governments of all parties want the flexibility of being able to make "paper transfers" whatever they say when in opposition. The problem with the GST cut is: 1) The benefit is unclear when you factor in provincial compensatory transfers. 2) Its advantage would be wiped out by rescinding the recent income tax break except for high income Canadians. 3) It is unclear whether the Conservatives really have any intention of passing it. They have a built in escape clause in the furor it would cause with all provinces other than, possibly, Alberta. It wouldn;t be the first time someone promised to cut GST to get elected, would it? We all hate the GST just like everybody in Britain hates VAT and everybody in every country with a federal tax hates it. Repeat after me: Governments do NOT cut revenue. They claim they will cut revenue, they may find ways to shift the source of revenue from one income group to another but they will not reduce what they have to spend. Cretien got elected on cutting the GST. Didn't happen. When I was very young, PC's in Manitoba campaigned on a promise to abolish Public Auto Insurance. They had 8 years in that government and another 8 subsequently in another PC government and gee! that government revenue stream is still there just like when the NDP put it in place over 30 years ago. So ultimately you are voting on social policy, even if you think you're voting for tax cuts. Which group of taxpayers will benefit most? I would suggest if you think it will be you under a Conservative government, you may be mistaken. And I don't even think this is because Liberals - and particularly Martin - are wonderful, warm people. I think it is because the Liberal voter requires at least some level of social justice in taxation and Liberal candidates who ignore that will not be elected. I think the Conservative campaign is reminiscent of recent U.S. Republican campaigns, relying principally on misdirection. If the Conservatives gain power, I wonder if you will jump for joy when they are defeated in the subsequent election too.

This paragraph would seem to weaken you claims of objectivity. You apparently expect the SCC to make overzealous decisions that parliament will have to rectify. As you presumably know, the SCC's authority runs to assessing if a particular law does or does not violate the Charter. They can not ammend the Charter in any way. We have a mechanism to ammend it. Yes it is slow and ponderous, principally because it requires majority support in most regions of Canada which is precisely what something as momentous as ammending the Charter should require. We also have a mechanism - one forced by political expediency and not favoured by the drafter of the original Constitution - to allow provinces to "opt out" of specific provisions by invoking the notwithstanding clause. We also have a mechamism (the federal ability to invoke the notwithstanding clause) which gives any federal majority government (and a majority these days is well under 50% of the popular vote) the ability to - in effect - erase any existing Charter provision at will. It would seem logical to me that if the Conservative party truly believes in greater regional autonomy they should welcome a move to abolish the ability of the federal government to invoke the notwithstanding clause. Clearly it gives the feds greater power than any province as they can strike out any provision of the Charter at will and this would take effect ACROSS CANADA. Provinces can only opt out of clauses in their own province. So again it comes down to "We got this power and we wanna hang onto it in case we want to go against the SCC in accordance with our particular political views." Comforting.

Unfortunately, the Conference Board's analysis is not up-to-date and does not include various initiatives and policies included over recent months, so their endoresement comes down to "if the Conservative Party does not implement anything not included in the plan presented to us - even if those utems are election promises - this is our opinion." Impressive.

This would be a nice argument IF Canada's economy had not performed so spectacularly under the current Liberal reign, vastly outstripping Mulrooney's Conservative stewardship and IF the principal architect of that policy was not the current prime minister. Gee! Didn't the U.S. Republicans promise that they would manage the economy better than the Democrats had? There was a promise that was sure fulfilled, huh? If the over-riding concern, the one that motivates the entire voting process for you, is the economy, why would you vote against a party that has proven they can manage the economy and government budget effectively and one who claim they can but has shown no evidence of it? Who's the fool?

So you are saying he insulted the majority - get it, MAJORITY - of the Canadian public - in fact went on U.S. TV to apologies on our behalf for our failure to sent our personnel to be killed and injured - just to be seen to offer an alternative view or - worse - to build up brown nose points with Bush for his own benefit? You think that's ok? You think that's someone you want in power? If we have come to the point where its ok to attack not just the position of the majority government but the position of the people of Canada for you own political ends and then have that public say "Oh well, just politics. If he has a minority he can't do stuff like that" what in God's name are we? Its not like he picked the wrong team for the Stanley Cup. He repeatedly, forecefully and insultingly advocated a policy that would have resulted in the certain death of Canadian citizens and damaged Canada's international reputation. I'm sorry. Some things are not "just politics."

At the risk of my double posting here, Hydraboss (apologies). ALL official statistics show that Canaidn's incomes have gone up and their taxes have dropped since the Liberals took power from the Mulrooney Conservatives. Plus the deficit was reduced substantially. AND this occurred in a time when conservative opposition was innefective and in shambles as the PC/Reform/Alliance parties were born and died so you can't argue that the Liberals were forced into this. So what are the Conservatives offering that we don't already have? More money for the rich? WOW! There's something that just inspires me to vote Conservative! I go to bed each night crying at the injustice of people paying 7% GST when they buy their new Mercedes or Porsche.

I think we tend to forget already that it wasn't that tough a call and one made by France, Germany and many other countries. The U.N. did not support the invasion. Tony Blair insisted on taking it back to the U.N. where the resolution failed and then joined with Bush in saying that the several year old resolution supported it so nothing further was needed (so why did he insist on trying to get a new resolution?). The U.N. disagreed. There was ample suspicion long before March that the intelligence was cooked (or sexed up in the Brit tabloids' phrase). I would assume Cretien, etc. (including Harper) had received some assessment of this from sources in Canadian military intelligence. You had Hans Blick and the former U.S. head of the weapons inspectors (dismissed by Bush) both saying Saddaam had little or nothing left in his arsenal. Colin Powell subsequently disavowed much of what was in his presentation to the U.N. So I don't think it was a tough call except in that immense pressure was brought to bear by the U.S. to bribe, blackmail or extort countries into joining the "coalition." I think this should be a huge election question and Mr. Harper's DEC-11 explanation that he was misled by the intelligence does not make it any better as it is simply an admission that he was wrong (and included no apology to the Canadian people for apologising on our behalf for not going to Iraq). The Conservative party is now also saying Harper really didn't want to send troops just "support" the invasion. NOTHING in Hansard or Mr. Harper's statements outside the House support this creative re-interpretation. So again it comes down to two options: 1) His judgement on international affairs can't be trusted to the point of being dangerous. 2) He would have sacrificed the lives of Canadian troops, AGAINST the will of the majority of the Canadian people and WITHOUT U.N. approval in order to curry favour with the Bush administration. The first makes him a fool, the second much worse.