Mimas

In case you haven't noticed, 2012 is still 6 years away. Stop LYING about the issue. The issue is NOT that we cannot meet our Kyoto targets. The issue IS that we are NOT even TRYING to meet our targets. The Liberals were awfully slow moving but they put a few programs in place. A small attempt but an attempt nevertheless. Those programs were promptly canceled by the Cons as soon as they got in power. They came up with this "Clean" Air Act, which is just as clean as "Clean" coal and aromatic dogshit. It is an outrage and an insult - a slap in Canadians' face. We are not as retarded as Harper thinks we are.

And you are dimented

Which part of Russia is the European part? ??? The European part of Russia is the part of Russia that is in Europe. West of the Ural mountains. Are you splitting hairs here? Are you asking so that you can say that we use twice as much energy because Canadians who live in Halifax and drive to work in Vancouver have a longer distance to go than Moskovites who work in Lisbon?

Are you including Russia? Ya, the European part of it. I said Europe, no?

August, only 20% of emissions in North America are due to transport. You can't blame one-fifth of the cause for the doubling of emissions compared to Europe. If every vehicle in North America is removed from the equation, emissions will still be higher than in Europe. You always come up with something. First, it's because we produce oil. If it's not because we use oil, it's because we process it here. If that's not it, it's because we are a bigger country. And on and on. Let me put it this way. The sizes of North America and Europe are comparable. Oil produced in North America is processed in North America and oil produced in Europe is generally processed in Europe. Emissions in North America are approximately 20 tonnes per person and in Europe they are approximately 10 tonnes per person. Have you been to Europe? Well, let me tell you that if you live there, you will notice a huge difference in how much energy the Europeans use compared to us. I lived there in a larger apartment than the one I live in now and I was using less electricity (heating wasn't electric so you can't say that Canada is colder). The difference comes from the fact that appliances there are more efficient. Everything there is very, very efficient and Europeans use only half the the energy we do. But this does not cause inconvenience. There are a million ways to do very small changes and save huge amounts of energy. It's good for the environment and it's good for your pocket too. But we kick and scream like it will take some draconian measures to pollute less. It's all spin by the oil and gas companies because they fear that if Canadians realize that there are easy ways to save energy, then their sales of oil and gas will fall.

Mimas, you make various claims without evidence and without explanation. You mix apples and oranges. In effect, like many wild-eyed ecological nuts, you exaggerate and undercut an otherwise good argument about environmental protection.Canada's higher CO2 emissions are largely explained by our use of coal. When that is taken out, our per capita CO2 emissions are comparable to Norway. (Bear in mind that we have many industrial processes and wide distances that the Norwegians lack. OTOH, the Norwegian population is small. This link provides good data.) My point exactly. Why are we using coal? Cause we are nuts! If you exclude Chernobyl, Russian nuclear reactors have as good a record as Cando reactors in terms of safety. Your statement about the coal makes just as much sense as this one. This is where you and 99.99% of the world's experts on climate disagree. The mumbling of Tim Ball and his half-a-dozen friends mosts of them retired and none of them climatologists doesn't stand up to scrutiny and you ought to take real facts more seriously than these conmen. I said that I don't care about the Libs or the Cons and what they say. What I want is for our government to take serious measures and do everything possible to clean up. I don't care about western or whatever society. I want good, environmentally responsible measures placed across the country. Greenhouse gasses are the same whether they come from Halifax, Toronto, or Calgary. All politician should shut up, stop pointing fingers at one another and work together to solve the problem. Victoria has no sewage treatment plants and has always dumped its sewage in the ocean. There are no plans to ever treat the sewage. Are you not mentioning this because Victoria is in the west?

Why don't we use land mass instead of population? What per cent of the world's land mass do we occupy? Isn't that more realistic? We have a very, very priviliged position. With privilege comes responsibility. You want to understand the difference between land mass and population, then go to Bombay (India, by the way, has one third our land mass). Go to Churchgate Station and stand there at 9:00 AM. That is the difference between population and land mass. It is an experience you will not soon forget. My advice: stand near a wall. Why do we use GDP per capita as a measure of economic activity? Why not use GDP per acre of banana orchards? We can also use emissions per littre of maple syrup produced. This would make Canada the richest and cleanest country in the world. Yey!

No chance, no way, no how. Not without taking into account that Canada is A northern nation Bad example. Sweden is a northern nation and they produce less one-third of the emissions we produce And have about a third our population, too. Don't be a smart one. Everything I've said here on emissions here is PER CAPITA! One-third per capita means one-tenth in absolute terms. Norway has a huge oil industry (as large or larger than Canada's) and is a northern country and they produce less than half of the emissions we produce. PER CAPITA, Angus, PER CAPITA. The difference in population is already taken into account. In other words, 1 Canadian produces 25 tonnes of CO2 annually and 1 Norwegian produces 12 tonnes. One Chinese produces 3.5 tonnes and one Indian 1.5 tonnes in case you want to point at China and India as the evil culprits here. Clear now? So is Russia being 70% larger than Canada. They also have a huge oil industry and are a norther country but they produce half the crap we do. Oh ya? Good excuse! The have larger oil and larger gas industries. They are the second largest exporter of oil and gas in the world, just above Norway. In many cases? Bull! In 90% of cases the reduction was 8%. Only Canada and a few others got a special deal to do 6%. Ok, genius. Explain that to the environment and to the species that are dying off at a 100,000 times the natural rate of extinction. Explain to the world that Canada has less than 0.5% of the world's population and produces more than 2% of the world's GHG emissions - twice as high as the EU, 7 times as high as China and 17 times as high as India and that you won't do a damn thing about it. I'm sure they'll understand your explanation that it's the Liberals' fault. I'm sure they will be impressed that Canada didn't reach its targets and didn't even try to reach them. What? You think that once you've signed a legally binding contract you can weasel out of it by saying that you can't be bothered to even try to meet your responsibilities? Try that in court!

Give me a break! Harper's posturing is pathetic and he only did it to take the news away from Rona in Kenya. So what's he going to do about the human rights violations there? Slap tariffs on Chinese goods? Penalize GOOGLE for censoring the internet in China? My arse! All Western governments talk about human rights violations but don't give a crap that Western companies bend over to help the Chinese government enforce limitations on free speech, information, etc. If Harper hasn't totally screwed things up just yet, he may succeed in selling the Chinese some Cando reactors if he crawls and begs them.

Whats parties are centrist then??? The Liberals. They run from the Left and govern from the Right, so on average they are Centrist . But really since action is worth more than talk, they are right of center.

No chance, no way, no how. Not without taking into account that Canada is A northern nation Bad example. Sweden is a northern nation and they produce less one-third of the emissions we produce What the heck does this have to do with emissions? Norway has a huge oil industry (as large or larger than Canada's) and is a northern country and they produce less than half of the emissions we produce. So is Russia being 70% larger than Canada. They also have a huge oil industry and are a norther country but they produce half the crap we do. So what? All EU countries are growing due to immigration and they put half as much crap in the air as we do. Ha! Canada dumps its raw sewage into rivers and oceans too, including cities like Victoria and Montreal which dump tens of millions of tonnes of untreated sewage every year. I don't give a crap! What's done is done and you can't change the past. I don't care where it's Liberals or Conservatives or the NDP, I just want whoever is in power to take this very, very seriously and clean up our mess. What the Cons are saying is that the Libs set the kitchen on fire, so we are going to let the whole house burn down. The kitchen is already ruined so what's the point of trying to extinguish the fire. We'll just pour some gasoline on the house, let the whole thing burn down and blame it on the Libs. Well, we aren't stupid!

When several executives of a corporation steal from the corporation that doesn't mean that everyone in the corporation is a thief and that the corporation is ripping off its shareholders. Besides the highest estimate of misuse of money in Sponsorship scandal says that it cost you $3 over 10 years -that's 30 cents per year, so it's time to stop crying about your 30 cents. The giving out of military contracts to friends of the Conservatives will cost you $1000. Why aren't you complaining about that?

Ya, they just bought $10 billion worth of military equipment most of it from former employers of the Minister of Defense. It is an issue because when they hid the money from the convention, that was illegal. Parties who run the country are supposed to report where and how they get their funding. Because this gives private interests the opportunity to get favours against their contributions. I bet you don't want the NDP to get a billion bucks from unions (or their members) and not report it. Do you?

I think their was quite a bit of ethnic cleansing going on. Not to mention large mass graves which were discovered by NATO. Think again. The mass graves discovered by NATO are the same as the WMDs discovered in Iraq. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0902-02.htm On top of that the fact that the ratio of Serbs to Kosovo Albanians went from 1:1.5 in the 50s to 1:10 in the 90s suggests that the Serbs were leaving in droves which is unlikely if they were oppressing the Albanians. The fact is that for years thousands of Serb families were given the option "Here is 20K DM for your house and we want you to leave by the beginning of next month." They either took the 20K and left or if they stayed, their house would burn down on the first day of the following month. The fact is that the ethnic cleansing killed several hundred civilians (on both sides), while estimates of deaths due to contamination with depleted uranium and chemicals released by bombed chemical plants run into the thousands. Increased cancer rates are not only a problem in Serbia and Kosovo, but also all over the Balkans and in NATO soldiers who participated in the war. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/408122.stm Can you provide evidence that this was said, as well as the name of the Canadian general. I think it was him but I'm not sure. He made the comment few months ago on CBC radio: http://emperors-clothes.com/news/mack.htm Read 3rd news item: http://www.hri.org/news/greek/apeen/1999/9...26_1.apeen.html Once again can you back this statement up. Do you know how to use google? http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Papers/BP22.htm Countless numbers of War Crimes investigators will disagree with you on that point. Once again back up your statements. Dare to back this up? Care to find some of those countless investigators? These parties aren't left. The right considers them left but they are hardly even centrist.

We have been asked to avoid the personal insults, please respect the moderator's wishes. I was referering to the debate and vote on extending the mission by two years. The Conservative motion received 24 votes from Liberals or the motion would have failed and there would have been another election. Those are the Liberals that shouldn't have voted for it. Why would the Conservatives take responsibility and give the Liberals a free ride? Because it was the Conservatives who brought that motion to vote, not the Liberals. And they did it in a manner that would have forced an election when the Libs did not have a leader. It was more of an extortion than a free vote. The 24 Libs that voter for it chose what they thought was the lesser of the two evils. That's why. The 2 year commitment is Harper's commitment and he can't blame it on the Liberals. Period.

That unpopular period happened to be the deepest recession in Canada since the Great Depression. There was a recession also in the US and in Europe at the same time. It is difficult to claim the the premier of Ontario caused a worldwide recession. What made it worse was the recently signed NAFTA, which made it beneficial for businesses to move to Mexico and layoff hundreds of thousands of workers. The federal government wasn't helping either because it had maxed out its credit and was broke. Mulroney continued to turn up deficits when he should have been paying down the debt during the economic boom of the 1980s, so when the recession arrived, the debt was so high the Feds could not provide any economic stimulus. Civil servants may still remember the Rae days but after their experience with Harris, the Rae days must have seemed like a joke. When Harris started shutting down hospitals, firing thousands of nurses, teachers, and other public workers, they would have loved to get five days unpaid vacation. As a matter of fact one-third of Canadians consider ourselves overworked - personally, I would love to get 5 days of unpaid vacation. On top of that, Rae did it during a recession when the government was broke and Mike did it during an economic boom when the economy was awash with cash. Not to mention that despite gutting education and health care in the province, Mike didn't pay down the debt even by a buck. He continued turning up deficits and balanced the budget for a mere 2 years during his 8 year rule. So much for the Cons being "fiscally responsible". What a joke! The most fiscally irresponsible governments claiming to be "fiscally responsible". If not paying down your debt when you are swimming in cash is "fiscally responsible" then I don't want to see any such responsible governments in place.

I love how they talk about how much they hate Harper, yet Chretien, Martin, and Harper, have all be involved in wars were they may be supporting questionable groups. Yet were is all of the criticism of Chretien and Martin? The criticism of Chretien and Martin was widespread but the media tried to mute it. And the right-wingers were on the forefront of the "Let's go bomb the hell out of the Serbs" movement. I remember the cartoons in The Sun showing NATO warplanes dropping bombs and a couple of Serbs throwing stones at them and reading the letters to the editor proclaiming that "We'll bomb them back to the stone age". The KLA was always a terrorist group, the militant wing of the Kosovo drug and weapons mafia. In fact, the whole thing was not about ethnic cleansing at all - it was about Serbian police and Belgrade getting in the way of Kosovo organized crime groups. Now the Serb police is gone and Kosovo has turned once again into the European paradise for drugs, illegal weapons, human trafficking, etc. But the mainstream media and especially right-wing media went out of their way with their nonsense about ethnic cleansing, the good and the evil, Canadian values, helping the poor oppressed people of Kosovo, how our military might would teach them the right way, blah, blah, blah. It didn't matter the slightest bit that everyone in neighbouring countries, who knew the situation very well, was opposed to what NATO was doing. When a Canadian general went to Greece for a NATO meeting, he saw a lot of opposition to the Kosovo action and told his Greek counterpart "It's nice that you have a public debate going on. In Canada we don't have any debate." to which the Greek general responded "We have no debate going on either. We are all 100% opposed to it. The only reason we are at the table is because we have to honour our NATO obligations." That's what NATO is about - it's the US and the Brits telling everyone else what to do whether they like it or not. It's also a good market for US weapons manufacturers to sell their product - all new members from Eastern Europe are told that they have to get rid of their Russian made equipment and buy equipment from the US. It's about giving the Americans some "international" cover. Of course, Iraq showed that NATO can be used or abused by the Americans only to a limit. And what about Canadians? Everyone I told what the KLA really is called me a wuss, a lunatic, being anti-Canadian values, that I should go sit in my socialist bunker and other reasonable comments like this. Of course the exact same happened when we went to Afghanistan and when we didn't go to Iraq. "Oh, my god...Canadian values...support our American friends...our trade with the US is dead...our economy will be destroyed...the US will punish us for betraying them...spread democracy...help the poor oppressed people..." Right-wingers never get tired of this kind of bull and instead of looking at the facts, they declare anyone opposed to their hawkish views anti-Canadian, a socialist this and that, a supporter of the terrorists. Harper lost his vocal chords screaming at the Libs for not helping our American friends in Iraq. The poor Iraqis would greet us as liberators and our American friends would allow us to sell beef to them. Gee, people, get off the clouds and stop repeating the Conservative spin like parrots. Use your brains once in a while!

Dude, what the heck do you think you know about Afghanistan? Obviously close to nothing except for the BS coming from the Army and the Gov't. Afghanistan has always been a freaking mess and not even Allah himself can help them. So how many young soldiers' lives do you want to see wasted for nothing?

We also have a military that feels more self-assured because the commitment to the military and the mission is not in doubt ... anymore. Yep, the mission is not in doubt anymore. It is guaranteed to fail. Not that we will be told that it failed. The US will declare victory and sneak out of there just as they will do in Iraq. Afghanistan will be the same freaking mess as it has always been and what we'll get is billions in $$ wasted there, a couple of hundred of dead soldiers, a thousand or so injured and mentally ill soldiers, who will end up struggling with their disabilities and whom we will forget right away (except for paying them small pensions) and what we'll think is the right to brag about how great we are and how we fought for freedom and democracy and blah, blah. Sounds like a great deal, doesn't it?

Now we are talking! I'd go for that as long as Alberta adopts a currency other than the Canadian dollar. Unfortunately, Canada is designed to fail. There is far too much power in the provinces and for provincial politicians it is essential that they set their electorate against the rest of Canada. Every provincial politician blames the Feds and the other provinces for all his province's problems. The population of every province is convinced that they are getting the worst deal in the confederation. The Feds have their hands tied because they really have no control over domestic affaires. So even though I'd prefer to give the Feds a lot more control to keep the country together, it just ain't gonna happen. The provinces will continue to pull apart and the country will become more divided. We are just killing Quebec's culture and we aren't nearly cultured enough for them, Alberta is too rich for the rest of us and we are just ripping them off, the Maritimes just don't get the respect they deserve...it will never end. So the next best option is to give up on being together and go our separate ways. I wish Ontario would go first, just to see Alberta and Quebec at each others throats. Just kidding. But seriously, Canada died the day the BNA was signed. It is a country designed to fail. It's a miracle it's still holding together. Since the provinces disagree on foreign policy and defense too, I don't really see a union of self-governing provinces sharing anything aside from free trade. So let's just call them countries and get it over with.

That will simply mean that voters have had enough time to realize what Harper really is about. It will mean that his the base of his support in BC and the Praries have realized that he is not a populist and that he doesn't even believe in god. In fact he is a control freak, who doesn't give a c**p about democracy, the west, etc. but is only interested in being in power and in complete control and that he's gone through life stabbing his friends in the back (Preston Manning being only one example). In other words, they may just realize that they are just being used. I think that the income trust bomb woke up a lot of people who've been fooled into thinking that he is an honest guy. It was quite a shock for quite a few to realize that he lied about it. I am quite convinced that he's hit his peak in every region of the country except Quebec. Quebecers have been so busy with separatism and the Bloc that they don't know a thing about him and they are the only ones he can still fool. So I expect very, very generous spending in Quebec between now and the next election because Quebec is his only hope.

>> That's bull, dude. You are making things up as you go. Look at the numbers and you'll realize that we are pretty darn productive. << Actually your not. Look at the real numbers: http://www.oecd.org/topicstatsportal/0,264...1_1_1_1,00.html Canada is one of the worst countries in the developed world for productivity, and we are getting worse. You ought to look at those numbers again because they show that Canada is above the OECD average in productivity. "Above average" doesn't mean "one of the worst". And if you see any drop in productivity relative to others it's only because the Canadian $ has risen sharply against the US $ in the last few years and all the calculations are in US dollars.