blueblood

If that's what it is, then I don't really see anything too wrong with it.

Simple logic would dictate the ethanol industry would reduce emissions and oil needs. The Wheat Board won't have the volume it needs though. Supporters of the wheat board say that without volume, the wheat board is toast. They say the board wouldn't be able to survive with marketing choice. The ethanol industry is in a way marketing choice and you yourself have just said that the board would survive. (I support the board because it is an accountable export marketing alternative, but should have competition) 10% of Manitoba's grain that would have been sold through the board is a lot of grain. Are you considering a tax break a subsidy? Lower taxes help stimulate industry and investment and help the economy more. I'm pretty sure the governments aren't handing cheques out to oil companies out in Alberta these days.

From a non-partisan view, what is the Bali deal in a Coles notes form? If it involves money going from Canada to say China to buy Carbon credits so we can meet the target, then I wouldn't be too thrilled with it. Are all the countries of the world bound to it?

You forgot being a major hindrance to the wheat board and the railways. Approx. 10% of Manitoba grain to be going to Minnedosa by Super B's when the plant is fully operational. I'm pretty sure the wheat board won't like that very much. In the long term it will reduce emissions and reduce oil usage, and I've already gotten into the logistics of that in another thread. There were subsidies that forced Alberta's oil on everyone else. Hell Trudeau tried to do it with his NEP. With Subsidies used properly, economic growth can be generated, look at Alberta. The ethanol industry is going to employ a lot of people, keep farmers on the farm, and in the long term compete with cattle producers for acres, which would then raise cattle prices. Having financially secure grain farmers and the spin off ag business jobs and a brand new industry that creates jobs, economic growth and tax dollars is worth the little problem with the cattle industry that can easily be solved by cutting supply numbers. Mark my words in 5-10 years the cattle industry will correct itself. I don't know why you would be against one of Manitoba's largest industries. Did you like how it was 4 years ago when both grain and cattle farmers were in hot water accepting little government handout cheques? The government is spending its ag money far more constructively and wisely than the old Liberal ag programs. The government is going to get a good return on it's investment in the ethanol industry and that's why they're supporting it full steam. The provinces will get richer as a result of this. Are you against a stronger economy?

No that would mean the packing industry, and it would be a weird way of doing subsidies, still high store prices, farmers getting nothing for cows. Packers are passing the buck. There are still too many cattle in the country that's all. I don't know why you would be against a town like Minnedosa getting jobs from that large ethanol plant going up and operating the damn thing and local farmers getting over 6 bucks a bushell for their junk wheat?

Why pick on the ethanol industry. There are a pile of jobs that opened up because of it. Ag business companies are also doing well and can expand and provide jobs. Grain guys are doing better now and can spend their money and improve the economy of western Canada. If there is to be a subsidy paid out to cattle producers, it should be a "set aside" subsidy. If cattle farmers want a subsidy, they should put their bulls away and quit flooding the market with calves. By reducing the cattle sold, it would correct the market. By paying cattle producers government money and them still flooding the market, a subsidy would do nothing. Or if there is another way in which beef can be used that would be profitable, then invest in that.

Cattle Prices have been in the tank for a long time. High grain prices have little to do with it. A bigger problem is passing the costs onto the producers for exporters to meet the extremely high standards put on Canadian cattle for export. That costs a lot of money. I mean if grain prices were so high worldwide, why are producers in Australia and Brazil and the U.S. able to make a go at it??? Don't worry in five years or so, packers will realize they have to pay up for grain and people will smarten up and quit overflooding the market with cattle. The market is overflooded with cattle, it has to sort itself out.

Why I said to repeal the registry and do the by-law thing, is to put everyone on an equal playing field in the first place and the people who want guns registered (most people living in montreal for instance) would pass a by-law in doing so. To pass a federal law that says country people can do this and city people can do that is ridiculous. You are right in saying that fed law must be served equally, which is what i'm trying to say as well. What I'm saying about the target shooter is that he is more than likely living in a high risk environment for guns and precautions should be taken, other than that I have nothing. This hopefully clears things up

Just so we're arguing the same thing, I'm saying bill C-68 should be replaced by by-laws. I don't think you get tossed in the clink when you don't register a gun, tell me if i'm wrong there. You'd get your gun snatched and a fine. When you commit an infraction hunting, which I think is under provincial guidelines, which is in my province of MB, you lose your gun, pay a fine, and if you brought your truck with you, bye bye truck. That's my defense for a by law. The murders rising in SK and AB are occuring more specifically in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Saskatoon. Which are urban areas last time I checked. I am referring to the sticks, which is why I don't believe a federal law is necessary. Stuff and guns just don't get stolen out in the country. Nobody locks anything except gun cases because we don't have to. Call it a perk. I think more guns are in the city due to illegal arms and stubborn individuals who persist on owning one for "target" shooting. Like I said if stuff and guns were getting stolen like crazy and gun crimes were up like crazy out in the boonies then a registry would be necessary. What I'm saying is, due to the amount of gun crimes that goes on in urban areas compared to rural areas, it is like comparing apples and oranges. Cripes I don't even know if the gas station or bank in my town has ever been subjected to an armed robbery, or if anyone has ever been shot. By-laws will accomplish this. You and I both know that what's good for someone out in Toronto may not be good for someone out on a ranch. A person from Toronto and a ranch will agree that murder is a crime and we have a federal law for it. A person from Toronto and a ranch don't agree that the gun registry is the way to go and I believe it should be repealed.

I'd advocate it not on a federal level, but as say a city by-law, I seriously don't think it should have been a federal law, due to the regional opposition towards it, in my opinion a federal law should be passed that takes all regions of the country into account, not just southern Ontario, Montreal, and Vancouver. That would be in my opinion more than fair. City boys get their gun laws, we get left alone. The city cops can still enforce the city by-laws and nail offenders. A good comparison of what I think would be appropriate as far as that is concerned was the smoking by-laws a few years ago, all the towns and cities passed them, the feds didn't. Would you be able to come up with more instances in the country? You guys had Dawson college, and for other instances, just call up an episode of to serve and protect. It's not a big problem out here compared to over there. If we had that same level of violence out here, I'd agree with you. I live in one of the best hunting spots in the country and I don't see city boys, lots of Americans, but no Canadian city boys. I don't think Canadian city boys really hunt. Part of that registry is to help out with stolen guns, the guy living in the city has a lot more chance of his gun getting stolen and being used in a crime, and again if guns were being stolen in the country and used in a crime I'd agree with you. How unfortunate.

The thing I don't agree with the gun control thing, that kind of a program belongs in the cities, not to be implemented nationally, out in the country we don't have gun problems, why should we pay for what goes on in the cities and turn people into criminals for not registering? It has been mentioned to death the crimes are commited with unregistered firearms. There are also crimes commited with registered firearms. I don't see how registering firearms would stop people from killing each other, if someone wants to get a gun badly enough to shoot someone, they'll pull it off. If somebody snaps, they snap. Trying to prevent a pre-meditated crime is impossible. If people want control, control the people selling the damn things. Personally I don't think guns should be sold/possessed in cities, there is absolutely no need for them there. A person buys a gun to shoot something, a country person has a rifle for shooting bears, coyotes, varmints, deer, elk for the reason of getting rid of pests that prey on livestock, and for a discount on meat products at winter time. Last time I checked there are no wild animals roaming around cities that are threats or can save you some money compared to going to the grocery store. A city person buying a gun for protection just flat out scares me. It's really frustrating living in our area of the country and having our privilege taken away and having done nothing wrong.

Was it not expensive giving subsidies to open up the Alberta oilfields when we could import it from elsewhere? Is it not expensive for other alternative energy resources? The ethanol industry is brand new, it is much too soon to judge if it fell short of some supposed goal, that's something that should be judged in 5-10 yrs. when it is self sufficient.

I don't think you can ever lower oil consumption. Energy demand far exceeds what ethanol would take away. I'd say ethanol fills in a gap a little bit more than anything. It is protection, but this kind of protection is helping out the economy worldwide, that translates into tax dollars and a stronger economy. The only alternative to ethanol would be a massive land set-aside program and try and get that to work. Alberta had to be generous to get it's oil industry off and running, now that it's self sufficient, they can tax it a bit. Ethanol needs time to get self sufficient like Alberta oil has. Of course food prices have a correlation to ethanol, ethanol came about because of high oil prices. High oil prices mean high transport prices which in turn are passed on to the consumer. A rise of a buck a bushell would be a negligible rise in food prices whereas a 20 cents a liter rise in gas prices sends food prices skyward.

If your talking about the energy used to grow a crop vs. drilling oil, well obviously more energy is needed to grow a crop. What I'm saying is that in the grand scheme of things, the energy growing the crop is being used up anyways, just the users are different. It's not like we started growing crops from scratch to compete with oil, it's more like hey we're already using X amt. of energy, lets use it for something constructive. And remember all those diesel engines used in growing crops will themselves be running on X amt of biofuel as well. So in time, yes it will lower consumption of oil, just not dramatically. I wouldn't say the government subsidizes it, the government is investing in it. I can assure you that the gov't is getting a healthy return on it's investment through tax dollars in a healthy ag economy and with all the jobs being created with this. I'd say the handouts to farmers over the years were misplaced use of government funds The rises in food prices for consumers at the grocery stores is attributed more to higher transport costs than commodity prices due to the huge amount of grain grown.

I think that a true right winger believes that the government should stay out of everything, fiscally and socially. I mean it would be hypocrisy to state that one is a Conservative by saying they believe in free market principles and at the same time believe the government should dictate regressive social policies--> thats crossing into facism land. I'll say that Conservatives are the ones that don't dictate anything at all except for of course the criminal code and the Bill of Rights by Diefenbaker. I also think that Crown Corporations can and should exist, but should not have monopolies. A Canadian Prime Minister is FAR more accountable than an American President. Bush can get away with doing his ridiculous shenanigans because he only has an 8 year term, he's more accountable to history than the American People. After his second election, it doesn't matter what he does, his tenure as head of state is finished anyway. The Prime Minister on the other hand has no limit on how long he can rule and must have an election every five years. If he's a good enough Prime Minister, in theory he can rule for 20-30 years. Why in all that is holy would Harper piss away an opportunity to rule for a long time by enacting any ridiculous right removing policy that leftists are suggesting? He'd be voted out of office and the CPC would be obliterated in the next election. If given a majority, he'll push his agenda through, but nothing crazy, he's accountable to the people of Canada, and the prospect of ruling for 20 years is a much sweeter prize than some idealism. Leftist fear mongering of the CPC is getting ridiculous.

I don't care if ethanol reduces emissions or not, it eats up excess supply that was just being dumped into the market. But if it does reduce emissions even by a little bit then that's icing on the cake. I also realize, that it won't reduce much emissions, but it will reduce them no matter how insignificant. If our energy consumption were to remain stagnant, then I would have to disagree with you in that it would reduce oil needs from other countries in that it would take some space; but since energy consumption worldwide continues to rise, then we will always rely on other countries for foreign oil; without ethanol though, it would be a little more. I'm surprised you haven't argued about the plight of the livestock industry in relation to this. But in a few years the livestock market will correct itself. Packers will just realize they have to pay more for feed, and the cow/calf producers will learn how to survive in a hostile market as the grain guys have been for years.

Well now, The manufacture of ethanol has boosted commodity prices of grains, which in turn boosts our economy as a whole, why would one not want a better economy. Farmers are always going to grow huge crops no matter who buys them. Whether a miller buys it or it goes to an ethanol plant doesn't affect production numbers --> the same amount of greenhouse gas is going to be produced in crop production no matter what. The argument that it doesn't help the environment is proposterous. Look at it like an algebraic equation. Farmer has X land that yields Y bushells for P price which results in G gross income. The only variable is price. He will always grow max production to pay bills, for a while without ethanol he had a hard go at it. Higher prices per bushell won't raise the price of bread as ridiculously as previously suggested. An increase in 2bucks a bushell means better returns for the farmer, but for the sheer volume of grain produced, the price of say a loaf of bread goes up a quarter tops. With Canadian prices as inflated as they are, if you are on a computer complaining about food prices a rise of a quarter isn't going to kill you. The rise in food prices is due to high transport costs due to sky high oil prices and with min. wage being 8 something an hour. Ethanol helps the CWB be more competitive and more efficient. If it wants grain, it'll have to get it's act together. It also helps out the real poor countries by eating up all of the waste grain the rich countries were dumping over there disguised as "charity". With less oversupply and higher grain prices, the farmers in poor countries can grow their own grain, become profitable, improve the economy of their country and improve living conditions, also by them producing more grain it would lower the price a little as well bringing it into balance. It also helps the environment. for every X litres of ethanol, that's X litres of oil in the ground. Yes it takes energy to grow crops for fuel, but the crops are still going to be grown anyway, just the buyer changes that's all.

And I would agree. Perhaps all the residents wore those laminated "all access " passes with all their birth details on them. Argus, I could show you numerous apt building like that. And I could show you numerous apt buildings that work just fine, and they have some immigrants in them. It's not that I haven't an immigrant problem, i have a skid problem. Which I hope would explain other's position on this. I think if you want into Canada, you should meet standards and come in where needed. For example in my town there are 2 doctors from South Africa, a Dentist from India, and one of the pharmicists is from Pakistan, I don't have a problem with that as we need all the help we can get and those mentioned have no problems in spite of living an a hillbilly backwater town. I don't like the white trash though, and other skids of different stripes. I don't like skids coming off the boat and sponging off the system. If your an immigrant and open up a store, more power to you, but if your coming to leech services, don't bother coming.

I know I know.....how stupid of her to sue, you know with Third Degree burns and all. Surgery.....over a week in the hospital. Lets not forget, for $800 , McD's could have had this squashed. Come on blueblood....still thinking she doesnt have a leg to stand on? You are talking to a person who despises lawsuits and thinks they are gutless. She has one hell of a case for W-5 and/or the fifth estate, go on there and run McD's coffee and practices into the ground. We don't need to be wasting lawyer's and judge's time with this sort of nonsense, those judges can be used on the severely backlogged criminal trials. Your trying to pull at my heartstrings and it just won't work, I have zero respect for the whole lawsuit game. You would probably love to have me as an insurance client, because you would have a guarantee your company won't get sued. I broke my arm helping my neighbour brand his calves, should I sue him because his calves are too wild? I was in a water dispute with another neighbour which involved him getting a court order making me expand a 56 acre pond into a 200 acre lake, I appealed and won. Did I turn around and sue him, no I opened her up and the neighbour had to put up with his field being a mess until the end of june.

Many defenders of Harper here says that they taxpayer should be paying for this. Are they out of step with the Tim Horton's dads who have to pay for their own haircuts? Ahh, Tim Horton's is a little too high class for me, it doesn't have that small town coffee shop atmosphere that your trying to refer to, Tim Horton's tries though.

People should stand up for themselves, but a line must be drawn. If more people stood up for themselves in a responsible manner, the police could focus on tackling serious crime. I think that not standing up for yourself is proposterous, it enables those who break the rules to slip through the cracks while the police aren't around. I'm not suggesting that people arm themselves with handguns and machine guns like americans and hunt people down, but say an intruder busts into your home, you should be able to take a bat to him and be able to justify your defence in court without fear of going to jail. Placing a ridiculous amount of checks on the police hampers their job to the point where they are almost not able to do it as they are scared of all the red tape that goes with it. What you get out of that is paying a guy 70,000 dollars a year to write up traffic tickets, why would we need police if they can't do their job they were sworn to do? Look at it like this, and if you ever get a chance to go to a hockey game keep this in mind. The referees and linesmen are like police and the players are citizens. During a game there are numerous infractions, some of the time the refs catch them and hand out penalties which would be like sending someone to jail. Does this stop the infractions, no not really. A lot of infractions like crime slip out of sight of the police/referees. Say for example someone takes a run at the goalie and gets away with it as far as the ref is concerned, the goalie is critical to a teams success and can't be thrown off his game and runs can contribute to that, something has to be done, what gets done is either the goalie or a teamate will "drop the mitts" and fight the perpetrator if it becomes a problem, justice is served. This sends a message that running our goalie will not be tolerated and if someone else wants to mess around that's what will happen and to a degree this works. If that is the attitude of Quebecers (to hide behind "civility") then I think Quebecers are a bunch of cowards and a bloody embarassment to our country. I'd rather be uncivilized than a coward and an enabler, you can take civility I'll take honor. I wouldn't say women are responsible for that, I'd say that's just nature, it's natural to be competitive, before civilization if you aren't competitive, your toast. I think competition is vital for the progress of everything, look at communism without competition it all amounted to a big pile of monkey crap. Men are just as guilty of that as women, who are you going to choose in a bar the fat girl who looks like she's been hit in the head with a shovel, or the attractive one? that's been happening since the dawn of time. I agree that's a big waste of money to be spent on vanity. I think people who spend hundreds of dollars on a shirt and pants needs to have their head checked and those who value that to have their heads checked twice. Either your naturally good looking or your not, accept it and move on.

The Liberals are gonna have a field day with this. Your right we have a Liberal party East and a Liberal party West. We'd be better off pulling out of Kyoto, having our name tarnished a little bit, and finding a reasonable way of getting things done that actually work.

Another form of hypocrisy on the left. We are to respect the traditions, cultures, and the way things are done in that god forsaken corner of the world and who are we to interfere in how they do things; and at the SAME time when we hand over prisoners to the authorities to deal with them under THEIR laws, all of a sudden we are to impose Canadian values all of a sudden. What's with the cherry picking? The fact that the left is more worried about detainees more than our troops is sickening. The fact that the left takes the word of our enemies over our own troops is even more sickening. The fact that the left implies that our troops are war criminals is the most sickening of all.

Care to indulge me? I would be interested in knowing your point. The point is if your buying something that is hot, it is your responsibility to be careful, which is why I'm a lot more careful when I weld now. Accidents happen, people shouldn't have to be paying for a freak occurence. McDonalds maybe should be not having their coffee so hot, but we shouldn't be tying up court with useless litigation like that, those lawyers and judges have much more important cases to worry about than chasing around after nonsense like this. That's why we have W-5 and the fifth estate, plead your case on a show like that and let them slam McD's on TV, which in turn hurts the company. McD's shouldn't have to pay for this person's carelessness.

Unfortunately if you knew about the McDonalds lawsuit, you yourself would be advocating a large settlement on behalf of the plaintiff. Googled it, from what i see, she should have been more careful with the coffee. I remember taking shop class in junior high and burning my hands from welding, should I be suing the school board for that, there were no release forms to be signed as well. No I won't sue the school, I burnt myself and realized hmm metal that was welded gets hot and I shouldn't be handling it right away. Just like the McD's case, the coffee is hot, maybe I should be careful.