Canuckistani

That minority is relatively much larger there than here. Let's hope it stays that way.

Obama is a Eisenhower Republican - you don't really have a left. Was that poll about the first Obama victory? Our politics were not very exciting, Harper doesn't excite anybody and there wasn't a realistic alternative. So ho hum. But being part of the wave that swept BO to power - I bet you could conduct this poll all over the world with similar results.

Well sure, I fear that this way of thinking will creep across the border more than it already has. We're massively influenced by what happens in the US. And, I care about the US. I've met lots of great people there. It's sad to see what's happening there, but maybe with the demographic changes taking place things will get better.

she had them for protection. It didn't work. Most people who are murdered are killed by somebody they know. Who's fears are we talking about again?

That's funny, given what's been reported about this woman and her survivalist fears and how much she loved shooting her AR-15 at the range.

Huge diff between our right wing and yours. Huge. Especially once they took power and went all moderate and all, because they like that power and don't want to get voted out. Everybody here from the right to the left is asking when Harper will finally unleash his secret agenda. He hasn't, because he knows he would immediately become an also ran. What keeps him in power is the split between the middle and the left here - they get more votes combined than the CPC does. But then the same is true in the US - your "left" (ie Eisenhower republicans) get more popular votes than your nut bars, yet the nut bars keep getting elected.

Her avid gun love. If she wasn't she might as well have been, since she's a poster child for them.

I believe the mother of the shooter, the first victim, was an NRA member. Ironic, that.

Never got flack for being Canadian in Canada. Met some resentment of Canadians just across the border, but that's to be expected when they invite a flood of Canadians in - ie any high tourist area for a particular group will have some resentment. Further in, no resentment that I could find, tho for some reason Americans felt the need to correct my accent. Of course Americans are going to loom much larger in the psyche of Canadians. Just by the nature of our relative population sizes, influence of American media, etc. Living in the US for a bit, and not on the left coast, I was actually surprised how different we are on the whole. Always assumed from visits to Seattle and even California, that we shared more or less the same values. Not til you get to the heartland do you see how large the right wing culture is in the US, how it's much more extreme than ours, or has way more influence. Seems to be waning tho. I spend time in Colorado, and it was seriously right wing at the time. A CO state senator could claim that UN troops were massing at the US border in Saskatchewan ready to invade, and that was mainstream thought. But CO went for Obama this last times. The times they are a changing. Not soon enough.

Good points. I also at one time considered emigrating there. You couldn't pay me to do so now. I read an idea, can't remember it that well, but that because the US got democracy in one big jump, fighting against a dictator, they've always had this idea they need to protect themselves from their own government. European democracies, Canada too, evolved more slowly, so govt is seen as more benign. Being on guard against govt excess is an important duty of a citzen. Thing is that clutching your semi-auto rifle won't do it - if the US govt wanted to take over militarily, they could with little problem (as long as the troops are with the govt), despite all the Red Dawn fantasies of the NRA types. Being on guard means being involved in how you are governed. Voting of course, protesting rights abuses also. But this idea that any moment you and your buddies are going to get together and defend your country from the jackbooted govt thugs is just nuts.

We have people in Vancouver who would love to live in overcrowded conditions, because they live on the street. Most people, if they want a decent place to live, they go to work so they have the money so they can buy or rent one. They don't go on hunger strikes so the govt will give them mo money.

Gun manufacturers stocks sank 18%, and the private equity firm that owns the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle is divesting itself of same.

That's great. Doesn't seem to be doing much good now, does it? Or maybe it is, which is a truly scary thought.

Does the US breed more crazy/violent people than Canada per capita? Maybe, although I bet actual incidence of mental illness is about the same. It's the idea that violence is the answer to your problems that seems so much stronger in the US. That's not something that gun control can address. But, it seems obvious that the easy access to high powered weapons that only have one real use - to kill humans - is a contributing factor to the many mass shooting they have. To say that further easing of gun laws will help with this problem shows just how much this craziness has infected mainstream America.

The obvious answer is to have a swat team accompany firefighters each time they go out. Gotta protect them just as much as the school kids.

We should just be happy that it happens so much less in Canada. It's got to harm the psyche of a nation to have that many mass shootings, and now of so many children as well. The more it happens, the crazier they get.

Doesn't matter the culture they came from, just what their families did to them. So maybe all the Native protesters around this issue could stfu then.

Only one third? It's always presented as a Native issue in the media, part of the missing Aboriginal native women nationally, how the system failed aboriginals, etc. Stuff like this: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/1304179--vulnerable-native-women-must-not-be-treated-as-nobodies

The thread topic was changed. My original title was "finally somebody said it." Sure the inquiry was about failures of the system. But as the article I linked to said, many of these women come from homes where they were abused, often sexually, or neglected. That's what put them in the vulnerable position they were in. To say that they deserve the same police protection is just a truism - of course they do. But they were taking huge risks for drugs, hard for the police to protect them from that. Pickton isn't the only guy that's killed a prostitute before. What put them in their precarious position are the families that are now crying the blues about how the system failed the women and how they want compensation. Not a word about what happened in their families to mess up those women in the first place. I mean the life of a crack whore is not a long or happy one, even without someone like Pickton coming along. Those families doomed those women to a short, brutal life long before him. But then Aboriginals always seem to find it easier to blame their troubles on the white man, never to look at their own contribution.

No, real fasts for long periods of time will cause permanent damage. He body, her choice tho. As I say, I bet that broth turns out to have all sorts of bits floating in it, and she'll do just fine.

Poor native reserves aren't large corporations. When they earn the sort of revenue that large corporations do, then they can consider paying their leaders as much. Note the underline on earn. What does the average mayor of a small village earn. Probably 30k or so. Of course these chiefs are leaders of nations, but then they should live on their own dime, not the foreign aid we shovel to them.

Well, we'd better see the pounds dropping off her, or I will suspect she's following the breatharian leader's diet plan. (Claim you don't need food to survive, then be caught dining in a fancy restaurant.) Her broth will probably have all sorts of bits floating in it, will be my bet.

Thanks for that. Lays it out very clearly and cuts thru the Fraser Institute bs.

Well, we'll see. My guess is you'll lose. People are more concerned about the present economy. And, usually the Native stuff about protecting the land is just bs. When they get control of some of it, they're just as eager as the evil white man to exploit it. In Clayoquet Sound, where the white dupes fought so hard to preserve the last untouched watershed, it's now the Indigenous People's who are doing the logging, or actually contracting it out to the evil white man, because it's easier to just collect rent. Story gets repeated over and over again. Attawapisat isn't about stopping a diamond mine, but that the Indigenous People's there don't feel they're getting enough rent. The jobs they were offered went unfilled, as often happens. Lil'wat Nation build a "healing center" in the alpine area around their reserve, then abandoned it, they left behind porno mags and tin cans to show how much they treasure the fragile alpine environment. When they had an environmental celebration in the alpine meadows, with David Suzuki dancing with them, they left behind a torn up, muddy mess. Alpine environments heal very slowly. Indigenous People's environmentalism seems to go only so deep until they get a chance to exploit the environment. Thank God some environmental groups have started to wake up to this and and made comments about it in the media, but there's a sucker born every minute who wants to dream the noble savage dream. That's just pure racism,

You make your snide comments about not travelling much, but whinge when I snap I at you. And not just for this topic, I just don't get why you come here in the first place. I talk about Americans a lot - to Canadians on Canadian forums. I make snide comments about Americans a lot. To Canadians on Canadian forums. I would never go on an American forum to do so - what they want to discuss is their business. Ice did start haunting the newest cable stayed bridge here, when it's never haunted our other cable stayed bridges, the oldest one has been here since the 30's. That's why it's as story for us. We don't really care that it's commonplace elsewhere, it's not here. Get it?