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The average attention span is very short conditioned by the cell phone. I also think our media controls the message to an extent. Let us hope voters remember.

I edited. My tablet changes the friggin words when I save. Sorry. That said my point is Sheer also may be a lot of things but calling him a racist is a stretch as well. The Liberal party has its share of progressive bigots. The anti Semitic comments about Bob Rae's wife were made by people who now support Trudeau. He panders for votes in many ethnic communities using extremists.

Then using your reasoning Trudeau is a bigot. Go find out who Omar Allghebra is.Also since Trudeau supports Lavalin who financed Ghaddafi and paid off Made well hey that puts him in good company. Speaking about who he sits with did not Justin bring a terrorist to dinner in India and make a point of going to a mosque in Calgary full of extremist anti gay anti women anti semitic followers and pray with them? The world sure is a stage but you seem selective as to what scenes you notice.

Trudeau is a case of herpes. Just when you think its cleared up, pow its back again. Canadians should have never got into bed with him. The best thing we can do now is use a contraceptive. Sheer is an appropriate name for a prophylactic.

I think he was an underachiever and has no legacy. I don't see why you would call what he did right wing. He did everything he did precisely because he did what many progressive leftists like him do and BELIEVE IN. He was a CIA prop. They thought they would create and use this guy to seduce and control the Islamic world via his Muslim Brotherhood network and it was an epic fail. All it did was empower terrorists, Russia and China and destroy any remaining world leadership reputation the US had. He was a total and absolute incompetent disaster with foreign policy. In regards to domestic policy he changed nothing and leaves nothing for anyone. He certainly was a gifted speaker and highly intelligent and articulate and likeable but those are not lasting legacies. He has nothing concrete to show for his 8 years in office.

There still is a belief that cutting your hair robs strength. This comes from our primal origins wear loss of the was a symptom of illness. The notion we were made in the vision of a furry entity is illogical. If we are originated it would be from a preceding source of energy. The belief there is a God we look like also suggests all othervforns of lifecwere not made in God's image. That would also be illogical not to mention absurd. If God has a human face then God has a face of both genders and call forms of life which means we have a huge choice of images to choose from not just the one that looks like ZZ Top.

Yes on your third sentence from the bottom, not necessarily to all your other comments.

Is it possible to discuss this issue without throwing generalizations back and forth....

Actually the one who ran in my riding for the federal Tories did not. You of course have made a generalization.

With due respect you make a lot of generalizations. It's not rational to assume all Muslims have the exact same beliefs. Stereotyping all Muslims in your discussions is no more helpful than leftists refusing to acknowledge that not all immigrants are interested in being Canadian or following Canadian values or working. Either extreme is not helpful.

Yes.

Last sentence is the crux of the entire issue.

His imagination has limits yes.

Some are not. So your point?

Your imagination is not necessarily a rational bass for the assumptions you state.

Who said she is being picked on? How is she a victim? She has a cushy job for life BC. Senators in Canada are patronage appointments. For the most part they are parasites. Some work hard revising bills to amend mistakes. Also the Senate committee on Euthanasia did a fantastic job only to have their report ignored. However for the most part they are a useless vestige like an appendix is to the human body. No one would miss it if it was cut out of government. Sorry I can't see any Senator being a victim. In this specific case the question is should a representative of all Canadians, which she claims to be leave up on her personal web-site letters from people she knows contain hateful comments about an entire group of Canadians. It lends to the appearance she supports those hateful comments. When you hold a public office, conflict of interest is a crucial issue and the test for whether there is a conflict of interest in law with public figures is not whether there actually is one, only if there is an appearance there could be one. By allowing hateful messages of OTHERS to remain on her personal site, she lends to the appearance her leaving them up means she condones or supports those hateful comments. If she agrees with those comments, then she should step down from the Senate because she is a civil servant of all Canadians including those aboriginals being insulted. She does not have the luxury of being able to condone hateful comments. Her standard of care is higher because she is being paid a lot of taxpayer's money and in a cushy job for life, to be a representative of ALL Canadians not just some. This Senator is not stupid. She made sure the letters were not on her Senate web site. She also never made any hateful comments herself which lends to the appearance she is being passive aggressive and using others to state what she really thinks. Yes we can have a two sided discussion on these reform schools-that is not the issue. Her original comments may literally have not crossed the line and are part of a necessary two sided discussion. That is not the issue, the letters are. Had she removed them we would not have this discussion. So the question remains if you keep up letters that contain negative stereotypes of an entire group of people, what are the consequences. I leave that to others to decide. Me personally I think she showed poor judgement leaving them up. If those letters stay up they should be on a site where they are not on a civil servant's site because hat civil servant must remain neutral and not associate themselves with such comments. To me that is all about conflict of interest and common sense. We are talking about the place where those letters sould remain if they do remain for the sake of free speech. They might belong on a public forum not a civil servant's personal site. Civil servants especially public ones, give up the right to personal opinions even in private life that could lend to the appearance of conflicting with their job responsibilities.

You bring up a point. Sometimes government intervention takes away the incentive from people on an individual level to change. I think I would prefer to use the word "adapt" or "change" more than the word assimilate in this discussion although it probably means the same. However people won't change, if there is nothing in it for them to make the change. If people are given a message intentionally or unintentionally by government there is nor reason to change, they won't. At this time if you come to Canada as a new Canadian, your need to adapt, change, assimilate, what-ever word we use, will of course depend on the personal situation of your family. If government services provide certain levels of services, those same services could prevent, delay or take away the incentive to change. So I think we can ask for the purposes of this discussion, has the government made it too easy not to feel the need to change with certain muli-cultural policies? If so why and when does a multi-cultural policy go too far and discourage new Canadians from feeling they have to change. I agree with Dialamah that as a general rule when we force people to do anything rather than have them make the decision to do it with their own free will, it may trigger the opposite effect i.e., resentment and resistance to change. People as a general rule need to know there are positive consequences to changing and negative consequences to not changing so they understand it makes sense to change. If you simply threaten someone without them able to see the positive consequences of changing-they don't really change, they mimic what they think you want from them (passive-aggressive resistance) and resist your change and cling to their status quo when its not detectable to the people demanding the behaviour they don't like but feel forced to conform to. Also "Forcing" is a word that then requires asking, how do you "force"? What enforcement tool(s) will you use-cattle prods...education camps....cultural police? I am not sure then "forcing" is realistic unless you want to have some sort of objective tool to measure how much you want people to change and which tools you create to enforce the change. So I think the answer might be re-examining multi-cultural policy to emphasize not just the values people bring to Canada, but the values Canada already has and how the values we already have are an essential part of Canada that in a multi-cultural context we want all Canadians of any culture to respect and honour. Then we need to encourage multi-cultural organizations that assist new Canadians to talk about Canadian values and what new Canadians should expect to be comfortable with and support once they come to Canada. Then we again could revisit what business and tax incentives the provinces and federal government can create to encourage new Canadians to move to smaller towns and get away from cities. Then let's spend a little but more time teaching aboriginal and Canadian history and geography in school curriculums. I think Wes' s points was when government did not provide as much assistance to immigrants which all of Canada is really, people could not rely on government, and had no choice but to swim and sink, so we need to know which government services have gone too far in stripping people of feeling they have any need to change.

To some aboriginals no, to others yes. To some non aboriginals no, to others yes which is your point. It comes down to a subjective take on what you think it means. The word lazy removed from context and intent would not necessarily be hateful. The meaning of any words necessarily depends on understanding full context of intent on how their author used them. Its true people can jump to the MOST negative meaning of words if they take them literally without analyzing intent and context. In that sense they may have not understood the intent and context. Then again other times, when people say deliberately ignorant or hateful things they may try couch them with ambiguity so they can leave themselves a way out and deny what their hateful meaning when confronted with one audience but snicker along with the hatred with another audience. As well there are what are called code or emotional trigger words placed in speeches with double meanings used in a process called meta-speech used as a deliberate and powerful manipulative tool by marketers and politicians to get strong emotional reactions.. This technique was actually perfected by Dr. Goebels the Nazi propaganda Minister and Orson Wells demonstrated how well it can work on Radio with his popular Invasion of the Worlds radio play that actually caused wide spread panic. I have no time of day with anyone using couched and coded references to whip up anger, hatred and recruit followers and/or are too lazy to differentiate between an entire people or any people and their politicians or government. I will challenge them to the ends of the earth. I loath both Trump and Trudeau who pander with coded references to their audiences to try get votes. Trump appeals with hateful stereotypes and insults, Trudeau with ethnic token displays and pandering language. Both play to the audience's feelings of being a special interest being placated by a self appointed savior. On the other hand you are also right and I do not think censoring speech is the way to deal with it-debate is. I think if you censor it, it goes underground and continues. Me personally, I believe only if the words incite hate and violence should they be considered as possible hate crimes or disturbing the public. Given we need to balance freedom of speech with threats to public safety its a constant dynamic tension. I think our legal system does its best with this issue. Who really can be said to be the best at balancing it? Certainly not Russia or China. I think when we look at free speech countries, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US do it as best we can albeit with some differences. I will take that over Russia and China or say North Korea or Iran. In this particular case its words of others the Senator left on her web site that technically went over the line in the opinions of the Senate that censored her and the Tory partner who interestingly are accused by some on this board as condoning racists.

Y'all ask me I would agree with you that what SHE said is actually well within the grounds of free speech. I think people really got into some of the comments in the letters sent to her private site which she herself did not write and refused to delete.

I was being satirical in response to your original response defending Trump by calling Canada a dead beat. So of course I agree defending or attacking Trump does nothing to address the issue of Canada having an underfunded military. That was the point. So come on BC lighten up or apply the same standard. Actually BC in all seriousness surely we all agree attacking the family of a politician is unacceptable when journalists do it. If I have done it, its done tongue in cheek never seriously because I of course agree. Its b.s. when the press goes after family and even political cartoonists have to be careful..I agree with you. .and seriously, to be married to an ignoranr rude bully likeTrump and handle all his crap and ego , I think would be a nightmare so I think his wife has handled herself with a quiet dignity. Then again Last comment I totally agree with. That said I am with Often Wrong on this one in feeling that Norman was trying to do the honourable thing and was screwed over. The rest of the comments from Dougie I defer to as he has an insider view which I respect but I can't comment on. As for you and me we disagree over Trump of course, but don't mistake my tongue in cheek. In fact one of the reasons I do not like Trump is his lack of respect for others including military. I did not appreciate the excuses and crap he pulled in Europe during war memorials and his comments over John McCain went way over the line especially since he himself has never served and used his rich boy status to avoid service. That said what ails our military will continue. Its a similar problem to what Toronto faces with its subway. There has been so many years of doing nothing that to get it up and running has to be costly and politicians afraid to increase taxes or are misspending tax revenues don't have the will to properly manage military procurement which is inextricably linked to political interests.

Good point. However he could any day have a conflict with China in the South Pacific, Iran, North Korea, Russia in the Ukraine, Venezuela, anything is possible when it comes to foreign conflicts and the military. He had one brief popularity spike when he shot off some missiles in Syria. Interestingly he had no fear removing troops from Syria or scaling down Afghanistan or sucking up to fat boy Kim and Putin. Whether he is the wild card or he is just a puppet for someone else who knows. I also wonder who really is behind the scenes and are they using Trump as a direct orchestrated puppet or merely reacting with opportunity to his chaos for their own good when it arises. I am inclined to believe it is more the latter. I think Trump is a voting accident and no one thought he would be elected especially himself. I think US politics is a chaotic mess with the true interests reacting after the fact to his chaos, not initiating it. I myself am convinced Putin has sex tapes and financial info on him and he is compromised. I think sometimes when you know someone is compromised its best to sit back and watch Putin manipulate him which in fact forecasts Putin's moves and in a way makes it easier to control him rather than removing his patsy. For anyone to believe Trump is not compromised by Putin is laughable. On the other hand could it be Putin has learned controlling Trump is not the magic power he thought it would be? Could it be he now realizes Trump is just a figure head and never has or can run the substantial powers and procedures of the US government which remains hidden and removed from not just Putin but all Americans?

In regards to 1, agreed 100%. That applies to Ivanka as well whatever the phack she supposedly does. In regards to 2, of course. Trump was a reaction to the corruption of the Clintons and ironically Trump has shown he is no different. The question is, is there such a thing as an honest politician, let alone in the US political system where the Congress and Senate define bribery as lobbying and allow Senators to make millions off of insider knowledge of bills about to pass? Those two elements alone necessarily have corrupted the system beyond repair. The almighty dollar has the US and probably the entire world firmly in its trance. Trump is a reflection of materialist values people crave.

On it and I tried to give you an explanation, hope it clarifies it. It appears its not necessarily Beyak's words but the letters of others on her personal web site.

Well you will find that interesting. I will try help you with an answer: First off in a debate in the Senate she trigged emotional reactions when she basically said that the religious teachers of Canada's residential school system were "well-intentioned." and she also said that not enough attention is drawn to positive stories from the era. She also wrote letters in support of her comments So if then if you to this source it says : https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/09/14/sen-lynn-beyak-doubles-down-on-latest-comments-about-indigenous-people_a_23209608/ "In Beyak's original letter, she says that Canada's "real problem" is the "Indian Act Industry in Ottawa, all living and working together comfortably, huge bureaucracies, massive expense accounts, fully assimilated to the ways of the white and Indigenous worlds, with available 5 star accommodations and business class travel ... "Move forward together just like the leaders already do in Ottawa," Beyak told Canada's 1.4 million Indigenous citizens in the letter. "All Canadians are then free to preserve their cultures in their own communities, on their own time, with their own dime." It goes on to say: "In both her letter and press release, Beyak called former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's so-called White Paper "brilliant." The paper, published in 1969, was essentially a proposal to eliminate Indian status, fast-track land claims, terminate treaties and dissolve the department of Indigenous Affairs." So then what happens is she put up letters on her site from Canadians supporting what she said and apparently the contents of some of those letters had negative stereotypes about aboriginals written in them: source for below: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/01/04/lynn-beyak-s-letters-of-support-could-be-grounds-for-human-rights-complaint-indigenous-senator_a_23324263/ "Letters of support posted on Sen. Lynn Beyak's webpage backing controversial remarks she made last year about residential schools could warrant a human rights complaint, an Indigenous senator says. Sen. Lillian Dyck said some of the letters, which are dated between March and October of 2017, promote "awful stereotypes." She referenced one letter on Beyak's Senate site as perpetuating the myth that Aboriginal men are predators and First Nations communities don't know how to manage money. "I'm at a loss for words," Dyck told HuffPost Canada Thursday. "It's deeply offensive. And hurtful." One of the letters written in support of Beyak's views especially triggered strong reaction: (also from above site) "One letter, dated April 5, 2017, written from a supporter named Hubert praises Beyak for her comments, saying "I feel that the First Nations people should be very grateful that there was such a service or system in place for their benefit." Hubert continues: "There have been many people that have been educated by the Residential School systems, that had it not been for those school they probably would not be the doctors, nurses, teachers politicians that have greatly contributed to our current multicultural society that is enjoyed in Canada and in turn, are able to greatly assist their own people." Dyk also said this: "So why are we tolerating it when it comes to Aboriginal people?" she asked. "And if the content can be perceived as motivating hate or be perceived as targeting mythologies, stereotypes about Aboriginal people, then she's responsible for that." So some of the anger is directed at Beyak's opinions and some at letters she has on her web site containing certain words. The letters areon Beyak's personal site so the Senate stated in that regard: "Senator Beyak's website at http://lynnbeyak.sencanada.ca/ is her personal website and she is therefore responsible for sharing content of her choosing on it," Korn said. "The Senate does offer limited website services such as templates and hosting to senators for their personal and individual use, as part of its toolkit of administrative resources available to all senators." You can go to that web-site to see what is on it. I appears when she refused to take down the LETTERS not her views it triggered the sanctions from the Senate and her own caucus as the LETTERS appear to be the source of allegedly hateful comments about aboriginals, i.e., calling them lazy.

Agreed. The only time the state should regulate speech is if it incites hatred or crime and you know that sometimes is hard to draw a line on as well but if it decides what is "polite" we are talking about censorship based on what standard? Political correctness as a standard is jello. It appears to have substance until you try to grasp it.