Jerry J. Fortin

What? We need elected judges so we can turf them if they screwup! Of course the judges should worry what the people think! The damned bar does nothing about their own! Its like the police investigating the police for God's sake! Not the kind of system that deals with problems at all. This system buries them. Your comment "we should have input on the law" sort of blows me away too. You don't want citizens to have a say in legislation so how in the hell do we get a say on the laws?

At least he can't legislate. I agree he will use the executive powers and privileges he has to do what he can do to buy as much support as he can. I will expect a new round of patronage appointments to high paying bureaucratic position. I expect him to sell off a bunch of public assets and revamp a number of departments to better reflect his vision for the nation. This was why I was not real happy with Iggy leaving him in power over the summer.

Are you aware of the value of resources being found in the Arctic? Have you any idea of the impact those resources will have to Russia and everyone else involved in the Arctic? Read this; http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/200...the_ocea_1.html This is only the tip of the iceberg, there are heavy metals and precious gems along with all the hydrocarbons that has everyones attention.

Help them? What sort of help do you think they need. I think they are doing just fine on their own.

That is true! They will do nothing, accomplish nothing and be paid for nothing!

Where do I begin? Senators follow the instructions of their leaders, so do Members of Parliament. All legislation is already vetted by government lawyers to ensure non-conflict and compliance issues. You are delusional if you think the Bloc gives a damn about benefits for anyone outside of Quebec. I think you will discover that almost all of these representatives concern themselves with benefits to their own regions and party specifics first. They can spend years studying a subject to death without ever passing a piece of legislation about it. The government commissions reports and then doesn't even act on the advice that was given at the expense of the tax payers. The governmental system that we have is chuck full of holes and problems.

I am officially pissed at Iggy! I think he has dropped the ball and given Harper a nice little holiday as Prime Minister.

I think many folks under estimate China.

If you want to make the system work, you need elected judges, and recallable representatives. You need a system where the jury makes the call of guilt or innocence and the judge must follow minimum guidelines for sentencing. You need a penal system that doesn't turn criminals loose on society prior to the completion of their sentences. You need a system where funding police departments is never a question. You need a way to make the criminals pay for their incarceration.

EI needs reforms, but the question is how far will the political leaders go in such reform. All I have heard so far is they want to hand out even more money.

Reality? http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/02/27/...overeignty.html Yeah I know its only the CBC, but read it anyway.

Molly, I agree with you in principle. There is however no way within this current system of having the candidate that was elected actually represent the wishes of their constituents. They can only rarely represent themselves because they are compelled to vote in a manner consistent with the wishes of the party leader. To head off of the reservation and vote according to anything but the party has serious consequences within the party. Take a look at the Swiss system of direct democracy and see how that works. Let me give you a little insight to their version of direct democracy, it has been around for over a hundred years. They have one of the highest standards of living in the world and their quality of life is the envy of many. Try these links; http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/ http://aceproject.org/ace-en/focus/direct-democracy/cs-swiss http://www.switzerland.com/en.cfm/home/gov...ent-200065.html

Bingo!There you have it, technology removes the communication problem that has until now been the issue blamed as the reason for the representative form of democracy we have been using. Now we have the means of doing what needs to be done. Yet to do so threatens the power and authority of the people within the system. So for the sake of the three hundred plus elected genius intellectuals in government 30 million idiot citizens need to be hand held and told what is best for them. Citizens need to be aware that those much vaunted representatives are for the most part very partisan followers who spend their time saying no to citizens and yes to hack at the top of the pile. They do that to attain power and privilege beyond that of normal citizens at public expense. They make careers out of politics and convert it from a means of public service to a means of corruption and avarice. Who can the best interest of citizens, themselves or representatives?

You forget we no longer have a military industrial complex. We can still do small ships, but nothing else. We buy everything from other nations.

We need to build ships, lots of them. I will suggest that when we finally break down and get the JSF we take the Marine and Air Force versions. The Marine version, the F35B with STOVL could be installed on ships and ideal for our use. The F35A version could be reserved for our use overland. Since this is likely the replacement for the F18's we might as well do this right and use both variants as best we can. That means some sort of frigate or destroyer with sufficient deck space to handle the bird or birds for that matter. This would be something new and different, worthy of our effort.

Canada does not fool anyone. We have become a wishy washy nation.

According to you there is nothing broken, everything is working fine! What you are really advocating is for government and society to do nothing because there is nothing to do. The Canadian government is far from responsible, ask Harper about Lisa Raitt. It just wasn't her fault now was it? The Canadian government is productive? In a minority Parliamentary system nothing could be further form the truth because to act is to be opposed with a larger and more disagreeable number of elected members than your own partisan faction. In short nothing gets done without a majority. Please tell me through those rose coloured glasses of yours what you perceive to be the problems that government should be trying to fix.

The losers of the second world war became the economic winners a few decades later. There is good reason for that, but that is not the point. History is seldom written by the losers, so the story is told by the winners with all the propaganda that goes with it. This is merely the modern version of "to the victor goes the spoils". In point of fact, war is the end result of failed diplomacy. Two world wars resulted in the same net outcome, attempted world government. Which of course did not and will not work in the manner that they were designed. The League of Nations and the United Nations have both failed in their attempts to mitigate peace in an uncertain world. The simple truth is that politics is divisive by any stretch of the imagination. The harsh reality is that disparity is now visible in a way it was never visible before. Peoples from all over the world can now communicate without the need of governments and diplomats and word travels far and wide. Governments are becoming less useful and more of a hindrance to the distribution of wealth naturally created through production and profit. In my mind the entire monetary system and the entire financial system that used to be highly regulated by nations is taking on a global context based on macro-economic formulas that serve the corporate instead of public purpose. The individual is being slowly marginalized in favour of the corporate effort. International trade and international lobbyists now have a far greater influence on governments than the citizens. All roads used to lead to Rome, and all economic efforts now lead to financing. In a world full of productive efforts to serve the needs, wants and desires of the people the most visible component within the system is money. Money may well be the root of all evil, yet there is little or nothing that can be done without it. So where does this take us? It takes us to the monetary system of currencies, debts, and interest rates.

So you suggest that since we are free to speak against the government and that since we hear about what goes wrong then everything is alright?

Sure is.......

The system is junk! It is antiquated and inflexible. The system just created a corporate welfare account called "the New GM", they didn't see the flaw in the privately held Chrysler bailout so they made the same mistake scant weeks later. Criminals are let out of jail to re-offend, entire generations live and die on welfare, governments are caught redhanded at corrupt acts and we can do nothing about it. The country is held to ransom by successive ineffective minority governments and the people drift in a political ideological wasteland of visionless and self absorbed leaders, and you dare to say the system works?

The Chinese are very industrious because they have so much to gain. They know this, and so does their government.

You can see what you want. I see a very large economic powerhouse in the midst of dragging its ass out of the last century and into the next. That nation can out produce any other on the entire planet. It can consume its own products and more of everyone elses than anybody else. This makes them a force to be reckoned with. You would do well to consider carefully, where that nation has been, where it is going, and how it plans to get there.

Any great power is just that.

Let me rephrase; keep EI as a withholding tax, but with personal accounts. Business can continue to deduct from paychecks, the money can be placed into the same account system used by CPP, but the government would no longer pay out of the public purse.