Jerry J. Fortin

Look if you can sling armament on them, they are good to go. What of the MQ9 Reaper, its a UAV to be sure, but just think about it for a minute. Look folks there is no such thing as modern warfare, there is only nuclear and non nuclear warfare thats it. Limited or unlimited war. This is a large nation we seek to defend, UAV's must be part of the defense plan. Once you find the targets you need to eliminate them, but they need to be found first. You don't win wars from the air, you do that from the ground, and we have a lot of ground to cover. A new jet is pretty, but it wont win any wars. We need a more foundational solution, not mere lip service. Look at the reality we face folks, are a couple of fighter squadrons going to serve as a functional defense? Not hardly. So why are we debating the viability of a new aircraft while the defense of the nation is not even remotely served with its purchase. We need to get our collective heads out of our asses and start looking at this thing with a little perspective. If Harper is vulnerable anywhere it is here in national defense. More than lip service is needed to defend this nation. WE need less politics and more patriotism to solve this problem.

The health care crisis is all about costs. No resolution is possible without addressing this point. The key to resolving it is to control costs, period. The way to do that is to look at spending, mot government spending as per say, but the way people are spending government money. The place to find solutions is through controlling primary care costs and investing in prevention plans. Its complicated sure, but so is the problem itself and we simply wont solve it without cost control. It will cost thousands of dollars TO GO TO EMERGENCY, or a few dozen dollars to see a family doctor. That is not very surprising, what is surprising is that so many people go to the local emerg for colds and flu problems. These are probably the folks complaining about wait times! WE need more doctors, and way more nurses staffing local medical centres. We need more MRI's and techs to run them. We need cheaper meds and ways to dispense them. WE need a lot of stuff, but we need to understand the nature of the problem in order to design some infrastructure to deal with it. No simple solutions will serve us.

This thread is about Steve, not tree huggers or tech weenies. Steve is a PM with successive minority governments. He has accomplished little because that is what Parliament wanted, he governs at their pleasure. This really is all about Steve, lets not forget that.

It will take more than just balancing the books to clean up our act.

Good call, I agree with you. Smart move for Steve, but perhaps not smart enough to get the job done. We will have to see how Iggy deals with the situation. It seems likely we are talking spring election, but don't overlook the possibility of a fall election. I would say a summer election is the least likely outcome of this latest gambit conducted by the PM.

Most Canadians are unaware that the F35 program is the result of a procurement process already concluded. The Boeing X32 lost out to the Lockheed Martin X35 proposal. The entire question of sole source procurement is a red herring. This F35 was determined to be the best way to go, and the reasons are a matter of public record. Another red herring is the cost of maintenance. This is where jobs for Canadians really come from, not the production of the aircraft itself. While it is true some production employment will be realized, it is actually very minimal.

In this nation, attack ads are just taking root. They have been a valuable tool down south for almost ever. Things are changing up here slowly but surely, and when that happens we often emulate what our American brothers and sisters do. Like it or not, that is a reality we must face. As long as we remain conservative, that is the way it will be. When we become more liberal in our thinking then the US will emulate us. In either case if we go too far off the reservation the US will neither emulate or support us. Which is why the entire concept is so funny in the first place.

I would rate Harper no better than a "C". No big surprise one way or the other really. An absolutely forgetable PM.

As most fans of social engineering will agree with you, I will take the opposing view. I will say that this politically correct concept is merely a play on words giving lip service to a perceived problem. Our society persists in taking one step forward and two steps back. Affirmative action is no more than legalized discrimination. WE have made the same mistake in legislative efforts time after time and still don't see ourselves as insane. Because WE know better. Level the playing field yes, that is what should be done without doubt, but not this way. Equality will solve the problem without question, now just try and enforce it! Its the guy that does the hiring and firing that makes the only and all of the difference. So remove the"guy", ensure all applicants for all positions are compelled to use a scorecard system of points as an opener, prior to interviews. The interview process is where all problems stem from and it should be subject to levels of appeals. Set up a process and deal with it, that would be real affirmative action, not lip service.

Times change dude. WE are taxed beyond our very lives, even our estates are taxed to a very real extent. That is only the beginning of our trouble or the first step in looking at where our hard earned dollars really go. The sales taxes on the products we buy and the user fees for the services our tax dollars pay for represent the next layer of our economic slavery onion. Going even deeper we can look at the monetary and banking systems we use to transact our personal business through. I do believe the core of that onion is the central banking/fractional reserve system now utilized worldwide. The issues go way beyond a few production line jobs, or very damned nearly every private sector position in the nation, when ALL business is underpinned with financing leveraged through legally mandated accounting procedures. The entire system is a house of cards, by any definition. Instead of supporting structures we have designed a leveraged credit system based entirely out of the hands of both private citizens and national governments. Bankers own the world, its just that simple. Those are merely our own domestic issues we are talking about. Unfortunately there is a world full of nations and nations full of localities and a myriad number of governmental levels within each, all competing for financing with you me and the place we work at. To get to the root of the problem we need to search for the signs of the foundation we have built upon in the systems we designed to function in our society. The entire thing is based upon growth and perceived leveraging. Any interruption or degradation of system integrity and it collapses damaging or destroying purchased or created personal properties and goods. The only people protected from this are the bankers and their supporters and attendants. The rest of us are screwed blue and tattooed.

Well said, that is the point after all. When all the arguments are done, the loser is the dead guy.

I said I like it, not that we should buy it. I maintain that what we need to do is dump some money that is owed to us in a project to develop our own plane. That is to say we should build something on license here. The money Bombardier owes the fed should cover a serious and viable proposal to build what we need here in country and save money in the process. All of the profits and jobs are taxable and that will serve to subsidize the effort. Lets face the reality here folks. we need a viable solution that works on ALL levels because its the citizens dollars being spent on any such project.

I like Sukhoi's T-50 myself.

Perhaps the most intelligent thing I ever heard you say BC.

Look fella, the burden SHOULD be shared. Its not like business is covering its fair share anyhow, they never have.

The government dips into everyones paycheck in the form of withholding taxes. Get over it, it ain't gonna change anytime soon. How else can the feds cover their loan payments but through some form of taxation. Pensions are merely the tip of the iceberg, and just between you and me, those are your own dollars invested in CPP. Its already your money if you paid into it, so why cut it off or have you forfeit that which is already yours. You don't because that would be foolish, so knowing that....what is your point here? The handout concept? Lets face reality here, there is a floor determined by government below which the government will not allow any citizen to fall below. As such its not a bad thing, but there is indeed a cost associated with it. Call it the price of civilization. Perhaps you would be interested to know that how citizens are treated by their own government determines whether or not they remain citizens. Paying their taxes and using the services and programs covered by our little civilization. When you think about it, I am sure you will agree that the real issue is actually government spending, nothing more and nothing less.

I think the feds should call in their loans with Bombardier. Tell them to design and build us what we need and pay for it with what they owe us.

I think the country is starving for leadership. The current batch of politicians is bereft of innovation. The entire nations future is wrapped around the development of our northern frontier, an area that is literally rich in natural resources and I might add wholly owned by the federal government. This nations future is no longer about our former industrial heartland, those days have come and gone. Methane ice under the mud in the Beaufort, the minerals and heavy metals of the northern parts of the provinces and the territories, the wind and the tides of our thousands of miles of shore lines, both renewable and non-renewable resources are in abundance in the north. These things must be integrated into our former industrial heartland in order to realize their full benefit. All it takes is a functional vision for the future, and a leader to take us there.

I will wade into this pool with; there is numerous sources of published data that appear to support either side of the fence. Yet here is the rub, nobody denies that our global environment is changing. So the created argument is about who is to blame, and even when that is considered there is always a money end to the equation. The simply reality is that we are required to adapt to any change in our environment in order to survive. All the rest is political BS, designed to create division and therefore interest, and lastly leading to how profit can be derived from the entire process. WE are fools to believe otherwise. As the planet becomes less healthy, so will the citizens and that is just another taste of this reality.

Good solid reasoning. Yet another valid point for the open bid process, but it speaks volumes for our own flawed policy decision to venture into this market at this time. Perhaps our dollars could be better spent elsewhere.

That is not the point. The point was the DND requirement for a two engine aircraft, what ever did happen to that?

Sure, after the fact. Just like it was nearly six decades ago it will happen again. The USA was surprised and unprepared for the original event, and when you think about it you will realize that nothing has really changed.

I don't think any of that is a good thing.............

I maintain that government spending is the only issue worthy of public concern. It is the foundation of everything the government does and is the reason we pay so much in taxes. This guy, and very damned nearly every other clown that has held the job in the past has failed to come to grips with this reality. Shame on them. Having elected these overlords to manage the public trust has proven one major thing, and that is shame on us for doing this our society. We can, and truly should do better than this. In this day and age of information transfer and public access, with our level of education, how did we let government slip this far away from us? Immense lobby efforts control both public and political agendas. Governments are beholding to the very banks supposedly used for commercial purposes. Entire nations have been enslaved in debt, let alone the individual citizens. All the while monetary systems and institutions amass vast fortunes on leveraged credit and debt holdings producing nothing and paying virtually no taxes on corporate earnings. These are not the things of a conspiracy theory, merely factual information that is easily researchable. The most harsh reality of all is that there is only one tax payer, the living breathing citizen. That is because our governments value money more than the individual.