watching&waiting

I am a supporter of this motion, not because I am anti-gay but rather I want to see what a free and clear vote on a simple and clear question, will finally give as a result. If the majority votes for gay marriage then that will be that. The same can be siad if they vote against it. But I do want to see what the true democratic vote will be. Not the party partisan voting that came about with the last vote. Personally I have no reason to care either way it goes and marriage to me is just a civil thing as I am not religious in any way. I have no faith in gods wrath or benevelence. Many do and I can live with that as I also do not want or expect others to have my own thoughts on the matter. Each MP should vote the conscience of his own electorate majority view, and if they do then we can put an end to all the bickering over this once and for all. Yes I know all the special interest groups are screaming that this is unfair, but so was all the lobbying to get the vote to go their own way, even though it was not a true representation of the system. I probably think it will be voted to stay the way it is, but that does not mean it will. Only the numbers of the true electorate can say for sure.

Wow someone pissed in someones cherrios didn't they. I too have been the brunt of some posters who wnat grammarically perfect posts, because they say they can not understand them otherwise. Well That is because they are stupid and would not understand them either way. They do not understand communications is all about making a point, and that point can be made in many ways. Most all of which people understand the implied intent of the post. I will brush off the grammar lesson as well you know that there are certain types who believe that we mere peasants do not have anything to contribute. We just sit and watch and last weekend was so very informing about this board as to who are the paid hacks that the Liberals have here. Remember who was missing last weekend and who was here? It may not be a smoking gun, but it was informative for us creteins that were here watching.

If Canada can not produce quality films at standard market prices, then we should not be in the film business. There should be no coddling the producers to amke a show, if there is not any real chance of making money from it. It really does not matter anymore as the internet is already more then capable of bringing all the shows from everywhere in the world and CRTC has nothing that they can do to stop it. So they might as well just shut up shop and let them all in, which is what should have been done long ago. Hell I would be $100,000.00 richer if they had of done that already. Anyone can legally download full length movies and sports from all over the world to play on your computers, but if you have an integrated TV tuner in your computer you can watch them on your TV even HDTV.

Sounds about right to me

Try Scarborough. I do not live there but back when I attended Centennial College there, I would have to say that things on the streets looked like I was the minority there. I am sure they have not gotten better since then.

I give Dion one maybe two weeks and he will need a dentist to remove his foot from his mouth. If Dion even trys to use his past performance as Environment Minister, he will be laughed outrightly by the press and the public. As for his ability to unite the party goes, I think you will see that it is still fractured into little camps. I give Iggy a couple months and he will be gone, maybe set his departure for the next election etc. Rae well he is not even going to try and run even if he said so. The rest of the party will pick up on this quickly and Dion will have the dogs at the doorstep demanding action. I just do not think that Dion has it in him to lead a party, and I do not think most of the liberals will back him that much. You can see by even the posters here that the fight has gone out of most. Last saturday was a bad day for the Liberal party, but they will have to live with it and even though the Liberals seem to have given up any chance at power for the next decade, they will do what they do best and that is wheel and deal in back behind the scenes and plot their next moves. The media will enjoy Dion as he will make the news alot and most of it will be against him. They would do as much with CPC if they could get them to make the same mistakes that others will do. That is probably why Harper is accused of muzzeling them. But from the media point of view the liberals make more news because they are involved in so many scandels so yes if they had their choice, yes the liberals would be their pick.

DDT was not so harmful to man, but it sure played hell on eagles eggs shells. B ut if I were to decide about whethere the disease that is now being spread by mosquitoes and affectting man, then DDT is something I would look at. There are more side affects with using DEET then there were with DDT.

Suzuki has not been a man ofscience for the last decade or more. He was and still is a paid activist that is used because of his name. Most of the stuff he has done on Climate change goes against the science of the problem. What he states is asking people to take a giant leap of faith in him, because the science of the fact does not support his findings. This is easily explained by a familiar fact that is called money. Suzuki sold out the scientific community when he became an activist, and that is why you will not see any science based fact to support what he says. Dion using Suzuki is just making use of hyperbola already in place about climate change, and the urgency for something to be done. If today Dion does go ahead and use this and I suppose there will be many more, then that begs the question of why was he so bad as Environment Minister, that things increased on his watch by approx 30%, and 4 billion was spent. With $400,000 that just seems to have evaporated? Which will again just show you that the Liberals just can not go a week without a scandel. Do we have to bring this up? No, but not to do so would be wrong and the public does need to know these things.

I as an Ontarioian do not even come close to supporting the liberals with their pick of Dion. I also believe that we have to consider the west way more then we consider Quebec or even the Maritimes, only because the west has renewed economies and they are coming into their own and if we are to have a united Canada, then we should be helping and guiding them, not ignoring and telling them to sort it out. It is time for people to tell Quebec to sort it out. Quebec should have been told way back that they would need to run candidates across the country if they were going to have a federal party. That would end the Bloq or expand it one or the other. NFL should be told to go about getting their own oil based economy going and the federal leases that are now held should expire every 5 years, if they are not acted upon. The same with NS etc. BC needs to further their expansion of lumber and other products to Asian countries and the federal goverment should be working that, as well as the sale of wheat to China, who is fast becoming a grain based country for diet. The rest is all just really the daily runnings of the government, which is too centralized and too big. Yes there are a lot of programs that do nothing but apply to special interest groups and the Federal government should not be involved with any of them. The wealth of the country should be divided up according to needs, but not so it is harming one over another. Distribution of wealth is not a who who screams loudest gets the most, but rather what fits in with the wishes of all the people best. It is not hard today to have people express what they wish and then letting their MP's know. That was one thing I was hoping Harper would have shown more of by now, but yes he has been busy with other things. When I look at the other parties I just can say that they do not have any appeal to me, so for now I will support Harper as he is the best of the bunch for me.

That is an easy answer, because they have done nothing more then hide the same old back behind the scene people in a better hidden place, Then they picked a person who was not dented as much by the Gomery and have made him their poster boy. Never mi d that his English os very bad, and that he also has had 4 billion dollars during his term as envoronment minister and it did nothing but increase our emmissions, and now there is $400 million that seems to be misappropriated, by this same person. The Liberals sure think that people are shoort sighted, and stupid. Otherwise they would not have been so obvious in picking their new leader, someone that will say the same old crew are alive and well. Dion will not unite the party and it looks like if anything he will again appoint the old guard picks for his inner cabinet. So it will be interesting to watch. I do not see anyone other then Harper himself as being capable of calling an election and benefitting from it.

Dion leading the Liberals will take the party down and he will never even come close to getting power. First off he will lose seats in Quebec mostly to Bloq but some to CPC. Then he will lose many seats in and around Toronto as he will not be taken to by the people there. His hopes of getting any seats west of the Ontario border is slim to non-existant. So Gerry just where is he going to get 25 or so seats to be a Minority, or the 3-40 seats to be a majority? It just will not happen. You are stuck with him now for at least two runs at elections and there will be no chance to gain power in either. You know that, but you still try to shine the bad apple, but it will still be rotten no matter how shiny you make it .

The media loves the Liberals because they make their job sooo easy for them. The scandel a week was even sometimes two a week when the liberals werer in power. Even after this leadership convention the leader they picked who was over looked in the main adscam but was definitely in the know during that time, also has never been oked at how he blew 4 billion dollars and never showed any progress in the environment. Now that he is leader that will be looked at and if as I suspect we will just have another liberal scandel on the go. That is why the media like the liberals so much.

My god the hacks have been brain washed again or are they just trying to shine a light on things? Dion will not get the votes of the people in Ontario, and the Toronto seats will start to be picked off by both the NDP and CPC. The Quebec voters will turn to the block and the odd one to the CPC. I can not see any where that Dion will gain seats, and that means that he will never form a government. So yes the polls do have it right that he will need to rebuild the party and lose the backing of the Chretienites, if he is ever going to have his chance at the brass ring. No matter how they try to shine the light on Dion he comes with much baggage. He now will come under fire of Shelia Fraser, as his position would demend clarity on his past postings, and with 4 billion gone thru the Environment with nothing to show for it, that will once again mean that the Liberals would need to act fast or lose their chance. Their pasts will come back to haunt them all. They may need to once again look at another leader before they will have renewal that this last one was supposed to be.

Jdobbin You seem really linked to the wheat board thing. I am willing to bet that there are not that many farmers that would be al that pissed if the wheat board disappeared. You forget it is the western farmers who have been saying they can get better prices selling it in the USA. So while there may be support for it here in Canada, there also is a good number who are against it. I guess you should just make it voluntery like it is in the east and let the larket place do its thing. I do not expect that it will have much political consequence. As for Dion goes, I believe that in the next week he will be painted as the same old Chretien Liberal, and he will only be there for maybe two elections before it is realized that he can not beat Harper. Then maybe the Liberals this next time will actually do what they should have done this time, and pick a new leader absent of all old guard influence.

Betsy you should have titled this "The renewal of Jean Chretiens Liberal Party"

I thought Chretien supported Bob Rae. It doesn't matter who Chretien supports, it matters who Dion is. Dion is the man who will get us out of Afghanistan. Chretien is the man who got us in. And I gather Kennedy supported Dion because he couldn't distinguish him from Chretien. I had wondered how long it would take before the new Liberal leader would be called names. Not very long apparently. Even Paul Martin had a few months before the name-calling began. In any event, calling Dion Chretien II is about as helpful and informative to this discussion board as me calling the PM Herr Harper. Norman I have read just about all your bellyaching posts about us being in Afghanistan, and you are always even when proven wrong, so hard headed that you just always just keep spewing the same old thing. So let me point out that id Canada annouced tomorrow that we are pulling out of Afghan in say 6 months, we would first be taken to task by NATO and probably be the ignition of the fire to end the NATO completely. That would also mean that Europw will not be a welcoming place for us to do business. The USA would also be wanting to take us to task on that and the isolationists would be screaming for trade barriers etc. The fact that there are a majority of Canadians that support the Afghan mission would also tear the country apart, because to reneg on it would be to ruin Canada's reputation. So you see what could happen if you got your way. That is why you do not get any support for your misguided views. As for Dion getting anything done, that will be a laugh. He will never win an election and so he will never do anything but bellyache about things. He is just a stop gap so the Liberals will have more time to groom some other puppet for the back room boys to run.

When the Liberals finally get home and take time to think, they will have to realize that they just voted Chretien Regular into power. They did not have a Chretien lite to choose from. The news are all going to take great time and pleasure in drawing Dion into every part of the Chretien camp, and it will be shown that while at the convention Chretien hide in the back rooms and with the analysis you will see the ties that will prove that Chretien and his team are who really crowned Dion the leader. The deals will come to light and we will again see the Liberals in the same way as you did during the Sponsor ship Scandel. Dion will try with all his might to sweep that under the rug, in the same way Chretien used to do, and he will go over the top with his claims about CPC destroying the land etc. Any Liberal who thought that this leadership convention was going to be about change, will have to admit that there is nothing new but rather the same old, same old. Thatis going to be much harder to run on. Dion as Environment Minister was a joke and his spending billions never produced results but again rather made things worse. I am trying to figure out just what he can lay claim to? He did write the Clarity Act, but that will hurt him more in Quebec then help him, and he is not well liked in Quebec to begin with. It is true that when it comes to Quebec they would mostly go with their own before going with others, but since the bloq will get more votes and the CPC will probably only pick up a few more seats in Quebec, I will have to say that Dion will be a scorched earth type candidate for them in that province. I could go on and on province by province and to tell you the truth, I would not see anywhere that Dion will be a psoitive infuence. Maybe others can find something, but I can not. The only positive infuence I can see from Dion is that they will be handing the next election to Harper.

I was there for the Mulroney corruption and yes I even knew some of the people that benefited from it. I was very upset about it and yes for a long time I would never look at the PC as a place to park my vote. But with Chretien his corruption was always either for himself personally or for the party, and friends of the party, that all benefited from his largess. It was also so deep running that it went right to the basic anals of the party. No matter what Gomery said we all know that it was still there for the most part. That is why yesterdays win by Dion is so weird as it is going to be since as once again making the Chretienites smile and rub their hands. The Liberals who were supposed to be looking for new blood and to show a new way of doing politics, just chose the one candidate that will mean nothing but the same old guard and the same old behind the scene power brokers, as Chretian had. These are all the ones who were there for the SponserShip Scandel and they now have a new sheet to try and cover up the back room once again. The Liberals have shown that they are rotten to the core and that they have little wish to make a change. That is why I will not support them and when things settle down and the public also sees what this really means, I am sure they will not support them either. Yes I think that this is handing Harper his majority for the next election and if I read Harper right he will make that just one of a very long run of majority government.

There will be an election this spring and it will be Harper who will have it declared. Just watch the polls starting next week and you will see that Dion as leader will cost the Liberals votes. As I said in the thread about Dion winning, he has nothing to offer the people, and now that he is the leader there is no hope of the change that the public wanted so much. But things are what there are, and we will have to look and see what and where things will come from with the nnew leader. I still do not see Dion as a uniting leader, and if anything I think the party will again be split on the lines of Chretien loyalists and the newer and younger members. I guess what I am saying is they just had a leadership convention to go back to exactly what the people were all hoping they would leave behind. For those who keep saying show me the polls, I suggest you wait to say February and you will see exactly what I am saying.

Dion will not gain any votes in Quebec and by most judges on the panels today, he will lose Quebec voters and seats there. His english is not great and this will be a hard sell in Toronto and the rest of Ont. As far as support west of the Ontario boder goes, it will not be Dion that will get that but maybe the personal area MP's. Dion will be good for the Environmentalists, but that will not get him votes on that alone. The fact that he was very much involved deeply with Chretien Liberals, will be a hard sell to what little support the Liberals have in Quebec. His drafting of the Clarity Act will not play well there either, as we know the french do punish those that they do not like. I do not see him as being the one to bind the party and bring it into focus. He will have to fight with many of the party's MP's to get them on side. Whether that will later translate into willing co-operation or not remains to be seen. I believe that the CPC has had a strategy for this event and I just do not see them afraid of him. Even the liberals own polls did not have Dion as being able to defeat Harper, and that should be looked at again with a closer eye.

It looks like Harper will smile at this but I am not sure just how this will play out, it almost seems that teh liberals do not want to win the next election

The vast majority of ammendments were by the Liberal senators. There may have been a very small from the CPC members. So lets keep the blame where it belongs. I know the Liberals would like to hide their participation in this but we are not going to let them.

Canadian content rules are just a way for the lame producers to get recognition, but they will still be lame. If we are ever going to succed in the broadcasting we will have to face the competition head on and just become better then them.

It does not matter who it is, as all of them are Liberals and they all can not shake the image even with a new leader. They will first have to publically admot to the past corruptiona and show a real cleansing before people will think of them as a different party then the old Chretien/Martin Liberals.

Liberals doe the most part are against the mission because they believe they can make political hay out of it. Lets face the facts about what they really have to run on. Does anyone believe that the liberals should try and run on their past records? I think that what the liberals need to do is some how try to make everyone forget about their past records, and try to sell the idea of this is a brand new liberal party and it is all new ideas. As if they can not sell that, then it will be the opposition roles for the party for quite some time. After this weekend we will see who they pick as leader and then we will see the time where they try to unite the party, and come up with new missions etc. The trouble is the old party still has many of the old guards still in there, and these guys while lying low this time out, are trying to tie string to the new leaders so they can be their puppets. I can only imagine just how this will work out, but if it comes out to the public before the next election, it will devastate the party right from the get go. I even can already see that the liberals are not getting as much press for this convention as they did for others and I am not so sure if that was by design or just being snubbed. Either way the back stabbing starts later tonight and I guess it will go thru the weekend. On Monday we will see who the prize winner is and who is elected leader.