Remiel

I never said riot or shout down the speaker. But you have brought up an important question: since Ann Coulter can, in turn, right a letter to the editor or a news column and have it published in Canada, was her right to freedom of speech really infringed on? I was not suggesting that the forms of protest that have people removed by security were necessarily shouting down the speaker, though I suppose I can see how it was interpreted that way.

Not holding up protest signs, not heckling, not refusing to refrain from doing anything that is not according to the plan of the organizers.

It may be linked to performance, but the measurement of that performance is not linked to good sense.

How is a protest by a mob of students any more an instance of censorship that being escorted out by a burly security guard for not behaving exactly as you are "supposed to" ?

? I am very surprised to hear that we do not grow food in Canada. Being, you know, from rural Canada.

"We import been importing food for a long time," is not the same thing as "we have exported our food security".

Military hardware is not like every trade good, however. It would also be dumb to outsource all of your food production, even if it were cheaper.

Exactly. Exactly! But tyranny of the majority is not solved by creating a tyranny of the minority. That is why I am suggesting that there needs to be some kind of balance, just not one that conforms nicely to rep-by-pop, which is obviously the wrong way to go in the Senate. A number of Senate experts believe that an elected Senate especially would take for itself more power than the House of Commons has, and if that happened under a Senate in which a much smaller minority could over-rule the majority with ease, it would it a very poor outcome for our democracy.

That is exactly the problem, however. The long term consequence of never building anything in Canada is never being able to build anything in Canada. And in the long term, that is unconsciounable. Military technology is only getting more expensive as the years go on. If we always buy from others, we will sending astronomical amounts of money out of the country in perpetuity. And the consequence of that is having less money for equipment, and less money for health. It is a recipe for the poor house.

Fair point, but I think the fact that the United States has fifty different states makes it significantly disanalagous to our own situation. In any case, I kind of think one of the aims of an upper house should be to temper the power of the majority, not completely invalidate it. To borrow from our other conversation, would your breakdown be fair if Ontario had 99% of the population of the country?

Did we, though? In 1949, it was still the British government that had the final legislative say, both on allowing Newfoundland to secede from them and on joining us.

I kind of like this, though I would rather double it and basically keep the same size Senate. Do you think it appropriate for the Senate that Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, which constitute like 80% of the population, could be over-ruled by the other 20%? I mean, under the current system, 50% of the vote is more like 33% of the population.

There is a lot of controversy over how many of these people really left "voluntarily". But, let as presuppose perhaps that 50% of these people do not deserve compensation, how is that an argument that the 50% that do should get completely screwed? If this were Canada, if you thoughht that 50% of the claims for renumeration due to the residential schools were bogus, would you use this to justify cutting off all aid to people who had been in residential schools? Unless it is the case that Jews are allowed to immigrate to Israel because they speak Hebrew and Arabs are not allowed because tey do no speak Hebrew, I think the language issue is irrelevant.

Honestly I think you could make a better analogy that lies closer to home. One could, I believe, make a valid argument that people who identify as Cajun should have a preferrential claim to immigration to Canada than that of the average immigrant. The question then becomes is there some fundamental difference between how Canada may set immigration policy and how Israel does. I think this is a kind of "all others thing being equal" scenario. All other things being equal, the US can discriminate in favour of people from Haiti if they like. This is because, however, it seems that all other things are in fact equal: who could make an argument that they are more entitled to American citizen ship that a Haitian? They might suggest that they have been discriminated against in favour of a Haitian, but they could not argue that they have intrinsically any more right to immigrate to the United States than a Haitian. In the Canadian and the Israeli cases, however, all other things are not equal. There do exist people who can claim to deserve extra consideration from Canada and Israel. This is somewhat more cogent in the Israel case because about 260,000 Arab refugees are alive today who were alive in 1948, whereas in the Canadian case, unless there really is a fountain of Youth somewhere in the everglades or the bayou, there are no original Acadians in Louisiana. Israel may be entitled to prefer Jews to anyone else, all other things being equal. But all other things are not equal. In the Canadian case, if someone were to suggest a law that would give a preference of some sort to Cajuns, I might think it would be a waste of time because Cajuns identify very strongly with Louisiana and the Southern United States now, but I think I would think that the rhetorical basis for such a distinction would be credible. Maybe that is all crazy talk though...

Two thirds of voters plus one vote would be sufficient, I think. Some may think that too high, but I think most people could agree at least that if it were more than that, it would very definitely be unambiguously in favour.

If you want a party like the National Front, start one.

Good points, but they are not iron clad by any means. If, for instance, Scotland were to secede from the United Kingdom, their reason for existence would presumably be similar in concept: to be a Scottish state. If, however, they were to then turn around and kick out a significant portion of Lowlanders on the claim that they must " preserve Scotland's Scottish character " (the insinuation of course being that some Lowlanders might not be Scottish enough), I think we should all be well advised to be highly suspicious. And though there obviously does not exist the same degree of bad history for Scots as their does for Jews, it is not that controversial I think that, historically, Scotland was treated poorly by the English. On the issue of imigration laws, you are right, but then again it is a qualified sort of right. Ancestry laws for most countries are for connections to relevantly recent people and who lived in states that were more or less continuous with the current ones. Jewish claims to Israel, from the ethic/religious angle (leaving aside for a moment the political angle, which is somewhat valid), are rather like the claims of modern day folks to being "druids". Yes, there were such a thing as druids, historically; and yes, the modern day version probably draw most of their ancestors from the Isles, and maybe even have some of the same traditions. But to infer from those facts that modern day "druids" are the legitimate successors to the druids of yore (in the legal sense; obviously the Israel case is somewhat different in that modern Jews are most definitely legitimately Jewish), and to infer they have some primal religious connection to the Isles that entitles them to some sort of state considerations, is simply ludicrous. The modern state of Israel is not a continuation of the historical kingdoms of the Jews. It is a revisionist revival (and I do not mean "revisionist" pejoratively here by any means, but merely as a statement of fact).

Voter turnout in the last Quebec referendum was 97%. But the question you raised is one I have an answer to. In my opinion, the criteria for seperation should not be measured by percentage of the vote, but by percentage of the voters. At the very least, 50+1% of 100% is not contestable as being a possible minority.

I am sorry, but this is just a horrible idea. This would give the West, which currently has a little under 1/4 of the seats, a little under 1/2. That is a FAR worse balance in many ways than each province having the exact same.

If we are concerned about these things, perhaps we would be best advised to do some poaching. With a $35 Billion dollar budget, I can only imagine you could do a LOT of poaching.

I think the 50+1% thing is laughable. Look at the vote in South Sudan. It was something like 97%+ in favour. When a people really want sovereignty, is is not ambiguous.

While you have a point, it is not as applicable as you might think. Canadians just cannot compete with China for junk. But high end equipment is an entire different ball game. The analogy you are making is like comparing baseball and cricket.

For what it is worth, Canada has the only fully appointed upper chamber. And while all federations have them, they each also tend to have their own unique variations.

Copycats do not usually fare that well, though. If you are concerned, and I am not so sure you should be, then you should probably be more concerned about people who are not Senate pages acting up.

How do you know that Richardson would be more willing to stand up to Harper?