Saturn

That'd be a waste of paper, not a good start.

Government should subsidize daycare because it's a lifestyle choice that is productive and beneficial to the economy. Sitting at home is a bad lifestyle choice - it's a big waste. Good lifestyle choices should be rewarded and bad choices discouraged. So stay-at-home parents are not entitled to laziness subsidies. Yes, I can because a stay-at-home parent is just that - another welfare bum. There is no way in hell you are twice as productive as your co-workers whose spouses work. A parent with a stay-at-home spouse may be more productive as someone who has to pick up the kids once in while but the difference is undetectable (if that were the case employers would hire only people with stay at home spouses).

BS. Everyone competes with everyone. Why wouldn't French doctors go to the US and Canadian doctors would? That there is no way to increase the supply of doctors in Canada is the biggest pile of bullshit I've heard from the private health-care investors and their brainwashed.

You are obviously someone who has never raised kids if you think stay at home parents sit on the couch. Do you think people who run day cares sit on the couch while the kids look after themselves? That's why they make $30K for looking after 7-8 kids. Stay-at-home parents figure they deserve similar pay for looking after a couple of preschoolers and that I should pay them for it. That's bull. What? YOu think that working parents don't raise their kids? They don't clean the house, they don't do the laundry, they don't make lunches, they don't take the kids to hockey practise. It's only work-free parents who do it. Bull. You want money, get off your ass and earn it. Your economic argument is a bunch of BS. Having one spouse stay at home frees the other spouse to do more work. This means the couple will end up producing more than they would if they both worked. That's even more bull. Giving people money to sit home doesn't increase productivity in any way, shape or form. Giving money to stay-at-home parents is simply welfare for those who are capable but unwilling to work. Keep your stupid examples because if one parent is more productive, he'd be the one working in any way case - subsidies for laziness or not.

Argus, you have used this argument several times and I find it presumptuous and irritating. May be irritating but you asked for it. Honestly, it's far more irritating when you don't know what you are talking about but you are so opinionated and you are out looking for victims. You should give up this bad habit, it's irritating. It doesn't take an expert to know that the rank and file in any organization just do the work they are told to do, they don't make any important decisions and they are not the ones who design programs or products and services. Going after the public unions for deficiencies in government programs is like yelling at your filight attendent for losing your air miles because they expired. Now that's pretty dumb of you.

You are mixing up cause an effect. The system we have in Canada rations care which means it limits the number of doctors and nurses than it will pay for. In a mixed model system there is more demand for these professionals which means more people enter the field. Aha, that's why French physicians make $60K/yr and Canadian physicians make three times as much. It's because there is too little money in our system, not because there are too few physicians.

It's natural for one income families to demand equal treatment, except they consider sitting on your couch to be a productive economic activity. Naturally, anyone reasonable will disagree. If they choose to sit on their butts and do nothing productive, it's their choice and nobody should be paying for it. On the other hand, working people should be given enough incentives to continue working. In an economy with labour shortages, it makes sense to give people more incentives to work, not to give them more incentives to do nothing and be a drag to society (once by doing nothing productive and twice for increasing taxes for those who are productive).

That makes a lot of sense. If we have two parallel systems, the same number of doctors and nurses will be able to provide twice as much care. Of course Sweden and France have 50+% more doctors and nurses but that doesn't make a difference at all. It's privately paying for service that makes the difference.

Great for you and them. However, it is those stay at home parents who constantly scream that they should be paid good wages for raising their kids at home. It's not the working parents who want income-splitting and who benefit the most from beer and popcorn money. It's those who chose to stay home and want everyone else to pay them for it. Take your complaint to them.

What brainwashing? Right-wingers are simply afraid that if their kids go to daycare, they'll make friends with the kids of gays, with brown kids, with muslim kids and they'll never learn to hate such "filth". Because family values such as homophobia, racism, sexism etc. take long time to instill and playing with those scary kids will interfere with right-wingers' kids picking those good family values up. That's what this evil "brainwashing" can achieve - make it difficult for parents to make their children hate others.

What's a more worthy cause to spend billions of dollars on, to have our soldiers killed and injured physically and mentally, than a pointless war half the world away. Apparently we have too much money and too many young people.

I think spemnding money outside of Canada is a good thing. We send money abroad and the foreigners send us real things (or Disney souvenirs) in return. That sounds like a good deal. And I think that you should be paying your tuition in full because it's clearly going to waste.

Actually that doesn't sound too bad. If the money is used to pay for the child's education (it would make more sense to put it into RESPs instead of into a savings bank account), then it's not bad. What pisses me off is when people are already planning to spend their child-care cheque and tax-savings from income-splitting (which is not into existence yet) on trips to Disney World and other overseas vacations. For one I don't see why other taxpayers should be paying for visits to Disney World and two, I don't like to see our money spent outside Canada.

He and Harper will be gone next election. How? One of them will by default be a winner. Unless you are thinking Harper will leave or be forced out if he gets another Minority Govt.. If Harper gets another minority, he's fried. If Dion gets a minority he may get to stick around for another election. They are both in a pretty tight spots - must be rather nervewrecking.

That's why you have to overspend all year round. If you wait till March, people get cynical. So, Harper started in December.

The Liberals always underestimated revenues and despite the "March craze" they ended up paying down the debt by $10+ billion every year. With the Conservatives and Flarherty, it's more likely that they'll overestimate revenues and run the risk of paying down the debt by nothing or running a deficit. They still have great traction from Martin's work but give them a few years and they'll get there.

Let me translate: One parent earns $100K and the other $25K = $125K. If the less productive parent stays home, this would allow the more productive parent to earn $150K. If they were interested at all in having more income, they would choose the second option WITH or WITHOUT income-splitting, so the economy doesn't gain anything from income-splitting. If they wanted to maximize their income, they would put the kids in daycare for $10K and earn $165K (after daycare), with the economy having 2 workers worth $175K. A more likely scenario than the one you propose is the following: Spouse A earns $150K, Spouse B - $40K. Income-splitting comes into effect and they decide that there is no point in working for B because their tax cut from income-splitting + daycare savings will amount to $30K and working for extra $10K just isn't worth it. The economy loses one worker worth $40K. My problem is not stay at home parents because parents with small children who will benefit from income-splitting will be roughly 20-30% of the people who benefit from income-splitting and they will also benefit less than average. In reality, if you wanted to help these people, you could do it with a fraction of the money. With income-splitting, the bulk of the benefit will accrue to couples where one spouse earns an awful lot and the other doesn't need to work (and those are typically more mature families whose kids are grown up) and you'll blow a huge hole in the budget. And then there are a lot of other negative side-effects of income-splitting but I'll leave them to you to figure out.

Sure sounds like a public service issue. The guys at the passport office decided on it.

What 3% below the national average? Do you realize that less than 10% of people in Ft.Mac had filled out their forms before enumerators had to be flown in to chase them around? Whoop-de-do, it takes 10 minutes to fill out the form but hard-working Albertans can't be bothered to do it. And then you and August whine and complain about the census being late. They sure could if the ministers and top management stopped handing out contracts to friends in the private sector for nothing. The gun registry, the HRDC boondoggle, the hundreds of millions DND lost, the sponsorship scandal, it's all money that went to private companies who didn't do heck for it. The guys at the passport office didn't have anything to do with that.

I already pointed out that having one spouse stay at home allows the other spouse to work more. If the working spouse happens to have skills that the econony needs then the economy ends up with more skilled labour available - not less. The economy ends up with more workers when both parents work, not when one gets to stay home. To claim that there will be more workers when you give them incentives to stay home is absurd.

It's not very tough at all because it shifts the tax burden to working couples and single-individuals who form 80+% of the population and it's nonsense policy on the economic front. I don't expect the opposition to be able to explain that to the general population though. The business community is the actual opposition on this one and there is no way Harper can implement it over their heads. The Conservatives may talk about income-splitting and may propose some weak form of partial income-splitting spinning it as major tax cuts for everyone but that's a difficult task.

Your TV should give you the option to switch to the floor mike on CPAC (play with your remote control). It's not that much better though because that way you end up hearing a lot more yelling and background noise.

I've heard that many times but I still haven't seen any evidence that Layton is propping up the Conservatives in any way. Can you clarify this for me?

Argus said "The ADs and their executive staff actually run all departments and agencies. And if they're screwing up, the responsibility to bring them into line lies solely with their political masters." I don't see how that exempts politicians from blame, quite the opposite. I thought you were holding the front-line at the passport office responsible. Didn't see anything in your post about holding the politicians responsible for anything.

There are many families that have much more flexible work arrangements. For example, many have a jobs which do not require a 40 hours/week. Providing a tax deduction would all these families to choose to work fewer hours in order to better care for their kids. We need policies in this country to encourage the middle class majority to take care of their own kids instead of demanding gov't subsidized daycare. Very bright idea. Give people money to work less in an economy with labour shortages. Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost?