Saturn

I've been looking at his website the last half hour and the site is down. It's the usual - he says he didn't think that he was effective enough as an independent in Parliament. He also says that the next election will be in less than 3 months, so a by-election cannot happen before that. If there was a by-election he is confident that he would win it. (I happen to agree with his last point)

Polls don't mean anything. If someone said they wanted him to go Green, did they say it because they would vote Green or because they thought that as a Green he would be less of a threat to their preferred candidate (Conservative or Liberal)?

Dion cannot call a by-election. Harper can but he won't, so Garth won't have a chance to run in one until the next election (which is hopefully coming soon).

I'm basically going by Turner's own words on the subject. He will have to explain himself most certainly. He has. He's posted his explanation on his blog already. www.garth.ca

I don't know that it is early enough to predict how the Greens will do in the election. So you don't think that his chances for re-election would much, much higher as a Liberal than if he had ran as a Green? We'll talk about it when he gets twice as many votes as the second most-popular candidate in his riding in the next election

Are you aware of any law that forces the PM to call a by-election within reasonable time when an MP resigns? The stepping down is under Garth's control but the calling of a by-election is up to the PM, no? Do you think Harper would have called one as soon as Garth stepped down?

Ah, give me a break! Garth didn't just jump to the Liberals 2 weeks after the election. He was kicked out by dictator Steve and sat as independent for quite some time. If he resigned, Harper would not have called a by-election in Halton, so he would not have had the chance to get re-elected until the next election (which may be coming soon but that's still far from certain).

Thought he would consider the Greens before the Liberals. As a Green his chances of re-election would have been poor. As a Liberal he is guaranteed re-election.

Are there any rules regarding this? The Conservatives are the government now. Why have they not created any laws covering this? The Conservatives voted against having floor-crossers face by-elections, Mr. Harper was absent for the vote. [edited] Why should anyone stay independent? He wasn't elected as an independent and if it wasn't for him, the Liberals would have won that riding anyway. Harper kicked him out of caucus. Garth is now going where most of his constituents would have liked him to be anyway.

Why not? Garth's riding has been Liberal for ages and the Liberals were going to take it back if he ran as an independent. He is now guaranteed to be re-elected for another term.

There you go again. You link evolution with global warming as if to question one is to question the other. That's not scientific at all.The IPCC report itself used terms such as "very likely" and moved probability from "60-90%" to "above 90%" (in the short span of about five years since its last report). Nobody would use such terms when discussing evolution as opposed to intelligent design. Quite wrong. There is a large movement of "Christian" scientists who have written hundreds of papers on what a "hoax" evolution is. There is a similarly large movement of oil-funded scientists who have written hundreds of papers on what a "hoax" global warming is. The IPCC report uses the term "very likely" because that's what scientists use whenever they are virtually certain of something (that has not been established over 100+ years) and because governments such as that of Bush and Saudi Arabia had to sign the report. Nothing is certain until it occurs. Evolution is "certain" because it has already occurred. It is "very likely" that there will be some sort of pandemic over the next 100 years, but just because we are not 100% certain doesn't mean that we should not be ready to face it. Most vaccines are only 85-95% effective but you've had dozens of them and you never refused one because it may not turn out to be effective. Nobody can foresee the future with a 100% accuracy but in such cases you use your best judgment and prepare for the most likely scenarios. In the case of global warming, the likely scenarios aren't very pretty at all and your best judgment should tell you that you have to take action to minimize the damage. Just like in a hot dry summer when you are "very likely" to have more forest fires than normal, your best judgment should tell you to put more money in the budget to put out forest fires. Your conservative judgment however seems to be telling you to wait until half the province has gone up in flames because those forest fires were only "very likely".

Why not come down to earth and realize that over a million Canadians work for minimum wage and the majority of them are parents raising kids and that they don't work any less hard than someone earning $100K. You don't need the "experience" to understand that they make a valuable contribution and that they deserve some respect. More respect than $15 billion in toys for the military does.

Yes, I used to live on $12,000 a year and $6,000 of that went to tuition and textbooks (the rest to rent and food). It is quite possible to live on $15,000 a year. On top of that a senior who has $60,000 in pension income gets a $6,000/year handout from the government to spend in warm places outside Canada in the winter. Most working Canadians don't earn $60,000, so why should they pay taxes to subsidize the winter vacations of snowbirds who have higher incomes?

Why didn't they do that to the Liberals with Kyoto? Typical. Because the Liberals actually put a plan for GHG reductions in place in 2004. Harper canceled it and is now starting to reintroduce it piece by piece.

So what? The costs of health care are skyrocketing because of an aging population and the cost of drugs and government pays most of it. Same goes for pensions due to aging population. Do you want $15 billion in spending on military equipment? How about beer and popcorn money for parents? For seniors? Last time I heard from you, you didn't have a problem with any of that. All I heard from you is complaints about welfare costs which are at their lowest in the last 20 years. Well, military equipment and handouts for parents and seniors cost money, so yes, spending is up in 2006. Take it easy. Taxes in Canada are lower than average taxes in the developed world. Canadian gov't is doing much better in that respect than other developed nations' governments. As for competing with developing nations, no amount of tax breaks can beat a dollar-an-hour wage overseas.

Is that federal government or consolidated government (all levels combined)?Does that include transfer payments (and interest on the debt) or merely government purchases of goods and services? Yes, it includes all levels of gov't. I was thinking spending funded by tax revenues - that's 33%. Total spending is 38%, the additional 5% coming from crown corps and other other non-tax sources.

Right-wingers here can whine and complain all they want about Kyoto and about the Global Warming "hoax". You can also whine about "intelligent design" not being taught in schools. And you can complain about immigrants and working women and everything else that's wrong with the world today. Unfortunately for you, reality is reality and no amount of whining and complaining can change things to your liking. So grow up and stop embarrassing yourselves. I thought the left-wingers were supposed to be whiners. Geez, you don't know whiners till you've heard the right!

Where did you get 38%? Last time I checked it was 33%.

Any evidence of that claim? I've produced academic and industry sources that say otherwise. So let's see your facts behind that? It's pretty simple. ITs and corps compete in capital markets and favourable tax treatment for ITs means they had an unfair advantage over the corps. A level playing field is necessary for capital markets to function efficiently. ITs became such a popular investment (and corps were converting to ITs) precisely because of the tax leak. If it wasn't for the tax leak, ITs wouldn't exist in the first place.

Dude, go have another drink!

You are the partisan hack here. I can't find another explanation for excusing such loony behaviour. But don't worry, when the Liberal or NDP candidates start hurling death threats at each other, you can start a topic of your own. We won't call you a partisan hack for it.

Sure, flying death threats are quite common and very becoming of parliamentarians.

There goes our GST cut

Keep hoping. If you are lucky, they'll just stop making the list available to the public. Have you seen the latest list?

Dishonesty is the biggest asset in politics. An honest politician would never get elected because he won't promise what no one can deliver. The more politicians lie and spin, the more likely they are to get elected. We'll always elect the politicians who tell us that they can give us the biggest tax breaks, increase spending on health-care, education, the military, etc. the most, and pay of the debt the quickest, all at the same time. Ultimately, it is the voters' fault that dishonesty is absolutely necessary in politics. We reward dishonesty and punish the honest. So next time you want to complain about the circus Parliament is, put the blame in yourselves because the voter elected the circus clowns.