Saturn

Those who can afford it already jump the queues by going outside the country. In addition 30% of health care in Canada is private money. You may think you can afford it but your opinion will change when faced with at $650K bill for heart surgery. It is not a question of whether you can afford it, it's a question whether the Canadian economy can carry the weight of health-care that costs 60-70% more than what we currently have and what the impact of this weight will be. IMO, a 20% increase in the publicly funded health-care system will go further than a 70% increase in costs due to privatizing the system.

http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp...AR31_2006high_e http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml US health-care per capita in 2004 cost 52.8% more than health-care in Canada. Now, factor in the exchange rate and you are looking at a difference of 70%. You should read the two websites thoroughly and carefully before you come back with any comments.

So assuming the dilapidated shack and waterfront property consume the same level of services, you'd agree then is what you are asking is, that those with a waterfront property to subsidize the services provided to those in the shack? First the dilapidated shack and the waterfront property cannot consume the same level of services, but even if they did, then yes - the owners of the waterfront property should pay more.

Abuse is commonplace in just about any system you can imagine but it's no reason to have no system in place. I know my doctor abuses the system by making me come back 4 times before giving me antibiotics for my strep throat. You have enough money to buy an apple or an orange. Which one do you pick? Now replace apple with health care and orange with military.

It's happening either way. Canada has no say in it and no matter what we do, the Americans will always handle things the way they see fit. I'd rather have them pay for it too.

You can't follow basic logic. Ignoring all your "leftist" and "liberal" nonsense, it's time for you to realize that in a democracy is the rule of the majority and that retirees are 4 times as likely to vote as your generation of recent high-school grads. Now, it was the Liberals and Conservatives alike who allowed (intentionally) health-care to deteriorate to its current state, so as far as I can tell the Liberals are on your side - time to stop spitting into the wind.

Saturn, As usual, in most of your liberal leftie posts, you make statements right out this world, and don't provide any kind of back-up to the spaced out bull you throw. But hey,the Lefties know what's best for the country,don't they?Just have to take their word for it, why?, well, because they say so. Never providing an answer, then calling it our problem because we should be looking for why you say so. Thanks for nothing Saturn,you're only telling everyone you and your posts are full of it. Spend some time and convince us, as your mentor would say,with some proof of the proof of the proof. I won't spend any time convincing anyone that water is wet and grass is green. If you don't know facts as basic as how much the US health-care system costs and how much our system costs, then you are obviously very ill prepared for any sort of discussion and are here just to indulge in name calling.

Just come out and say it. You want to pay double for health-care just so that some "poor people" can't get health-care services when they need them. You NEED more military spending. That's the last thing I need. See, we can't even agree on what is needed.

What does it really matter what the consensus of local people are? People pay a price on a property for a variety of reasons, the proximity to water, the neighbourhood, the schools, the size of the house, the location, etc. The priviledge they pay for is reflected in the price they pay for the house? Why should it be in the level of taxes when they don't consume any more services than a property not on the water. For the obvious reason that those who can afford a property on the water can afford to pay more in taxes. You can't ask people living in a dilapidated shack to pay as much as someone living in a multi-million dollar mansion.

Why don't you provide these numbers? Or haven't you learned how to support your fallacies yet? The numbers are well known to everyone except you apparently. Which is your own problem but you can easily rectify it by learning how to use google.

People have very good idea of what the world outside of North America is like. This is precisely why they know what any privatization will lead to a US style system. Because our system is the same as the US system in all respects (except for the part where the government pays for it) and is different from European systems in all respects (except for the part where the government pays for it). The way our system will get though the baby boom generation retirees is that once they retire and they need it, they will simply vote the younger generation to fund it properly.

Because you say so? Because the numbers say so. Or you haven't learned how to count yet?

You WANT it, you just don't want to PAY for it. You are like a 3-year-old "I want it! I want it!" That's a tough one because most Canadians just want their $100 child care cheque every month and they don't care about anything else. So you expect politicians to quit their jobs, to knock on thousands of doors and get spit on half the time, to be watched by millions and tortured by the media for $100K over 4 years? Hell, no one in their mind will do it for such a pathetic amount of money. And you expect politicians to be able to fund expensive election campaigns without the support of friends who expect good contracts in return? How naive. If we lock up all the criminals or we manage to rehabilitate them, what will tens of thousands of lawyers and judges do across the country? You have a giant industry of immigration lawyers, specialists and whatnot to deal with here. Wish you luck! So you want a private militia for the party in power paid for with my tax dollars? I don't think so. You want a police state run by the RCMP. More nonsense. 90% of "foreign" aid goes to Canadian companies. ROTFLOL!

You know this how? Simple. You want American health-care - it costs 60% more than ours.

I don't know why you even bother discussing whether global warming is caused by human activity or not. It's like discussing whether smoking causes lung cancer or whether jumping into a pool full of water will cause you to get wet. The naysayers refuse to see the facts either because they see some personal benefit to it (most likely) and/or because prefer to ignore the facts (less likely) and you are simply wasting your time trying to change their mind.

Does the Romanow report suggest shoveling 60% more money into the problem - roughly $60 billion annually? Because that's what privatizing health care will do.

You can read it all here > http://www.ararcommission.ca/ and here > http://www.maherarar.ca/ My understanding is that the RCMP was watching Abdullah Almaki and became suspicious of Arar when Arar had a coffee and a 20 minute walk with Almaki one day. Apparently Arar worked with Abdullah's brother at a couple of high-tech firms in Ottawa and Arar had met Abdullah on several occasions (through his brother). Coincidentally Almaki also ended up being tortured in a Syrian jail for 2 years. The inquiry found that the RCMP had asked the Americans to watch out for Arar and his wife as they were suspected "terrorists". IMO that would be enough for the Americans to become suspicious but I don't expect to hear anything from the Americans and I don't expect them to change their story until all investigation on this and related cases is over (give it 5-10 years).

These are not accounting errors - unless the CPC accounting is done by plumbers. Since it isn't done by plumbers, this is a clear effort to circumvent party funding laws, which face it - makes the Conservatives look like crooks. There is no excuse for breaking the law and then making up ridiculous excuses for it.

Add to this the fact that as a result of this, Harper and at least 2 other MPs have exceeded the $5,400 donation limit that they "fought hard" to reduce to $1,000. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/27/...-donations.html

Pfff. You must be kidding! Missile defence is nothing but a useless pile of very expensive crap. I'd be more worried about the missile defence shield screwing up and blowing up a city accidentally because that's more likely to happen than to have foreign missiles intercepted by it.

I hope you've been sterilized by nature. Mommy, who pays 10 times more taxes than your sorry ass, deserves proper child care, you deserve to shut up!

And I bet the possible anwers to the survey are "No!" and "No." along with some nonsence about how great the PM and the Conservatives are and how their only goal in life is to support Canadian families. Mr. Clement shows yet again that he is a lying weasel because the CCTB clawback is very small and even families (with 2 children) earning as much as $110K/year will qualify to receive benefits. With the elimination of the under-7 supplement by the conservatives, this will go down to about $95K/year. In fact, over 90% of families receive the CCTB and I can assure you that there is no riding in the country rich enough to have only 1 child qualify for the benefit. The only change the Conservative UCCB will provide is that families with lower and middle incomes will receive significanlty less in CCTB than they did before and the top 10% of earners who did not qualify for the CCTB before will now receive money from the UCCB. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/icbc/simnet/...B&baseYear=2005 The UCCB is NOT a child-care program. This is a vote-buying, beer-popcorn-and-Florida vacation, and huge-waste-of-money program that the Conservatives thought up to get people with children to vote for them. The UCCB is designed as a good advertising campaign - to exagerate greatly the quality of a marginally useful product. The Benefit has nothing to do with Child Care, most of the people who received it are those who need it least, and it grossly exagerates the amount of money parents will actually receive. In typical Conservative fashion the payment distribution is made in the most expensive in-your-face manner to ensure that people don't forget about the cash Canada's New Government sends to them. Millions of cheques are printed each month and sent off to parents across the country at the cost of over $20 million just for printing and mailing the cheques. Other much more efficient ways of making the payments, such as adding the $100 to the CCTB (coincidentally over 90% of parents are already enrolled in the CCTB), were set aside because the advertising value of depositing the money in the parents' bank account is much lower than sending them a cheque 12 times a year. At the same time, the CCTB under-7 supplement is quietly removed from the CCTB payments - hopefully nobody will notice. Yet another benefit to sending a $100 cheque is that people think they are getting $100, when unlike most other similar benefits, the UCCB is taxable income so most parents will end up getting $50-$60 or so.

Of course they do. Do you expect Harper to blame himself?

We polluted recklessly for 50 years developing the technology that allows them to improve their standard of living much faster than they would have been able to do on their own. If a Chinese company can steal technology from Western companies and then make a huge profit selling into Western markets then the Chinese should be expected to adopt the same pollution controls. That's something to think about when you go shopping and you buy a tonne of Chinese junk which manufactured by burning piles of coal, will last half as long before it ends up in a landfill as a similar product of better quality made elsewhere (but costs more).

My point was quite the opposite. We polluted recklessly for 50 years, they get 5. It is ridiculous and disingenious of us to complain that we are somehow being treated unfairly. In fact, we got a much, much better deal and they have much more right to complain. If we don't stop whining and start cleaning up our act, they will never agree to start cleaning up theirs.