Saturn

LOL! This plan goes from government controlling costs to government controlling prises and controlling everything else imaginable. Do farmers need government support to use the bathroom? So when it is to your benefit, the government should be involved to the neck but when it doesn't benefit you, the government should be 1000 miles away. You know, things don't work that way.

Technology forced his hand to put the brakes on competition? Interesting point (and completely absurd btw).

After delivering Harper's message on the environment, Rona has become the most despised member of his cabinet and the face of environmental doom. At this point she is nothing but a liability and clearly Harper would not like to take her into an election as a prominent member of his cabinet. At this point, some in Ottawa are speculating that she will be disposed of in an upcoming cabinet shuffle (to occur within a month), given some other good job that would put her out of public view. IMO this makes perfect sense given that Harper well knows how damaging his inaction on the environmental front is to him and given Mulroney's recent comments in a build-up to a reversal in conservative environmental strategy just in time for the election. The whole point of the Clean Air Act was to set super low expectations of Harper's government on the environment, so that Harper could make changes that would be perceived as a vast improvement, thus confiming his image as the former regional ultra-conservative politician who has drastically changed since he moved into 24 Sussex and is now a statesman who upholds Canadian values and is lead by what's good for the country and not just by ideology (of course the quick close of the SSM debate and the reversal on the income-trust issue were also intended to build this new image). What will Harper's new environmental policies look like? Are Rona's days in cabinet numbered? What position will she occupy after the cabinet shuffle? Who else will be put out of public view before the election? Stockwell Day for his performance on the Arar file perhaps?

Get over it! None of these "comments" actually appeared on the CBC discussion board. All these are made up by conservative xenophobes whose only intent is to make the Liberals and Muslims look bad. You are not going to convince anyone that any of this actually happened.

So the Conservatives are forced to get rid of the wheat board. In other words, they have no choice but to do it. Again, you get what you vote for.

Or you've run out of ideas on how to argue that anti-competitive measures are good for the consumer.

This is a forged website. No it's supposed to be like that. It's what people were saying on the CBC after it was said. CBC has a section where you can talk about your selected riding. Just go on google and there will be a million hits on it. Some American websites even took interest in this. It's not an interesting story as it could have been because what he said wasn't 'caught on tape'. Well it probably was, but it's at a muslims house and he is certainly not going to share it with you. I can't beleive that you never heard of this. This was big news a while back and was on the talk radio stations here in Toronto and in all the newspapers. Hello? Look at the address http://canadiancoalition.com/AlghabraOmar/...ryForIslam.html. Click on any of the links on the left and you'll switch to http://cbc.ca/.... The real CBC website is http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/ridingtalk/2005/11/156.html The word Islam is not even mentioned on the real website. Do you really think that we'd fall for a fake site?

And if the Liberal party didn't treat us like second class citizens we'd be able to vote for them and we wouldn't be in this mess. Well, blame the Liberals for the Conservatives killing the wheat board. That's of course fine - you'll be out of the business all together in a few years. Maybe you'll be treated better when you don't farm anymore.

Getting rid of the wheat board will benefit the big players in the industry at the expense of the small guys. As usual, the conservatives support the big players, not the small guys. Killing the wheat board won't affect the conservatives because the small guys will vote for them anyway (that's rural western Canada we are talking about). So the big players will be happy, the conservatives will be happy, and the farmers should be happy (because they'll get what they vote for). Pretty simple.

Brenda Chamberlain? Yes, she is retiring.

And he also closed lots of hopitals too... and he cut welfare payments. And why did he do all this? So that he could buy some votes and we'd end up paying for it through the nose when he's retired and sitting on the boards of 20 or so companies.

Brenda What's-her-name (liberal) won't be running in Guelph, ON.

I agree. That's the argument I was waiting to hear, but so far, I haven't seen anyone mention that in this thread. However, what about the argument that many dropouts are 'irresponsible'....and I don't want to generalize here, certainly a lot of dropouts go on to do great things, but most of the dropouts I knew back in high school were very irresponsible and very bad drivers. It's certainly not true that all dropouts are bad drivers, or that all high school graduates are good drivers, but is there not at least some correlation between the two? As I pointed out there is a correlation and it is a very strong correlation too. It is strong enough for insurance companies to charge different rates. This is not what the intent of this policy is though. Dropouts are more likely to end up at the bottom of the pay-scale, on the welfare rolls, in jail, and on the worse side of everything else. The intent here is to put more dropouts back in school or discourage them from dropping out in the first place.

In fact there is a direct correlation between driving and education. This is why insurance companies give discounts to students who have above 80% average. These students are less likely to get into an accident (for whatever reason - presumably they are more responsible and less likely to do stupid things with their vehicles) and present a lower risk to the insurance companies. A 17-year-old with good marks will be paying less for insurance than a 17-year-old dropout.

Making it illegal doesn't do anything. Are you going to put them in jail? Obviously not. Now why are kids dropping out like never before? Because Mike Harris decided to cut education down to the bone, put 40 kids in class (some sitting on the floor as a result), let them share textbooks because there weren't enough, turned down the temperature in classrooms to 16C, closed school libraries and stripped funding to a point where schools couldn't afford PAPER. The message - education is worthless. The result - 30% dropout rate. Now you come up with some good ideas on how to get those kids back in school. You must have some great ideas that will be more effective than taking away their driving privileges.

There is no oil-patch in Ontario. Mr. 17-year-old should stay in school until he is 18 and then he can go drive a truck. A high-school diploma will provide him with more opportunities later on and it will pay off so he can sit on his butt and study for another year. Besides nobody will hire Mr. 17-year-old to drive a truck because Mr. 17-year-old's insurance will cost them 3 times as much as someone else's.

Because it isn't "modest" - it is a joke and avoids real reform. We don't need another pathetic piece of tape to hold this thing together. Because the political system in this country needs serious reform, not some fake measures that amount to nothing (yet cost big money).

But the voter is stupid. Judging from Flaherty's record in Ontario and Harper's record so far, they will also: -provide income-splitting on some type of income (like dividends or capital gains) and advertise it as income-splitting across the board that "all hard-working Canadians will benefit from", -give more beer and popcorn money to "deserving parents" as a way to "invest in Canada's future" -send some Ralph bucks to everyone (in some form or another) because "the people are much smarter than government and know better what to do with the money", -come up with 100 new tax credits for this and that because "Canadians should be rewarded" for everything from dieting and exercising to keeping their lawns weed-free -cut corporate taxes because "the Canadian people will benefit", -pour billions and billions into Quebec because "Quebeckers deserve it" (in Quebec) and "it will strengthen the Canadian economy" (elsewhere), -pour more billions into subsidies for farmers, plumbers, asbestos producers, and everyone else who can vote "to strengthen the Canadian economy" -earmark lots of money for studying how to improve health-care because "Canadians deserve world class health-care" and advertise it as a once and for all solution to all the problems ailing the health-care system -earmark money to change 1 line in the Clean Air Act and call it the Pristine Air Act at some point in the future -spend more to build more jails (or rent them) and call it the Act for Crime-free Canada -waste more money on national security projects because "Canadians' security is a number one priority" (along with 100 others) -give money to some seniors because they obviously deserve it (they vote a lot) and advertise it as some universal program that will solve all problems of the elderly -cut the immigration application fee for some type of immigrants and again claim that it applies to everyone The result of all these wonderful initiatives will be: -lots of votes for the CPC -a massive hidden deficit that everyone will know about but will not show up on the books until after the following election (when they will be kicked out of government) -lots of angry voters when they realize that not everyone qualifies for everything

Some are worse assholes than others and since some asshole WILL be elected, you might as well vote for some asshole who is less bad than the rest.

Run as independent and vote for yourself.

Trades people are not dropouts. Most of them also have trades certificates which are above high-school diplomas.

Not all but a lot more of them end up poor and unemployed. Also, not all people in jail are criminals. Not all drunk minors cause harm either. In addition, current dropouts are going to do worse than dropouts have in the past as the average level of education is going up and up pretty quickly and the number of jobs dropouts can do is going down and down. Taking away a welfare recipient's driver's license is not an incentive to find work. For a 17-year-old though it is an incentive to go back to school, so that s/he doesn't end up being a welfare recipient later.

Poor judge? Annoying moron is more like it. If she is offended by Christmas trees, others may be offended by seeing the star of david in public places. Let's get rid of both or get the judge have her head checked. I'm not Christian and I quite like Christmas trees. Ya, get her to have her head checked.

Again, it does. When they end up poor and unemployed, our taxes will be paying their welfare instead of going into health-care for example where this money can save lives. Dropouts take away resources that can be put to much better use.

High-school dropouts are more likely to become criminals, more likely to end up unemployed, more likely to drag the economy down (actually they are guaranteed to drag the economy down), so yes, they harm society. Driving is a privilege and they choose to drag society down then they can lose that privilege for a couple of years.