Catchme

Where is God for these seniors? http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2...t_worsens_.html And please do not respond that they are not children of God and are deserving of what they are getting. Where was God, during the Holocaust? Where was God during any of the wars? Where was God when millions of women were being burned at the stake, or drowned in the witch hunts? Where was God when Pope Julius II was running around murdering people and stealing peasants money to promote his art patronage? Where was God when priests were/are sexually assaulting children?

Oh Canadianblue, that is why O'Connor is being asked to resign, and why Harper has him off flying again to Afghanistan trying to find out what indeed happened to the disappearing Afghans. because apparently we are NOT fulfilling our obligations. And you see, it is all there in that nice little contract Hillier signed with the Afghan government, and that would be the standards set out in the 3rd Geneva Convention. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/375?OpenDocument

Your poll is broken -- there is no debate on whether climates change. The poll should be something like: 1. Climate change is not occurring 2. Humans are responsible for none of it (it's all naturally occurring) 3. Humans are responsible for >0% but less than 20% 4. Humans are responsible for between > 20% but less than 80% 5. Humans are responsible for between 80% but less than 100% 6. Humans are responsible for 100% of the climate change Obviously anyone who'd vote 1, 2, or 6 is extremely stupid. Yes it is, a broken poll and indicates nothing, and perhaps they should take a drive through BC's interior and see the bug kill and then they would realize things are serious climatically. One just has to love those who think their "lifestyle" is more important, than their children's future. But then, most of those denying it are all whacked out on the whole armageddon thing anyway, so their words mean absolutely nothing opinion wise.

Look, I do not want to read stuff like this here, if she sent you pm's or emails please report her to greg or or the moderators, it is none of the board at large business, you said you reported her, that should have been the end of it.

"...Peacekeeping has traditionally been a primarily military activity but Canadian involvement in international peace support operations has expanded in response to the complex emergencies that we now face..." link newbie, oh I know all this, but many spent thread after thread here stating we weren't peacekeepers, never had been, and now wow, all of a sudden we are again. Amazing really. Just had to see if the usual culprits would now try to say we are peacekeepers when it could be now used to be convienent to send troops to Iraq. And I was correct. Another ploy to try and send our military into combat and nothing more you see. To bad they were not consistent, and that there were NOT so many threads here where they denied we were peacekeepers. And now that the Karzi government has disappeared peoples that our troops turned over to them, meaning we Canadians are in breach of the Geneva Conventions and of the contract signed with the Afghans If individual Canadian troops were aware that the people they were turning over were in fact going to be disappeared, or tortured and they did nothing tp prevent it, then they are guilty of crimes against humanity, as well. It has nothing to do with the UN resolution whatsoever, and everything to do with the contract Hillier signed and the Geneva Convention.

Yep we should listen to someone who says this: "Disolve Unecessary Governments" As quite obviously they are in the know.

It always means civilian casualities, and BTW, we are not at war, in Afghanistan didn't you know? Although O'Connor did say we were there for retribution didn't he, the liar. One wonders how many mor civilians were killed because he made a lying, immoral, hate filled irresponsible comment like to troops just being deployed? Did you not know, we are there for reconstruction purposes to liberate the women and children, even though the mission was to find Osama, and that was cancelled 4 long years agao. But heh, we are still spending billions for no reason. Other than to destroy civilians and their country, of course. But hey, should we care if the military personal can never fit into "normal" society when they come back from somewhere they should not even be? Or whether they have PTSD? There should be no excuses for their behaviour. After all, they were not lied to, and they are there to Fight Fear, Fight Distress, Fight Chaos, so really should we care how they come back after all, eh, they freely chose to go and do the things they are doing, even if it is breaking the Geneva Conevention and International law?! Of course, we care, and we should care, these are our sons, daughters, cousins, nephews, nieces, brothers sisters, etc, but there is only one way to truly care and that is to insist they come home NOW, so we can get to the bottom of things, as they are obviousluy out of control over there. Our military has absolutely no business being there, and for those who throw up NATO obligations, forget it, that pathetic excuse is long done with when Osama was stopped looking for, and many other countries in NATO are doing nothing or pulling their military out. Nor are we there for Afghan women and children and their freedom, another lie some perpetuate here.

Oh, no. There is no way on Earth that Canada should become involved in anything having a hint of a smidgen of a dash to do with Bush's criminal ventures in Iraq. Oh, I agree figleaf, it is Bush's criminal ventures, in Iraq, and indeed Afganistan, but we have no peacekeepers anyway, we never have had any peacekeepers. If Harper sent troops they would be combat troops as Peace Keeping is a Canadian myth, and not a fact or a reality. Again, please remember we have no peace keeping abilities in our military. Not only that, our military may well be up on charges at the ICC level for actions in Afghanistan, so who knows if we will even have a military in the future. Perhaps Hillier and O'Connor should be resigning and thereby save the inncocent regular military personal.

Oh, gee, spoken for a position of priviledge eh, you would go bonkers if you were deprived of your "cottage land", but yet you expect the FN's who have been deprived of their land for much longer than you have had your "cottage land" to be real nice about it and rachet down their rhetoric. And they had nothing they could do about it either, as the Dept of Indian Affairs LEASED THEIR LANDS OUTS UNDER LEGAL CONTRACT FOR DECADES AND IN SOME CASES 100'S OF YEARS. So, they got/get to sit back and watch others use "prime pieces" of their land for pennies, waiting for the time when these contracts ran out. Property use became the right of others not because of FN's but because of Indian Affairs. Rental property users in the real world do not get to become owners just because they use(d) it, and the same applies here. The property does not become those who use it property, just because they use it. Get a grip, you are talking about what you believe your privilege should be and nothing more.

Well, I guess you haven't heard dlkenny, our Canadian Military were NEVER Peace Keepers, that is a myth that Canadians hold that was never true, our military has always been combat, and was never Peace Keeping.

First Law of Thermodynamics

Stats Canada reports that there are 976, 305 FN is Canada 2001. Metropolitan breakdown shows that almost 50% of FN reside OFF reserve. Having migrated to urban areas looking for a better living. Fact on the ground are, they are NOT being employed, and if they are, the majority are being employed at poverty levels. So, should the other 500k move into urban settings looking for work too? So they too can be disenfranchised and become street people or live in slums? It boggles my mind how some think they have a right to come here and take from those, whose contracts have been consistently broken for 300 years for white settlers, and then the same white settlers or their ancestors, again are victimizing them. Blame the victim not a pretty sight!

So the guy was having a blast. Why some others want to spoil the guys fun I will never know. Actually, I agree but the title fit the topic, and made a statement about the responses to the topic that deny it was about women and children being sold by Dynacorp for sex slaves, indeed went so far as to bash the congresswoman. But apparently it whoosh........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6441461.stm

You ask those questions as if you think they have no answer, but in fact they do. Ways that the forces fight fear, distress, and chaos are exemplified in the ad. I'm afraid I don't find this sort of sloganeering very persuasive. It's a simplistic sort of moral relativism that fails to acknowledge that resistance to injustice is just. The ads didn't answer anything talk about simplistic moral relativism. How does and armed convoy driving past a women with her arms outstreched in an area of copmplete devatation answer anything? How does a combat unit running up the stairs in a building, weapons in hand answer anything? Fear is a commodity of the unknown, people fear what is unknown to them, war certainly does not create "known" it creates more unknown. Distress is a creation of chaos, creating more chaos, does not alleviate distress. There is MORE chaos now in Afghanistan, than there was prior to any "imperialistic" forces present. The civilians certainly are not in a reduced state of fear, distress and chaos.. The military is certainly not in a state of reduced fear, distress and chaos. Canadians are certainly not in a state of reduced fear, distress or chaos. So again, what does the military in a war situation have to with alleviating any of these things? Nothing. The ads are a lie, in as much as depicting "good times" are a lie. Brainwashing 13 year olds into a war mentality, is criminal as far as I am concerned. Those who profess themselves to be "Christians" while war mongering had better take another look at the teachings of Jesus. Especially those who are of a "Christian" sect that affords them the ability not to have to go to war as it would be against their religion, and who seem to be quite vocal about the need the for war, "over there".

Btw, did you know that the Canadian Armed Forces has the highest ratio of General officers to non-General officers in the western world? Figures. What is fighting fear? What is fighting distress? What is fighting chaos? What are the "right" kind of recruits? How does one fight fear? How does one fight distress? How does one fight chaos? Are they fighting for it, or against it? Fighting creats fear, fighting creats distress, fighting creates chaos, so in truth our military would be creating the things the ad says fight. So then in truth it would be: Fight for Fear, Fight for Distress, Fight for Chaos. Fight for the Canadian Armed Forces. These ads smack of the disasterous fight comments of the CPC's 2005 election campaign revamped for the Canadian military recruitment campaign. So, maybe they will target the "right" type of people. Well, quite clearly, we gotta have more enlisted men readily available to give up their lives for all those officers just waiting for enlisted men to command. Then we gotta find some fear that need fighting, some distress that needs fighting, and some chaos that needs fighting, just so we can ad to it, and create more.

It seems then, that there is only 1 country, who some find it accpetable of meddling, and that is the USA's meddling in other country's. Talk about hypocrisy.

Sexual immorlaity and perversions were also occuring while nations rose, and have no bearing upon the rising and falling of nations, other than the fact sometimes maybe the planning of such occurred in the bedrooms of the world. The Roman Empire did not rise quickly, nor did it fall quickly. Same for the extended "Hebrew" History. The USA Empire, has not yet fallen, and yes, it has had a relatively short shelf life if it were to fall today, or in the near future. but again nothing to do with sexual immorality and sexual perversion You said where a nation is blessed beyond compare, God was left unstated, but present nonetheless, as something was dispensing the blessing. Moreover, your framing it in a sexual moral context re-affirms that you are using your perceptions of "morals" that are derived from a personal determination of the Bible. Again sexial morality, whatever that really is, has nothing to do with either the creation nor decline of an Nation, sex in all its various forms is occurring through out and history.

Nations are not just blessed beyond compare and elevated to world power in some mysterious way, like by the hand of God, or something. What a simplistic rendition of factors and actions, equalling cause and effect, that is not in anyway accurate. Please feel free to study history, as oppossed to inserting an empty meaningless phrase in place of actual knowledge of actions and events. It is humanities efforts that cause nations both to rise and fall as well as geological events. Lives given, lives lost. Intrigue and manipulation, diplomacy, money, work and labour, actions of murder and theft and war, bring about Nations and those actions equally bring about Nations decline. And it is ALL human actions not some divinely put forth degree, that suddenly just happens, to bring about, or end a nation. A more accuarte but still too simplistic of historical nation decline would be: It is usually when corrupt power is consolidated at the top, with beliefs of divine supremacy, being above all others, that brings about the final nail in the downfall of a nation. The people at the top start failing to realize Nations are not them, nations are the people who comprise the nation and who allow them to rule/govern. But prior to that, it is internal revolt, a turning away from what the nation has become, that weakens the nation from within. It is also, over extended national boundaries, through colonialistic actions that require up keep, that is expensive both in human and monetary capital. Indigenous populations never fully assimulate and look continually for ways to throw off colonial shackles that weaken it externally. Disease, and natural disasters caused by things like; earth quakes and shifts in plate techtonics. Volcanic eruptions leading to climate change causing droughts, flooding and famines. Plus, many other numerous internal/external things that bring about the decline of a nation and it is usually a very long process, not just a bam your done, or your created kinda thing..There is nothing in this world, and it's history, that proves an actual exhibit of instaneous creation or dissolution, other than land mass and peoples wiped out by natural disaster. And please don't be tring to say natural disasters are the hand of God showing displeasure, believing something like that demeans both God and the one who believes it.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/sto...2031455,00.html

The laws I am speaking of are with in the 'Charter of Rights and Freedom's'. 1.-Official languages of Canada, including 'official bilingualism' relating to federal entities-divide on the basis of culture -a component of race. 2.-Minority Language Educational Rights- again divide on a basis of culture, when Canada is NOT 'officially bilingual'. 3. Rights of Aboriginal Peoples of Canada-again dividing on the basis of culture a component of race. 4.- Equalization And Regional Disparities-again dividing on the bases of race and culture. Canada always did have a culture built on a thousand years of historical birthright of individual rights and principles. To-day with 'official multiculturalism' it provides racial recognition and provides generous funding for these different racial groups to promote their old world culture, fight racism, open credit institutions, arrange cultural festivals, print their own newspapers, retain their own languages and never ONCE be told to acknowledge and respect the the principle culture in Canada. This is racial and cultural divisiveness at its worst equating to government sponsored Apartheid. You apparently have no understanding of Apartheid. Or perhaps anything at all. And your statement that Canada "always did have a culture built on a thousand years of historical birthright of individual rights and principles." is so off the wall, I am still laughing.

Conservative ideology dictates that the consequences of your actions don't matter if they occur beyond your lifetime or in politics - beyond your term in office. After us, the deluge! I concur, which actually makes their stated premises on everything else, including morality issues, bogus. They care not for the lives of their children or grandchildren, it is about them being the "me" in the moment and all else does not matter. The incredible ideology based upon moral self-delusion, an erroneous superiority complex and greed, is actually nailing the lid on the coffin of their progenity's future. Wonder if their the children and grandchildren will recognize they have no future because of the actions of those who were supposed to love them and protect their future?

Everyone is well aware of how the BC ndp destroyed the BC economy with there last reign of terror and created thousands of economic refugees who fled the province and bragged about how they turned BC into one giant park when actually what they did was to park the economy, and are still bragging about it, and would do it again. Socialism is not the medicine, it is the cancer. Actually get it right, the NDP did not destroy BC's economy, the corporations who wanted NO environmental controls and refused to do business in BC until they had a government who was willing to gut environmental controls, and let them operate how they want, who forced down BC's economy. A good economy means nothing, when the environment is destroyed, and if the environment is destroyed the economy will follow. And the environment is being destroyed by the cancer of unrestricted capitalism.

How so? Laws the divide people by skin colour or race or ethnicity are no better than Apartheid. Okay what would those laws be that you are speaking about leafless, saying there are some, without stating what they are does not cut it?

I am going to post a speech, in full, by BC MLA Corky Evans, that he just gave in the BC parliament, as commentary to the BC Speech from the Throne. It is by far the best governmental analysis and social political speech, coming from a politician, that I have heard in decades. Please do take the time to read it, it is worth the effort. The bolding is mine and not because I believe the bolding is more important parts, but they are essential points, if we are to work on resolving environmental from the non-partisan positon that is required. And Corky makes that point fully, which is why I am posting his speech, he is calling everyone to account and placing the onus squarely on all, with NO partisanship. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C. Evans: I had the honour of closing debate yesterday, and I suggested that it might be a better idea if I went away and came back 24 hours later in a better humour in order to deliver a more philosophical and less reactionary statement. I am pleased to get the opportunity this morning. I rise to speak about the throne speech. For those people not in this room who don't understand what a throne speech is, I'll just give a little bit of background. A throne speech is a very strange tradition or phenomenon of English parliamentary culture. Once a year a person comes in this building — the Lieutenant-Governor, quite a wonderful woman who used to be MP in Haida Gwaii and Prince Rupert — and she reads a speech that she didn't write. She uses the pronoun "my" or "our" when she refers to the government. The Lieutenant-Governor is actually, I think, a representative of the Queen. She's reading a speech that she didn't write saying what the government will do, and the press gallery refers to that speech as written by the Premier. But we in this building are all sure that the Premier didn't write it. Actually, once a year there's an event where an anonymous speech is read out loud that says the government's objectives, and nobody knows who actually wrote it. Then, for the rest of the year, the government attempts to live up to the content of the throne speech, read by a representative of the Queen and written by someone we've never met. This year's throne speech contained some quite wonderful words. Even though I get wages to oppose the government, I have to give praise to the Lieutenant-Governor or the Premier or the anonymous author of the speech for recognition in the Speech from the Throne that climate change is real. I'll just read a couple of words from the throne speech, because I think everybody in the province has waited for the day when people in this building finally come to grips with the notion that we have to manage our own pollution and attempt to do something to see that the planet survives. The Speech from the Throne read by the Lieutenant-Governor in 2007 — that's this year — said: "British Columbia will take concerted provincial action to halt and reverse the growth in greenhouse gases." The Lieutenant-Governor said: "The government will act now and will act deliberately." The Lieutenant-Governor said: "The science is clear. It leaves no room for procrastination. Global warming is real." Hon. Speaker, I think there are thousands of citizens, especially younger people, who have waited years — maybe in some cases decades — to hear: "The science is clear. Global warming is real." I would like to dedicate this speech to a gentleman who lives in my constituency named David Lewis. David Lewis has been talking about climate change since before I was first elected in 1991. I remember David Lewis coming to meetings when we, government and citizens, were engaged in battles over the attempt to double the amount of provincial parkland from 6 percent to 12 percent. There would be a whole bunch of people in the room. Some are for parks, some are against parks, and they're all arguing what the best thing to do with the land would be. David Lewis would say: "Excuse me. It doesn't make any difference. If you don't deal with climate change, you're going to have a park, and all the trees inside the park will die. Then who wins? Do the loggers win? Does the environmental community win or the recreationists win? No." He kept pounding the table and saying: "When are we going to deal with what science is telling us?" This is now — what? — 17 years ago. Year after year after year we, the leaders — both sides of this building, regardless of who governed — found it difficult to say publicly from your chair, hon. Speaker, what we all knew in our hearts, which was that the way we govern, and maybe even the way we live, was precluding the future for our own children and grandchildren. I think every culture — I hope every culture in the world — starts out thinking that their job is to leave the world better than they found it for their kids and future generations. Once we began to understand climate change, it became clear that we — our generation and the people in this room on both sides, our leadership — were the first generation that might not be able to say they left the world better than they found it. I want to talk a little bit about the enormity of this idea of sustainability. I think that the big political ideas of my grandparents' time and my parents' time essentially came from the analysis of Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 — that would be about 250 or 300 years ago — defining how capitalism worked and, to some extent, how a world economy worked. Then Karl Marx in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto defining an alternative. The big events of the previous century — world wars, the evolution of the Soviet Union, the détente between what they called East and West…. All of the politics of my parents' time derived from essentially the struggle — I would argue a very healthy struggle — between the principles of capitalism and the principles of socialism, as defined by philosophers Adam Smith and Karl Marx in previous generations. The biggest idea of my parents' era, my mom and dad, was this idea of social democracy — this idea, which evolved in their time, that citizens who we represent, voters, had a way to choose. You didn't just get a capitalist or a socialist society because of who had the most power or the most guns, but because citizens could choose and create a balance. That idea we — everybody who is sitting here — inherited. We didn't think it up. I think the biggest idea of our generation started on August 14, 1959, when a rocket ship — I think called Explorer 6 — went up in the sky and took a photograph of Earth. For the very first time in the lives of anybody in this room or anybody watching at home, we found out that what we thought was endless — there would always be another territory to go conquer, and there would always be another country, another continent to explore — was actually finite. Our generation began to talk about words like spaceship earth or the lifeboat earth or the idea that the planet was finite. Out of that photograph grew the only real new political idea of my generation, which was the idea that maybe the world wasn't just a struggle between ideological constructs of capitalism or socialism. Maybe both had an obligation to try to see to it that that blue-green globe was sustained. That was not part of the analysis of my parents' generation, for whom growth was an infinite objective. Once we saw that picture in 1959, I think all of us began to figure out that the growth and prosperity and the well-being — the money that sent us to college, the money that saw to it that there was a car in every garage, the money that saw to it that we could have the dream of a home for every citizen…. All of that was essentially built on the prosperity of cheap energy post–World War II, fuelled by hydrocarbons. Maybe, as David Lewis kept trying to tell us, that growth was in fact killing us. Now what do you do, hon. Speaker? How do you govern? How do you lead when it turns out that the very system that you put in place for the well-being of your citizens…? Whether you are ideologically committed to the capitalist solution or a socialist alternative, it doesn't really matter. The system might be killing the very people that you represent. It's a challenge, eh? It's a huge challenge. The notion that we all get elected, and our political parties, our leaders, ourselves…. What do we say? We say: "Elect me, and maybe we'll have to tighten our belts. Maybe it will be tough for a while, but we'll make it better for your kids." That's the essential promise. In any democratic system, you have to be able to promise to make it better. Better continually means ever-increasing levels of consumption and ever-building levels of consumption, which of course means ever-building levels of growth, ever drawing out of the earth cheap energy in order to pay for it forever. I started thinking maybe this was a little impossible. I remember in 1996, when I was running against Joan Smallwood and Glen Clark in your town, hon. Speaker — in Surrey. We were having a debate, and I was trying to get to be leader of my party. I made a little speech and said: "You know what? I think growth is maybe killing the planet. Maybe we should talk about the politics of less." Wow, did I get creamed from the audience and from the other people I was debating, Mr. Clark and Ms. Smallwood. The politics of less was seen as an abdication. It was losing the dream of always making it better. I learned that day to never, ever repeat those words and talk about the politics of less, because we couldn't handle the idea that we could ever have a ceiling on never-ending prosperity. Hon. Speaker, I wish it hadn't gone like that. That was 1996. That's ten years ago. We lost a decade when we could have shifted the debate away from consumption levels, ever-increasing consumption, to some kind of conversation about quality of life. How do you live? Do you have to always have the biggest car, the fanciest suit? Do you have to live in the poshest home? Or could you have a different quality of life? Could it be that the cement is choking us down on the ground as much as the pollution in the sky is choking us up above? How would we begin to talk about it? If what the government talked about in the throne speech…. If they actually mean it where they say the science is clear, it leaves no room for procrastination, then how do you govern? I would submit to you, hon. Speaker, and to the folks over there and to everybody at home that you've got to start with restructuring everything about how we do what we do. How can we measure the well-being or the success of a government with what they call gross domestic product, once we discover that gross domestic product is maybe suffocating our planet? I mean, it just sounds bad — gross domestic product. It almost sounds like immoral domestic product. GDP is named in the budget 88 times, every single time the Lieutenant-Governor said: "Here's our debt-to-GDP ratio; here's our spending-to-GDP ratio; here's how much we spend on health compared to GDP." We measure every single thing we do by gross domestic product, when divorce is part of the gross domestic product. If I get cancer, making me well is part of the gross domestic product. If an ocean liner hits a rock and spills oil, picking it up is part of the gross domestic product. Tragedy is part of the gross…. Crime is part of the gross domestic…. Why on earth would we measure everything we do against almost an obscene number, except that it's tradition? We did it in this century. We did it in the 1990s, in the 1980s, in the 1970s. Essentially, the bond-rating agencies want the government to measure everything they do against GDP, and it's maybe immoral. I would submit that if what the Lieutenant-Governor said is real and we're actually going to deal with climate change, then we should never have another budget come into this room where GDP is the measure of success. The 88 times that it was mentioned in this budget speech has got to cease. Right now, if we're actually going to deal with it, Mr. Premier, tell your Minister of Finance to go out and invent another measurement. Go meet with the bond agencies, meet with the big heads at UBC, meet with whoever you have to, to find a way to measure our well-being that actually measures pain, pollution, disease and crime and deducts that stuff from well-being. If we're going to deal with climate change, you can't have an old-fashioned, industrial sort of system budget following a throne speech that says climate change is real. It's over. We live in a province where the people own the land. I love that. I talk about it all the time. Some 97 percent of the land owned by the people — certainly the only province in Canada, the only jurisdiction in North America, and I'm not sure if there are any others in the world. Certainly the people in British Columbia, under a capitalist system, own more of the land than the people in the Soviet Union did under communism. We own the means of production. We are the stewards of the land, and that means equity. But in the budget that followed the speech on climate change, the word "equity" was only mentioned three times. Apparently, we are living on cash flow. We are like young people living on their credit cards. We aren't talking in our budget about equity. Do we take care of the land? Do we sell the land? Do we degrade the land? If we do, we have to deduct that from…. You can't have a throne speech that says we're going to deal with climate change and measure it all by gross domestic product and never consider the value of the equity that you're passing on to future generations. Otherwise, I don't actually get why people would come to work here. Exactly why would people on either side want to work in this building to pass on a degraded land base to the next generation? I don't think anybody would. Unless it's spin. My God, if it's spin, it's the biggest lie we've heard in this building. No, we're not allowed to say "lie." What's a good word for misleading the people? If it's spin, it is the largest immoral gesture to come into this building in a very, very long time. I worry that it's spin. I'll give you an example, hon. Speaker. Just yesterday the member down here at the end of this row, the Liberal gentleman from Prince George–Omineca, was quoting me on the subject of climate change. He was reading a sentence. I've heard the Minister of Environment read it. I've heard other people in this building read it. He's reading a sentence that I wrote last year encouraging my party to deal with the issue of climate change, and he reads it as if the people on this side have no opinion. That gentleman didn't even read the article that he was quoting from. He'd never seen the article he was quoting from. I know that because every time anyone asked, I'd go ask them. They've never read it. They got it from their public relations staff. Those 24-year-olds went to college, and then the Premier hires them. They go through the computer, and they take out quotes and stick them in their speeches. It has no bearing on the truth. Or doesn't the truth matter here? If a person reads a sentence that comes out of context from a larger document — one that I, by the way, am proud of — and he's never read the document, does that constitute misleading the House? Or because he didn't actually write it there…. It was written by some child somewhere else in the public relations department. Is somebody not working in this building, whose name we don't know, misleading the House? And if they can do that, then can they write a throne speech that they don't even mean? Where is the line between coming in here with integrity, saying words you believe and can write, and just acting as an actor? You know what? There are people over there who should be getting actor wages. There should be a picket line out front, because there are actors over there who haven't even bothered joining the actors union. They are reading words that they don't understand written by somebody we've never met and degrading the world of ideas. If you can lift stuff out of context and just use it against people, then, of course, soon people on both sides will quit engaging in the world of ideas. Public discourse will die because it's too risky. If those folks can engage in that activity, exactly what substance is there to make me believe that they meant the words when they said: "Climate change is real, and now we're going to govern differently"? And I want to believe it's real. I want to work here when we actually deal with the issue of growth and try to reinvent our economy. If it's real, then every single ministry in government has to come forward next year with its own plan. The Ministry of Transportation should deal with how we're going to move people now that we acknowledge climate change. The Minister of Finance has got to come in here with another way of measuring well-being and how they're going to relate to the bond agencies and how we're going to get rid of GDP. Municipal affairs is going to have to talk about how cities can do planning. Somebody is going to have to talk about the dikes. My kids are living in Steveston. We all know that if climate change is real and if the government admits to it, then they are living where the sea will be unless we begin to reinvest in the dikes. What about the people in Chilliwack and the Fraser Valley? If climate change is real, when the snow melts where I live and begins to run down the river systems, what do you think is going to happen when it gets to the lower Fraser? Municipal affairs or whoever is going to have to deal…. You can't say climate change is real and not deal with its ramifications. What about Environment? What about the Ministry of Forests? If climate change is real, are we still going to keep planting Jack pine all over the land? If it's real, then the government in the next year is going to have to have consultation with every single industry. It's certainly going to have to talk to the forest companies. You're going to have to talk to B.C. Hydro and Columbia Power Corp. You're going to have to talk with the Islands Trust, the Columbia Basin Trust, the Fraser Basin Council. Every business and every institution in this province is going to have to change the way it thinks, now that we have acknowledged that growth is maybe killing us. I want to close here with a little discussion about how economics works, I figure. I was taught how to do politics by a gentleman who was my friend and my mentor, and has now passed away, named Bob Cunningham. He was a log truck driver and a really good thinker. When I was just getting started, he used to drive the car and lecture me on how to think. "To understand the people in the land base," Bob said, "you know, you'd best understand capitalism and socialism, Cork." "Capitalism," he said — and you'll probably want to take this out of context too, hon. Member, the next time you're misleading the House — "is the best system there is and that has ever been invented for employing people and making money. But that best system that's ever been invented tends to grow out of control. It's kind of like the cells of your body, Corky. They're healthy. They make your body beautiful, but sometimes they're out of control, and then they grow at an exponential rate and actually kill the body or the body politic." "So," he said, "for the cancer that is capitalism that is sometimes out of control, socialism is the medicine." Then he explained to me how it works in our party and in Canada generally. Social democracy, he explained, is the system where you have to define your socialist principles in such an attractive way that people will actually walk in a ballot box and make an X, will impose those limitations on the cancer themselves. You cannot impose it on them. It's a beautiful, beautiful notion. If climate change is real, it's going to take the folks over there, backed up by all the miracle of Adam Smith's analysis, and the folks over here and all that social democracy means about a people's ability to impose limits on themselves in order to control capital…. It's going to take both sides to make it work. It's going to take the invention of a politics that actually means what it says, and that says it is more important to pass on a planet to your grandchildren than it is to work here. Your job, the work you come to do, is more important than the wages or your name up in lights. It will take a fundamental shift and one that I am honoured to be part of. But God help us, hon. Speaker and folks opposite and my friends, if we come in here next year and it turns out that it was a sham, that it was spin, that it was words out of context because the polls told them it would help. I think, hon. Speaker, what you have — I hope metaphorically speaking — is me, my party and beyond them the four million citizens of British Columbia suspending belief and judgment while folks opposite, the government, attempt to restructure the state to make their words real. If it's real, if they mean it, I am here to help. And if it's false, spin, corrupted language in order to fool people one more time, I submit I'll spend the rest of my career trying to see them disappear from this building.