noahbody

If you'd take 20 seconds to google "Jim Hillyer" you'd find out he does speak French. If you want to argue the green NDP candidates are more qualified than Hillyer, good luck.

You missed "It's"

The Gun Registry is more or less symbolic of completely wasting taxpayers' money. Same goes for Kyoto. They were both flawed 'solutions' that were politicized. Stats showed there were only around 12 homicides committed with registered long guns/per year. We were spending over $2 million per homicide, preventing none. As far as police go, they could never assume someone didn't have a gun. If any trusted the Registry, it put officers' lives at risk.

The way a city dresses for a 10-day festival doesn't exactly qualify as culture to most sober people... of course you probably just spilled beer on your Lederhosen as per Ontario culture.

Lloyd Robertson asking Harper is he was going to be a nicer guy.

Funny, I can't see any soldiers on our streets. I couldn't care less if Igantieff lived in the U.S. before or will in the future. He may very well have plans to return to the USA in the future. Why wouldn't he want to go south, with Global Warming producing all of this snow?

Our medicare system came in under a Liberal minority government, so that's not a good example.

I would say the death of the bloc and the popularity of the NDP in the province depend on how well Harper treats Quebec. Both Harper and Layton know that. As far as sovereignty goes, it really hasn't had life for years. Sovereignists can rise up, but at the end of the day, there's no chance of a referendum succeeding as long as Harper is PM. The reason is unlike Chretien, who fought the referendum largely on emotional arguments, Harper would would make it a rational choice, spelling out what Quebec would lose if it left Canada.

Why do you think that's true?

I thought Lawrence Cannon was a pretty competent minister. Hard to believe Quebecers voted for a karate instructor/former communist.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/05/04/pol-ndp-brosseau.html

Only three governments in Canadian history have every had a majority of the popular vote: Mulroney, Diefenbaker and McKenzie King (during WWII).

Citation?

Can I ask how old you are?

That's really not true. To this point, from a statistical point of view, they haven't shown to be an effective measure in lowering the crime rate. At the same time, saying they can't play an important role is a little short-sighted. They can be an effective tool against gun crimes and help police to in get gang members off the streets. For example, if you commit a serious crime in possession of a gun, you get 5 years. Putting gang members back on the streets though a revolving door is not only a danger to society, but to our police officers.

I really can't imagine Mansbridge hoping for an NDP government. I wouldn't be surprised if he voted blue.

I lol'd when Layton said, "I've always favoured proposition over opposition."

The Liberals have definitely moved further to the left. That's why they weakened their brand. They need to move back towards the centre. Their biggest problem is that the Conservatives now have an opportunity to show Canadians that the scary hidden agenda was nothing more than playing politics.

I'll say: 141 seats for the CPC 77 seats for the LPC 71 seats for the NDP 19 seats for the bloc

I would agree. They could possibly get more votes than they did last election, because a lot of Liberals stayed home. This years there's no Green Shift and many will go out to vote to try and keep the NDP out of government. I wouldn't be surprised if some strategically vote conservative.

Canadian voters wiped the Mulroney Conservatives off of the map. If "some people" think this, they likely aren't voting Conservative. At the same time, I'm guessing the Liberal Party today isn't the same Liberal Party it was a few years ago, right?

I had high hopes for Ignatieff in the beginning when he was a terrible politician and would speak his mind. He never has been the leader of the Liberal Party though. It's the Party that's led him. The problem with the liberal party is that in a minority, they are the last party who will address politicized issues. Martin branded himself as "the defender of health care." Our system is ranked 30th. It needs to be de-politicized and improved. We also don't need to follow the world into half-wit schemes like Kyoto. Again that was politicized. Though it wasn't politically correct, Harper was the leader who stood up and pointed out that the politically popular Kyoto was a flawed 'solution' that didn't do anything for the environment and was completely pointless without the US, China and India. That's what leadership is to me. It's not always being popular. It's having the nuts to do the right thing for Canada. Canada's identity should be a country that's an intelligent, responsible leader. The intelligent and responsible thing to do at this point in time is to address some pretty touchy issues. There have been some bonehead moves like the G-20. The could just have that at the UN and save a billion or use Skype.

Harper is far from slick. As far as politicians go, he's pretty rare, because he puts Canada ahead of his own and/or his party's popularity. The whole "he's not democratic" thing is the latest attempted way to brand him by the opposition. He believes in allowing free votes. He even made a promise to have a vote on same sex marriage because they way it happened though the courts was not the way our democracy works. Ignatieff during the debate created this notion that if you're not looking to include everyone's views, you're somehow not being democratic. That's just not the case. If it was, every majority government in Canadian history could be labeled as undemocratic. The great irony is an example of being undemocratic is how the Liberals named Ignatieff as their leader without an election. The other thing Ignatieff has claimed is that you can't trust Stephen Harper with the economy. How quickly we forget that he campaigned on bringing in the Green Shift during uncertain times. Where would Canada be if more had voted Liberal last election. Harper doesn't want MPs speaking on certain topics and that's perfectly understandable. He did lose the 2004 election because the view of Randy White were used to convince voter's he had a hidden agenda. The Liberals have sunk pretty low to brand him as "scary" since then. Why do you think that is? Do you really think they believe that Harper would end abortion if he got a majority? If he did, the Conservatives wouldn't win another election for a long time. The scary thing for the Liberals is that Harper would get a lot of work done with a majority and that would keep the Liberals out of power for some time.

WWWTT, Can you explain why you think voting for the NDP in these uncertain economic times is an intelligent choice?

To be more clear: the threat of time behind bars (deterrent) versus spending time behind bars (paying a debt to society).