hitops

It was interesting that Mulcair kept talking about what the UN has asked us to do. Who cares what the UN has asked us to do? The UN does not make the law here, Canada does. Inviting people to a debate has nothing to do with being democratic. If they invited only May and whoever the Christian Heritage leader is, that is not un-democratic, it is just their choice. Democracy does not = inviting every conceivable individual to a debate. Ok now you have to say mean things about the other 3 leaders, otherwise you are excluding them and being undemocratic. You cannot show any favoritism in your private comments on a private forums, right? You tyrant!

Democracy IS a private activity. It is private individuals participating. Anyone can hold a debate. You can hold your own debate, and there is nothing forcing you to watch anybody else's. The Globe and Mail is not taxpayer funded. They can invite whoever they want, and if you don't like it, then don't buy their newspaper. There is nothing about democracy that requires any single candidate, or any group of candidates to be invited to any given place at any given time.

The debate is not enshrined in law, there is nothing saying we have to hold a single one. Private entities are holding them, and they can invite whoever they want. They invite who they think is relevant to the viewers. The most democratic aspect about these debate is that these media companies have the freedom to do that. If they want to invite only Justin Trudeau and have him stare lovingly into the camera for 2 hours, they can do that. Of course, nobody would watch it. If they don't want May, there's nothing un-democratic about it any more than you as a private citizen not giving equal praise to each candidate on this forum.

You're missing the point. Commodity prices can fluctuate, but the given size of your piece of the pie is highly relevant to your tax rates. With sudden high or sudden low prices, it is still good to have a larger market share of that pie. It is still good that we are a major oil exporter, whether oil is $40 or $100 a barrel. With very high taxes, we would be exporting much less oil, which means less revenue at any price. Using your logic, you shouldn't care what the salary is of the job you are applying for, since the value of Canadian dollar can sometimes affect your purchasing power more than differences in salary.

Right, just like the price in oil hurting us. But how does this make taxes irrelevant? In the long term, the lower the taxes, the more production from here vs other places. The world potash price is set by supply and demand, but where it is mined depends both on where it is, and how expensive it is to mine it. That's where competition comes in, and with low taxes we compete better.

Actually they do. The larger the difference between production cost (affected by taxes) and market cost, the more profit. It's true that world prices and the cartel in europe dissolving have recently had an even bigger impact, but it's false that our taxes don't matter.

That could be, I have no idea. Good for you but again you're talking about immigrants in general, something I never contested. Your favoured 2006 census data shows IndoCanadians education levels are markedly above average. The topic is Indian immigrants in Canada. The fact that they come from India doesn't change the reality of how they do in Canada. India is a corrupt place. Vietnam was an incredibly terrible case when most came over. They did great. I don't disagree that some immigrants do poorly. But I do contend that there are vast differences between different groups, and we need to consider that in our immigration policy. The areas of higher learning in science and medicine, as well as the universities, are packed with Indian and Chinese/Taiwanese kids. They disproportionately get degrees and get employed. As a doc I can say it's probably 1/3 to 1/2 of some departments, especially in some of the bigger cities. When I was trying to get into med school and putting in 4-6 hours a night in studying, that's who I met.....because that's who's also in the library doing the same thing. Exactly zero native kids were doing that, as a comparison. No your first objection, immediately after your quote of me was: "Written, no doubt, by Indo-Canadians. Sorry, not acceptable." I think you are just a reactive person, and you pull the trigger quickly. The fact that you got insulted at nothing, and then likewise concluded I must be insulted about my wife or some such thing, tells me you are quick to give an emotional dimension to something. But try to remember we don't disagree that immigration is not always good. Immigration is not a charity, it should not be done simply to boost our number or because people somewhere else are poor. Some will help build us and some will just be malcontents who ultimately just try to tear it down. The trouble is figuring out which is which. We can look to the success/non-success of the groups already here, to guide us.

Traditionally ya. My riding has never come close to electing a conservative in the time I have been eligible to vote.

I see your point and understand why you would think that, but statistics don't work in that linear way for effect. I review oncology medical articles all the time as part of my job, and this is exactly the kind thing we discuss. Even in extremely dramatic subgroup effects, you may see no effect at all in the larger group, and only be made aware once you look at the subgroup in particular. For example 'triple negative' breast cancer patients do far, far worse than others. But in the whole group, the success rates of treatment are very similar whether or not you include that group. But when you examine only that group, you see the huge differences. Well no because we are examining the whole city, not just the Somali population. For the same reason it's hard to tease out effects when most state's crime is decreasing, its hard to tease it out when most cities crime is decreasing. It's very easy to see the differences between african americans and whites because those groups data are specifically collected. Much harder when you do not collect the data for a given group. Regarding the effect, see above. Vis a vis 'huge', I mean huge relative to their population. I fully admit this is based on what police report and what people report (I know 3-4 people who live there), but I find it credible. Please understand I have nothing against immigrants or black immigrants, a fact that should be obvious when I cite the above-average performance of some Africans compared even to whites. There is no true control group unless you are comparing the same city. Because regional factors are at play which are not the same in all cities, or all states. You can never compare a parallel universe city, but you can compare groups within the same city - except in this case we just don't have the data, unless you know of some I don't. The fact that the rates of change are so dramatic between different cities, some very negative, some very positive, tells you that it is all over the map. Even Minneapolis and St Cloud, practically the same place geographically, are actually very different places in the economic and demographic composition. And then we have these weird outliers that sort of defy reason - like the 30% increase in Rochester. Have you been to Rochester, MN? It's economy and population is basically IBM and Mayo clinic. It would be harder to a find a place more packed with PhD's and MD's than almost anywhere. I can't explain that. The first link is directly to the official report, as far as I can tell.

Is there a 'on behalf of everyone' option?

Goodale is my MP and would have been a far better choice. He doesn't speak French well though, so I hear. Garneau also much better.

Have to agree, they are talking at a different level. Trudeau thinks he is at a pep rally.

True enough, I'd say in the final exchanges Harper did well and Trudeau got more superficial.

I liked this one better than the first, it was less forced and cheesy. The moderator on the side like another debater was weird though. Tonight Mulcair was good. Not creepy like last time, he seemed earnest and genuine. Not an angry uncle either. Harper was slightly better no gaffes. He was the most substantial and gave answers with some depth and hit all the facts he needed to to rebut the others. Trudeau I would say most improved, definitely less goofy but still tons of platitudes and "we support puppies and love" style appeals. At least not as bad as last time. He seems to want look into your eyes and hope you know he cares. I'd say close between Mulcair and Harper but I'd give it to Mulcair on style and approach, with Trudeau last.

Seems like there would a lot of other reasons to criticize Harper. I'm not sure these are reasons at all, so it is a little puzzling.

That may be true, but the link was posted to counter my own assertion of Somalis causing a problem, which is not the same thing. Right but that impact might not be visible if there are even stronger forces pulling the statistics for the population in the other direction. I see this all the time in the world of medicine, where the effect of one variable get blunted or hidden in the context of others. There are ways to tease that out, but I'm not aware if the US government does that. There are not a high number, there are a high number relative to other MN and US cities. The absolute number is about 3% in Minneapolis according to those tables, and 1% or less in most other MN cities. I would not call that high. Certainly not high enough to affect the statistics for the other 99% in a meaningful way. The other problem is crime rates are changing (going down). If they were static over decades, we might have a chance at seeing an effect from an especially criminal 1%. https://themuslimissue.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/denmark_somali_rape_1313962.pdf This is found via a fringe website, but the report is source material from statistics Denmark. Here is the source website, but I can't navigate it since I don't read Danish: http://www.justitsministeriet.dk/generelt/english

We didn't 'go over there and blow the place up'. They had a revolution against the government. Since then, the government and rebels have mostly been blowing the place up with western nations playing a lesser role. If we are there, there will be mass chaos. If we are not there, there will be mass chaos. Doctors without borders are in many dangerous places, that doesn't mean doctors without borders creates danger.

You haven't proposed any solution to that however, beyond increasing their taxes which does not logically follow that it could magically cause them to invest. Just ask yourself, if your taxes go up, does that make you buy more stuff? Liberals believe that for some reason other people or entities 'should' behave differently than they themselves would in the same situation personally. If you wouldn't spend more of your money when taxed more, why should they? If you wouldn't invest when the market looks risky or uncertain, why would they?

It's well known that the effective tax rate in the US about rebates and loopholes, is lower. There are corporations that literally pay almost nothing in some cases.

This is largely distorted, but let's assume it is true. How many people would really care?

Well no, it just shows that Minneapolis has a declining rate consistent with the average. It has been declining for some time, just like most other states. Even with 10x the crime rate, the relatively small Somali population would not change that overall trend. To put it another way, you could actually take any group in the entire US who immigrated during that time, point to the declining crime rate in any state they came to, and claim that this group does not have a higher crime rate. I'm sure you're smart enough to know why that argument would not be valid. What we want to know is what is the Somali crime rate? In Denmark they collect stats on Somalis, and they have a crime rate roughly 10x higher than the average. Somalia itself is one of the most dangerous, least educated, least developed place on the planet. It's not much of a leap, given than MN police have had to specifically focus efforts on Somali gang activity since 2000 increasingly, that Somalis have a higher crime rate.

No, I didn't, You apparently just thought I did. You are quick to perceive insult when non exists. Go read that post again, after a chill pill. You implied immigrants lack literacy. I countered by saying they have higher rates of university education, so my guess is they do not. You, for reasons known only to yourself, took this as an insult. Good thing it didn't then. The subject is Indians in Canada, not in India. Please stay on topic. But that's not what you said. You said you didn't trust it because it was written by Indo-Canadians.

I those nice tables, but they don't really answer the question. They show overall crime rates and rates of Somali population. Somalis are only 3% of the population, and the majority of US states have overall steady declines in crime rates of the last 30 years or so, so it does not tell us much that MN also has a declining rate. In those same tables, it shows that other states have lower or higher declines, but most are declining. Actually the crime rates in the most of the western world including the US and Canada, show gradual declines over the last 20 years. Few conclusions can be drawn apart from wider factors affecting the developed world. This is the same false argument used by pro-carry advocates in the US, who point to increased firearms and declining crime. They always fail to explain that crime declined at similar rates in most states regardless of carry laws or not, and even in states that increased their laws, and even in other countries. This points to larger cultural factors. There are many statement from Minneapolis/St. Cloud police about Somali gang activity, and increased in gang activity focuses within that population. One such article is here: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-02-06-Somali-gangs_N.htm

No because American immigrants largely don't preach adherence to a book who's author says they have the right to kill and subjugate me. I'm highly pro-immigrant, just not pro muslim immigrant. I can't get enough of Filipinos for example, so hard working, so friendly, not believing I deserve to die or women are inferior, etc.

I'd prefer you didn't speak at all, but we'll have to tolerate you I supposed.