hitops

Well then maybe I'll take a strict interpretation of some old ones. As a Mormon I don't want to take the oath in the presence of a black person, since they have been cursed. As a Hindu I don't want to have to touch or interact with someone of a lower caste while taking the oath. As a Muslim man I don't want to have to speak to a woman during the oath. So we're good to accommodate all my requests eh? Freedom of religion and such....

Obviously a conspiracy by the police to make the protesters look bad. Nope, no reason at all to keep tabs on those type of folks.

That is up for appeal.

Um nope the email doesn't list those people. Those people are also not these people: Environmental activists, unlike ordinary Canadians, have indeed used unlawful means in the past, and been prosecuted for them. So this definitions applies pretty well to them. Fortunately most activists do not commit unlawful acts, and this will have no affect on them.

I wonder how many people want to do the ceremony buck naked? or by reciting the oath while pouring a barrel of toxic waste over their head? It doesn't matter. What matters is standing up for universally consistently enforced legal procedures, not trying to appease every special interest because they complain loudly.

I'd say those could apply to all of the parties, or none of them. I would say probably Liberal overall if I had to choose. I noticed you didn't mention remaining employed in your field. If hope for continued employment is a priority, conservative policies tend to favor that outcome.

Yep, and done jail time. Jacee is not going to let that affect her reality. Forget that some anti-oil or pro-environmental groups have not only committed violence, crimes, and threatened to do so. That simply will not factor in to the narrative.

Again this then brings us back to the point, that if you don't have to reference religious dogma, then no more than a claim of religious reasoning is good enough. Ergo the guy who wears a goalie mask and claims religion, is good to go.

There's a difference of opinion among everyone, about nearly everything. Is there a point here? As long as I find a group of people who debate the religious merits of wearing a bedsheet (with eyes cut out) with the middle finger ironed on, I guess I'm good? For any ruling to make sense, it needs to be clear and unambiguous. Either religious reasons (which means any religion I could make up tomorrow) are good enough, or they are not. Can't have it both ways. And if we are then going to decide what is a valid belief vs what is not (the truly idiotic statement from the court about "sincerity of belief") then we need some kind of verifiable benchmark for that. So maybe we need a new position in the courtroom - religious belief sincerity confirmation agents. They stare at you for a bit and by divine edict your solemn sincerity shall be approved!

Since Harper is not talking about people divesting from fossil fuels, what is your point here other than a strawman? In addition, divestment is not a large scale practice by any stretch of the imagination, nor any measurement. It is a trendy niche pursuit that affects nobody and has no significance. Divestment due to the falling price of oil is the normal response to the market changes just as it has always been. For activist purposes, it is an insignificant subject of malcontents and nothing more. That's not because of a shortage of folks who enjoy the emotional self-importance of feeling part of the anti-oil in crowd. There are plenty of them. But investors are people with enough knowledge, experience and intelligence to have something to invest, which are features nearly mutually exclusive from the former group. Investors are not in their position because of feel-good policies. They do what gains a return. As a result, they divest from oil for the same reason they divest from anything - during times when that asset is not performing well.

Not sure what purpose Batman has here, other than to indicate you relinquish the point.

If there was a religious issue here, you might have a point. Since there is no religious text, including that of Islam, that requires a facial covering at all times, you do not. No, apparently its fine to cover your face because you want to. If you don't agree, you're arguing for the law to be unequally applied.

A chief tenant of communist societies which, when enacted, almost without exception, resulted in far worst outcomes than than doing nothing. One would need to demonstrate that break-even return in some way. Many ares of government spending cannot do do.

The law should be applied equally. Therefore, from this point on if somebody wants to wear a goalie mask, clown mask, or something from a masked ball, why not? But why stop there. Why not simply allow people to wear a bedsheet over their bodies with an iron-on imprint of a middle finger sticking out?, if they so choose. The law should be consistently applied, not special exceptions for the loudest group of malcontents.

We can make pretty reliable estimates for example, of the costs of getting something from point A to B with or without roads, and the net benefit of having that road vs the cost of building it. All would agree, in most cases, a huge benefit. A way to test this is simply to look at how much more expensive it is to get goods to places without roads. I can't disagree, but again that's a philosophical statement. We can argue about how far we need to go redistributing people's money to call ourselves meritocratic. However that's besides the point, I was responding specifically to the idea of an investment. Just because something is philosophically attractive, does not mean it provides a return on an investment. Becoming meritocratic in intent, also, does not necessarily mean your policy to accomplish that actually results in more meritocracy, in fact in could result in less. By definition almost, redistribution works against meritocracy. The definition implies merit is involved, rather than handouts. Merit means what you do, not what somebody else does for or to you. Perhaps it means we should spend less on it. The US spends on the most per student in the world, and few would argue that the average student is even above average vs the OECD nations. But the greater point is that there are many areas we spend a lot of money on, that we cannot demonstrate a return. A classic example would be the huge amounts of spending on first nations programs and benefits, which have arguably not moved the overall status of native people anywhere. Meanwhile immigrants arrive with nothing, and far outperform them without the benefit of that spending.

In principle, generally I would support this. Personally I find it clearly morally wrong, however people should have the right in a free society to end their lives if they want. In practice, however, I would oppose it if it came on the ballot for some reason. This is because, as a physician, I would not want to chance the slippery slope where the argument would be made that as public servants, we can be forced to perform assisted suicide. I would never want to be part of that myself, and while I'm sure at first any physician who wanted would be exempt, once something is established the goalposts always get moved. For the sake of the long view, I would want to stay as far away from that line of reasoning as possible.

Depends on what you mean by investment. My mom calls buying a new couch "investing in furniture'. Just spending money on something that depreciates, is not an investment. An investment is something with a potential return. You can spend money from government coffers easily. What's not so easy, is demonstrating a return. There is little clear evidence beyond basic infrastructure, that much spending provides any kind of measurable return. To give 2 examples; Building a road makes it possible for everyone to use it, which most would agree gives a net economic benefit to all. Providing government backed mortgage insurance does not, and in fact has made it more unaffordable than ever, to own a home. Spending on things like education. It's clear that education is good. It's not clear that government providing it is any better than the individual seeking it out on their own. IMO the evidence, in particularity the last few years, is that success with education has little to do with the method of provision, and much to do with the individual seeking it. Even students who get accepted to Ivy league schools, but don't go, do as well as those that go, and better than those who were not accepted. This is a commentary on what that kind of student goes to Ivy league schools, not on what kind of student Ivy League schools create.

This is a plain, verifiable fact that anyone can access. It doesn't require opinion, it's available to all in black and white in the budgets. This however is philosophical statement, which requires independent evidence. That evidence is far from clear, and often contradictory. It's furthermore not clear that this social spending is better accomplished by government or private citizens on their own behalf.

CMHC doesn't prevent money from being lent to people who don't qualify, it encourages it. It guarantee's the risk for the bank, which makes the bank care less about back risks. It doesn't protect the borrower, it protects the bank. The reason people aren't walking away from homes here is not because of the CMHC, it's because the rules that have nothing to do with the CMHC, are different here. In US you can give the bank the keys and walk away. The bank eats the loss. Here, if you give the keys and walk away, the bank can sell the house and come after you for the difference if it takes a loss. Not even close. Without the CMHC, the home ownership rate would be slightly lower, but homes would be far more affordable. It's very simple math: when the CMHC guarantees the loan, the banks are willing to lend more because their risk is gone. When they lend more, that means far more people can access large amounts of money to buy a home. When far more people have access to far more money, by simply supply and demand, prices go up. Prices have risen like crazy in Canada, far out of proportion to wealth, incomes or rents. We now have the most over-valued housing in the world, according to several studies. Firth and Moody just issued reports saying we are dangerously over-exposed. The IMF says we are in a precarious situation. http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN0H51OC20140910 Look at any graph of debt to income ratios for Canada and the US. Until the US housing crash, they are identical. When the crash hit, the Canada line just continued to rise at the same rate. We are now far more over-exposed and bubbled than they ever were. Because you can't walk away, it makes a crash less likely. But for the exact same reason, we can't escape housing debt. The CMHC is the largest reason for this. Due to it's availability driving prices into the stratosphere, homes are more unaffordable than ever to the poor and people entering the market for the first time.

It will obviously not, since the party has control over who runs, and no leader with half a whiff of political tone will run somebody who has publicly gone through such a public process with sexual assault allegations. It's not fair, but it's how it works in politics, unfortunately.

You haven't watched many elections, have you?

I'm not sure what you're responding to here. Seems to have no relevance to what you quoted. We've seen every clearly that it does. By definition, it does. Today if you want to buy a car from the US, it will cost you 13% more than a few years ago, due to nothing else but our dollar's falling value. Since the US is our largest trading partner, quite obviously we lose purchasing power when our dollar falls relative to theirs. This is 2014 not 1985, people buys tons of stuff online. All that stuff that we bought from the US in 2010 costs more today. Ah, the insults of a failing, angry argument. You are losing when you are insulting. At my bank right now, every single account has fees waved if you maintain a minimum balance, some requiring that balance be as low as $1500. Some don't even require that, such as those for kids, student, old people, new immigrants etc. Every one of those groups has a no-cost option. The cost of course, is the fact that the bank pays less interest than the rate of inflation. This, again, if your own choice. Don't want to lose money to inflation? Then move it to investments. Then I guess you just don't know how to look. I don't pay any fees and I have all the regular accounts and a small business one. Or maybe you're just too lazy to negotiate or shop around. The only fees I pay are percentages on investments. That's again, my choice. I don't have to have investments. Relevance?

No that's the problem....it won't. It will be up to Trudeau, who not not let them run because of the political liability. Obviously any opposing candidate will constantly bring it up, and they will never get away from it. The Libs will be smart enough to just avoid this problem by blocking them from the start. All do to an accusation. The only way they will be able to run is as independents. In that case they lose all the benefits and infrastructure of the party, not to mention have to also run against the new party-approved candidate, who would siphon off votes even if they were hugely popular.

Good for them, but no matter what it finds, their careers are over.

It's harder because issues with new language and culture. That's not systemic, that's simply the nature of immigrating from anywhere to anywhere.