old_bold&cold

I do not thinkthat the Liberalsin Ontario's election in Oct, will do very well. It will take a bit more time for the polls to start reflecting the numbers but Mc Guinty hid from the openess of the plow match and only stayed near his liberal faithful, because he was booed before at this event, and did not want that to repeat itself. This shows that he is scared of facing the people. Especially the down to earth farmers who can not see that Toronto is the center of everything. He stayed only where his own could control the crowd. That is pathetic of him and his party. His stance on the schools is also laughable as he can not even give proper answers as to why his own child and wife are part of a faith based schooling, when he says that these are going to be the death of the public system. His answer is that Catholic schools are part of the legal school system. And why is that? Cough cough sputter sputter!!! The facts are just now coming public how two years ago the syrplus was 300 Million only because his government hide the real numbers about it and last minute spending brought it down to that number. Sound familiar about Liberals and backroom deals and spending etc. to hide what might be politically unsavourable to his party. But this should go into the provincial section, but when you say that the provincial numbers will not change much, I say they well may change a lot of things. If the Tory's win in Ontario, then things will look very bad for the liberals of all stripes.

Not knowing exactly what he has said, I can only think that Dion is now trying to lock up the ethnic votes by trying to show compassion for a war criminal. He hopes that the ethnic voters will see this as being good. I do not think it will work though, as from what I get from most of the immigrants I have talked to, is that the large majority believe that this boy now a man should be locked up and they would not push for his being brought back to Canada. Only the extremists are the ones pushing for this kind of thing. So it would not be an issue that most would endorse as a good thing to do. I am sure Dion sees it differently then this.

The rise in the value of the Canadian dollar will spell some grief for manufacturers that rely on exporting their goods. The only way they can relieve this, is to take the dollars new power of buying and update their equipment to more labour saving types. Yes that means robotics, etc., and it also will mean many people losing jobs. The only way to compete with the strong dollar and the world economy, will be to cut costs, and labour is one of the most expensive costs there are. It will mean a high dollar investment, but in the end it will also mean survival of the company, and its ability to compete. The good paying low educational demanding jobs that we have had for so long are going away, ont way or that other. People will have to make an investment in education to continue being productive in the times that are coming. Even to companies who moved operations to third world countries will see that even there the costs will only rise and robotics will have to be what they all will have to go just to be competitive. Canada is ripe for this kind of thing and we do have many educated people who can design and build such equipment and service it. The time of man's use in much of the repetative production jobs is coming to an end. It had to happen, and now with the strong dollar, it is cheaper for companies to do this kind of investment, and the government has already in place programs to help with the write off of all of this. They are saying now that the CDN will be worth $1.06 USD by the spring of this year. While I do think that it is possible, I am not sure of the time table.

I would say that the Block has lost some of its relavence to make of the old supporters. These are now seeing that it may be best to try to work in Canada as part of Canada and not just for quebec interests only. Now how long this will go on for I do not know but it is quite evident now, and I think Harper deserves the credit for that. Duceppe will not push too hard for an election with the kind of results that have been shown lately both by the Provincial PQ and the Bloc. It does not bode well for them right now, no matter what the polls may say one way or another there is definitely a change in the minds of many Quebecers.

With these results I do not see there being much will to call a federal election. The Block did win one seat but lost one, so this probably is not the kind of environment that they would want to hinge a full scale election on, and the NDP winning one from the liberals may bolster jacks rhetoric, I do not see the Liberals wanting to face the voters at this time. So when Parliament starts anew in Oct. there probably will not be the push to bring down the government that there was just yesterday. Harper had nothing to lose and he gained a seat, and that will make him happy. Whats more he gained a lot of political time for his party.

Ontario will have to modernize the manufacturing sector even more with robotics playing a major role. That way they will be able to compete even with the strong dollar. This of course will mean that those without post secondary education will never really find stable employment. I do believe that Ontario is one of the better educated provinces when it comes to work forces, but the kind of needs for those who do not have the education, is to fill those jobs that Alberta has plentiful. We may well see more of a migration from Ontario's lower work force until things in the USA blow over. Slow downs in the paper and lumber industry in Ontario also, has help feul the problems as well.

St John's may be doing well by eastern standards but compared to the west it would not even be on the list. Yes they are now seeing a small tiny amount of investment from offshore oil, but wait and see when you get the full amounts. The smallest homes in St John's will sell for $500,000.00 etc. Luxury homes will be in the millions. The city may now be doing well with jobs and things, and to most that is a welcome change. The offshore oil will be big, as long as Canada can protect its waters and claims etc. If not then offshore oil will not be nearly as big if international oil companies can take it over and run from foreign lands. Many newfoundlanders have traditionally voted Liberal, and that will not give Canada the security it needs to protect our waters. Maybe thay should be looking more toward the CPC, as that way they will get better protection for things to come, even if they are mad at Harper now, they will see the wisdom of it all soon.

I get kind of tired reading about all this over and over. I say let the police arrest the youths who did this. Charge them as adults with attempted murder and jail them for 15-20 years. It would send the right message back to the protesters that breaking the law is took seriously and they either follow it even when they do not agree or go to jail for it. As for their land claims go, if the government can show that it was sold or given back in 1850, then I think that the penalty should be such that an equall parcel of land should now be taken away from their reverve, in payment of restitution for their protests. We have to get back to the same law enforcement of laws as the laws of physics and that is for every action there is an equall and opposite reaction. Then maybe I will be able to have a small amount of faith in our system.

I just read in todays Ottawa Citizen that those who voted liberal in the last election have 27% that say they will not vote Liberal this election, with a small percent saying they are unsure. The Tory's have 80% saying they will vote tory again with mose of the rest saying they are not sure. The NDP and Greens are not really counted. But while it is a almost even numbers swap at first glance, it does show that those definity will not vot liberal at 27%, with a small unsure percent. The tories have 80 percent sure and I think it was 15% unsure. This is done with people how voted last time and their intentions this time. It does look like the Liberals, will be losing a lot of voters and the unsures will proably split evenly between them. So if you take the numbers and crunch them it does look like the tory's will out gain the Liberals. Even the 905 and inner city Toronto are not so sure liberals in this. Now I will say that this poll in the newpaper was just that a poll. But if it does follow this trend and as we have seen this week the Liberals are not gaining but losing numbers..... well you can see the trend. McGinty needs to stop pressing the shcool support issues and get to other things, as the electorate is not really that caring about Faith Based Schools, and it looks like they are tired of it. McGinty needs to do something else, because the others are remaking him into the big liar he was when first elected, and if they get to do so for much longer he will never recover and anything he says will just be thought of as a lie. He really has misjudged the amount of caring there is about faith based schooling. The rest have being quite able to attack him on all his broken promises and deficits etc.. He has let the other partys define the issues of this election. That will cost him big time.

I agree with the above, and while I also think that Dion in Quebec is a losing leader, I do hope to see the PC's make bigger in roads there as well. But yes I am afraid that with the way things are that the BQ may well be the official opposition, again. The liberals have this idea that because they did not melt down completely with the voters last time, that they will be able to rebuild with Dion as a leader. What they forget to mention is the only reason dion is the leader is because no liberal with any sort of high profile was crazy enough to face the voters after adscam. So along comes Dion, about as vanilla a person you can find and all the charisma of a wet sponge. I really do not think that there will be any call for an election this fall, but if there is the liberals will be the most to lose. You can start to see it now with the polls in the Ontario election, where the Liberals did have the lead and now are dropping steadily, and if this stays the course then come election day you will see people finally waking up to the fatc that all liberals are liars and cheats. This will also carry quite easily to any federal election that may come. If I am right, you will see the PC get back in Ontario, and the federal liberals quickly puling in their horns and supporting anything the federal PC's may want to make a confidence vote. Just my own view of course, but we will see how right I am very soon.

I am no lawyer or even a political expert, but when I looked at the declaration and the way it was worded, there were too many things that evenI saw that I did not agree with. So to me that means I am happy that the government of today is not onside with this . Too bad if the UN does not like this, as we are not there to be yes men to their own misguided declarations.

If I had my choice of how we were taxed, I would raise the GST to 13-14% and drop income tax completely for all people. I would keep a business income tax but at a much lower level etc. That way we would have it much harder for people to cheat and those who do manage to cheat will still have to pay for all the taxes that have been added up to their level of purchase. The underground economy would not make sense any more and so we would have more people paying fair shares.

So by your take on things, it goes back to the survival of the fittest, and displacement or death to the losers? I will agree that the majority of our time here on earth has been lived on those very basic concepts. For the nation with the stongest armed forces then, it would be just a simple push and conflict and voila they have more land. If this truly was the position of things today we would still be fighting small wars all over the place. We, I hope at least, have grown beyond that kind of life into one where negoitations and treaties are abided by. The problem is, in todays world there is no real loser when it comes to breaking treaties. We do not take the losing people and make slaves of them. We seem to tolerate the redrawing of borders and homelands, without resloving the issues that were important to earlier times. The first Nations people were a wandering people. They followed the animals that were hunted by them. To say that they had their own territories, would not be wrong, but it is not actually true either. Their homelands were more of a agreement with their neighbours to not hunt in the others areas, but many tribes also have travelers that would go between tribes and even marriages so to speak between other tribes. There were few is any communities that were used all year round. I would suppose that much of these territorries were won thru war, but I also would image after a while they were mostly held by promise or aggreements. Once the settlers from Europe came, these people built homes and settlements that were year round. They farmed the soil much more then the native people did, and while they did hunt and fish they did not move their communities with them to do so. Of course there were exceptions to this in the village of Hochellaga and Satacona, wich are now Quebec city and Montreal. The natives here in Canada were far from the societal structures of the Myan or Aztec. We still see a nomadic life for much of our Inuit people and yes they had territories, but no fought over them much. In these times if you settled a land it was yours. You could not just say you owned a whole mountain, but if you settled it and were working the whole area then yes it was yours. The use it or lose it time of things. You can still get free land today in northern Ontario, but you must clear it and farm it to be given clear title. This is where we have so much confict today over land claims. The natives have not settled all the land they were given access to and therefore do not own that land. The treaties signed gave the native people access to the federal land but owership rights were not open ended as the natives would like them to be. That is where we have all the legal and procedural wrangling go on. Some governments recognised land ownership, but only to the settled lands others did not or did some partial version of it all. That is why we have the mess we are in today. The palestinian's though were a people who settled much of Israel for many centuries. It was ruled by many nations in the past, but the people were always there. When the British turned this land over to the Jews to be used as a home land, there then became a very strong protest by the palestinian people, that they had rights to this land as well and ownership should be recognised. The Israeli government does not see things as such and therefore sought to segregate the people from them. This meant moving most of them from Jurusalem. Hence much of the conflicts of today. The arab world sees this as an act of aggression by Israel, and while not openly waring against Israel they do support the palestinian causes enough to keep wars a regular thing. The fact that before the british took control of Ireal the arab world ruled it and yes settled it very much like the Israeli do today. There does not seem to be a fair line that anyone will recognise so you have wars and skirmishes all the time. It all comes down to when is conquered land a property of the winning side? Are there legal positions that can show this in the courts of law? If so what obligation does the conquering side have to the losing side ? If we go back in history, it would be cut and dried. All the conquered people would be considered slaves of the winning side and therefore as proerty themselves they can not own land in that country. But we want to think we have grown since those times. So what is the rule and how is it to be applied.

Job opening very soon Elections Officer and head of Elections Canada. I have always said that the civil service has been liberal leaning and many people have even gone so far as to leak many things just to discredit the PC's. Since the last elections. Harper did not do as most had done in the past and sweep clean the Liberal faithful from the civil service positions. This has cost him some valuable points and fights, that if it were in private industry, these people would be long gone, before any of this happened. I will give Harper credit for being able to keep his own staff etc., in line, but when you have a civil service with liberal faithful, still in positions of power, then you really must be running a tight ship to only have these few things come about. It is no coincidence that the elections Canada, are responsible for the story about 1.2 million be shifted by ridings etc. to come about when the government may be brought down. But what people are forgetting is this whole issue is one of a question about what is a deduction and what is not. In the end it will be a non event. But in the prospects of an election, this is the Liberals trying to say that Harper is corrupt. But 1.2 million from 17 ridings etc which did pay for advertising, there is no doubt about that. No envelopes of cash involved here. It make me go HMMMM Then we have the head of elections Canada making rulings on issues where nothing was requested, and in the face of what we all know was in direct opposition to what the government of the day was saying. Again it makes yo wonder why is this happenig, and why now. I would think that it would be pretty obvious that this position being taken, is going to cause trouble, and it was designed to cause harm and get the liberals the ethnic vote. But now there is a backlash, the muslim women do not care about showing their faces for ID, and do so all the time at borders and drivers licenses etc.. Who then was this great idea brought up by, and why now. The liberals should be ashamed because this shows that they are still the backhanded bunch of lying, cheating, and corrupt political body, that was proven so recently with the sponsorship scandel. Dion is supposed to be their leader and it is obviuos that all this hype of late was the design of the liberal party and their faithful. Lets see just what the voters in the by elections think of this same underhanded actions. If a liberal comes to your door, get out the gun and tell him exactly where to go, and how to get there. Maybe then they will see that their ways and means will not be tolerated any more.

August1991, you do me a deservice by thinking that what I have said was not true. That is upon you because I do not have reason to lie about that. I was at Harrington Lake ( PM cottage ) to fix some satellite hardware etc. I was asked to do this on an emergency type basis, and probably because I have passed many security checks in my work, and so has my wife in her work as well. I went there late on a saturday afternoon. I went through all the RCMP points and was greeted into the cottage by Mila, who was in her house coat, hair in curllers and eating warmed pizza in the kitchen ( I like Mila right away, as she was much like most people, and really down to earth). I had my wife with me as we were in Ottawa when I got the call. I worked on the satelliet receivers and the telsat decoders etc, and also programmed it in to also watch TV, All Canadian of course. I was asked about the other decoders and smiled and said yes I knew of them, and it they were serious I could provide that. Brian then came into the room and shook everyones hand and talked for a few moments, you could tell he had been drinking, and you also could see he was full of himself as well. All the time I was working on the equipment I was being sniffed and licked by their dog flower, who really just wanted to play. I did throw her toy ball sveral times for her to fetch and finished up my job. Mila still had many questions about the satellite etc and Brian mostly just agreed and then left the room. I did not think much of Muroney before this, but this was just after OKA, and I must admit meeting him in person only lowered my thinking. Not for the fact that he was drinking but for the swagger and his attitude about his presence. Mila, was very nice and level headed, my wife was impressed by her as well. Brian though, it was more of a personal read of the man, the kind you do when you first meet a person. I have learned to trust that instinct in my life because it is mostly true by experience. The dog Flower was as most dogs happy and playful. Later in newspaper reports about Mila being a closet slob, made me laugh, as yes it was true by I did not think it a news worthy thing. To me, that was what made here a likeable person. Who did not cast any airs on entitlements etc. I said that I did not think much of Mulroney before this, and I should say this was after he said OKA is a chees is it not? And there were several other things as well. I did like some of what he did but was more if balanced on a beam, would say he was more on the do not like then like. It was later when the appointments of Mila's hairdresser to the Bank of Canada position, that really did it for me. So there you have it. You can believe this or not, I really do not care one way or the other. But maybe you should meet the man yourself and see what your read is. You never know maybe you will see the same thing, or maybe not.

It is funny the way the poem the Cherry Tree, had that line in it about "of my 4 score year and 10". Many remember it and yet it is not even close to todays life expectancies, or the times in which it was written. But yes it would be nice to think that 90 years would be a full llife.

I have said before that I hated Mulroney for the man he was. I think some of what he did was right and proper, until the end where he appointed so many friends etc that it was plain he was abusing his power. After watching him last night, I must say I hate him even more as a man, and would wish him to just shut up and go away. He is being very vindictive in much of what he says, and it is just so narrow minded. I would feel a lot better if Harper would stop using him as an advisor in many things, but maybe he just cherry picks things out of his advise. Or I would hope it is just that, and not following him blindly. Mulroney's fate lies in the hands of historians now and if he keeps opening up his mouth, it may well change that to one of a whining loser, who can not let go.

I back Harper on this and say that election Canada was wrong and must reverse itself. If the Muslim women want to mount a Charter Challenge then so be. But let them pay the costs of such a challenge. For now the law stands and must be enforced. That is the way it should be.

We do not set the level of our dollar like some other countries do. We have a floating dollar, and we can not force it up or down without pegging it, and taking away the float. That can be very costly to us, in many ways. So do not wish for things you will regret later. I believe that it was around 1966 that the dollar was left to float. We could have pegged it to the USD at that time without much harm, but to do so now it would cost us lots especially in our way of living.

I am not shocked that Russia is playing games with fighter jets and we all should remember it was just a week or two ago when Putin said that yes they were again flying near other countries air space and exchanging smiles with each other. This should again tell you that it is all political manouvering by Russia. The economy of Russia has rebounded some what and they can once again afford these kinds of games. I really would not worry so much that there will be shots fired, but I do think that we scramble our jets just to let them know that we are willing to defend our air space. Call it testing our resolve or defenses or what ever you want, but I think we can safely say that for now it is all just posturing. We could set missel locks on to any plane that comes into our air space, but that is getting more escalated then necessary. We will defend our artic and we will make sure our soveirgn rights are kept in force. If that means a few jets being flown to the edge of our air space, so be it. It is something I believe would should be doing anyway. Russia is letting the world know that they still are a super power and they are not toothless. I wonder though just how many people did not eat that day, to pay for these new flights. If they are once again able to feed the people and have the military spending, that I feel that is their own business. Russia has been quite friendly to Canadian investors for the last decade or so, but if their communist past, starts showing up again, they will scare most investors away. I am glad though that things have improved some. As when they were in their worse finacial shape, it was really a big threat to the world, because the nuclear arsenal there could have been sold to the black market by the scientists, so they could feed their families. That was probably more dangerous then these flights ever will be.

There will always be fallout from US companies when they need to cut jobs, and yes if I were them I would make my cuts as much as I could to foreign plants and workers, where money company plans would allow it to be so. That goes without saying. As for lots of auto workers jobs coming north, yes this was done, and usually at a big expense from government etc.. So there may be some things there that would need looking at before the axe gets too well used. There are a lot of US owned companies here in Canada, and I believe the stats are around 75% US controlled. While that means many things to many people, it does not mean that these companies can just pull up stakes and go to the USA. It does mean we have a heavy load of USD investments in most of our companies. If the USD goes bust or gets major hit, it will not affect the companies to a great degree as the investments were already made and as long as they were not carrying a lot of debt will it mean very bad things. Ontario will of course take bigger hits then all other provinces, because our economy is based in a lot of US investment etc. So when the USA slows down, so will Ontario. Alberta which is now the biggest economic province in Canada, will also see some slow down, but not near the same as Ont. The oil based economy there would not even have to look hard for other countries to buy the oil, if the USA slowed down so much that their demand for oil lessened. Investment in the oil sands would also be easy to find as the USA, is not the only ones interested in this. It is hard to say just how well the rest of the provinces would fair, but I would think BC would fair well and just chug along with out much change. The Atlantic provinces, are all just now coming into their own oil based economies, so I would say they would have no where but up to go, but yes things may come a little slower. The real big winner in Canada will be the North. With the first open water summer season of the north west passage, there will soon be many companies and investors putting money there, even if there is a recession in the USA. I would maybe go as far as saying this will still be the case even if there were a depression in the USA, even though yes I know a depression will hurt much of Canada too. I worry that in all of this the CND may well then be over valued in time and a possible correction may hit us as well, but hopefully we will be better prepared. Oh and the time Greenspon said about the USA getting hit by an overvaluation correction was in the same speech he gave about China having 10 times their normal USD reserves and Japan also having way more also. He commented on the fact that one day the USA will have to address this, as can not say you have control of your currency with so much USD being held outside the country and not in circulation. Roughly about 2 years ago, but I will admit that I could be wrong on the dates.

The trouble is Greenspon did say very early on that a day reconning was coming for the USD. He does seem to make sure that he will be remembered for doing so. It does not matter what the new man says or does, he can only try to hide this for as long as possible, but in the end it does have to happen. I do not think there ever is a good time for that kind of thing, so now is as good as any I guess. Maybe they are trying to keep a lid on it so they can dump all on Bush as he goes out of office, but that will not save the republicans much. People will still blame the party for Bush for quite some time to come i would think.

I can only hope that this will be stamped out real fast and the person who invocated this stupidity, either gets retrained or removed from their position. It does not pass the smell test or any other. This was a stupid civil servant, showing they the can get just as dumb as some of the NDP members.

You are probably right that all the parties will have to dela with Climate change, but I do not see it being a real election altering subject. While the PC'S are the only party to have actually done anything, even if most say it is not enough, it does show that they have set deadlines and limits. The Liberals with 13 years of a majority, did absolutely nothing on Kyoto, and never even set one dead line or limit. So anything they may now say is just posturing and the people of Canada will not be so easily taken in. What I do think will be made clear in any election upcoming is the costs of each level we try to achieve. This will be where the fire hits the pan so to speak, and yes it will seperate those who thought this was a free or not a costly action, to find out that what many are screaming for would mean taxes would be 15-20% higher in all levels of taxation. Once that is made clear we will see the attitude that maybe second best or even third best will be ok. That is why I do not think it will hold much sway when things come into the open.

I can say that yes we should be able to settle first nations land claim by the law of the land. But to do so properly we need to know what the law of the law was when they were first signed and what other laws were also in effect in those times. Such as the squatter's rights law, and the gifting of land through settlement. When these are taken in to account and given the rules and laws of there day, you would also have to understand that use it or lose it, as much as it sounds bad today, was the law of the land back then. So yes, the law of the land is where we need to start, but remember that to do it justice we need to know what the spirite of that law was in the time it was happening. Too many people still think this is a simple case, where it really is way more complicated then most realise. The First Nations are well aware of this and yes they wish to cherry pick the laws, and how they apply today. Where the government is more into taking the laws as they were in the time of the treaty. Some where in between is where the fair line should be. But this it seems has nothing to do with fairness. Now it has become issues where neither side will comproise their positions. The courts today give rulings that get ignored by first nations and for this the police need to arrest all those who do not obey the court order. Do it by reasonable force if necessary, but it must get done. If we allow the flouting of the courts then we will never stand a chance of settling these matters. It is that simple.