JB Globe

Mike, you just said that you were American. So please explain to me why I should start caring about what an American thinks of my Canadian immigration system. What planet have you been living on, and do you get Lou Dobbs there? And since your American vision of what Canada is excludes Quebecois, descendents of Black Loyalists, 1st Nations, and anyone who isn't protestant, I think you're on your own on this one.

Is anyone actually going to engage any of the points I brought up here? Is anyone going to debate this using actual facts? Or is this sniping par for the course around these parts?

If this is the same poll you posted about in the other post today, than it says NOTHING OF THE SORT. Either post the poll or retract this statement. Why are you threatened by people with dual identities? I for one see nothing destructive about someone being Polish-Canadian or Indo-Canadian. Try as a might, but when I see a Portuguese Flag flying alongside a Candian flag at a house in my neighbourhood on Portugal's national holiday - I don't see something evil and threatening. Maybe it's because I know that when Canada Day rolls around both flags will be Canadian. Maybe it's because I know that most people who celebrate their own ethnic heritege's big days are also likely to hit up Canada Day as well. Maybe I'm just happy that folks are happy and proud to be Canadian, and I really don't care if, at the same time, they're proud of another part of who they are. I mean really - if they're proud Canadian citizens, and they contribute to the economy, what is the problem, really? Mike, do you love Canada or not? Are you a proud Canadian or not? Because this makes it seem like you secretly detest this country. You're all over the place - you say people should adapt to "Canadian culture" then you go on to say you pretty much dislike Canadians in general - aren't Canadians the product of a culture? What does it say about this culture you say everyone should adopt if it produces people you dislike? And for JC's sake - how small is your world? You dislike Catholics IN GENERAL now? Wow - you sure picked the best town to live in if you don't like difference . . . Okay, now you've gone off your rocker completely - you're calling yourself American and praising America, and you spent most of this post telling us how you want people to stop calling themselves Italian-Canadian and just Canadian? Which is it? This is just about the most hypocritical post I've seen in a long while. Is it usually like this? If people just let you talk do you usually shoot yourself in the foot? I thought you lived in Toronto and were Canadian - now you're American? What's the deal?

You mean, 77% believe in REASONABLE ACCOMODATION - which of course, you're against. Reasonable Accomodation means maintaining key concepts - such as good government, economic freedom, justice, etc - but at the same time working to make society more inclusive for all people. Sometimes that may mean confronting xenophobia where it exists either in society or in an institution. You on the other hand would like to see people never mention their ethnic heritege, never display it, never celebrate it, never participate in it. ie - Stop playing soccer and start playing hockey! Otherwise get out of my country! Essentially - you would like people to completely kill off that part of who they are.

What is Canadian culture? I live in Toronto and I don't see any evidence of this. I see evidence of changes to make society more INCLUSIVE, but I don't see society fundamentally changing that much. I think the real problem stems from many white Canadians who are used to being at the centre of everything, are now sharing the same stage with people they don't know much about and are nervous about as a result. I really don't understand what the big deal about this is - there are a few Toronto Police officers who wear turbans (which match the uniform colours and have the same steel badge on the hats) and last time I checked, the sky hasn't fallen in. No one's been able to tell me the great damage that has been done to Canadian society because of this. Frankly it looks like some people are making mountains out of molehills on this one. They wear a different hat, and they're good police officers - oh the humanity!

What's Canadianism?

Well, what is Mike? Because so far you've only alluded to your vision of Canada being essentially Anglo-Canadian-Protestant culture and nothing else.

I agree. We're crippling their economies and keeping them in poverty by using our control of global trade to make it impossible for their farmers to compete on a level playing field. Who says they're not using modern farming techniques? You're just assuming that Africa=backward - but they're using the same dwarf-wheat we're using here - they use crop rotation, they diversify their fields with different crops. They use less machinery, mainly because it's cheaper to use labour than it is to rent or buy heavy harvesting machines. And keeping cost down is important when you're selling in a developing country - but even with this they can't compete with the subsidized prices on Western grain. I don't think you understand the cycle that these subsidies have started: 1 - We flood their markets with subsidized grain with prices so low and quantities so high that local farmers can't compete. 2 - Local farmers have to cut their profit margin to next to nothing to compete - since we've made it illegal for governments to have subsidies on their grain the way we have subsidies on ours. 3 - These farmers which make up 80% OF THE POPULATION IN MOST COUNTRIES can't afford to improve their farm because they make almost no profit. 4 - These same local farmers also can't afford to send their kids to school in the hopes of climbing the economic ladder. 5 - This means that there is a lack of professionals in these countries in virtually all professional fields. However you want to cut it, agricultural subsidies are hypocritical - on an ethical level - I've already established that. But even on a capitalistic, free-market level - these subsidies are the very antithesis of free-market capitalism.

Allow me to add to the mix - Agricultural Subsidies by Western Nations Which means that a pound of wheat grown with fertilizer, pesticide, shipped across an ocean and sold in West Africa will always cost less than wheat grown up the road from the market. Meaning, farmers can only compete by cutting their prices, meaning they make next to nothing. Without any profit, they can't expand their operation or save money for education for their kids, meaning they can't move up the social ladder. This explains why pretty much the same amount of people are in agriculture now as there was right after independence. Our trade policies, which we've pushed on developing nations by our most beloved proxy - the World Bank/IMF make it illegal for these nations to subsidize their farmers the way we subsidize our own. We hear G8 and EU leaders promoting free trade, but free trade isn't actually fair trade because the playing field isn't level. Exploitative policies like this have much, much more to do with Sub-Saharan Africa's economic situation than a lack of development aid does. And in this case the West is almost entire responsible. God forbid Western farmers should have to compete with developing farmers on a level playing field.

Actually, you'd be more of an Assimilationist - you want people to hide their cultures, and destroy them. You don't want a hybrid of cultures, because that would mean that for example - some Indian traditions, or Italian traditions, etc - would become part of Canadian national culture (ie - the way Curry Houses are a staple of British cuisine now). After all, you did begin this post delighted that at your dinner party no one ever discussed anything about their cultural heritege - if you were an integrationist, you'd want people to discuss their heritege as a way of finding out how to combine it into a hybrid culture.

So, do you enjoy providing those who claim you are racist with ammunition for their arguement? Or are you just sloppy?

Either back up these random baseless attacks with an actual arguement or shutup please. Unless of course, you would like everyone to start posting "Mikedavid00 is a Neo-Nazi who eats kittens for breakfast" Because that's what the discussion will turn into if you continue to be lazy and sloppy.

Well, if rapid migration automatically lead to the situation in France, than surely, it would be similar here in Toronto . . . Oh wait, it's nothing like it is there . . . Seems like there's another reason for France's problems . . . Actually, the reason non-white French don't work as much as white French is because they can't due to widespread racism across French society. Take for example SOS Racisme's experiments - identical CV's are sent out to a diverse range of employers, the only difference being that one set had French names and the other had African and Islamic names. The second set recieved much fewer positive answers from employers. Also consider the fact that it's common practice for many employers to ask prospective employees to attatch photos to their resume - my friend encountered this while working in Paris, the employers would give her a vague reason why they did this, but once she was hired other people confided in her that this was done to identify African or Muslim people who changed their names to a French name to try and get their foot in the door. Also your claim that immigrants to France created ghettos is ridiculous. They didn't hold Le Corbusier's hand while he was drawing up the urban nightmare that are the social housing projects in the Parisian suburbs. It was municipal leaders across France who voted against allowing social housing in their city, thus forcing it to be concentrated in Paris and a few other cities. They created the ghettos - they didn't want to be anywhere near "the immigrants" so they packed them into a terribly designed and isolated block of high-rises. Sorry - you just finished saying that French immigrants are lazy, don't want to work, won't integrate, etc - now you're saying that North-African-French (who make up one of the largest immigrant groups in France) are a dream? Which is it? And if you wonder why people claim your racist - perhaps it's comments such as referring to immigrants as "garbage" But of course, for many people, myself included, who we are is a combination of several influences, including where we live now and where are parents are from. We don't consider our mix of cultures to be "foreign" as you do. We see it as very Canadian - especially since Canada has been a cultural melting pot since Confederation. Yes, they're usually called well-meaning-but-often-paternally-racist-white-liberals OR people who are deeply ingrained in racialist ways of thinking. Well, that's the thing - there aren't really any "laws of culture" - culture is constantly changing and evolving, it isn't static. Certain policies can guide culture, but you can never contain it. Multiculturalism simply means that people have the option of maintaining part of their ethnic heritege if they so choose, while being participating citizens in national society. Example . . . Brazil is itself the product of multiculturalism - various cultural elements from many different cultures have, over time, combined to form a distinct national culture, all the while those different cultural heriteges still remain in some segments of the population. For example - Samba, Afro-Brazilian drumming, Capoeira, are things which weren't invented by purely by Brazilians in some sort of cultural vacuum - they were things which developed in Brazil when immigrants adapted and fused their cultural traditions to their new home. No national culture was enforced, as you seem to suggest should be done here, but rather culture was allowed to develop organically - which is the main reason why Brazil is known around the world for being such a vibrant and exciting place.

Are you trying to deny that there is no link between rule of law and the amount of violence in a country? Really? You don't think that if the NYC police force vanished and you could get away with anything, things wouldn't start to go south pretty quickly?

So why bother having a legal system in the first place? If a person is not satisfied with the results of a fraud case against you, can they go ahead and rob your house in an act of vigalante justice? Sometimes technicalities mean the difference between a killer's sentance and freedom, and sometimes they're what prevent an innocent person from being charged with a crime. Not sure what this has to do with most of my post, considering I only used this as an example, the rest had something to do with terrorism, I believe

Your words, not mine. Understanding why OBL does what he does isn't the same thing as saying what he does is justified, which it isn't in the slightest. Afghanistan - Is occupied by Western troops, and was the former home base for OBL and Al-Qaeda. The central government is weak and controls little of the country. Western powers run the show, essentially. Hence why its a target of OBL Pakistan - Ruled by a military dictator who is allied with the US in the fight against Al-Qaeda - hence why OBL targets his regime. India - Major acts of terrorism in India are motivated by the conflict in Kashmir, and have been that way many decades before Al-Qaeda even existed. (ie - India has stated that the recent Mumbai train bombings were the work of Kashmiri separatist terrorists) Making sweeping generalizations about a religion of over a billion is like making a generalization about all people with pale skin - it's lazy, always inaccurate and represents the ignorance of the person who makes it. Calling someone out on their lack of knowledge on a subject, by pointing out major logical flaws in their arguement, has nothing to do with generalization. The same way you study Christians who live in the same kinds of countries. Your dismissal of the PEW Studies as rubbish is quaint, but considering you seem to be claiming you know how 1.5 billion Muslims think about issues, I'd like to know how you came by your information, and how it was gathered. It varies, for example - two states which are similar, Jordan and Syria, have much different levels of human rights. I'm sorry if I'm blowing your mind - but their is variation and difference in both the Arab World, and the Muslim world. It isn't a monolith. Also, considering the unstable nature of the Middle East, it's not surprising that there are many authoritarian governments - chaos is the enemy of human rights. Stability breeds good government. And frankly, most Syrians and Jordanians are looking at Iraq right now and thinking - "If that's democracy, I'll keep this dictatorship if it means I stay alive" Once the region becomes more stable, you'll see more democracies, that's why the gulf states - which HAVE been stable for some time - are moving towards democracy. Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, to name a few. Yes, it's true - there are rich nations in the Middle East. Oh, most insurgents aren't Iraqi? Really? How do you know that? It's one thing to claim I hate America, it's another thing to prove it. So I suggest directly quoting me or shutting up with this baseless attack. If you can't argue without personal insults, maybe you shouldn't be here. Of course, there are good and bad ways to go about achieving this goal.

Thanks for the straw man, the answer is so obvious I don't know why you bothered to ask me - NO. The thing is, rationalizing WHY Bin Laden is doing what he's doing isn't the same thing as saying IT'S OKAY for him to do so. Terrorism is never justified on legal or ethical grounds, but as much as you would like to deny it, there are REASONS behind why people commit acts of terrorism. I don't understand why acknowledging the link between the actions of terrorists and the foreign policy of the US is some sort of moral defeat. In fact, it's part of the solution - you can't really solve a problem until you admit there is a problem. Acknowledging the link doesn't mean you give in to terrorist desires either - it just means you sit down and think about a better way of doing things, maybe there's a way to accomplish what you want to accomplish without becoming the target of terrorists? Maybe there's a way to do it that doesn't make it look like Imperialism to the local population? Maybe you just made a dumb move in the past, maybe there's a way to be smarter about the situation. I don't see what's treasonous about that, unless you're unable to admit America has made big mistakes in the past - which isn't healthy for you or for your country. Why would we need to? Per capita, no group of people on earth is as rich or influencial as we are. We're the last group on earth that would need to resort to the tactics of the desperate. It's like asking why a CEO doesn't run a counterfit phone card scam - he doesn't need to. Of course, that private property was purchased during the colonial period and under the first Shah, without the consent of, and to the anger of the public. I don't think that Mossadegh's plan was "wrong" given that context - also considering the fact that under the previous agreement 85% of the oil wealth was sent to Britain. Frankly, the UK used their position as a colonial power to leverage an exploitive agreement from an illegitimate leader with disdain from the local population, Iran was in the right on this one. Oh yes, of course it should . . . No really, stop with the straw men, it's lazy . . . Frankly, the West should realize that there will always be people who disagree with the foreign policy of the US and other nations, and it should seek to meet them in the sphere of a negotiating table rather than at the barrell of a gun. Example - the Egyptian Brotherhood long ago abandoned terrorism in favour of politics, and Mubarak continues to outlaw them. Frankly groups that choose to affect change democratically and peacefully should be rewarded with the opportunity to enter into negotiations, they should get political legitimacy. If you refuse to speak to people who disagree with you, you make peace impossible and war inevitable. And in case you didn't know, speaking to someone, and listening to their concerns isn't the same thing as caving into their every desire.

So the fight continues in an effort only to give the fight meaning? Is there an actual goal that can be accomplished in Iraq or is it a situation where there can be no solid conclusive "end," and thus no way to "win" and by continuing with the current strategy the people involved are just refusing to accept the reality of the situation? Of course, Iraq wasn't a haven for terrorists under Saddam. It was the playground of a dictator, but one that was largely impotent in strength due to the sanctions against him. Now that Iraq is functionally a failed state, terrorism thrives there, just as it does in other failed states like Afghanistan. The main difference between your approach to fighting terrorism and mine is that you seem to be advocating a war of attrition here (ie: "[iraq] gave us a chance to kill as many extremists as we can") and I'm advocating the strategy of Containment. I think 9/11 proved why a war of attrition is unwinable by the US - For the few hundred thousand dollars spent and the efforts of 19 hijackers the US has had to spend trillions on two wars, two occupations, and spending on homeland security and intelligence. That and the fact that, if you believe this is a war between the US and all the world's Muslims (which you suggest at the end), considering how much trouble a nation of 26 million is giving the US, what makes you think the US can handle 1.5 billion people? Not the same thing - Germany attacked American Allies, and then its Ally (Japan) attacked the US directly - meaning Germany was the aggressor against the US, and the US could not guarantee its own safety until that regime was gone, meaning it HAD to occupy Germany to eliminate the threat. Once there, it made the great decision to make sure the mistakes of WWI's Treaty of Versailles weren't repeated - it's main purpose was to improve the lives of ordinary Germans, so that they could never be duped by someone like a Hitler again and establish economic links as well. Iraq on the other hand, posed no threat to the US or its allies when the decision to invade was made, Saddam was, like I said earlier, weaker than he'd ever been before. The invasion and occupation was entirely unnecessary, and has diverted much, much money and manpower away from critical missions like rebuilding Afghanistan (I believe the last figure I saw was only about 3% of the money needed to rebuild Afghanistan has been spent). Well, if you condemn the actions of the Shah, for example, and aren't happy that the US installed him there, than you probably also should be upset that the US is supporting a another autocratic leader in Mubarak in Egypt. It's not as if this pattern of supporting unpopular dictators who are Western-friendly has stopped. Do you really think this is a war of religions? Really? It's one thing to be emotional when a tragedy occurs, it's another to let emotion guide your response to that tragedy. It's like deciding to go avenge a loved one's death out of anger and loss, rather than assisting the police to nab the suspect.

Well, the thing is, most Americans view their nation as the City on the Hill - and I highly doubt most of them would want their nation to become a blatantly Imperial power. Also considering how wary the rest of the world is from American unilateralism as it is, I think the reaction to blatant Imperialism would be pretty severe - I don't see the general publics of many nations being anything but against such a policy.

Actually it's government inaction that's gotten us to this point. Darfur simply is not a prioirity. When trying to resolve disputes it's never a good idea to use emotional/morally-based terms and language. That said, Darfur fits the legal definition of genocide, so you can call a spade a spade in legal terms, which really accomplishes the same goal of condemning the actions of a government, without making the dialogue about emotion and morals. I don't understand what you mean by "morally equivalize my culture to extinction," and if you believe my arguement is BS, that's fine, but I don't really care about someone's unsubstantiated opinion. Actually there are many questions about that, hence the intense debate about the conflict. It all stems from how do you categorize and rank different forms of oppression and violence. In terms of suicide bombs, it's easy to tally up the death toll, but how do you tally up the impact of living in a virtual prison for several decades, which is the experience of Palestinians? Also, since the Israelis and Palestinians are in such radically different positions, there's really no way to compare what the other would do if they were in the other side's shoes? Would Israelis be using suicide bombs? We know they did bomb European Embassasies and made assasinations - but since then their experience has been shaped by their situation - why engage in guerilla warfare, which reduces your international standing, if you can defeat all of the region's military with your own? If Palestinians could defeat Israel militarily, would they continue to use suicide bombings? Of course, some groups of people are in the same situation the Palestinians are in and they don't engage in suicide bombings - so it's not a clear case of the environment determines the tactics. Pretty much, the entire situation is a huge moral mess, which makes proclaiming good guys and bad guys useless, it also makes moral equivalence useless, which means that any solution to the conflict should be free from moral arguments, and based purely on legal grounds which can be debated more easily than a case of "who is more evil" can. I assume you're referring to Hamas, which of course is far more complicated an organization than you suggest. Hamas' military wing is staffed by competent people, which is why they've been successful - and they know that there's no chance of wiping Israel off the map. That's empty rhetoric, and they know it, but it's useful as a political tool. Being such a big organization, there's much dissension about this rhetoric, which many believe to be holding the organization back from being a bigger player - ie: accept the existence of Israel, and get on with the peace talks already. And seeing as how Fatah is now viewed as a Western-puppet regime, any negotiations have to include Hamas if you want them to work - so, the best thing would do would be to make their acceptance of Israel's existence mandatory for peace talks, but to not outright ban them for life from peace talks, no matter if they accept Israel or not. That's a terrible analogy, mainly because it completely leaves out the Israeli Occupation, which is the nuclear reactor of the whole conflict.

Of course, but when you live in a state where there's rule of law, and other means to settle disputes, it makes either the thought of armed conflict not worthwhile, or the risk of jail is too great. Take any society with underlying communal tensions, and then strip away the rule of law, and eventually those who are normally kept in check by the legal system and police are free to pursue their agendas by means of violence. If you lived in a nation where someone could kill your brother and there was no police or legal system for you to turn to, you'd be much more likely to pick up a gun and go looking for revenge than if you knew there was a chance that the person would be caught and jailed.

Question - How would you know she's disappointed she doesn't fully belong to a minority? Aren't you just making a gross assumption about an individual without knowing much about them? Question - Who endowed you with the authority to decide for others what their cultural identity is? Why do you get to decide how people view themselves? And where are you getting this all-encompassing objective knowledge that enables you to do so? Is it even really any of your business if someone likes to cook sushi or not?

This quote reminded me of my favourite Stephen Colbert monologues where he talked about race for the first time. He begins by saying he's colour-blind saying: ""Now, I don't see race... People tell me I'm white, and I believe them, because I own a lot of Jimmy Buffet albums." In an effort to prove the fact that he's color-blind, he then goes on to list all of his token-non-white friends, and shows photos which supposidly prove this: http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/image...kfriendalan.jpg So, after thinking of the Colbert bit, imagine my surprise when this followed . . . So, you're colourblind, which is why you can identify people based on their ethnicity . . . Really? I mean, to my eye, it seems like a little bit of wishful thinking here, you clearly aren't colourblind. No one is and from the sounds of your post you aren't either (ie- you chose to mention your friend has an accent when it's completely irrelevant to the discussion, why would a culture-blind person do that?) It would seem you're doing what Colbert did in that bit (although his was a conscious parody) and what a lot of white-liberals use to "prove their not racially biased" in that you're listing your "ethnic friends" as though you'll get a badge that proves you're culture-blind. There's no danger in acknowledging cultural differences between people, in fact it's a lot healthier than trying to pretend you don't see those differences at all - after all, a person who refuses to acknowledge differences is someone who can get themselves into a lot of trouble - someone who doesn't "see culture" also can't see where they could offend someone of said culture with an ignorant comment or action. (ie - "oh sorry, I didn't see your hijab, I'm culture-blind you see, that's why I put that pork-sausage on your plate, not because I wanted to be a prick). I mean, we've seen in France where this attitude got a nation when it was applied on a policy-level - The French government for decades was culture-blind, refusing to keep statistics that included ethnic categories, as a result, there was no official data that showed the situation most French of Arab and African descent were in, and without the data, there could be no policy to improve the situation, especially when a policy targeting people based on ethnicity would be against government policy. And while the government refused to acknowledge culture, believing ignoring it would lead to better integration - the reverse was true - racism throughout society was allowed to fester and grow without and checks from the government and this pushed Arab and African French into ghettos and out of the mainstream economy. Of course it's important to acknowledge that a person's culture or religion is only one aspect that makes them who they are, but it is an important part. Just like it's important to someone who's female that she's perceived as a woman in society - that has affected the course her life has taken, it affects how she perceives herself and how others perceive her. But again, being a woman is not the only thing that makes up a woman's personality or life experience. And unfortunately, we still live in a society where some differences lead to people being treated better or worse than others. You can't really fix those indifferences if you don't acknowledge that they exist. Define "normal people" - I'm interested to hear this, because I was unaware there was such a thing. But as for no one discussing cultural or religious issues - is this par for the course at all your dinner gatherings? Can you really assume that the reason these topics weren't discussed was because no one was interested in them? Some people just aren't comfortable discussing these issues around people they don't know, because they don't want to risk getting into arguments. What would happen if someone did bring up such an issue? Would you shut them down? Would you tell them their opinion doesn't matter, because they should be culture-blind, like yourself? And if in fact none of your friends ever discuss any cultural or religious issues they've been dealing with - is that really healthy? Like it or not your cultural and religious upbringing helps form who you are as a person. Some people place a greater or lesser extent on it than others, and that's fine - that's their choice. But you appear to be saying (either you're assuming this, or your friends have told you themselves) that all of your friends have abandoned any cultural or religious identity or heritage and are therefor "culture-blind" And there's a big difference between someone only being somewhat involved in their cultural heritege, and someone who denies it, and/or resents that part of themselves. That's where you get into the area of self-hatred. You can never really blame people who do this, because this is just their reaction to pressures they face from society - such as what you're suggesting which is that the only way in your books for immigrants or their children to be accepted by mainstream Canadian society (which itself is a loaded term) is if they remove from themselves many of the things that make them who they are, and replace them with . . . Well, with what exactly is up for debate: after all there was never ONE culture in Canada - we've always been a multicultural nation since confederation. Exactly what is this "Canadian culture" that everyone's supposed to adopt anyway? Actually, your dinner parties seem to be the antithesis of multiculturalism: after all, if you seek to ignore and destroy cultural differences, how can your parties be about many (as in - multi) cultures? Wouldn't a more apt term for your parties be: MONOCULTURAL? Isn't that the end result of your views on culture in Canada? That we erase all cultural difference and end up "being the same?" I also suspect that your desire for monoculturalism is opportunistic - for example, if North America was completely monocultural than we wouldn't have blues, jazz, rock, soul or many other musical forms that came about because different musical traditions from different cultures mashed together to form new ones. But of course, you probably like some of those genres, so you yourself enjoy the benefits of a multicultural society. You probably don't want to give up Italian or Chinese food either - but that's what would happen if we had been a monocultural society from the get-go. Also, I can't imagine how much more ill-informed the general public would be about the rest of the world if it weren't for the few friends most people have who are themselves of their families are from different parts of the world. After-all, people who discuss other places and situations in the world with friends who are from those areas are much, much more knowledgeable than folks who are surrounded by people who are of the exact same background as them. Frankly, I prefer parties where people aren't in self-denial about their own culture and how they perceive others, but rather they choose to learn about each other and figure out ways to check whatever biases they were raised with, and learn about cultures they don't happen to know a lot about, in an effort to become a more knowledgeable and better person and citizen of a multicultural nation. Culture matters, just like religion and sex do, but they're not the be all and end all of a person. I can honestly say that living in a truly multicultural environment is one of the biggest positive influences in my life.

The thing is, veiling one's face has nothing to do with Islam. The Niqab (what the garment is called) is a relatively recent invention that's used by an extreme minority of Muslim women around the world, and only in sizable numbers in certain countries. It's based in culture, not religion, and as such doesn't get the same legal status. It's totally different from the Hijab, which has been around even longer than Islam, and was adopted from Islam's beginnings as a key element of faith. I don't see it as a religious issue at all - it's a cultural one. If it was something to do with the Hijab, than it would be religious.

I've been so thoroughly unimpressed with all three major parties that I'll be voting Green as a protest vote. I don't see any party swaying my vote any time soon. The only problem is that my riding's voted Liberal federally and provincially for 50 years. And idiots wonder why that party takes Toronto for granted. Oh, and I'll definitely be voting for the new election system, which is probably as important as the election itself. Strange that no one's mentioned it. That way future votes like mine won't be thrown away completely.