kp186

The trick here is to make the guv'mint more accountable as to how tax revenue is spent. An even harder job is to get Canadians off their complacent asses and actually start caring about what the government does. The one thing that disturbs me is how NO ONE is talking conservation. I'm still seeing commericals for pickup trucks with big V8's and I still hear people talking about how they NEED all that power. I think passenger cars should have strict limits as to how much torgue their engine can provide with no exceptions. I also think that rather than removing the tax from gasoline they should remove the sales tax from fuel-efficient cars and tax the hell out of the big ones. If you HAVE to have a Hummer or a pickup with the power of a jet airliner then you should pay maybe a 50% sales tax on it. One sure way to lower the price of a barrel of oil is decreased demand.

There was a time when we'd design and build our own helicopter specifically for our needs. We did it with the Arrow and the CF-100. If only we could get our so-called "leaders" to actually lead instead of playing politics, which is all they seem to know how to do.

Is there any such thing as a wholly-owned Canadian company anymore? I've heard tongue-in-cheek references to an American invasion of Canada over one issue or another. Take a look around. It's already happened. The USA owns us lock stock and barrel. I'm really surprised that Bombardier hasn't relocated to someplace like Texas yet. It's only a matter of time.

Short quiz... 9 of the 10 most venomous snakes in the world live where? The Sydney funnel web spider, one of the deadliest in the world, lives where? One of the world's largest populations of great white sharks is where? Where can you find waters teeming with box jellyfish, possibly the most venomous creature on the planet? The world's largest reptile, the salt water crocodile, lives where? In what country are you likely to be confronted by guys with corks hanging from their hats?

I've always maintained that religion is the worst thing that humans ever invented. Letting a religion, ANY religion, rule your life is always a bad thing. I keep hearing how Islam is one of the most tolerant of all the major religions but the headlines these days really don't bear that out. The world would be a much, much better place if Islam were wiped off the face of the earth, along with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and whatever. Without all these archaic and irrelevant beliefs holding us back we could really be the people we aspire to be.

By simple fact of geography a Canada/U.S. rivalry was as certain as the bread falling peanut butter side down. As a Canadian I'm aware that this country has done (and is doing) some things that frankly make me ashamed. But let's face it, U.S. bashing was bound to become a national pastime here. I mean, who else we gonna bash? The Mexicans? Our major cities are strung out along the U.S. border like barnacles sticking to the side of one of your aircraft carriers. We drive your cars, watch your TV and movies, sell you our goods, fly your airplanes and, like it or not, we're under your defense umbrella (another fact of geography that a lot of people don't get) and all the while we gleefully complain about you. The important fact here is that ALL we do is complain and argue. A lot of other countries would be trading artillery shells rather than barbs and tongue-in-cheek insults. By the way, Celine Dion is our revenge for the softwood lumber dispute and we're NOT taking her back!

I wonder how long the rest of Canada is going to put up with this nonsense and hold a referendum of its own - Do you want to keep Quebec in confederation? Yes or No? If the answer is no then we'll give them a year to get the h*ll off our land.

This is a clarification and a partial response to what I've read here so far. I'm not talking about the guy caught doing 60 in a 50 zone. That isn't covered under the street racing laws. I'm talking about these morons caught doing 170 and 180 kmh on the 401. Okay so speed isn't a factor in all accidents but think about it... do we need these people on our roads? Do you want your spouse and/or children tooling down the 402 with one of these idiots coming up behind them at 180 kmh? I say we get these people off our roads permanently. Just so you know, I thought I was being rather lenient. If you wanna know, I think anyone who causes another person's death by excessive speed and/or drinking while driving should be put up against a wall and shot. We've got to get away from this myth that human life is precious. Human life is the cheapest, most easily-replaced commodity on this planet and we can well do without criminals in our society. It's not like we're going to put a serious dent in the gene pool.

With Britney it's like passing a bloody accident on the freeway. Everyone slows down to look. We get a certain satisfaction watching someone famous self-destruct, especially someone like her, who couldn't cut it musically without her body and sexual "pop tart" image. Personally I love it when someone like that goes off the rails. There are too many talented musicians who can't get arrested these days because they don't appeal to the video generation and their cookie-cutter, corporate so-called "music".

Personally I think this is a potential time bomb. Look what happened to the crime rate in Miami when the Cubans started pouring in. Do we really want "barrios" like they have in east L.A.? Okay, so most of them are decent hard-working folk just looking for an even break. And Canada isn't the U.S. so maybe we won't have the problems of the big U.S. cities but still, I have a sense of "The Gathering Storm" here. Are we going to have to start putting French AND Spanish on all our labels? We have to draw a line somewhere and control who comes into this country. By the way, my place of employment is mostly immigrant-staffed and I have no problem with that at all. But these people went through the process. I think we should put a strict limit on "economic refugees" considering that our manufacturing sector is mostly going to Asia as it is.

So the police finally get some teeth in the speeding laws. Personally I don't think it goes far enough. Our roads are crowded and it's only going to get worse. I have a few things I'd like to see happen. 1. Ban the V8 engine in private vehicles. No exceptions save for REGISTERED antiques. 2. Make cars limited to 120 kmh. Impose severe penalties for tampering. 3. First offense? You lose the car permanently and your license for one year. 4. Second offense, you lose the car and your license permanently. 5. Speeding and no license? You do a two-year stretch in the Gray Bar Hotel. Double it for every subsequent offense. 6. Educate. Go into the high schools and show them pictures of accident scenes before the ambulance gets there. Traumatic, yes, but they'll remember it. Hell, put these pictures on billboards on the 400 highways. 7. Do away with driving... causing death laws. It's second-degree murder and treat it as such. And please don't start whining about hardships caused by loss of driving privileges. If you live way out in the country and work in the city the answer is simple... DON"T SPEED! Okay, I know there are bugs in this. Like pulling trailers. With some of these behemoths a wimpy little six-banger ain't gonna do it but the way oil is being used up maybe it's time we started changing the way we live and realize we're eventually going to have to start doing with less. Besides, there's a business opportunity for someone with a commercial truck. What do you think?

As a Canadian I'm tired of... * Our so-called 'leaders' waiting until just before an election to do anything. * Canadians gleefully bashing the U.S. while we can't even build our own car and the Koreans can. * Canadians who think hockey 'defines' our nation. It's a pointless, meaningless sport. Get used to that. * The same-sex marriage debate. There are more important things going on. * Canadian politicians whose answer to every crisis is to put a tax on something rather than come up with viable solutions. * Sitting on about half the natural resources in the world and not owning any of them. * Our government's weak and laughable action on global warming. Actually, this goes for all governments. * Our weak and laughable criminal justice system. * The sonic booms created by our medical and nursing school graduates moving to the U.S. * Bills involving pay raises for MP's and MPP's defying the laws of physics by moving through the House faster than the speed of light. * Our military pilots flying planes from other countries when we used to build the best in the world. * Winter. 'Nuff said.

While the political and moral issues of our troops being in Afghanistan are indeed the stuff of barroom fights and endless debate there is one aspect that I have not seen or heard mentioned - experience. If we're going to maintain a professional military let's realize what that means. These are the people we pay to do our fighting and dying for us. The more experience they have then the fewer of them will come home in boxes. A military needs to get into a fight once in a while just to maintain combat know-how. All the training and simulation in the world can't prepare you for the real thing. The troops in basic training now will benefit from the experiences of those who are over there now and that kind of information is invaluable and irreplaceable. The last big to-do we were in was Korea and it's a much different world now. We owe it to our troops to let them do what a military is supposed to do and that means getting experience in actual combat so that we keep our "edge". If we aren't willing to send troops into harm's way then why bother having a military?