Wild Bill

For the bazillionth time, how do you KNOW that 60% can't stomach him? We all know that 60% prefer someone else but that's NOT the same thing as they can't stand Harper! Some can't. Some just like someone else better! Do you have a poll or a breakdown of how all of that 60% feel? How many liked Ignatieff? Could we add his numbers to Harper's and make the claim that the total can't stomach Jack? Or are you just pulling things out of your butt?

Well, perhaps we should wait until the polls close before we doff our tinfoil hats! Rest assured that many other members are just waiting to point out to folks who made predictions that were too extreme how silly they were, complete with quotes from the predictors own posts. If you keep making the extreme posts that you have been, I would advise you to consider re-registering under a different name if the election results make you look too foolish. Me, I couldn't really get that excited if Jack became PM! I don't think it likely but it would not be the end of the world. The sun would still come up the following day. I don't subscribe to this partisan hyperbole. Desides, if you had been around for any length of time you would have known that I'm not really a conservative. I'm more a classic Liberal! I'm not surprised that you haven't recognized that from my postings but then again, it appears that your definition of a conservative is more simplistic than that of most folks. You seem to define a conservative as anyone who is not extremely left wing! Normally, I would just put you on 'ignore', since you rarely give any substance to your arguments. Shouting slogans seems to be about it. However, I do admit that often you have made me laugh! These days I can use a good laugh! I owe you my thanks, Rick! I have faith in the people! Once in a while they might make a bad mistake but that too is just part of the corrective process. Sometimes people have to learn the hard way! The lesson sinks home more strongly.

I keep repeating that this could be the start of a very good thing! Canadians end up with two clear electoral choices. The brokerage party of no fixed principles will go the way of the Liberal party in Britain. The NDP will have a chance to grow up! They won't be restricted to appealing just to the fringe demographics. They could become like the British Labour Party, able to work with Big Business without insulting them, while giving more respect to the common man. Quebec gets a federalist option that better suits their own socialist culture. The BQ will be left with all the old, dying guys stuck in the 60's. No doubt there will be some kinks in the evolutionary process but I can see much reason for optimism. Polls have shown that Jack's personal popularity is far higher than that of his party. If he brings them to the rank of Loyal Opposition he will have the power to effect change within his own party. These changes would help to attract more qualified people, who understand that real wealth comes from business and that government needs to strike a sustainable balance. It's too bad for the Liberals but they have done it to themselves. Things might not work out quite as bad as they look by the time we actually vote but no one can deny that for the Liberals things are looking very bleak indeed.

What does a bunch of refugees from rabble.com posting comments on an opinion board prove? Do they represent mainstream Canada? You're stretching well past the realm of ridiculous. I'm not sure why you keep doing this. If this were rabble.com I'd say it was simple group masturbation from all those perpetual leftwingers locked into a perpetual adolescence. They all seem to keep feeding each other, like a minister preaching to a mirror. Since it's MLW, who do you expect to convince to your point of view? Almost everyone, even those supporting opposition parties, can see that your arguments have but a boring sizzle with no intellectual meat to them. It seems pointless, unless you are so bored you have nothing else to do! If I were you, I would think about whether I am helping or hurting my cause...

I took the liberty of contacting the mother ship for the source of your partisan arguments: " [clop clop] ARTHUR: Old woman! DENNIS: Man! ARTHUR: Old Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there? DENNIS: I'm thirty seven. ARTHUR: What? DENNIS: I'm thirty seven -- I'm not old! ARTHUR: Well, I can't just call you `Man'. DENNIS: Well, you could say `Dennis'. ARTHUR: Well, I didn't know you were called `Dennis.' DENNIS: Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you? ARTHUR: I did say sorry about the `old woman,' but from the behind you looked-- DENNIS: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior! ARTHUR: Well, I AM king... DENNIS: Oh king, eh, very nice. An' how'd you get that, eh? By exploitin' the workers -- by 'angin' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an' social differences in our society! If there's ever going to be any progress-- WOMAN: Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here. Oh -- how d'you do? ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who's castle is that? WOMAN: King of the who? ARTHUR: The Britons. WOMAN: Who are the Britons? ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king. WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes-- WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again. DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would-- ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle? WOMAN: No one lives there. ARTHUR: Then who is your lord? WOMAN: We don't have a lord. ARTHUR: What? DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. ARTHUR: Yes. DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. ARTHUR: Yes, I see. DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,-- ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more-- ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet! WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is? ARTHUR: I am your king! WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you. ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings. WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then? ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king! DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away! ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up! DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed! ARTHUR: Bloody peasant! DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you hear that, did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn't you?"

Context, mon ami. The Poles and the Irish did not define the political basis for having a country on their race. You are right that Quebecers do not claim to be superior because of their race, just to be not the same as the rest of us and therefore entitled to their own country! You see, to TROC, that is some kind of bizarre tribalism. TROC is a mixture of many races and cultures. The idea of one alone being different and entitled to special consideration is just not valid. Your definition of "pur laine" may well be correct. I grant that you live where the phrase was born, not me. Still, who cares? What's important is what enough people in TROC believe! This is politics and politics is about perception, not truth. As far as the threat of having good relations with an independent Quebec, why would you assume that most of TROC would care? Ottawa would have some problems over highways and the St. Laurence Seaway but the average citizen in Red Deer or Owen Sound would likely not care a bit! He never thought about Quebec before and after separation it would become simply another foreign country. There would also be enough anger over the divorce that Quebec would not be a very well liked foreign country! The popular mood in TROC would be to treat Quebec like Brazil, or Malta. Nothing special, just a blob on the map that used to share the same colour as the rest of us! No, the only thing the average TROC citizen would care about would be money! In his anger, if any ruling party in Ottawa was even PERCEIVED as favouring Quebec in any separation deal they would die in flames the next election! It would be hard to negotiate with someone who's afraid that if he even LOOKS like giving you anything he will lose his job. You should understand M Benz that I myself am saying what I believe to be true and NOT what I personally would wish! I have some close Quebecois friends and I would sorely miss Bra D'or beer (mais PAS MAUDITZ!) i just think that you have a very self-centered and Pollyanna view of how easy it would be for Quebec to separate and how good a relationship the two halves would enjoy afterwards. In my view, it would be a very bitter and long drawn out fight, with much hurt on both sides. Who ever heard of a painless divorce?

Give it a rest, Rick! There have been Tory and NDP signs vandalized. It's been happening since we've HAD election signs! 999 times out of a thousand the party accused had nothing to do with it. Some over-righteous neanderthal of a private citizen has a few two many brewskis and decides he personally is going to do the world a favour. 999 times out of a thousand that private citizen is really just a nobody trying to make himself look important, as some kind of partisan ninja, singlehandedly changing the results of the ballot by his actions! Surely you can do better than these posts! Really, they are so "high school"!

Here we have a political candidate busy as hell in the middle of a campaign. She has no time to check out her appointments - that's what her team is for! She is invited to a meeting at a school and it comes out that some scumbag is also there. Now, the odds are extremely long that she knew anything about the scumbag. Not being of that ethnic persuasion herself, his name was not likely to be an easy one for her to remember, even if she had followed his history closely. Now folks are accusing her of consorting with a terrorist scumbag! This is an obvious setup! It is pure partisan crap and not very good crap, at that! Who knows, perhaps at some time in the past, she and the scumbag may have shared the same bus! Or worse yet, gone to the same shopping mall! Somebody is either very lowbrow with their tricks or else very desperate.

I think your ideas are racist. I do not know if you consciously realize that! You say you are different. Why? Because you are French! That to TROC is the very definition of a racist justification. You say TROC is different from Quebec. Why? Because they are Anglos! That too is a racist statement and also an inaccurate one. Much of TROC are NOT Anglos! How else can one translate "pur laine"? It doesn't matter if you disagree with me, or even if your arguments convince me that I am wrong. I am expressing a VERY popular view in TROC as to the real basis for the Quebec separatiste movement! Hell, I first learned of this idea from some Montreal friends! I always considered them Quebecers and was surprised to hear that in the separatiste quarters they were not! Since some were descended from Italian immigrants and some from Irish in Labrador, they were not thought of as "French enough". All of them had been Quebecois for more than 4 generations! Again, not of the "pur laine". Is it any wonder we outside Quebec who see and hear this going on begin to believe there are some sheets and pillow case hoods in the PeQuistes' closets, a la the KKK? You should poke your nose outside of Quebec once in a while and get a feel for what other people are thinking. As I have said, if separatistes ever think they will end up in negotiations with TROC they should be realistic as to how their negotiating rivals view them.

Guyser, you may be quite right on what Quebec SHOULD pay as it's half of what's owed, but it doesn't matter. If Quebec separates, it is a dead certainty that Quebec will calculate ITSELF what it owes, if anything! You have to remember that the PeQuistes and the Bloc are really socialist parties. By the time they get through with their math, TROC will owe THEM! Whatever they owe, they simply won't pay! Period and end of story. If Canada tries to put pressure on them to pay their debts, they will start their "victim" whining! Most likely they will expect that Ottawa will continue to give them transfer payments and pay all the welfare an pension cheques. What they don't understand is that it would be political suicide for any party in Ottawa to do such a thing after a separation. No party is likely to do that just to please Quebec as she goes out the door! It would be a very bitter, angry and emotional divorce. The lawyers will make millions for years!

Well, I'm not all THAT right but I'll add a flame! It doesn't matter how you feel about the issue. Math is math. All these immigrant grandparents cost money. Love doesn't pay for hospital care. Dollars do. Either the budget will handle all these extra non-financially contributing people or it won't. If it can't, then it goes broke. You can argue about the morality of the issue all you want, WWWTT. However, you can't argue with what it costs! Hope you like more taxes!

Well, I have a solution but I'm sure a pur laine homme like yourself will not like it! How about we ignore the idea of French and English? How about we simply view ourselves and each other as citizens? You see, to TROC, your independentiste arguments sound like something very different - racism! You may not think so yourself and you may truly believe that the entire rest of the country is wrong but that is EXACTLY what most of TROC believes! So if you think you will eventually arrive at some high level political negotiation, you should understand that point and deal with it. Language and culture should be irrelevant. You are either a citizen or you are not. Issues like kirpans being banned should be decided solely on the basis of threat to public safety. Religious arguments should not be allowed in a courtroom. TROC will never accept giving Quebec a Constitutional veto. Why? Because, if Quebecers are truly so unique and different in their views and values from the rest of Canadians it would be inevitable that there would come a time when Quebec, being the ONLY group that felt a particular way on an issue, would exercise her veto and deny the entire rest of Canada their choice! It would NOT likely be over an issue of language rights! It would more likely be over Canada's involvement with some peacekeeping issue, or conscription, or dairy marketing boards - simply, issues where Quebec stands alone but could impose her choice on the entire country. In a situation like that, resentment could build so high that separation would become moot. TROC would throw Quebec out! Anyhow, all this is becoming irrelevant. We are heading for a "Star Trek" society, where your original race or culture is irrelevant except for personal family holiday dinners. If Quebecers want to become so insular that will be their choice. They will become relegated to being a quaint little tourist trap that the rest of the world visits once in a while. It's "The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy", Benz! If Quebec is not careful, they will end up on the 'B" Ark!

Looks like some NDP supporter posters are having a wet dream in this thread over the surge of the NDP in the polls! Somehow, I doubt if Canadians en masse have woken up all with the same thought - that the NDP is the path to Heaven and they are instantly switching their vote to Jack! That would REALLY be a stretch! It's possible that the NDP might one day be the most popular party but somehow I think it will take more than a few days during this one election to change the minds of that many people. That being said, the surge in Quebec cannot be denied. Also, there are scattered areas across the rest of the country where the NDP are doing better. We should not forget that the election is not tomorrow! There's a fair bit of time for people to see and hear what's happening and react to it. Remember how Bob Rae sneaked into power in Ontario. Everyone wanted to force David Petersen into a minority government, for being too arrogant. The problem turned out to be that too many folks all had the same idea and they ended up with Rae! Nobody was more surprised than Bob and he proved woefully unprepared to govern. In this situation, Canadians now have time to see how strongly the NDP have surged and have to consider, did they want the NDP in order to knock down the Liberals or do they actually want to make them at least the Loyal Opposition? So we may see a bit of softening in the numbers but still, at least in Quebec the surge has been so strong that it's hard to imagine that the NDP are not going to make some respectable gains. What's more, if they do it by taking Bloc seats that will truly be a paradigm shift in Quebec politics! Myself, I would welcome an NDP Opposition! I truly think it would be good for Canada. First off, killing off the Liberals would be a blessing. Their brand may be too scarred to recover anyway. We would then have more clear alternatives for governance. Second, I think a term or two as Official Opposition would do great things for the NDP. They would have the opportunity to finally mature and get out of the 1960's model of ranting against and bleeding from Big Business. They would have to face the possibility of being the government, where they would have to work with Big Business. It would be impossible for them to do that if they continued their policy of demonizing them and spitting in their face! They would have the opportunity of becoming like the Labour Party of Britain, much more down to earth and practical. The fact that Quebecers seem to be seeing them as a federalist alternative to the Bloc and the 'old' parties that they can respect is a big bonus! This election has finally gotten interesting! I'm fully awake now!

Some would say that minority governments are for people who like debating, arguing, nit-picking and just bitching far more than actually DOING something! There is an old joke that used to go around in diplomatic circles, particularly in Europe, about the "Canadian solution". The joke is in the definition of the phrase, which went like this: "An American physicist discovers a new principle of physics. Six months later a German engineer thinks up an application for it and wins a Nobel prize. Three months later a Japanese businessman hires the engineer and builds a factory using his principle in a consumer product, which begins to sell like crazy. Two months after that the Japanese company re-locates to China. Production and profits soar! Six YEARS after that Canada is still debating whether it's a federal or a provincial matter!"

Nice recovery! Reminds me of an old joke told to me by some Montreal friends. It seems an American businessman came to Montreal and checked into a hotel. That night he took a shower and came marching down to the night clerk in his robe, angry and fuming. "What kind of a 2nd rate hotel is this?" he hollered. "In my shower I turned up the tap marked 'C' and nearly scalded myself!" "Of course, sir!" replied the clerk. "Montreal is a French-Canadian city, with a proud heritage of speaking the French language. In French, the word for 'hot' is 'chaud'." Mollified, the American mutters an apology and returns to his room. A short while later, the night clerk's extension rings. It's the American again, saying "Hey! What are you trying to pull? I looked again in the shower and BOTH knobs are marked 'C'!!" "Of course, sir!" the clerk replied with aplomb. "This is a bilingual city in a bilingual country!"

You don't have to convince me. You have to convince all those aboriginals! What will Quebec do if the native peoples in your province don't want to leave Canada? What if they refuse to abide by any move by the Quebec provincial government? TROC isn't likely to send troops in but the native folks well might take up arms! We all remember how much appreciation for Quebec's respect was shown by Lasagna at Oka. No, that will be Quebec's problem, at least at first. If it leads to bloodshed, I'm not sure what Canada would do. We do have treaty obligations... Oh well, I'm sure you're quite right! The natives will be overjoyed to stay with a separate Quebec and it will be all sweetness and light! You and I can argue tlll the cows come home. It will have to happen before we'd know who's right.

Please don't pick one nit out of context! My point should be obvious. The salient factor is HOW MANY is "MANY"! If you were a member of the "inner circle" of any political party, you would be VERY interested in just how many people might switch their vote away from you! Your party lives or dies on how many votes it will receive. As I replied to Dave, voters are not likely to riot in the streets over a coalition. However, having one influence their vote NEXT election is surely worth considering! If "many" is a small number, then who cares? If it's a LARGE number then that's something else again!

People have the right to be ignorant! Also, they have every right to feel contempt! They have no right to have their opinions automatically respected, of course. No one does! That includes you and me. We can only try to hold considered opinions that we can competently defend, in order to gain respect from others. Still, if someone wants to be ignorant who has the right to stop them? As for force-educating or teaching civics, we've had threads about problems with our schools and their curricula before and will again. Even if we spruced up our schools, with lots of civics, maths and disciplines that encourage good reasoning it wouldn't matter. We would still have citizens that are ignorant, either through a lack of intelligence or a deliberate choice on their part. Sadly, you can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think!

I see perhaps more clearly than YOU do, Dave! First off, who said anything about not abiding by the constitution? If a coalition of the losers is formed, I will not disagree with you that it would be constitutional. So what? Many voters may STILL not like it! As for the rule of law and power held by men of dubious character, you have no grounds to lecture ME just because I don't dislike Harper quite as much as you do! I lived through the reign of Jean Chretien! I was one of the "disenfranchised conservatives" screwed by Mulroney! I voted for Trudeau because of the record of Mike Pearson, only to see him jerk the Liberal party much farther to the left so that I came to regret my vote. I live near Caledonia, where Dalton McGuinty took the right of protection under the law away from an entire town! Almost 44,000 people were in fear for their safety yet when they phoned the OPP they were ignored! We shouldn't expect to see voters rioting in the streets over a coalition. No doubt they will abide by the law. However, eventually there will be another election. At that time they may decide to punish those parties that formed the coalition. What on earth is wrong with that? The losers have a constitutional right to form a coalition and those voters that are pissed off also have a constitutional right to forever hold a grudge against them every time they vote. Everyone will have abided by the Constitution! Are you suggesting that it would be unconstitutional for any pissed off voter to vote against the coalition partners in subsequent elections? What you are really saying Dave is that you hold YOUR opinions against Harper and think not only that ANYTHING to get rid of him is justified but that all other voters should not punish the parties that do it! Give your head a shake, my friend! The world will not end if Harper retains power. Neither will it end if a coalition of the losers boots him out! Canada will go on. Still, voters WILL have their own opinions and they WILL choose who to support and who to punish! I'm surprised that you seem to take such exception to that idea. Who knows? Perhaps you're worrying over nothing. A coalition might take power and from sea to shining sea, every voter will cheer and REWARD those parties involved! I'm not saying at all that it couldn't happen. I'm saying that it would be Jack, Michael and Gilles who would be taking the risk. It would be up to them if they thought it would be worth it. You and I have no skin in the game. We can sit back, pop open a beer and watch the entertainment!

Dave, I wish people were smarter too! It would certainly make driving a lot more pleasant. It might also have prevented the rise of disco and later hiphop. Still, they aren't! They are what they are and that's all that they are, er...am! It's real world and we have to live in it. How you and I feel about coalitions is irrelevant. Whether or not you or I think Joe Voter is despicable is irrelevant. If you want to win an election you better listen to him and NOT constitutional lawyers! Joe Voter is a citizen. He will vote the way he wants. You cannot coerce him or force-educate him. And it would be very wrong to try!

Dave, you must have been in a hurry when you read my post. I don't think I've ever had someone so completely miss my point! I have absolutely no argument with you about the legality of a coalition! The same is true about popular ignorance! I'm saying that it doesn't matter! The common man doesn't care or understand such things but he still votes! He still has opinions about such things but only when he sees them happen. We would never really know how he would react unless and until a coalition actually happened. At that time, the legalities would be irrelevant. If Joe Voter didn't mind, nothing would happen. If he got upset because he didn't like it, then he would be pissed and would hold a grudge against the parties that forced the coalition. More plainly, if at that time someone like you scolded Joe and waved a book of constitutional law in front of him he would likely just laugh at you and move on! You wouldn't change his feelings and the way he would vote next election in the slightest. In politics, legalities are a lot less important than whether or not something passes the "sniff test". In fact, if you have to use a legal argument as an excuse you've already failed! It only reminds the public that most politicians are lawyers and lawyers' tricks are not well respected. So keep waving your constitutional law book, Dave. I hope it makes you feel better. All I know is, if I were a politician I wouldn't want to stake my political future on it! You can't pass a law to MAKE someone vote a certain way!

I don't know what the "global catastrophe" folks would say but in general, the idea of positive and negative feedback is pretty simple. With any system, if you want it to be stable and tend to run in a "safe" condition you use what are called feedback loops. Most control loops are negative. Imagine a steam boiler, with a gauge to read the pressure. If it is an electrical type of gauge you can set a maximum pressure point. If the pressure gets that high a signal would be sent to the heating element, making it cool down a bit. This would reduce the pressure to a safe point below the "red line". In the same manner, a positive loop could be created. You would have a meter or some kind of sensor with a MINIMUM setting. If the pressure falls below that point the heating element would get "dialed up", raising the temperature and thus the pressure to keep it from falling too low. Combinations of feedback loops would control the system to keep the output (steam pressure) within a desired range. The same principles would be happening with weather and climate systems. Sunlight falling through a clear sky onto water will tend to make the water vaporize, adding moisture to the air which can form clouds. Clouds tend to block some of the solar energy, reducing the amount of vaporization. It can be hard to discover exactly what feedback loops Mother Nature uses, or how each interacts with all the others. Melting Arctic Ice might allow more cold water from currents to move into an area, making it easier for ice to form the next winter. Still, it only makes sense that weather and climate MUST have many feedback loops for things to stay within a relatively small range for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years! Some folks believe that Man's influence might over-stimulate a positive feedback agent, like too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If there's no compensating negative feedback loops then the CO2 effect might become magnified far beyond what's comfortable for human beings. It would cause excessive global warming, frying tropical countries, melting the ice caps causing low-lying areas to flood and also giving Canada a nice, balmy climate where we might go surfing in James Bay! I don't know enough to debate one side or the other as to the likelihood of any catastrophe looming but as a techie I find it hard to believe that Mother Nature does not have a large number of powerful feedback loops in her climate systems. I just don't believe that things could be as stable as they have been for eons and eons! True, we've had hotter and colder times but without feedback loops I would have expected that long ago we would have seen the entire planet forever covered in ice or else too scalding hot for life to survive, as on the planet Venus. In fact, that might be what happened to Venus to prevent it from ever forming a habitable eco-system. Anyhow, that's the skinny on feedback loops!

Oh, I dunno, Molly. I would have freaked out! The question then would be, how many other voters would have felt the same way? One old curmudgeon like me is no worry to a campaign manager but thousands or hundreds of thousands of like-minded voters, particularly if they are concentrated in critical areas, like Metro Toronto, would be quite another "fish kettle".! As I've said before, a "coalition of the losers" is quite different from an ordinary minority government, where the party with the most votes still rules. At least to the common man, who couldn't care less about the niceties of constitutional law. I'm not at all convinced that the average Canadian would be tolerant of such a situation. I think he would strongly resent being over-ruled in his choice and would likely become hardened against those Opposition parties forever, or at least until he or she died! I could be wrong, of course. That's why I've come to the point where I'd actually love to see such a coalition happen! If the people love it then fine and dandy! If the people get pissed off it would be great fun watching the Opposition parties squirm! You see, it's easy for pundits on MLW to kick this idea around. We members have ZERO risk with what could happen. Jack, Michael and Gilles have a great deal at risk. They also seem to have more common sense than Dion had! Notice how the last time they talked up the idea they made Dion the front man. If it hit the fan, it would have been Dion who would have taken the brunt of it.

Mike, I'm not sure if you're even serious! In all my time with Reform, I never once met someone with views as extreme as yours. You're certainly entitled to them and I will defend to the death your right to hold them but still, I sincerely doubt you ever would have been accepted as a riding candidate for office. Likewise your claim to be a Libertarian. You should take a tip from Ayn Rand, who once called racism an illogical expression of perverted reasoning. If you had stopped when you referred to a "race based candidate" I would have agreed with you, although I think you are confusing race and culture. Race is truly irrelevant but culture most definitely is not! I too believe that our traditional Canadian culture is worth preserving and should be dominant. I too believe that it should never be an issue with choosing a candidate. Using an ethnic heritage to seize a riging is undemocratic and unethical, like mixing religion and politics. That's what happened in Chuck Cadman's riding years ago and what a mess that turned out to be! Oh well, I too call myself libertarian in many of my views and I too am proud to have been a Reformer. Yet you and I seem very different. The beauty of Reform was its populism, however. Both of us could belong to such a party, knowing that we would be free to express our views and try to persuade other party members to share them. I happen to thing that I would have had a much easier time of it than you but hey, the important thing was the populist principle! Whatever. Peace, brother! Farm out!

If it comes to it, I think Harper should take a page from Trudeau's book. If the BQ and PQ start to seriously promote separation and another referendum again, he should immediately tell them that if Quebec chooses to be out then they are ALL the way out! No sovereignty association, no shared currency, no OAS, no CPP, no EI, no nothing! Canada can offer to have a good relationship with Quebec, just the same as we have with Britain, France or any other foreign country. If Quebec feels they can use things like the St. Laurence Seaway as a lever, they should be shown that Canada can also play that game in other areas. If it becomes tit for tat, Quebec could be hurt just as badly if not worse than they can hurt Canada. Quebec should also be told that Canada will defend the rights of the aboriginal peoples living in Quebec. What the separatistes always seem to misunderstand is that if they choose to separate they will not be negotiating just with Ottawa. Whatever party is in power will be under intense pressure from the people in the rest of Canada, who will be angry and bitter at Quebec. They will be in no mood for anything that looks like an unfair concession to Quebec's benefit. A Liberal or a Tory government will be forced to be extremely hard-nosed with Quebec or they will certainly be hounded out of office by the remaining voters in TROC. The separatistes would be fools if they go into any negotiations and not understand that. As I said, Trudeau made these things plain before the first referendum and Duceppe and the PQ lady need a reminder that nothing has changed. The separatistes have always tried to make Quebecers believe that separation will be painless. It would be the duty of the federal government to make it plain that is simply not true.