Wild Bill

No, over the past months since Dion fell in flames we political junkies here on MLW have long since picked the concept of a coalition government to death. We really are just preaching to our own choir. It doesn't matter! What's important is what the majority of Canadians feel when they go to cast their ballot! Last time, polls OVERWHELMINGLY showed that Canadians would have viewed a coalition to kick out a minority Harper government as just a "lawyer's trick" to use a technicality in the rules to stage a power grab. Although no one party had a true majority, ALL of the proposed coalition partners were LOSERS! The public made it plain that THAT SORT of coalition would offend them mightily! If the Opposition had tried and even succeeded, it was obvious that they would have had their butts kicked severely next election. The public doesn't care about tricks with semantics or definitions. It's plain that they would rather have a minority of whoever won the most seats than a government of all who had the LEAST seats! Deeper polling seemed to indicate that they don't mind the usual form of minority government 'coalition', where one party got more seats than any and another party agrees to prop them up in any house votes. The important difference here is that the party with the most seats DOES still lead! Waving a rulebook at the people and telling them they shouldn't get angry because of some obscure rule only infuriates them. And rightly so!

Keeps, let's not waste our time with the idea that there are two sides and that Carson might not actually be that bad! We have the closest thing to a political sex scandal that we Canadians ever get! For once, politicians are providing us with some adult entertainment. It may be salacious and racy but at least that's a change from 3 Stooges slapstick! Don't dig up some FACTS that might ruin everything! :angry:

Nothing is wrong with democracy, per se. It's how you define it that makes it a personal opinion and not a fact. Some folks think our present system IS democratic! Others don't. Where is it written as to who gets to write the definition for Funk & Wagnall's dictionary? Whatever, I was replying to YOUR point about why people ignore the Greens! I tried to give some reasons that to me make sense. As for the idea of reform, you're talking to a fervent old Reformer! I won't argue with the idea, just what YOU might propose as a positive reform! That's why we have parties and elections, to try to represent a majority view. The idea of trying to make EVERY minority viewpoint happy is so futile as to be silly! In fact, it can lead to even LESS democracy, as with the concept of "tyranny of the minority".

Listen to Molly, TB! You are closer to the BC votes than I am and may well be more accurate but as far as Ontario goes I agree with Molly 100%.

I think your predictions are coloured by your own likes and dislikes, which don't appear to be mainstream. Particularly about the Greens. You have to understand that first of all, most younger folks don't vote! Some get active and most have strong opinions but on election day they mostly have other things to do. This is a plain fact, borne out by numbers. It's just the way it is. The Greens get much more support from younger folks than from the older crowd. Yet it is that older crowd that is much more likely to vote! There's a cultural sense of duty in that demographic. Even when they're not that happy about their choices they still feel obligated to vote. I submit that amongst that older crowd the Greens don't have the best image! They are strongly identified with being eco-warriors. To a 40 year old man or woman that usually means someone who wants to save the planet but doesn't have a practical idea on how to do it. The big difference is that in the early part of our lives we have more freedom in our time and fewer responsibilities, particularly financial. As we get older we get bogged down with our job, a mortgage and providing for our kids. These are tough financial times and most families are struggling. Most "green" programs have a perception of being more expensive than the status quo, at least initially. The usual defense is that "what will it cost if we all fry and starve?" or "In the long run green alternatives will prove to be cheaper, once all the peripheral costs are factored in." To a mom or dad trying to make the pay cheque stretch to the end of the week, those defenses are just so much hot air! They don't believe the situation is as bad as the Greens say it is and they simply can't afford to consider 'the long run' when they are in debt for the short run. Everybody wants to save the planet but if the question is "How much are YOU willing to pay?" the numbers instantly plummet. Not because of greed but simply because we are in tough times and people feel they can't afford it. This might not be an entirely fair picture of the Greens but it is a popular one in that older voting demographic. So far I've listened to Elizabeth May and she never seems to provide the actual details of how to make an idea WORK! Lots of talk about how important it is and how we should all feel a sense of community but when push comes to shove - little or nothing about how an idea could be made to actually accomplish the specific goal. Can you imagine what it's like for a 40 year old housewife to listen to a Green spokesperson on some talk show saying that she should be taking a bicycle or public transit? She likely has small children she has to take with her 'cuz she can't afford day care and has to buy groceries in family amounts far too large to take home on the bus, let alone on that bike! Until the Greens get a lot more specific and practical in their proposals they are not going to make many inroads into that older demographic crucial to winning elections. Eventually they may get there. After all, when you first start out it's very hard to attract the best people. However, they are NOT going to get there THIS election!

White pride? The idea seems rather silly. I'm supposed to be proud simply for having been born white? That's about as good a reason as having been born with 2 arms! I had no control over my birth race. How can I take pride in something that has nothing to do with my personal efforts or accomplishments? No, the idea is simply a reaction to the socially divisive idea of Black Pride or Green Pride. There's a good argument involving being a victim, entitlements and official multicultural government money that says it's all just using racist excuses to grab money and opportunities from what's perceived in some circles as an unfairly advantaged group. Don't ask me to be proud of being white but I AM proud of my British/European heritage and culture! It wasn't Tibetan prayer wheels that put a man on the moon or dreamcatchers that led to penicillin. Not that there's no value in those other cultural achievements but I put my primary value on those inventions that keep us warm and well fed while enjoying a long healthy life in a society that has a low infant mortality rate. I was awed and delighted watching both my daughters being born. I would not have cared for the experience if there was only medieval technology available in the birthing room. To me, ANY pride taken for something you had no control over is simply undeserved!

Well, I'm gonna stick my neck out and predict a Tory majority! I'm not 100% comfortable with the idea but hey! My personal choices don't matter in this poll. What matters is what the majority of all the OTHER Canadians thinks! First off, I think the impressions of the various leaders will be key factors. Most Canadians either don't understand or couldn't care less about most of the nit-picking details that amuse us political junkies. The Opposition will try valiantly to make something stick but it just won't work. Their arguments strike the ordinary voter as just too esoteric and convoluted, like something dreamed up by "Sheldon" from the tv show Big Bang Theory. Very few people at a racetrack actually practice intelligent, handicap betting. Most just vote for the one with the same name as some relative, or even the one "with the cute nose!" Betting houses prosper because intelligent bettors are in such a minority. All the money comes from the people who essentially just make random choices. Few of those people actually win anything and all their money goes to the House. Elections are a good parallel. Most people vote with their heart and not their head. So far polls consistently have shown that the majority of voters think Harper is more competent, despite his lack of a personality. Ignatieff may rival Dion at having a historically record low public support. Votes will go to the Liberals for their party and a few from being anti-Harper, not for Ignatieff's personal appeal. This time around, the Tories are running a regionally focused strategy. They've slipped a bit in Quebec but they are likely to lose only a few seats, since they don't have that many in the first place! The Liberals aren't likely to pick up many there either so what does it matter? Newfoundland is more pleased with Harper since Danny Williams cooled off and will likely deliver at least 4 seats, maybe more. The West Coast is pissed at provincial Liberals and some of that will rub off on their federal candidates since again, the average voter doesn't always understand or care about the difference. The big gains will come from Ontario. Like Quebec, there is a lot of anti-Liberal sentiment coming from the performance of the provincial party. McGuinty is FAR behind Hudak in the polls! Last time, the Tories came close in a lot of ridings. They've been steadily improving for the last two elections. Most important could be the "Ford Nation" factor around the GTA! Ford got swept in by a feeling that the Left is just too costly with taxes and too inefficient in delivering services, if not actually corrupt. Not all of this perception is deserved but it doesn't matter! This is politics, after all. The Tories just have so many regions where they have been improving that a majority government is quite possible. Just as they have a lock on much of the West, the Bloc has a lock on much of Quebec. Harper has only a modest number of Quebec seats he can lose and the Liberals show little hope of gaining any. Like a Liberal vote in Edmonton, anti-Tory votes don't matter much if the Bloc was going to take the riding anyway. As for who resigns, obviously if Harper wins a majority he won't go anywhere, which is a shame since I could provide a few suggestions. Ignatieff will be toast, however! The Liberals will regroup, re-trench and come out re-born! It will be time for serious leadership candidates to come forward, since the Party should finally have a serious chance at winning NEXT election! I also voted for Duceppe to resign, simply because he nearly did a while ago. I don't think he wants to stick around much longer and has only remained this long out of a sense of duty. It will be great fun to pick the bones over this thread AFTER the election!

If it wouldn't have been that impetus before a coalition it's guaranteed it would be after such a term! Government usually works glacially slowly under it's normal structure. Could you imagine what would happen if everything had to be worked out amongst all the coalition partners? How long would it take to get everybody onside, with all the very different values of each of the parties? What would happen if one party absolutely refused? Or felt that a particular Bill would cost them too much of their voter support for their own individual demographic? It would be worse than a "pizza" Parliament! It would be a "McCain's FROZEN Pizza" Parliament!

Actually, there was quite a bit of interest in buying the Arrow, or at least all its development technology. It seems odd today that you can't google up confirming info but if you read some of the books or talked to some of the old employees you quickly see that this is true. Perhaps the lack of cites to confirm this point is further proof of a conspiracy? First, the Avro Jetliner could have saved the company's ass. It was produced first and the prototype flew like a dream. Howard Hughes flew it as his personal jet on an indefinite loan and was prepared to place a production order on the spot. The Liberal government of the day refused to allow A V Roe to accept the contract! They insisted on priority being given to Canadian government projects, like the CF-5. Roe was too small at the time to handle contracts from both customers and had to obey the Canadian government. Second, the Americans and the British had inquired a number of times about placing small orders. Again, under Canadian government pressure they were refused. Meanwhile, the Feds reduced the number of aircraft on their initial order, putting more financial pressure on A V Roe. When Diefenbaker's Tories took power they felt they had a commitment to cancel the Arrow project, having railed against it in Opposition as another example of letting Prairie farmers starve while Ontario and Eastern Canada thrived. When the order came down the Americans, British and French all offered to buy the prototypes and all the technical data. Dief brought his fist down and this was refused. EVERYTHING was to be scrapped and NOTHING was to be sold! This was the main factor in all the conspiracy theories. Why on earth would Dief do this? The suspicions range from American pressure to a fear that someday some country would build a similar plane that would perform so well that it would embarrass the Tories for their action. I lean to the latter. No politician likes to be embarrassed. A V Roe was also much to blame for its own demise. They had put little or no effort into building any rapport with the Tories. They took it for granted that the Liberals would stay in power or that the Tories would never win power for very long and would be reluctant to destroy the entire industry and all the associated jobs. That was perhaps their biggest mistake! The Tories were left woefully ignorant of the entire Arrow industry! There is a famous quote from one of Dief's ministers who phoned Arrow when the news began to report how after the cancellation the plant went out of business and 10,000 workers were let go. The minister was understandably concerned about the bad press this meant for his government but was totally puzzled as to why the company folded! I don't have the exact quote but to paraphrase it went something close to this - "Well, instead of airplanes couldn't you just build tractors or cars or something?' I don't blame such a Tory minister for his ignorance. It was A V Roe's responsibility to send a few suits to the Tories once in a while to 'shmooze' them a bit and keep them informed. That's how such business is done. Again, I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theories myself. I also don't believe that the Arrow would be competitive today. However, if we hadn't have destroyed our aerospace industry at that time perhaps we WOULD be building competitive planes today! No, the simplest explanation is the most likely. The whole affair was a perfect storm of marketing mistakes and political ignorance from both political parties.

As an MP, wouldn't she make a magnificent orator in the House? Considering that balcony...

I dunno about M Bernier but I'd vote for his girlfriend any time!

Not quite, Max! Admittedly, the Tories have been a disappointment. However, so were the Liberals. Most of us that voted Tory or even Liberal are not likely to ever vote NDP. What does that leave us? As I keep saying, we can only vote for who stinks the least! At the moment, the stink of the former Liberal administrations and the ineptitude of Ignatieff's crew is still greater than that of Harper and his bunch. Not by much, perhaps. Still definitely not quite as rank. Maybe next election? As I've posted before, I could switch my vote if the Liberals finally got their act together!

So? I'll agree! Still, it is most definitely a EUROPEAN construct! It is NOT a Bangladeshi construct or a Chinese construct! The cultures involved were far similar to that of Britain. More importantly, they were under British rule. The immigrants knew that when they came here and most had no problem with that. Those few that didn't knew enough to keep quiet about it. Virtually all of them became Canadian! With no hyphens! How many Canadian names with -ski on the end were proud to accept medals from the British king during WWI and WWII?

2000? Man, I really gotta get out more!

More likely "close, but no cigar..."

I made my contribution when I was younger. I worked hard for the Reform Party and served as a Director for several terms here in my local riding. I can't see myself doing that again. Not just because I'm older with less available energy. It's mostly because there's no party that provides me with the same inspiration that I got from Reform and Preston Manning! As I have said many times, I'll vote CPC only because the alternatives are worse. If I ever get an inspiring choice again I'll be gone like a shot! Meanwhile, the present choices all inspire me about as much as a package of chocolate flavoured EX-LAX...

Okay, you're making more sense to me now. Except I think you're missing something about your suggestion to qualify a foreign trained doctor. You see, at least here in Ontario, the government doesn't want any more doctors! Way back in Bob Rae's time they figured out that limiting the number of doctors was an easy and not too obvious way to reduce OHIP medicare billings. First, he limited the number of student openings at medical school. Then he put a billing cap on what doctors could charge. All along the government had control in that every doctor needs a billing number to be able to charge OHIP. No new billing numbers, no new doctor charges! This game has worked great so far! The billing cap was an easy sell. It was based on GROSS dollars and not net income. Since the average person doesn't understand the difference it sounded like it was a way to keep greedy doctors from becoming millionaires. When a doctor hit the cap of course he wasn't going to accept any new patients or spend any more time with his existing ones. All governments since that of Bob Rae have left his changes in place! If more people had access to a family doctor then the Ontario government would have to pay more into the medicare budget. Meanwhile, we literally have hundreds of thousands of Ontarioans in Ontario without a family doctor! THAT's a big part of the reason so many go to ER! They have to use ER as a substitute for a family GP!

Guyser, there's some truth in what you say but it hardly covers the entire story. I've sat a number of times for hours in a Hamilton ER and seen what goes on. Do you have any kids yourself? If so, surely you know that kids NEVER run a fever during office hours! That eliminates going to a walk-in clinic. There's no other alternative than ER. What's more, a high fever is usually not that serious but it CAN be something like meningitis! So what else is a patient to do? What's more, refer to my opening post. The story was NOT about some lardass with the sniffles! Even if the 'lardasses' were clogging up the ER system surely after the DAYS she spent in the hallway they could have found her a real bed! Accepting that it's all the fault of frivolous visits is sure a great excuse to let politicians off the hook, however. If you're waiting for 10 hours with your leg hanging off they can just duck the issue and do absolutely nothing! "There is no problem! The system is perfect! It's just that some lardasses are abusing it! Of course, we are not going to turn the lardasses away ourselves! We're civil servants and can't do that!" So how do we fix the problem, Guyser? Seems to me you've left only one possible solution. Since we know that the hospital folks can't turn any citizen away then I guess we'll have to do it ourselves. If we are in emergency we will have to point out the lardasses and tell them "Hey! You're clogging up the system for the rest of us! Get the hell out of here!" Assuming that they are in much worse physical shape than ourselves, we will probably have to shove them outside ourselves. This should leave lots of spaces for REAL patients! I'm curious, however. If we're wrong about a lardass having just a case of the sniffles and they actually die from something serious, could we be sued?

Molly, how many Hutterites were there compared to how many citizens who came from Britain, France, Germany, Poland or whatever? I'm talking about the whole blueberry pie and you're talking about one blueberry!

"I like to watch!"

Old news, Molly! Of course there were immigrants from non-British sources. Your link points out that many immigrants to the West came from various European countries. This doesn't change my point at all. In total numbers these other immigrants were dwarfed by the number of British stock. What's more, those immigrants to the West didn't come here expecting to change the Canadian culture to an Ukrainian one. Having the band play polkas was fine but at the end of the night they still closed with God Save the King! We had a mainstream British culture with a great number of European influences. Some of my personal heroes were European and not British. Marconi for one. Tesla for another. My inlaws came from Italy in the early 50's. They were proud of their adopted country and worked very hard to assimilate!My father-in-law likely knew more about Canada's history than I do! When they started a Ti-Cat game you could hear him sing the national anthem across tiers of seats, in his thick accent that he just couldn't shake, no matter how hard he tried. This attitude towards and amongst immigrants changed only recently in our history, like during the last 30 years or so. The idea that you can come here but keep your parent culture first and foremost used to be laughable! Now we had a case where a Canadian boy of Serbian descent went over to fight for Serbia during the Kosovo conflict, ending up not only firing at Canadian soldiers and their allies but chaining captured Canadian UN reps to a lamp post! Later, he actually came back to Canada and was accepted! To my mind, if a Canadian fires weapons at Canadian soldiers he is a traitor and should be treated like one. Anyhow, the fact is that Canada no longer takes an appreciable portion of its immigrants from Britain OR Europe! The vast majority come from countries with cultures that have little or nothing in common with our traditional roots. To these new immigrants, Walter Ostenek and his polka band would be playing music from Mars! Come to think of it...

This is simply not true at all, but it would appear that over the past couple of decades some folks are trying very hard to make it true! You make it sound like there is no connection between Britain and Canada other than the Crown. This is where your argument fails. Canada was first a colony of Britain and then an independent Dominion. We had an existing area of the country that was of French descent and the rest was predominantly British. Our immigration was overwhelmingly from the British Isles. True, there were people from other countries but they were very much in the minority. They were welcome but it was recognized that our core culture outside of Quebec was British and newcomers were expected to assimilate. Certainly, the idea of multiculturalism was a foreign concept indeed and the idea of it as practiced these past few years would have been denounced and firmly rejected by previous generations of Canadians. There was a great deal of loyalty and pride involved with being part of the Commonwealth and the British Empire. Why not? Britain had been a world leader in the Industrial Revolution, the advancement of sciences, the development of the Arts and her navy ruled the seas. Most Canadians were descended from Irish, Scottish and English stock, including large pockets in Quebec. In Quebec, French culture was legally recognized, as long as allegiance was given to the Crown. It may have been true that there was historically some discrimination in that positions of power were mostly Anglo but that was the way of the world at that time. As we matured we discarded some those old ways. The situation in Quebec today is completely different. Now we often see that its the owners and managers of businesses that are of French descent and many workers on the floor are Anglos - and nobody cares! The cultural bonds between Britain and Canada are still very strong, despite the fact that the federal policy of multiculturalism has been that British Culture is both non-existent and worthless while ALL foreign cultures are to be equally respected and officially preserved within Canada. The idea of assimilation has been discarded. It constantly is happening anyway, of course. Kids lose the connection to their families previous country far faster than their parents. Where they grow up is home, not where the stories their parents tell come from. It is said that Trudeau himself was disgusted with how his idea of multiculturalism had been twisted by subsequent governments into a vote-grabber. He had truly thought that immigrants would develop a sense of Canadian pride and culture as primary and their former culture as merely a cherished memory. Turner, Mulroney, Chretien and now even Harper have tied it to immigration so firmly that no politician seeking to get elected dares to declare that Canada was and is a British descent nation, with strong historical and cultural ties. I'm presently reading Lowell Green's new book, 'Mayday! Mayday!' about this very topic. I don't quite agree that things are as bad or as drastic as he claims but one thing is for sure, he is anything but a racist! To label him such would be merely a cheap ad hominem trick from the partisan brain dead, who almost certainly would make such pronouncements without even reading his book! He quotes numbers extensively from the StatsCan 2006 census. On page 57 of his book, in a table headed "Immigrant Population by Place of Birth and Period of Immigration, that before 1991 we show a number of 515,135 from the United Kingdom and after 1991 it drops to 64,485! The table then lists all the traditional source countries such as the USA and Europe to arrive at total numbers of 1,845,630 before 1991 and only 529,515 after! Meanwhile, the next table shows the numbers from Asian, the middle East and Third World countries, Like China, India, Pakista, Iraq, Bangladesh and so on. The table shows huge increases in immigrants from such countries. I quote: "China has become a greater source of immigrants since 1991 than all of the UK and Europe combined." This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Good citizens can come from anywhere. However, when we have official government policy to encourage immigrants from different cultures other than the Canadian mainstream, in order to acquire ethnic votes every election, we do have a problem. Couple this with an unofficial policy that holds our traditional British culture somehow of lesser worth and we find those Canadians of British stock whose family has been here since before Canada was founded feeling upset and abandoned! To those who say "what unofficial policy?" I would cite how Olivia Chow changed the police parade in Toronto to feature a Chinese dragon, shoving aside over a hundred years of a tradition of a British bagpipe band. We could talk about minor details, like taking Christmas out of the schools but the real factor is the dramatic change in our sources of immigration. The British number has been officially pruned to only a shadow of it's former magnitude, in favour of immigrants from non-British cultures. Anyhow, it's a shame that you don't share this sense of British heritage. Like it or not, Canada WAS and IS descended from British culture and shares much of her history! To long-term Canadians like myself it sometimes makes one feel like you've welcomed someone into your home and then they promptly started making demands to change the decor! This phenomenon may also account for some of the rural/urban divide in politics. In the 'old days', immigrants settled all over the country and literally built our infrastructure 'from Sea to Shining Sea". Now they overwhelmingly flock to Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and that's about it! They have formed 'ghettos' where no one speaks English or French and feels absolutely no need to bother learning how! It's interesting to note that with the relatively new policies of multiculturalism and immigration Quebec has been given powers to totally control and protect her own culture. No other province has similar powers. Anyhow, you're welcome to your own opinion, Mr. Bambino. However, I must caution you that you are provoking divisionism when you knock our Queen. To someone like me, who's ancestors came to Canada from Britain in 1690, sailing on the good ship Hector to land in Pictou, Nova Scotia, you sound almost treasonous! I'm PROUD of my British heritage and firmly believe that it was and is one of the strengths that developed my country! I do NOT believe that all cultures are of equal worth, just that all PEOPLE are of equal worth! I get furious when some immigrants bring their old conflicts here, into their new home. And I expect them to adopt and respect Canada's existing culture and heritage. That includes our Queen!

Some talking head on talk radio today was saying that where Carson blew it was he had started putting the word out that he had 'back door' influence with Harper and the PMO. Apparently, this is something that Harper truly loaths! This apparently is also the real reason why he threw Jaffer and later Guergis under the bus. They were doing the same thing. I commend Harper's sense of ethics with this sort of thing but perhaps he has a tendency to over-react a tad...

Well, if you want to join the "Mr. Canada School for Odd Logic" then go for it!

Thanks, Max! That brightens things up a bit! You know, this Carson guy helps support one of my favorite suspicions about the new merged Tory party. I've said many times that I believe the old PCs have taken it over. All of Manning and Reform has been tossed down the memory hole. That wasn't surprising in itself, as Harper and Manning always had their differences. Manning held to principles and Harper was much more pragmatic, which in politics is a nice way of saying 'wishy-washy'. What surprised me was how far Harper went with it. Manning is really a banned name! It's like one of those Chinese communist purges and history re-writes to expunge those no longer in favour. We saw how Harper almost immediately got cosy with Mulroney, who was perhaps the principle reason Reform was formed in the first place! Now we see that Harper hired Carson, with all his scandalous baggage, a man who was a favorite of Mulroney? My premise that the PCs won just keeps getting stronger and stronger! I have to laugh when I see some posters longing for the "good old PC Party". How the hell is the present CPC any different? They call the CPC "Reformers in disguise" but can they point to any trace of Reform in the present party? They should pull their heads out of their butts and look at the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. It's getting more and more difficult for me to vote Tory this coming election. I had good reasons for bailing out of the old PC party in favour of Reform. I have no wish to go back. Harper backing Julian Fantino after how he trampled on civil liberties and the rights of citizens at Caledonia REALLY offended my classic Liberal principles! If it wasn't for the fact that Ignatieff has all the appeal of a long dead fish I would switch my vote THIS election! Maybe next time there will be some better choices. Where are the Rhinos when you need them?