Wild Bill

No, it is based on fact, just not much of a fact. We have a large newspaper chain reporting on how a municipal employee in Montreal was caught looking at child porn. That's it! People from all walks of life have been caught and convicted of child porn. What's so special about this case? There was nothing in this article to suggest the perp was a Liberal. On percentages he was likely a Bloc supporter but he could have been Tory, NDP or nothing at all! There are absolutely no other facts to speculate with other than the one, that he was a man working at a city job in Montreal. Even if he was a Liberal, so what? The Liberal Party and it's supporters constitute a large number. So does any other major party. In a representative sample of that size you will always find a few 'bugs'. If the man was a Tory, what would Mr. Canada have said then? Probably the obvious, that the fact meant nothing because it wasn't relevant. It would make as much sense to believe that all Liberals are child molesters as to believe that all Tories are magnificent party animals. Obviously, one look at Harper and his cabinet would put the lie to that idea, although Chuck Strahl and Tony Clement have been known to let their hair down and have some fun occasionally!

Not surprising. If 80% of the time the system is working then it's very easy to find success stories. My point is simple. Even if only 20% are falling through the cracks we should recognize that 20% and seek to improve the figure, not deny it's happening and just tell those disadvantaged patients that they should be glad that at least they're not Americans!

'Not the story'? 'Sez who, Scotty? To me having a 'busty hooker' involved is everything! Canadian political scandals are always so boring! Not surprising, since Canadian politicians tend to be boring. Look at Harper! He's living proof of the old joke about how a business financial controller is someone who didn't have the personality to be an accountant! As for Ignatieff, if he had more personality he'd be one of the Living Dead! Americans, British, French and especially the Italian politicians all provide great sex scandals! The closest we've come since Gerda Munsinger over half a century ago was Max Bernier's girlfriend. That's a LONG time! I mean, if we have to keep electing these bums can't we at least get some entertainment out of them?

Why do you keep repeatedly posting what amounts to the exact same post, a post which is really just blatant advertising for your new party? This is a discussion board, not a free advertising venue for your party! If you want advertising, do what every other party does and PAY for it! Here, if you want people to answer your posts just give them something interesting to discuss, not four consecutive posts exactly the same, saying that your new party will be all things to all people and please come to your websites! When people don't answer your posts it's because they're BORING! Repeating them will not help!

Actually, CANCON for tv happened because the only way to get us Canadians to watch crap like "The Trouble With Tracy" was to leave us with nothing else! It was either that or put a gun to our heads!

Forgave who, Molly? In politics, NEVER forgive and NEVER forget! I've been keeping a list of what parties and politicians have done both good and bad, all my life. As I keep saying, when it comes time to vote it's a question of who smells the least, or more succinctly, who has pissed me off a bit less than the other guys! After Day fell I felt a bit better with Harper at the reins. That is, until he merged with the PCs. I didn't see the need for it. The PCs were almost gone. Another election or two and they likely would have been dead and buried. What was the rush? Everyone seemed to feel it was just a numbers game. Add the PC and Reform vote together and you could knock out the Liberals. I thought that was just too shallow a premise to be believed. Not everyone would stick with the new combined party. History shows I was right. Even with a huge Liberal scandal all the new Tories could do was form minorities. Then Harper decided to abandon virtually every Reform party plank and turn the party over to the old PC bunch. He even tried to cozy up to Mulroney, his former hated enemy! Look how well THAT turned out! So I am FAR from having forgiven those involved from those times! It's just that there's no one else for me to vote for! Give me a choice I LIKE and I'll drop the Tories faster than raw hamburger left out in the sun all day!

Gee, this is another time I find myself agreeing with Waldo! I should check my med prescriptions to make sure there hasn't been an error! As an old Reformer, I still vividly remember when Day won the party leadership. To my eternal shame, I had voted for him! At that time a lot of us were getting a bit ticked with Manning. He was still the "Founding Father" but he had seemed at times to be a bit manipulative in getting the party membership to vote his way on policy and party direction. Day looked like a fresh face and his campaign team had done a great job in talking him up as having a great resume in provincial politics. The problem was that Day very carefully hid his evangelical beliefs during his campaign and then after he won tried to let those beliefs become party policy! Manning was always very careful to keep religion and politics totally separate within the party. Harper had given a speech at one convention warning the membership that if they tried to merge evangelical positions into the Party it would be the kiss of death, as most Canadians wanted nothing to do with religion in their political parties. So here comes Day, lurking like a snake in the grass during his leadership campaign and almost as soon as he won all the members of his evangelical congregation start acting like THEY controlled the party! It wasn't like they had been smart enough to understand the situation and stage a coup. It was more like they truly believed that the majority of Canadians believed the same as they did! When Day started to do this it really hurt the Party. Here in Ontario new memberships started to plummet. A lot of people across the country failed to renew their memberships. If they had wanted to mix politics and religion they would have joined the Christian Heritage Party! Some of the old guard saw what was happening and tried to talk to Day but he blew them off like some kind of dictator. That's party of why we saw a breakaway movement, where a dozen or so of the most respected founding members of the Reform Party left to sit as independents and eventually with the PCs. It was all because of Day. Eventually Day went down to defeat and Harper took over. The party had learned its lesson - never let someone like Day be leader again! However, Day and his zealot minions still had a bit of power within the party and to be fair, Day could be a good cabinet minister, as long as it was in the right portfolio and he was always firmly kept in check by the party leader. Day was given a respectable position and in return he hung up his cross and put away his robe and sandals. If Day hadn't have won that leadership I'm convinced Manning would have led the Party to government. Day derailed everything by imposing his own religious views onto the party. Worse yet, one of the most basic principles of the Reform Party was populism, where the grassroots membership set policy. Day committed his derailment without ever having put it to a membership vote! That to me was unforgivable! It's all water under the bridge now, of course. Still, you won't see me shedding any tears while watching Day fade off into the sunset.

Topaz, it is obvious that both you and the reporter who wrote the article don't really understand what software code actually IS! The idea that an outside force could seize control and start flying the plane remotely would add about and extra BAZILLION bucks to the cost of the plane! It might be possible to remotely disable the engine, in order to protect against theft or against some ally eventually becoming an enemy and using their F-35 to strike a American target but that's not likely. The US is pretty careful about to whom they'll sell their planes. No, the real reason that the US wants to keep it secret and some countries want it for free is that this sort of code is incredibly expensive and all or portions could be used in other aircraft! Nowadays just about everything in such a plane is controlled by computer chips run by software programs stored in software code. Such code has to undergo extensive testing. A bug in a software could cause a plane to misfunction or even crash. That software code could be worth millions on the black market. China and other countries would love to have a copy for their own new designs! The US would be a fool to just hand the software code over to some other country. What's more, you have to get a bit suspicious as to why another country would REALLY want to have it! They don't need it at all to fly or maintain the plane. So what's their problem?

You really don't know much about Ontario police outside of the GTA, do you? Toronto is not all of Canada or even Ontario. You really should get out more! Have you ever heard of Caledonia? You must be totally ignorant if you think that Ontario police could never do such things on their own and must be led by the feds! McGuinty's boys threw an entire TOWN to the wolves! They left them with ZERO protection of law! It's posts like yours that are part of the reason everybody likes to hate Toronto!

Why are you blaming Harper? Those were almost all OPP and Toronto Police, not federal RCMP officers. That makes them Dalton McGuinty's boys! What's more, it was DALTON's Ontario judges who came up with those trumped up "police super powers" that failed to pass the Charter tests!

Mr. 'Saur, I caught a brief bit of CBC NW at suppertime last night on this issue. The Tory spokesman mentioned that the Opposition was not calculating the purported cost over-runs for the F-35 correctly, perhaps deliberately. From what I overheard (and admittedly I wasn't paying full attention as I was cooking supper at the time) his point was that the over-runs have to do with R & D stuff, i.e. more engineering or whatever. These costs are not part of the deal for F-35 customers, who get a price already calculated based on true production costs. In other words, working out all the bugs is on Uncle Sam's tab and countries like Canada, Australia and other customers don't have to pay for that. Have you heard anything more about this and perhaps can explain it better? If this is true, not only does it put the Harper decisions in a better light but it makes the Opposition look like they're deliberately twisting things for partisan purposes. This of course would not be at all surprising, given that the Liberals absolutely refuse to grant the fact that it was THEIR government that committed us to the F-35 in the first place!

First off Topaz, many of us disagree with you about how bad the things the Tories have done have actually been. Second, what are we supposed to do if we also believe that the Liberals are WORSE?

You're forgetting that we're Canadians, Wyly! Every time we join our allies in a mission we're always the guys that need a ride there and don't have enough bombs or ammo to do our part of the job. So we wind up bumming from our allies. Have you forgotten our Kosovo experiences, if nothing else? If we're the only guys there flying MIGs then we will have no one to bum from! If we didn't have it or didn't bring it we're beat!

Not entirely, Scrib! I agree there is usually some Liberal bias but outside of Queens U. and Ryerson or the pages of the Star it's not that bad. ALL papers are going to attack ANY party that looks like a runaway winner! That's what sells papers! It has to look like a real race or it gets boring. What are they supposed to do, attack the Liberals or the NDP? They're the parties that don't look like strong contenders. Knocking them would only put people to sleep! Papers need new factors that look like they might change the outcome. That's often hard to find in Canadian politics. Right now, reporting Harper and his Tories in a constantly favourable light would be just more "dog bites man" stuff.

Sounds like a good idea to me! Let's go for it! This new party is far more Mulroney's than Manning's anyway.

Let's not be hasty here, Max. You may be quite right that Harper showed poor judgement but one thing seems obvious - the Tories hid nothing and seemed absolutely sure that they were legally in the right! Consider, they hid nothing! They didn't try to pull something with just a few MPs but with as many as they could! What's more, a court ruling agreed with them! Now an appeal has ruled against them. All the partisans here are jumping all over the verdict against them and ignoring the one that supported them. There is still a court process underway and the Tories may yet prevail. Or, they may lose. That's how legal systems work. One thing's for sure - since the opposition parties have gone so rabidly after the nitpicking details in this case they have established a new precedent. Someday they will find themselves in a similar position on some other issue and the Tories will respond exactly in kind. Tit for tat, I guess. A new low will be set. Of course, in politics is it possible to go lower than low? Anyhow, we still see little or no signs that the average Canadian gives a rats ass! There's a lot of noise but one thing that stands out when a citizen looks at the case is again, there was no attempt to hide! A voter may or may not understand an issue but attempts to hide speak for themselves. For this reason the Bev Oda case may yet do some damage (but not a lot) but the "in-out" accounting dispute done all above board just can't be equated with the typical political secret scandals. If I were a Liberal I would be screaming about a far bigger weakness in the Harper camp. It's almost a one-man show! Harper has been such a control freak that few of his cabinet ministers have garnered much of a profile for themselves. Back benchers may as well not exist. Even Chretien was never this bad! A ruling party is supposed to be just that, a party! That is, a group of competent individuals who all contribute to the rule of the country. What if Harper fell under a bus? Would his style of leadership have prevented any competent replacement? Ignatieff shows in the polls as a weak leader or PM choice. The Liberals should be turning that around into a strength! There are a number of high profile members in his shadow cabinet that are leadership material. They should be trumpeting the strength of their team, thus dodging any criticisms of Ignatieff personally. Oh well, as I have said before, this election is just a "snore-fest" anyway. Next time the Liberals will likely have a much better chance and we will see some REAL action!

You and Bryan both have done exactly what I predicted! You minimize the problem and make an allusion to a problem with an American style system! "Every time we have this debate a number of defenders will rant and rave about how these reports are few in number, purely anecdotal and of course "Aren't you glad we're not Americans?" It's as if we are so defensive about our system that we are incapable of admitting it has some problems and if you can't recognize you have a problem then you can't fix it!" You are contributing to the problem! Instead of recognizing there's a leak in the roof folks like you and Bryan call it "just a small hole, that only drips when it rains!". Then you talk about how at least in Canada we have a roof, unlike many Americans! For Pete's Sake, if there's something wrong why not recognize it and FIX it!

In the context of my post, what was implied was huge numbers from specific areas, due to racially-based quotas, in order to accomplish some social engineering goal. At no time was I talking about specific numbers of immigrants per year. That is an entirely separate argument, at least as far as I'm concerned.

"Slightly shift" I could agree with, Bonam but some posters in this thread are implying we should fear huge numbers due to racism.

"Should we or shouldn't we?" The point is moot. Immigrants pick us, we don't necessarily pick where they come from. My point is that virtually all of the time, we don't have the freedom to choose! We have to take our immigrants from those areas that have people who WANT to come! For the past few decades a policy of choosing immigrants only from Europe would have meant very few immigrants! They were happy where they lived and had no desire to come to Canada. More simply, I personally feel that we should take the best of all applicants, regardless of where they are coming from. Simply apply our standards and take the best. Which countries supply the most immigrants will tend to vary over the years, according to conditions in their home countries and also, here in Canada! Canada has slipped a lot in ranking among living standards. Our politicians love to use yardsticks like "quality of life" but if you are talking employment rates and living standards we've gone from maybe 5th or 6th when I was a lad down to at least 17th. Countries like Norway are more attractive than Canada for immigrants. This should be obvious. It's France that has problems with a huge Muslim population, not Canada. Those people could have chosen to come here instead. There must have been something far more attractive to them with countries like France, Italy or Holland. I find it hard to understand how so many posters in threads like these seem to be assuming that we can pick our immigrants from wherever we want, whether for social engineering reasons or purely economic ones. That's an unproven premise, with a hint of arrogance within it...

You're being a rock against the waves again, Mr. C! The world is the way it is and if you fight it you'll only get worn down. Today parents are constantly told - "You're NOT a doctor! Don't take a chance! Bring your child to a medical professional! It could be the onset of meningitis or who knows what!" So the old mother's intuition that it may just be a bit of flu is blown off as a "worthless and anecdotal" opinion. Then we remove any other avenue to get a professional medical opinion BUT an ER! Everything else is always closed! Kids NEVER take sick during weekday office hours! Even more, with the ER wait times, if parents DO put off an ER visit and their child's condition worsens when they do go to the ER they may have lost valuable time. And in the back of every parent's mind is the knowledge that if they don't take their child's symptoms seriously enough and something one-in-a-thousand times terrible happened, the authorities and the media would crucify them! So you have parental competence dismissed, avenues for medical service curtailed and penalties for not following the official 'system' increased. What's a father or mother supposed to do?

Hence my premise, Michael. We aren't picking any particular continent! We take what we can get! For the past few decades, it has been a lot from the Third World. For a little while it might be Europe again, at least until the EU gets some of those countries' economies back on track. Given the current troubles, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more middle east immigrants as they flee to safer climates to raise their families.

Perhaps that is because the culture of South Africa is mostly Commonwealth British?

Isn't it odd that someone like me, who is constantly accused of being a Tory shill, finds so much agreement so often with a labour guy like you, Jack? Hell, we even agree that the Ti-Cats are the greatest! What do you think about disco music?

Quite right, CyberC! A lot of people underestimate the inertia of many Canadian voters. I'm reminded of my late, Italian-Canadian father-in-law. He had been very interested in the politics of his new country and had been a life-long Liberal. His reasoning was very simple. He came to Canada in the early 50's. Economically, things were great until Diefenbaker came to power and we went into a recession. So to him, it was quite simple. Liberals meant good times and Tories meant bad! He was a fervent liberal when I married into his family and holiday dinners sparked much political debate. We didn't change each other's minds but we had a lot of fun. Then came AdScam. It broke my father-in-law's heart. After that, he just didn't want to talk politics at all. I felt sorry for him. He had built his political beliefs more as a faith than I did. The fact that I had switched parties a few times over the years just amazed him! This left him more emotionally vulnerable to the Liberal scandal that it would have left me if I were in his shoes. Anyhow, there are still many voters in this country who have always voted for one party and always will. That's their right and any political observer or party campaigner had best account for them in their calculations.