Wild Bill

The issue is not who pays and who takes. Rather, it is who takes and then bitches about how much they get! Very different and I would think, obvious.

In any group, there has to be some sense of fairness. If too many members feel their job is to pay dues for the beer while other members get to drink it then the group will eventually breakup due to internal resentments. The issue in this thread is that many in TROC feel Quebec takes more than it gives. Even more, it also perpetually bitches about it! Even if this perception is wrong, it is very real. It will not go away by scolding people about it. The kind of arrangements for Quebec's wants you imply would only look to many in TROC as even more "Neville Chamberlain" arrangements, eventually allowing Quebec a high level of autonomy not shared by the other provinces and a fiscal imbalance accomplished with the taxes imposed on TROC citizens. Do you really think this would have widespread acceptance? When's the last time PEI removed the flag of Canada from their provincial legislature?

My mother's side came over in the good ship Hector to Pictou, Nova Scotia. That was in the 1690's. How long does one's family have to be here before we stop being classed as immigrants? As for the OP, it seems rather a Rube Goldberg solution to talk of rewards for having children. The major difference working families have less children is because they have less disposable income and much less security. Plus we are taxed more than previous generations! Larger baby bonus cheques won't help if you lose your job, especially when the economic status quo these days is for both parents to have to work. People are not going to chose to have more children until and unless we return to one worker families where that worker is not constantly afraid of losing his job. Stop and think a minute. How long have we been seeing plant closures and downsizing? Plus job losses due to new technologies? I've been watching this trend for over 30 years! Companies put in new machines so they can eliminate labour costs. Computers have wiped out vast numbers of accounting jobs. Secretarial jobs are almost entirely gone. Today, the only families that have more than one or two children are those who don't have to care about money. Most of those are on some form of government assistance. Somehow, a few hundred dollars more as a child dependent deduction on our taxes is not likely to cut it.

Well, if you are going to "turn it around" you should do it in a more logical manner. Otherwise, you just sound silly! There is an important difference here. Alberta PAYS and Quebec TAKES! It's like being at a party where someone is being criticized for not paying his share of the beer. You are attempting to defend that person, who has been drinking most of a two-four after only putting a 6 pack into the ice tub! Who will take your words seriously?

Sounds like the deal that Quebec has been steadily achieving already - independence without calling it that! What would TROC get out of such an arrangement?

Because that's the way statistical mathematics works, Topaz. Math doesn't lie. That's why casinos and smart gamblers make tons of money, while most people who gamble just lose. You may not understand the math behind polling but if you worked on a politicians campaign you had better trust polling. Or you will lose!

I don't follow you here. Of course there was no coalition but there WAS a real threat of a coalition being formed! Harper was given a threat. He took it seriously. Should we now treat his actions as voluntary and blame him for the consequences? I stand in front of you with a baseball bat and threaten to hit you with it unless you rob a store for me. You get pinched by a cop. You tell the cop about the threat and he says "So what? He didn't actually hit you with the bat. There was no actual use of force." He gives me a wave and a tip of his hat as he hauls you off to jail. Laughable indeed.

What was repatriated was the British North America Act, so that we no longer needed any rubber stamp from Britain. Until 1982, we didn't really have a formal constitution! We didn't really need one. We sprang from the example of Britain, who has never had a formal constitution. That is really much more of a French idea, which is where the Americans got the idea. Britain had something which many feel is far better - the force of Common Law! Common Law is law set by precedent,which also slowly evolves as the needs and wants of a society also evolves. There is also one very important distinction - it sets limits on what we can do and what "rights" we have only in specific instances. It sets NO limits on anything not clearly defined! There was much talk back then about the English model and the French model of Law. The usual example given was the idea of "Keep off the grass!". Under English Common Law, you could only prohibit walking on the grass in specific areas such as private property. Under the French model, you are told what areas of grass you may walk on - all others are verboten! Put another way, the French model spells out your rights. Anything not on the list is not your right. The English model assumes that you have unlimited rights that are only limited in specific instances for specific reasons. Walk wherever you damn well please as long as there's no sign posted. The two are very different views and philosophies of rights and laws. Our system was changed by adopting a formal constitution to much more of a republican, or French, model. There are many who still believe we are the poorer for it.

That may be true, but so what? If there were a separation, Canadians would feel the way they feel and politicians would have to react to that, right or wrong.

Jaycee, a LOT of people don't like many things about our Constitution! What's the big deal? That's democracy, after all. I was a young lad when it all happened. What did you think was going on? A constitution was worked out all in peace, love and harmony, with the entire populace all in agreement and deliriously happy? It was nothing of the sort! Trudeau and his Liberals rammed it through by virtue of their political power. There were many dissenting voices over a number of aspects of the Constitution and the Charter that were just quashed or ignored. Ask Quebec how they felt about the process! I'm not sure what you expected out of Harper. A giant party? Guaranteed to open up old wounds? With a new PQ government in Quebec, that would have gone over beautifully!

People have damn good reasons for fearing the "Islamists"! When America or Israel make a strike, it's virtually always in retaliation, to deter violence. When Islamists make a strike, violence is the very purpose! When America or Israel make a strike and civilians are killed, it is unfortunate collateral damage from being too close to the targets, if not even being used as human shields by the targets. When the Islamists make a strike and civilians are killed, it's because the civilians WERE the targets! That is all the difference I need to decide where I stand.

What else is new? The Liberals pretended the West didn't exist for decades! :lol:

I agree and I am sure so do many other Canadians in TROC. The PQ are playing to their internal audience - their supporters in Quebec. This is very shallow "only one move deep" type of thinking. If someday they do find themselves negotiating a separation agreement with TROC this is the sort of thing that is remembered. In effect, they should be aware that what pleases their local support can spark anger in the people with whom they must strike an agreement. Perhaps they know this and realize that the antipathy toward Quebec if it was leaving will be so great that it will not matter. As I have said many times before, the moment Quebec leaves it will have nothing to offer any party in power in Ottawa. There will be no seats available from Quebec. The only way for a party to take power will be to please enough voters in enough seats in what's left of Canada. Canadians in TROC will not likely be in a good mood. Any governing party that is seen as being "nice" to Quebec in any negotiations will likely face a good deal of wrath from the only people left who can continue to vote them into office! A divorce is rarely amiable - a divorce of a province from a country is even less likely to be so. Marois seems like a very shallow thinker indeed if she believes she can take the rest of Canada for granted.

It doesn't have to be the "land of milk and honey", Smallc. It just has to be better than what many Ontarioans are facing NOW! Certainly, except for the cost of health insurance, Americans have a higher standard of living. Otherwise, our border towns wouldn't have such lineups to cross to buy groceries! When a man or woman is having a hard time feeding his kids, those are the factors that begin to dwarf patriotism. We would likely also see a public/private sector split, since public sector workers tend to be much more insulated from the effects of job losses.

I'm not so sure about Ontario being at break even, Smallc. Remember, I live here. From my perspective the province is hurting very badly economically. Perhaps my perception is coloured by living in Hamilton, which has been particularly hard hit by steel plant closings and that of all the associated industries with that. There's also Niagara area and Windsor that are sinking fast. Back in the spring I took a job for a couple of months at a call centre, phoning businesses around Ontario to try to get them to sponsor Shriners Circus tickets and other charity stuff. The poor response and the number of sob stories I got from those I phoned was literally frightening! This wasn't just lies to get rid of a charity call. The computer showed the history of most calls over the past few years. Companies gave MUCH more in past years! It would appear that this year is far worse than previous. Plus, we are now officially a have-not province. Not surprising, with the high unemployment. Hell, there's stiff competition between older factory workers for jobs as greeters at WalMart! And I couldn't begin to count the number of ex-factory guys I meet at box stores like Home Depot and Lowes. Before you say that at least they've found a job remember that they are now making perhaps a third of their former income. The only area I hear positive things from is Northern Ontario, from the mines and such. So I dunno, Smallc. It's hard to get a clear official picture. It's not as if policians want bad news to be easily heard. Still, from those areas I CAN get some info it's not looking very healthy in Ontario today. If Quebec were to separate and joining America was an option, I think a strong majority of Ontario would go for it! You can't keep your house and feed your kids with patriotism.

The quote you assigned to me is puzzling, Boges. I don't recall saying those words but if you like, since today is Sept 18 when I've had my morning coffee I can repeat them for you!

You may be technically right, Smallc. Perhaps I should have said "one of the things". I am sure that most would agree that it is no longer Ontario's economy that keeps Canada afloat! My point that if we separated in an east/west split would HURT economically still stands!

My perception was that most citizens DID understand it! We just didn't like it! I despised it from the start. Remember, we were offered one specific option. No one offered us a chance to mull the idea over and choose what we thought was best from several different models. No, we were given something dreamed up by a group of academics with only a pretense of wide spread public input. It was an approach dreamed up by a cabal of elites. So our choice was only to support a new system where extra MPPs could gain office from the results of the popular vote. However, THE POLITICIANS THEMSELVES WOULD CHOOSE THESE NEW MPPS! That's right! Politicians could gain office with never having been voted in by constituents in any specific riding. Parties made their own lists and would have been free to impose an extra MPP from Toronto onto the good citizens of Kapuskasing or Hearst. No doubt he or she would have been intimately familiar with the needs and wants of those people. It would have been the first step on a slippery slope - politicians choosing more politicians without a popular vote. Plus, it would have destroyed the idea of regional representation. Very quickly, larger population centres like Toronto would have become the de facto rulers of the entire province. Not that they don't get their way anyway... It was a very poorly thought out scheme that was placed on that Ontario ballot. It vividly showed us just how far out of touch with ordinary mainstream citizens were the academics who dreamed it up. They actually hurt their cause, for now their flawed original scheme has become embedded in the consciousness of ordinary voters, leaving a bad taste in their mouth. If and when they come up with another scheme they will have a lot of bad feeling to overcome. There are certain truisms of what citizens expect in our democracy. They expect that any MP or MPP must be elected by the people, not named from a party list. They expect that any MP or MPP must represent citizens in their specific geographic area. They expect any MP or MPP must win a majority of the votes in that specific geographic area. Any scheme that does not hold to those truisms will never win popular support. It will only be perceived as a plan to give perpetual losers who cannot win enough popular support more and unearned power. That being said, I would not be at all surprised if supporters of proportional representation found some back door, undemocratic, way of sneaking change in without having to win a popular vote. Despite their claims, I've never seen much REAL populism in anything they have proposed so far!

Quite right, Jaycee! You have successfully destroyed my model! So of course, that obliterates the validity of my POINT! Thanks to your post, I can now clearly see that the INDEX shows that Harper is actually dead last in the favour of Canadians. Mulcair is comfortably way out in front and is guaranteed to win a large majority next election!

You always talk from the heart, jaycee. Never from the head. Right now Albert's oil money is the only thing keeping us afloat! Ontario is in a deep economic depression. Manufacturing is dead and plant closures abound. Factory workers in their 50's have been slowly exhausting their EI benefits and have finished those training courses to make a guy who operated a rolling machine become a heating and air conditioning technician, only to find there are already a surplus of such technicians out there. So how about answering a practical question for once, jaycee. After your proposed east/west split, where will we work? How are we gonna pay the mortgage and feed our kids? Look around you right now! Just how well are we doing under the status quo? Which way is the trend going? It was only a year or two ago that we were told Ontario was going to get rich making windmills! How's that working out?

There is some argument about oil being a non-renewable product. This is something that has just been accepted for over 100 years, because 100 years ago they had formulated a theory as to where oil came from. Some believe that hydrocarbons are continually being formed deep within the earth and very slowly collect into pools. I don't pretend to be an expert myself but I am struck by the notion that if petroleum is indeed formed from decayed organic matter from millions of years ago, there must have been a staggering lot of it! Any one who has mulched their lawn knows how drastically the volume of the residue shrinks over time. Even only a small fraction of that would have been covered up. Most would have been exposed to the open air and blown away by the wind. Even if vegetation eons ago lay hundreds of miles thick on the surface of the earth I find it hard to believe it could have eventually become as much oil and natural gas as we have already pumped out, let alone all the reserves that are left. I think there must be a better explanation - one that may include a constant formation process rather than the dead plant theory.

Well, before petroleum we used whale oil! Whales have gotten scarce but perhaps we can set up whale farms, similar to what we do with salmon. :lol:

Yeah, those are factors CC but 98%? DOUBLE that of Mulcair? Even more for Rae? It's gotta count for SOMETHING!

here's the link: http://news.ca.msn.com/local/ottawa/federal-tories-and-ndp-tied-for-support-nanos-poll-says-2 "Harper's leadership score is up 20 points over the summer, currently sitting at 93 compared to leadership index scores of 48 for NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and 38 for interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae that did not change significantly over the summer." 93 %! Man, this is amazing! Once Canadians put their party preference aside, it seems Harper wins hands down as the most trusted leader. Mind you, how we feel about a leader and how we feel about his party are quite different things for Canadians but still, it does pose a challenge for the other two guys, especially Rae and the Liberals. Of course, once Justin T is annointed and comes down from Mt. Sinai to lead the Liberals into the Promised Land...

I seem to recall that destroying the Liberal gun registry was a plank of the Tory election platform. It was part of why I voted for them!