Wild Bill

This was another Reform plank. In every riding candidates had to win the nomination from the riding membership. The idea was that the riding people picked their own candidate, rather than the party imposing a choice on them. In a few cases the chosen candidate turned out to have some skeletons in his closet and the party HQ had to turf him but that was after the fact. As much as was possible, the people picked their own representatives. I guess this was just to radical an idea to become accepted in the other parties. Myself, I just can't accept anything else as truly democratic.

Forgive me jdobbin, but you really sound like a politician! Every issue demands more studies! Decisions are rarely ever made but a lot of money and time is spent on studies. Politicians use large numbers of studies to make it look like they are actually doing something. Watch the girl in the sequins and fishnet stockings! Don't look at the magician's hand! Also, were my words that vague? Where did I say that I go with my gut? I believe I wrote that I have been following the issue for years, with quotes from policians, media reports, info from family members that are police officers and so on. Your call for another study implies that I have been ignoring the issue until the day when you suggested another study! As if I have done nothing so far! As for a study specific to police, I sincerely doubt you'll ever get one. Who is going to pay for it? The current federal government obviously feels no need. The police leadership are NOT going to dip into their budget to poll their troops UNLESS they are going to get exactly the answer they want! I would think it obvious that they know what their troops would say. No matter what a gun registry report tells them, they have to treat every door as if there could be a gun behind it anyway. That's just common sense! A registry is useless for info about illegal firearms. I submit that if the 'powers that be' truly believed that a poll of frontline police officers would support the Liberal designed gun registry they would have paid for one long ago. The fact that we have never seen one speaks for itself.

Well, I guess it depends on your belief in 'studies'! As Molly has already pointed out, you can google up a study that will tell you whatever you wanted to know. In politics especially, there is much truth in the old adage: "A consultant is someone you pay to agree with what you already wanted to believe." So while I am not suggesting that all studies are worthless, in the final analysis I put my own beliefs FIRST! This means that with the registry issue, the info and studies I have seen over the years since the registry was first proposed and then implemented have not impressed me enough with their methodology to convince me of the value of the registry's structure. To tell me that I need to see yet ANOTHER study just exceeds my patience. If YOU find a study you trust then give me the link! If you expect it to change my mind, it had better be a good one! For after all, unlike some folks I've never been able to grant a point simply by being given a study or two. I've written studies and reports in labs over my life. I'm well aware that to blindly accept a study on face value is the same as choosing your medicines because the guy on the television ad was wearing a white lab coat when he told you it was the best choice! This can demand time and effort. We are not all expert enough properly critique most studies but I believe that before you accept one you are honour bound to at least read it as best you can and make the attempt! Otherwise, you are simply accepting a catechism based on how fancy are the priest's robes, not on how scientifically valid is the study in question. So again, YOU find a study you like! Me, I'm like the guy who has a different church knocking on his door every Saturday morning, each one claiming THEY have the straight dope! I now can use their pamphlets to light my fireplace, confident that I'm not missing out on any infallible truth.

I've been following the gun registry closely, since it was first proposed. So far I have yet to see anything cost-effective, practical or logical about it. It seems to me to simply be an 'touchy feely' pseudo-solution to suck votes from emotional people. So I HAVE been looking, for years now! I have little or no confidence left in the value of the Liberal gun registry. That being said, I DO see value in a simple, cheap registration system like we always had. A delay of a few weeks in issuing a FAC, or Firearms Acquisition Certificate to run a quick check to ensure the applicant is not a convicted murderer out on parole would not be a bad idea either. Except that if the government bureaucracy ran true to form they would likely get so far behind they would just issue the certificates willy nilly. Here in Hamilton we actually have law suits against the City for not issuing building permits and doing inspections on new homes until AFTER the owners have already moved in! Some of these homes proved to have big, expensive structural problems. The City has no excuse except to say that they had problems handling their backlog. So new homes were built and occupied before the permits were even cut, let alone any inspections, which of course are not of much use after the walls are up. So no, I'm not a bit curious. I've seen all I need to see on this 'file'. Scrap it I say and go back to something cheap, simple and easy. Legal gun owners never had a problem with simple registration. It was all the hoops they had to jump through and the antique firearms they were forced to sell, not to mention the exorbitant fees! The Registry was a Kafkasque expensive nightmare for legal gun owners. Yet anytime anyone questioned such problems they were battered down with accusations of being 'Bubbas' who just wanted to drive around in pickup trucks with gun racks shooting rats and neighbourhood dogs and cats for the sheer fun of it! I suspect that if you had followed it closely yourself you might agree with me. It was never the idea of registering guns. We had always had firearm registration systems! It was the way THIS registry was structured that caused all the problems!

Sorry, I misunderstood you! I thought you were saying that Canada should have a well equipped force of 100,000. As far as the UN having an army, wouldn't we have problems like the Human Rights Commission which is dominated by the worst offenders ordering the UN army to attack Israel?

If you are suggesting a well trained and equipped force of 100,000, are you not then suggesting a tripling or even quadrupling of what we have now and the budget that goes with it?

Better pick your policeman carefully before you ask the question, jdobbin. The offical answer is ALWAYS that they want the registry! The reason is quite simple. The police officials don't have to care if a registry is accurate or cost-effective. They don't have to care if it is an invasion of civil liberties either. Basically, they don't have to care if it is no more than a very clumsy and flawed too. From their perspective, they would wish to keep anything that is even slightly useful in their work! Now, if you asked a front-line officer how useful is a gun registry when he has to knock on a door and he would no doubt privately tell you that it is not very useful at all. That's because illegal guns are so easy for criminals to obtain that he has to treat EVERY knock as if there could be a gun waiting for him! However, he's not the one who will be asked for official stands on such issues. Besides, simple games theory would tell police leaders that a flawed tool is at least slightly better than no tool at all. If it is far over budget and grossly inaccurate there's a chance it could be improved into a more cost-effective tool. It costs a police chief nothing to sit back and wait to see if it could happen. It's only we ordinary taxpayers who care if a tool is useful and worth the money, since it is we who pay for it! Unfortunately, taxpayers seem to be split on such issues. Many seem incapable of separating their fear of firearms from their ability to critique the validity of a gun registry program. We see two main groups, namely those who feel safer with the mere thought of more gun ownership restrictions, regardless of what they are or actually do, and others who examine the specifics and if they find them wanting not only don't feel safer but actually become enraged over being fed a "bill of goods".

Either you didn't listen closely enough or the report was wrong. Try googling: http://www.guncontrol.ca/English/Home/Work...gtheIllegal.pdf "Toronto Police Service conducted a review of crime handguns submitted to the Gun and Gang Task Force during 2004 and found over half (52% were smuggled) and almost half (48%) originated in Canada." "Canada Customs seizes about 1000 - 1500 smuggled guns each year. This number represents the tip of the iceberg as only a small percentage (3%) of trans-border traffic is checked. • These guns account for as many as 50% of the handguns recovered in crime. • In 2004, the Canada Border Services Agency seized 1,099 firearms at the border including 140 non-restricted firearms, 299 restricted firearms and 660 prohibited firearms.16 • While guns originally owned in Canada are a major source for the illegal trade, in large cities in Canada, smuggled guns account for more than 50% of the handguns recovered in crime." You might also consider that several high profile cases of stolen guns in Toronto came about from criminals reading the address book of gun owners when they purchased ammunition. It was a simple matter to then go to those addresses and break in. One case involved a law enforcement officer who was a legal collector. He was on holidays and they literally ripped a large locked safe full of firearms out of his house. The ammunition list was a result of government regs that perhaps were not very well thought out by people not of a practical bent. You know, Liberals! I still don't understand why anybody cares if criminals are using guns. They only get a slap on the wrist if they're ever caught and brought to court so what does it matter anyway? I remember reading the Liberal Bill that brought about their gun registry and being struck by the fact that it DIDN'T ADD EVEN ONE DAY to the mandatory sentence for any criminal actually using a gun in the commission of a crime. In fact, often the penalties purposed for not registering a firearm were harsher than those typically given to some felon who had held up a variety store with a gun. To me, this could only mean that the Liberals were not serious about reducing gun crime. If it was more than just a show why would they not increase the mandatory penalties as a deterrent? Why pick on farmers, hunters and gun club shooters? The answer seems obvious. It was a cheap and easy shot that would buy them a lot of votes from people that don't think very deeply about what actually would happen!

I don't follow your logic. If the Taliban have most of the guns what's the chances of a popular uprising? If the Taliban control the schools and indoctrinate the kids from a young age do you think they will allow the 'leakage' of CNN and MTV to influence them without some kind of challenge? Of course not. They are fanatics and will try to commit more acts of terrorism against the West! Afghanistan is not East Germany or Czechoslovakia, where you had a well educated populace and although the government was communist the police and military were at least civilized. The Taliban think nothing of letting 50 civilians get bombed trying to salvage free gasoline if it will make the Americans look bad in the liberal press. No, Islamic fundamentalism is so repressive that the chances of a people successfully freeing themselves with no outside help is just about zero! We've seen this before, many times in history. There are Canadians in my own family who came here fleeing the Russians from Hungary, circa 1956. They are still very bitter against America, since they believe they were encouraged by America to rise up against Russian rule and then left hung out to dry when America didn't follow through! I have never met anyone who had grown up under a repressive regime who hadn't desperately wanted outside help to remove their oppressors. Frankly, they would find your attitude rather cruel and uncaring. Myself, I have mixed feelings. I sympathize but feel no obligation to save the world. Still, I am not so naive as to think that the 'bad guys' will always leave us alone if not provoked.

Seems to me that having the Cities make the decisions is the status quo, MM! Why do you think the Liberals phrased the gun registry the way they did? The Liberals and the NDP seem to be almost exclusively city-based, except for portions of Northern Ontario. I doubt if they ever even think about rural folks, much less care. If some rural family wanted a gun to handle the bears that occasionally tried to break into their house and eat their kids I'm betting Jack would side with PETA and tell them that they should be using negotiation instead of asking for a gun.

Even simpler, when approaching any property or person cops have to assume the worst! They know better than anyone how easy it is for a criminal to source a firearm, licence or registry be damned! Does anyone seriously think that if a registry check said NO firearm at this address the cops could take it as gospel?

Unlike the NDP, the federal conservative party has almost no control over any provincial Tory party. So it is not surprising to see a conflict about an issue. Tim Hudak cares about Ontario. Jim Flaherty cares about the federal government. So what's to explain? As far as the very idea of an HST, any sensible Canadian finds it hard to believe that the feds are doing this for OUR benefit! They want the money, plain and simple! We can argue about the theoretical positives and negatives all we want but that's not really relevant. You can prove anything as a theoretical concept. Where the rubber hits the road is what happens in the real world. What does government REALLY do with a tax grab? My answer is to give a personal anecdote about my dear departed Nova Scotian grandfather. He was a fine man but struggled all his life with the bottle. When he was on a bender you had to lock up even the aftershave. He would pawn my grannie's silverware to get money for booze. You NEVER, EVER, EVER dared to leave any loose money around! Governments and taxes always remind me of my grandfather. He always had some great theoretical positives about what he would do if you gave him some money as well.

No, of course you can't trust their dictators but you can more easily control them! The alternative is to decimate the populations of such countries. After all, it would appear that neanderthal violence is part of their culture! Some exceptions, of course. Still, it would be impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. Since we have a moral code that won't let us just bomb a primitive country "back to stone" then imposing a puppet ruler is the only way to control what is clearly a threat! Look at Al-Queda! To mount a suicide mission of crashing airliners into the Twin Towers is not the act of mad dogs then I don't know what is! The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan catered to Al-Queda with money and protected training camps. Whatever is happening in Afghanistan today, you can bet the training camps are rarely seen! If we let mad dogs rule themselves we'd only have ourselves to blame if they wandered into our turf once in a while and bit some of us. You can't blame American politics for provoking Islamic fundamentalists. The mere fact that western culture exists is enough for them to hate us! Despite our faults, we have a culture based more on individual freedoms. They have a culture based on a small group forcing their will on everyone else. It is almost impossible to keep the ideas of blue jeans, satellite television and rock and roll out of any society today, even North Korea. This makes it more difficult for some rulers to control their people, since it is human instinct to gravitate to more personal freedom. It is obvious that the Taliban and other fundamentalists like them would be perfectly happy to see western culture wiped from the face of the earth! You can bash the Americans all you want but only a fool would choose to emigrate to northern Pakistan instead of America.

I always have a problem with what seems to be an odd sense of 'moral equivalency' in these arguments. If I understand correctly, some folks are saying that because American upset some folks in the Middle East politically, that gives them the right to publicly air video of them cutting the head of some poor western reporter, or blowing up tens or hundreds of civilians in their marketplaces. Or throwing acid in the faces of school girls. I just don't see the equivalency! To me, these people are evil cavemen. They share little or nothing with what I would consider morality. They are little more than animals and should be treated as such. You can't negotiate with them because they don't keep their word. How many cases are there of Americans deliberately targeting marketplaces? Or throwing acid in the faces of school girls? Or firing rockets not at soldiers of who you consider to be your enemy but rather randomly into residential districts? As far as I'm concerned, there is no equivalency. Or any comparison. If a terrorist ever harmed my daughters I could see myself strapping on some tnt and paying him or his comrades a return visit! Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of innocents in order to achieve political ends. To me, as a Libertarian, there can be nothing so vile. Terrorists have no right to even take up space. As Kim Mitchell once sang: "Ah, you should be six feet under, pushing up wheat for the hungry!"

Molly, I've got a news flash for you. They're ALL hypocrites! It's really not worth pointing out these examples! All politicians of all parties have both a private and a public persona. The only one they show us is the public one, which is dictated by their party HQ. The party whip tells them what they officially stand for and even though privately they may think differently that is their official facade. Our system is based on ruthless party solidarity. We have a tradition that a defeat on pretty well any kind of Bill is to be treated as a non-confidence motion. This was something that Manning dearly wanted to change. Apparently, since it is a tradition and not part of our legal structure all that it would take is a declaration at the start of a parliamentary session that only major Bills like money stuff were to be considered votes of confidence. This would allow MP's to vote by conscience or better yet, by the wishes of their constituents. A Tory gets caught snorting coke, a Liberal passes out envelopes of money and Jack and his wife live in palatial Toronto digs considered subsidized housing. What else is new? Bob Rae sent his granny to a Buffalo hospital to avoid waiting lists. Ho hum, ho hum. They are all merely 'players on a stage', proxies that vote the party line in order to help achieve the Party's official agenda. The idea of free votes and representing the people of your riding over the wishes of your party was one of Reform's most popular ideas so the parties sometimes will 'fake it'. They will take a nose count to make sure that a few dissenters won't matter to the result. When a few of their boys or girls vote 'contrarian' they will trumpet to the news flacks "See! We allow our members freedom!" but in the final analysis, it's just a show to fool us rubes. Parties don't really care if their member MP's are saints or true to their official values. They only care if they are popular enough in their riding to make it secure next election for the party. I think I must have told you before how once after the campaign started Reform discovered that one of their candidates had secretly been a racist! They had no time left to come up with another candidate so they chose to fire his ass out the door and run no one, leaving the riding uncontested. Meanwhile, the Liberals had found themselves in exactly the same position in one of their ridings. They let him stand, telling the reporters "Well, golly gee, what can we do? There's no time to get a replacement so we'll just let him run and if he wins we'll get him some counseling!" When they ALL do it it becomes a null factor. We're left to make our decisions on the official agenda of each party, with very little reason to support a candidate as an individual. After all, under our system you could elect Jesus Christ Returned and it wouldn't matter, if he belonged to an Opposition party. All an Opposition MP can do is appoint a staff that is very good at straightening out EI snafus and the like. As far as getting big money help for his riding he's essentially impotent. To crib from classic SNL's Jack Handey, if you lower your expectations things will not bother you so much!

Wipe out the Liberals?You say this like it's a bad thing! What's odd about that? Politics is all about such rivalry. I don't recall Chretien showing any mercy whatsoever to the Tories or Reform through any of their troubles. I too would be happy to see the Liberals decimated! Perhaps that's what it would take to get them to examine their values and perhaps decide to be dictionary, classic style Liberals. I could vote for that kind of Liberal! One things for sure, political parties are no different than any other institution. They never change until and unless their back is up against the wall and its a matter of naked survival. If Harper can achieve his goal, the Liberal party may be forced to change into something that appeals to Canadians coast to coast, in large numbers in all regions. If he doesn't achieve his goal, I don't believe it will ever happen, at least not in my lifetime.

Is that how you see it, jdobbin? I didn't think 'keepitsimple' was making any legal claim about ignoring Quebec votes. What I saw was more of a moral claim that the Tories had a strong mandate from English Canada and the Liberals did not, by comparison! Legally we may have to accept the votes of separatist MP's but moral comment is fair game!

Good point! Although some reserves are so far out that there are no roads. Still, it does seem like some just sit there and bitch for the government to bring it to them. Those reserves that take that attitude really puzzle me if they are also those who claim to be a sovereign nation. Talk about having your cake and eating it too! This whole over-reaction really seems to be an entitlement ploy. Having body bags available is standard policy. If they needed the bags and didn't have them that would no doubt be called a crime against the universe as well! It really looks like the body bags simply were delivered before the masks and sanitizer stuff and the First Nations decided to make a federal case out of it to speed up delivery of what hadn't arrived yet. Nobody delivered a mask and some hand sanitizer to my door! Oh well, it really doesn't matter. Whatever happens, one way or another, it will all be blamed on non-natives. We can't win no matter what we do. Rather dampens any motivation to try, sometimes.

Flawed logic, Argus. A joint income of $70K and one of $250K are two different situations! Apples and oranges. First off, demographics suggest that there are far more at that hypothetical $70k level of yours than at $250K. So if you want more babies it doesn't make sense to target the higher but smaller income group. Also, the higher group would likely consist more of professionals. Professional women tend to be less interested in raising a large family, no matter how much money they make. You can scold them all you want but you're not likely to change their minds. Thus, they are irrelevant to this discussion. So at that lower income level, what are the family options? This is what I mean by real world choices. Perhaps the father should go out and take an oil sands job while the wife gives up her job in Ontario and tends the family? Not bloody likely! Ask the Newfoundlanders how pleasant is that option, for a father to rarely see his family ever again. Relocation costs money, money that usually a family in Ontario just doesn't have put aside. With no contacts or support network out West, relocation is literally a shot in the dark. If you miss, your kids go hungry. The devil is always in the details and things always sound easy to the man who doesn't have to do it himself! Or if he did it himself, to expect that someone with a completely different lifestyle in a completely different situation several thousand miles away can do the same as him. If our governments want to increase the birthrate they could start by lowering taxes and giving families more tax incentives. I'm not talking a couple of thousand dollars a year here. It would need tens of thousands before it would have a worthwhile effect.

Who ever said it did? Who says it's supposed to? Does the lack of manners over at "rubble.com" represent those of every Internet forum poster? It is what it is. At least even with an over preponderance of Tories the board is far more civil!

This is a perpetual topic yet I rarely see the 'real world' factors mentioned. We have smaller families for a very simple reason, money! Or lack of, to be more specific. We've constructed an economy where both partners have to work to have sufficient family income to support a home and a couple of kids. Also, I can't speak for the rest of the country but here in Ontario jobs have been insecure for a couple of decades. Having both partners work is at least some insurance. This also ties a family down. If Dad moves to the oil sands for a job should the family follow? After all, it would mean that Mom has to quit her job! Re-location becomes a bit more of a complicated issue. I know there are those who say that Mom can stay home if you buy a cheap shack but that's just it, it will be a cheap shack and likely not in an area where you have the kind of schools you want for your kids. If you have any more than a couple of kids the money runs out, especially with the cost of day care. Meanwhile, work is demanding extra time (usually for salary workers as unpaid overtime) while you are trying to drive your kids to soccer or karate classes. It's bad enough juggling everything with a small family. Up the number of kids and we might see a massive wave of nervous breakdowns! If we want people to have more kids we have to change their economic situation so that they can afford and manage them. Anything else is just 'blarney talk'.

I did read your quote! I'll add a little more: "...snort a couple of lines, have a few drinks, then go speeding along... cause that's how the conservatives roll! " I will grant that your excuse could also work if one put the emphasis on the internal quote to your post. However, you're not the only one I thought was partisan. I stand by my words. A number of posters here tar their political rivals with one brush, or have an amazing warped sense of equivalency in blaming Tories for spitting on the sidewalk as a crime against the Universe. Or implying all Liberals are crooks because one Liberal Senator ripped off some nuns! I prefer to dislike people as individuals...

That's your opinion and you have every right to hold it! I happen to disagree. Unfortunately, at the rate we're going we'll both likely be dead before we see who is right and who is wrong.

Why? If technology can feed us and keep us warm in greater and greater numbers, why would Nature have to step in?

If you've read my position on the coalition many times I would think you also would have read that I too am unhappy with the status quo. I just don't happen to agree with you on your solutions. Or, it would appear, with Trendlines. My solution is simple. A strong Tory majority! Failing that, a change in leadership of the Liberal party so that they begin to represent the principles of Classic Liberalism. I would have confidence in giving a majority to such a Liberal Party as well. The problem I have with Trendlines is that I can't believe they can be objective with their stats when they editorialize from such a partisan standpoint. I just can't give them the credibility that I give to the more formal polling organizations.