Wild Bill

Wilber, I don't know what you do for a living but I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the hard sciences. How on earth can you believe that voter turnout will eventually reach those low numbers? You're just extrapolating the curve. Anyone from the hard sciences knows that Nature doesn't work that way.So demanding some lower limit before your proposal becomes justified is totally moot. It is far more likely that we have already come close to a 'plateau' set by the percentage of 'lazy' or disinclined voters in our society. The numbers may hit that limit and never go any lower. As Robert Heinlein, the famous scifi writer. He used to make curves and by the one he made that showed the rate of increase in speed of transportation we should have had faster than light travel a decade or two ago! We don't, of course. The speed of light may very well be impossible to exceed. Nature doesn't work by curves that go on forever. She has 'kinks' in the curves from hard limits or changes. If you used a curve of temperatures with water that is flowing in your pipes you should definitely pay attention to what happens below and above the freezing and boiling points. The characteristics of that water will dramatically change, making your curve useless. Personally, from my POV it would seem that what the supporters of STV and similar schemes really want is not "fewer wasted votes" in the name of democracy but rather more power for the parties THEY favour! They just can't accept that the majority of fellow citizens don't agree with them and so they want to tweak the system a bit more in their favour. If the numbers showed that the NDP or the Greens would end up with FEWER MP's under a change in our system the entire issue would be dropped immediately!

Did you read Riverwind's comment about how you have a group already biased in favour of STV? I read your link. Almost immediately it says how the group was chosen at random from the voters list. How on earth can that be representative? I can guarantee you that most people would not have the time or the inclination to devote to such a group, PARTICULARLY those who don't see the need for it! So you phone the first batch from your list and then keep going until you finally get the number you need. The process inevitably means a "stacked" group. I don't know if this means the people behind the citizensassembly were all "artsies" or simply math-challenged. Certainly they were not experienced pollsters. It's like the old story about truth in advertising, where a commercial might make the claim " 4 out of 5 Doctors prefer Aspirin!". You may have to poll 1000 doctors to finally come up with 4. Then you take just one from the 996 who did NOT prefer the product! You can truthfully and legally now claim that "4 out of 5 Doctors prefer Aspirin". Please note, I am in no way taking a stand on STV. I don't live in BC, after all. I'm simply pointing out parallels between what just happened and what happened before here in Ontario. My point was simply that it seems most of the supporters of electoral reform just can't accept that theirs is not the majority view and therefore there must be something wrong either with the vote or with all those who voted against it! I submit that is simple denial. I think that those who wish change have been putting the cart before the horse. It might be a more positive step to first give their fellow voters a chance to vote on whether or not they agree on a NEED for change before you give them only one alternative choice, as a fait accompli ! If and when people agree on a need for change they will be more interested and perhaps more interactive with developing a specific new system. Perhaps we would see a day when the issue has been more widely thought about and a number of alternatives might be on a ballot, letting the people choose for themselves. I'd have bet 3 beer that if the Ontario proposal had not included a "standby MP list" for the PARTIES to choose the extra MP's instead of the people it would have received a MUCH higher number of votes! Voters were asked to swallow too much in one pill and they spit it out.

"Barney the Dinosaur", anyone? - Warren Kinsella

The same thing happened last election in Ontario. People voted overwhelmingly to keep things as they were! Afterwards, the "talking heads" have blamed it on pressure groups, misleading propaganda, voter ignorance and secret manipulations of the Illuminati. Virtually NONE of them are willing to mention the most likely explanation: PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD IT JUST FINE! IT'S JUST THAT THE MAJORITY DIDN'T LIKE IT! I'm betting two beer we'll see the same avoidance of that explanation coming from BC.

Exactly! We're rather a naive people, for the most part. Americans are much more naturally suspicious of their political leaders. They elect virtually every political position down not just to the local sheriff or police chief but often even the dog catcher! Many Canadians sneer at them for doing this but I see it as a strength. It forces governments at all levels to be conscious of the will of the people, perhaps even beyond the letter of the law. In the Great White North we seem to have a child-like faith that our laws, Charter of Rights and overall system is somehow perfect, handed down on high from Pierre Trudeau or whatever. So we see no need for such populist input. Worse yet, we somehow distrust the will of the people and look at these institutions as necessary barriers to the people expressing their will. We believe that an unelected Supreme Court judge should have more legal power than an elected politician. Obviously, that can only work if the system itself is "perfect". Those of us old enough to have lived through the times of the patriation of our Constitution and the enactment of the Charter of Rights saw clearly that these were documents written by politicians and not some supreme deity. They made deals among themselves to get the necessary agreement to have these documents enacted. The right to property is one conspicuous example. It was deliberately left out to get the NDP folks onside. Worse yet for Canada, we have no amending formula that could ever work in the real world. It requires such a high level of agreement among the provinces and those offices involved that for practical purposes it can never happen. Other countries, such as America, were wise enough to allow for change over the years. That's how they came up with so many amendments to make things more fair and just. Our documents are cast in stone. The way they were written is the way they shall remain, forever and ever, amen! We did come up with the "not withstanding" Clause. This was supposed to be the last defense in any dispute between the will of the people and a badly conceived or written law. However, except for the separatists in Quebec, no politician in the rest of Canada has ever had the courage to use it! Unpopular laws are referred to the Supreme Court. Again, the unelected judges decide if the law should stand. Since their role is not to make law but rather to interpret it, they will only strike down a law if it is unconstitutional. If it IS constitutional the law stands, no matter what the majority of Canadians may think of it. For most of us the deficiencies of our system never touch us personally so we can live in a sort of fantasy world where everything is fair and "just ducky". If someone is unfortunate to get caught up in some unfair legal problem we tend not to believe they have a case! We tell ourselves "They must have done something. There must be more to the story. They probably deserve it anyway!" According to the "system", we all should have a right to get to a hospital for treatment without having our way blocked by protesters. As we saw, people who needed chemo and/or had heart conditions or whatever WERE blocked by protesters and the police did nothing! Why? Because in the real world the police were afraid of the protesters. They knew there was a very real risk that the Tamils might escalate into heavy violence. The police do not have the power to stand up to protests at that level. The police aren't cowards, they're realists! If violence breaks out they know that the official response will NOT be the politicians saying "Good show, guys! You're enforcing law and order!" Rather, they will get blamed for provoking the protesters! Any injuries to the protesters will be deemed the fault of the police. Our system has slid into this rut over the last 50 years or so. As long as most folks have a culture of being law abiding it has worked fairly well. Transgressors have tended to crop up as individuals or at most small groups, well within the resources of our police forces. The difference now is that we have natives who have been willing to mount armed protests in large numbers, as at Oka. We now have Tamils who have come to this country and now are willing to block major highways BY THE THOUSANDS to try to force our governments to take their side on the world stage! There's just no way our police can handle that! True, they also have guns but they would be castigated for using them! That leaves billy clubs and water cannon. They would be blamed for using them as well! Meanwhile, these protesters are not stupid! They have seen that their tactics WORK! This means that they can just keep challenging authority without fear of reprisals. McGuinty was hoping that native protests would end at Caledonia. Mayor Miller is likely hoping that the Tamils will stop and go away. Maybe they will. I just wouldn't bet any money of my own on it.

Well, if he did sue for wrongful dismissal it's a lead pipe cinch he'd never get another such job again! This is the difference between the official line and the real world. The utopian situation that you describe is the official cant to please the plebs like you, me and everybody else. In reality the political situation is quite different but it was deliberately set up that way. Thus it always was and thus it will always be. A variation of this paradigm is how politicians are always so quick to pass laws, such as gun registries or whatever. They know full well that a law by itself is worthless. You need more police to enforce it and a justice system to try, convict and incarcerate offenders. This costs money and they rarely actually allocate any. However, the average citizen sees in his morning paper that a new law has been passed and he thinks "Good show! They're doing something at last!" He never actually "looks behind the curtain" to see if anything was really changed. Thus the old joke "It doesn't have to work, it's enough to say we've got one!"

Would you like their names?

It's all very well for a Blair or a Fantino to claim that no politician is yanking their strings but after all, who hires or fires them?

Good point! It seems like teachers are trying to have it both ways, claiming to be professionals like engineers and doctors while going to rallies where they sing "Solidarity Forever" with Sid Ryan and Buzz Hargrove! They have always been rabidly against any sort of standardized testing, claiming that it is not a good yardstick for a student when everyone knows the real reason is that it is about the only way to highlight somewhere with bad teaching! Their Association in Ontario claims that they are self=policing yet only a handful of teachers lose their license, far less than you would expect from an organization of that size. Still, the Ministry is not part of the Union and much of the "silliness" seems to come from them.

Lukin, academic abilities have been declining for far longer than 20 years! It seems to have been a trend that began in the late 50's and early 60's. I graduated high school in 70-71. I was one of the last students to take 4 years of Latin. By my Grade 13 it was discontinued. I would have liked to have taken Greek but that was axed the year before I got to high school. In Grade 11 we once had a 'spare' due to a teacher illness where we were supervised by a teacher in her final year before retirement. She had started teaching high school at the start of WWII. To kill the time she asked us if we'd be interested in taking an English Comprehension and Grammar test that she used to give students in the late 40's and early 50's. We thought it was a great lark! Those were hippy days and like all teenagers we were quite cocky, believing that we would ace her test, since we were obviously much smarter and more 'advanced'. The results knocked us off our high horses very quickly. The class average on the test was Grade 8 and we had some students as low as Grade 6! Those were the preliminary years of the Hall-Denison Report. I really think that did quite a bit of damage to the students of the newer generations. Just as we were graduating there was the beginnings of the trend to abandon essay answers and just mark with point form or even "multiple guess". Much easier and faster to mark but of course it de-emphasized critical thinking in favour of mere rote learning. I was lucky in that my daughters were and are quite bright. Judging by them and others like them in their peer group it seems that the upper portion of the Bell Curve learn well regardless of or even despite the nature of the "system". The bottom of the curve has always had special dispensations made and frankly, lower expectations. It's the median portion of the Curve that suffers, IMHO. Their lack of basic skills are obvious to those of us from older generations. Fortunately, a return to some phonics in our area has helped reverse some of the poor results. During my work career I was always impressed at how people much older than me may have never gone to high school and yet had already learned much by grade 8 that many younger people never saw until university. I don't know where the trend will eventually take us. Already it would seem that many students can drop science as soon as those beans in the jar full of tissue paper have sprouted and died! Math skills have dramatically dropped. It's not the computer anymore than it was the calculator. You have to know what you want to do before you can use a tool to do it more quickly. My kids never were drilled in multiplication tables. I constantly find myself in situations where they can't follow me with doing simple math in my head. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law gave up teaching and went into real estate. He just became too discouraged when he wasn't allowed to fail any of his Grade 8 students. His principal was bucking for a school board position and didn't want any bad vibes among the parents that might have caused him political problems. So kids who were far behind the needed standards were promoted anyway. They then became the high school's problem and no longer the principal's!

You know, I think you may be more correct than perhaps you had thought! Consider the parallels. Both protests involved large groups that have already shown a willingness to use violence. When Caledonia broke the pictures from Oka were still fresh in our minds. Who could forget "Lasagna" with a bandanna, a feather and an AK-47 standing face to face with a Canadian soldier? As for the Tamils, they invented the suicide explosive vest! The terrorism in Sri Lanka is world-known. It's all very well to say that our police should enforce the rule of law, equally on one and all but in practice, they simply don't have the firepower! The OPP or the Toronto police have nowhere near the resources to enforce the law in these situations. We can't call in the army. BOTH our soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan! Sending our canteen boat up the St. Laurence wouldn't be much help either. A Sea King would likely crash before it got there. No, it doesn't matter if our police forces have the stomach for it or not. They just are out-gunned! If we had an escalated native protest or if the Tamils started practicing the sort of civil terrorism they have done in their home country it would make this situation obvious, which would politically be very, very damning. That would also account for why they practice a two-tier sort of enforcement in Caledonia. You can lock up a few angry white folks without it being likely they'd break out guns, registered or not. The same cannot be said for aboriginal protesters, after Oka. For that matter, does anyone know if the Liberal gun registry was ever enforced or applied to native reserves? This scenario makes more sense to me. The police are not just being directed by "white-ass liberals" like David Miller. They are simply impotent to handle groups like these!

Well, I appreciate those who have either set of skills! However, computers are obviously here to stay and my point was that my daughter's grade school teachers were at least 25 years behind the times. Horsemanship was once an almost universal skill to greater or lesser degree but a driver's license is more useful to most folks today. I'm impressed by those who can scribe by hand too. It just seems that my daughters' teachers are not comfortable with anything more advanced than a feather pen!

I can only speak for my own two daughters, who both attended a nearby school. One girl just finished her first year of University, the other is finishing Grade 7. What struck me with both of them was how most of their teachers were computer illiterates! Two principals in a row even had to have their secretaries (secretaries! Can you believe it! How 1980!) retrieve their emails for them. I've learned long ago that you can't fight these sorts of situations. I made sure of my daughters' computer literacy on my own. Both of them had a mouse in their hand by the time they were 3! By kindergarten they not only could play many computer learning games that schools did not offer till at least grade 3 but they had no problem booting up the games themselves, with no adult supervision. By the time they were required to do research and write essays they were masters of "google", cut and paste, sharing files with their friends and knowing what magic 'bad word" would get a balky printer to work! Even the teacher in charge of what the school calls a "computer class" never really impressed me. Perhaps I'm just naive but I always thought that those in the 'knowledge industry' would have embraced computers like a duck loves water. There are a few new teachers that are competent, mostly fresh out of teacher's college and forced to take supply and part-time jobs until some of the older Luddites die off. Perhaps it's always been this way. Anyhow, as I said there's no point in fighting. My priority was and is my own children and it was not that great an effort on Mom and Dad's part to make sure they were properly prepared for modern times.

_..., . , . , ._. ., ....! once VE3EKJ

Well, the Tamils in Toronto have targeted innocent Canadian citizens with their protests. Is that not the definition of terrorism? They could have blocked Queens Park and no one would have cared. No, they chose to inconvenience the maximum number of people who have nothing to do with their issue, thinking somehow that people would therefore support them and pressure the feds to help their cause. They've accomplished exactly the opposite, of course. What "rocket scientists". Then again, perhaps they're counting on McGuinty to duck, hide and throw them something out of his policies of appeasement. They don't HAVE to care what the citizens of Toronto think of them! The citizens are irrelevant! If the politicians give them what they want rather than stand up to them they win. Dangerous game. Right now, any politician who stands up to them and tells them to get stuffed is almost guaranteed a seat in or near Toronto.

Oh, I believe that abuse did occur. I just think that we have to deal with specifics. You mentioned ONE case of a needle through the tongue but I had taken the tone of your original point to mean that it was a common thing! The CBC link confirms there were indeed residential schools that closed in 1996. It says that there were many instances of abuse. Who's arguing? What's more important is HOW MANY specific instances of abuse! I agree that one is too many but I find it hard to believe that the majority were mistreated and that the majority of aboriginals can claim the schools "screwed them up". It is also not logical to blame the entire white race for the actions of some members of the Catholic and Anglican churches. That too would be racist! The only people responsible are the specific individuals who committed the abuse. It makes about as much sense to blame all of 'white' society as it would be to tag ALL aboriginals as alcoholics because you have seen ONE native who was one! I think we are seeing a very common difference in point of view here. Natives identify themselves in terms of tribes or groups. Non-natives don't! Especially traditional European cultures. We think of ourselves very much as individuals and so we don't feel any collective guilt. I know I feel zero identification with some child abuser who ran a residential school. Hang 'em, for all I care. Takes care of repeat offences. I feel the same disconnect with abusers in non-native areas. Hell, I might not even accept them as fellow humans let alone think that we are both of the same "tribe". Another question would be how long since these abuses occurred? Sooner or later one must break with the past if they are to have any hope of moving forward. Myself, I see residential school abuses and much of the Indian Act to be classic examples of what happens when you allow socialist social engineers free rein to run the lives of a group of people. The tragedies inflicted on many First Nations people are classic examples of what those wingnuts will do if given half a chance. Their motives may have been noble but when it came to actual implementation of their screwy ideas they were revealed as true "fruit loops". The saddest thing of all is that for many reserves I don't see any hope unless they make a dramatic break from their cycle of "being victims". The Indian Act should be abolished. Give aboriginals the same property rights as any other Canadian. The traditional system of reserves was supposedly designed to allow tribes to preserve their traditional ways of life. That was fine in 1850 perhaps but in the 21st century the idea is just no longer possible. Nor I believe would most aboriginals want to opt out of modern life, with its technology, medicines and conveniences. The problem is that living on a reserve under the Indian Act severely limits an individual's ability to earn his own way in the modern world. If he can't start his own business that is self-sustaining then he is trapped to live on a perpetual government "dole". How can a "sovereign nation" exist if it can only glean income from another government's monies, including those from lawsuits and land claims? Societies can only survive if they can create their own wealth. Otherwise they are doomed to survive on the dole of others. Hunting and fishing in the 21st century are not huge money makers. Neither is farming, for that matter. Look how many family farms in non-native communities have gone bankrupt or the children decided not to continue, ending up bought by large corporate farms or simply abandoned to lie fallow or be sold for development. I'm not claiming to have all the answers but it seems to me that the failures in traditional approaches are obvious. Something very different will have to be done or things will stay forever the same.

I've always found the Star to be biased towards the Liberals. Why don't you start a "poll" thread? It would need to be a "two-parter", in that you should have to declare your own leanings and then your opinion of the Star. Actually, it might be even more interesting to include ALL the national papers! I suspect that the results about the Star might surprise you. Anyhow, as a "techie" I say don't jaw about it. Test it!

Never heard this story until you mentioned it. Do you have an independent cite or link? Was it a case of one instance from one cruel instructor or was it a universal practice that happened to every aboriginal child in Canada? Was it official policy of the Canadian government or was it an isolated case of some Roman Catholic "missionary" teacher? Did it happen in barbaric frontier times or is it a modern phenomenon? If it's still happening today I'd support capital punishment for the perpetrators. I'd pull the rope myself! The last thing I would want to see is them turned over to some kind of "sharing circle", tapped on the wrist and let go. You've described a horrendous act and the punishment should be equally horrific to serve as a deterrent.

You've mixed up a couple of points. First off, some people don't care about the individual candidate. There's a good argument to be made for that, considering how Canada has always practiced rigid party solidarity, making an MP essentially just a trained seal. Nonetheless, there are citizens who feel having a particular party in power is most important. Letting them know which candidate runs for which party is simply more information. It would be the WITHHOLDING of information that would be a false pretense! I fail to see how making it a bit harder for a citizen to know which candidate is with which party is the same as making it EASIER for all to understand! Seems to me you've got it backwards! Meanwhile, floor crossing is not a common thing. You would throw the baby out with the bath water. Virtually 99.99% of successful MP's stick with "the party that brung you!", to paraphrase Mr. Mulroney. It is never a popular thing. I agree with you that it is a betrayal of those who voted for a particular party. At least, I think that is what you meant. If you want to make people fend for themselves to find out which party the candidate is with then I'm not so sure. Or jump through some hoops to prove they are a competent enough voter, according to some definition YOU dreamed up! Anyhow, it may not be popular but it IS legal! We had many voices telling us that a coalition ousting a minority government with no election is perfectly legal and therefore should be casually accepted. I guess by that logic they would also be quite comfortable with MP's crossing the floor. So that is a separate issue. The Elections Act could be amended to disallow floor crossing unless there was an immediate byelection to allow the constituents of the riding a new vote.

Wait a minute, I must have missed something. Are you saying the BQ are NOT separatists? Or that they are but we should not mention it? PET must be spinning in his grave!

I haven't heard such arrogance in a long time. When I do, somehow it always seems to come from those who support the smaller parties. Canadians have a right to vote for the person or the party, or both. Who are you or anyone else to TELL them how they should make their choice? Much less support changing the system to FORCE them to abide by YOUR concept of what's proper! It's elitist and it's arrogant, pure and simple. One of the main planks of our system is that EVERYONE gets to vote, no matter whether they're smart or stupid, old or just turned age of majority, a businessman or an employee, a simple labourer or a poli-sci grad fresh out of university! I think the smaller parties can't resist making changes in the system because they know that it's they're only route to power. They just can never get enough people to agree with them to compete with the larger parties! If they can change the system they can garner more seats. Maybe not enough to form the government but certainly enough to hold a balance of power to force sitting governments to dance to their tune if they want to STAY in power! When someone starts to talk about how people SHOULD be allowed to vote and HOW they SHOULD base their decisions I start to feel a little afraid. Then I start to get a little angry! I have no desire to see my children grow up in such a county, no matter what voting system we have in place. Once you set a precedent of having small lobby groups becoming successful in changing the system to suit their own ends it just gets easier and easier every time, until the majority opinion is so diluted as to be ineffective. At least in BC the option is on the ballot. Not the choice to investigate making changes, unfortunately. That also is what happened here in Ontario. People were not asked "Would you like a new system that would be more representative" and if passed we could start a debate as to what new system the people wanted. No, we were offered one new system, take it or leave it! When people looked at it they saw many things they did not like, such as party lists of "standby" candidates with little or no connection to any particular riding. If they didn't like that then they had no choice but to vote no against the entire idea, even if they weren't 100% happy with FPTP. When the average person sees how he's been given only limited choices, he's usually smart enough to see that it's a rigged game. I suspect that most of the people supporting changing our electoral process would really like to have a way to avoid having a popular vote on the matter at all! After all, if people SHOULD think a certain way then why not just make the choice for them?

There's an old and true saying. "The most expensive military is the one that proves only second best."

Sounds typically wacky, for a Bennet! It does sound kinda dumb! If you're likely to win anyway why say such a rude thing? Where's the gain in being insulting? I know that not every aboriginal band takes the same stand on politics but I hear so much about how they are all totally sovereign countries from the Six Nations Reserve here locally that I don't understand how an aboriginal could run for office in what he has defined as a foreign country. Certainly as a non-native I could never accept an MP or MPP from Six Nations as a representative for ALL of us! Then again, as I said, some may consider themselves part of Canada and some may not. Sounds like the aboriginals are a bit more rational in BC.

So what's our alternative? More Adscam? More Shawinigate? More HRDC? More canoe museums?

Hydraboss, how did you feel about Manning's idea way back when of ALL of Canada separating from Ottawa?