Wild Bill

Correct me if I'm wrong jdobbin but your argument seems to be that Harper has done the same thing that he accused the Liberals of doing and that this may translate into a loss of his support. Even if he did, why would it? Any marketing man knows that it's never enough to disparage the competition. You have to also give a reason why YOUR product or service would be better! That's not the case here at all. Should Harper supporters abandon him because he's acting like a Liberal and then VOTE Liberal? That makes no sense at all! We've still been given no reason to think that the Liberals would be better. We still have a LOT of bad Liberal history to influence our decisions! There are still a lot of people who remember Jane Stewart and the HRDC, the gun registry cost over-runs, Shawinigate, all those canoe museums, Adscam and on and on and on. There may be some new people in the forefront of the Liberal party but that will not entirely put everything that has gone before down the memory hole. If Liberals can drag up Mulroney's perhaps chequered past then they themselves are fair game. I'd be the first to agree with you that Harper is a flawed leader. So what? He may smell but he still smells less to me than the Liberal party. There is always a slump in the polls for incumbent governments between elections and a rise for Opposition parties. The only thing that matters is how people feel once the writ is dropped. The Liberals need to stop the emphasis on cutting down their opponent and coming up with positive reasons why they're a better choice. Sure Ignatief is a new guy but that only makes him a "what if". He has only promises and no proven history. You should note that several decades of disappointment with ALL politicians has Americanized most Canadians. We're now Missourians! You have to SHOW us, not just tell us!

We can't have "rep by pop" until and unless we get a Triple E Senate. The Commons is supposed to be based on population but the more equal by pop you make it the more you screw the smaller provinces and regions out of any voice in Parliament. What most sensible parliamentary democracies do is have an Upper House to represent the regions, where every state or region has the same number of Senators. That way you have "rep by pop" in your lower House with 'rep by region' in an Upper House. Check and balance. We've never had that. We have a flawed 'rep by pop' Lower House and we have a geriatic rest home for party bag men. That's it. The Canadian way!

You're stretching here with your partisanship. If we follow your premise to its logical conclusion then we should never have had any minority governments at all!

Yeah, most of us do but some of the posters on this board speak it doubleplusungood!

Jdobbin, you keep saying "coalition" as if getting support to prop up a minority government is equivalent to what Dion, Duceppe and Layton tried to do. I don't see it! Minority governments have always used support from one or a number of opposition parties to stay in power. What Dion proposed was quite different. He would have OUSTED a ruling party by means of an opposition coalition! The party in power would have been gone, without an election. If this is the same thing then I'm afraid I'm missing something. Perhaps you could explain it a bit better.

For pretty well my whole life I've heard various dog breeders tell me that mongrels are in general stronger and that purebreds are prone to medical problems. I've also read this as regards the breeding of other animals. I've had friends that have had to put purebred dogs down for things like hip dysplasia. Then there are the snide comments on the children of the Royal Family in Britain and the shape of Prince Phillip's ears! I agree with you that many cultures have negative traits that we would do well to avoid but when it comes to human bloodlines I can't help but think that from a more scientific perspective the more we mix the better the offspring. Or would you maintain that pure bloodlines make healthier offspring?

You're giving the 'lawyer's argument", Molly. The one that politicians use. Counting back to Pearson, how many years has it been and how many of those years were filled by a PM that came from Quebec? Please don't count Kim Campbell. She was never elected. She just took over the helm for a few days until she got turfed! Technically you're correct but most folks don't really care that things were more balanced before the Early Pleistocene Era. The next PM will be from Toronto? Damme but you're cruel! I don't care if he's a Liberal but to have someone from a self-indulgent greedy city like Toronto is just rubbing salt in the wounds...

Well, semantics again, jdobbin. It depends on what definition you use. I like dictionary definitions, not names from a team jersey. Many of us never thought of Mulroney or the PC's as Conservatives, except in name only. By word, deed and action they were simply modern Liberals who moved kinda slow! By that definition, it would seem there are NO Conservatives around anymore! You should be happy! Even if your Liberals are out of power the CPC will do many if not most of the same things. It's 1988 all over again. Our choices are red, pink or rose.

Quite right! The most bigoted man I ever knew was a Hindu.

Interesting. No one in this thread seems to pinpoint the real issue. The Asian-Canadian boy himself said that if he was charged then so should the other fellow. THAT's why over 150 of the other students are standing behind him! Whatever happened to "zero tolerance" for racism? This boy has apparently never been in trouble before of any kind. He has maintained high grades. I doubt if he "went postal" merely because someone used on racially-charged name at him. Surely the case is not that simple. The principal is really to blame! Sadly, we see this sort of thing all the time. Schools post noble sounding rules like "ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RACISM! ZERO TOLERANCE FOR BULLYING! ZERO TOLERANCE FOR NASTY WORDS!" In the real world, it's often just crap! I've seen it myself at my daughter's school. Teachers and management ignore a problem until a victim can't stand it anymore and lashes back. At that point the victim has become "over the radar" by his or her actions so the staff take the easy route and punish the victim. I applaud the Asian boy! No one becomes a vigilante because they want to. It's almost always because the "system" is letting them down. The other boy got what he deserved! He's lucky someone didn't sic a Human Rights Tribunal on him!

Actually, they're BOTH directly linked to Latin! I took 4 years of Latin in high school, just before it was dropped from the Ontario ciriculum. But I shouldn't pick apart your model instead of your point!

If someone has a DirectTV dish and account and the cop turned on the TV, would it not also say 'DirectTV'? Legal signal! Why would the cop suspect it was illegal? Again, how would he know?

Jdobbin, I repeat and repeat: I'm not arguing with you about laws and that copyright should be protected. I'm arguing about the logistics of enforcing them! As soon as people realized that the police were noticing dishes, they would paint out the logos! Besides, how does a policeman know that a dish is legal or not? Unless he has access to the account information, only those psychic powers I keep mentioning could tell him! Now, I'm sure that Expressvu would love to check their records for a policeman to determine if a home had a 'pirate' dish but I'm not so sure if the police would feel they should devote the time and attention when they have so much on their plate already. You haven't said anything about pirated music. How would a policeman know that there were pirated songs on the 12 year old's MP3 player? Would he make a point of subjecting every player and computer hard drive he finds in that house THAT HE ENTERED IN THE COURSE OF INVESTIGATING A FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT CRIME to some form of computer forensics? Again, psychic powers! So let me ask you, encore un fois, how does the cop know? What's the chances that he would expend the time and energy to find out? What I've been waiting for is for you to give some kind of practical, working method of enforcing the laws. So far I'm still waiting...

How do you recognize an "illegal"satellite? All dishes look the same! How many homes do the police enter over the course of a year, compared to how many homes have "13 year old music pirates"? If someone steals a car, the police are virtually always informed about it. The same with murder. The police react, they are not proactive. They are not psychics, after all. However, to know that a dish was illegal and to know a reason to enter a significant enough number of homes to deter online piracy still seems to be a completely unrealistic task..REQUIRING ESP! Do you really think that "charging the head of a household" would stand up to a Charter challenge? Do you think the parents of all those young pirates would not vote against the party that got them charged in the first place? Jdobbin, I would LOVE to see your methods become law! As long as it happened as a result of your being an elected Liberal MP, with lots of publicity immediately before an election! Once again, you remind me of someone who refuses to dodge someone approaching in HIS lane, because "that other guy has no right to be there!" Your goals may be noble but so far I fail to see ANYTHING "real world" in your "solutions"!

But that's precisely my point! I don't believe that regionalism has ever been as high as it is today! Has there ever been a period in our history where the Liberals have been so shut out of the West, for so long? When's the last time the Conservatives have had any significant representation in Quebec? If such a situation goes on for too long it inevitably starts to fuel the fires of separatism. Why not? Who wants to belong to a club where you or your neighbours can NEVER be club president? The West finally, after DECADES, got one of their own as PM and almost immediately faced a coalition that would have chucked him out! If the Liberals again become the "natural governing party" what's the chances that their leader(PM) will be from anywhere but Quebec? Why should Anglo Canada put up with that forever? For that matter, if a strong Conservative leadership candidate arose in la Belle Province, how fast do you think he'd be made party leader in order to garner those Quebec votes? How much chance did John Crosbie ever have of becoming PM? We've been told FOR GENERATiONS that not only are these points not true but that they either don't matter or that they are "the price we pay for unity!". Nobody seriously believes it. These are just the excuses used by politicians to excuse their expediency. It's beginning to wear a bit thin.

Once again, my model is critiqued and my point ignored.

You can be FOR Canada and yet recognize reality! How does it serve Canada to pretend "the Emperor has no clothes!". Isn't that how politicians keep fooling us? "Excuse me, Mr. Politician, but I've been waiting all year for an MRI and I'm afraid I might die before I get it!" "What! You unpatriotic Canadian! Do you want an American system where babies are born in ditches and thousands of poor folk die untended?" Once again an awkward question gets successfully dodged under the guise of being "...for Canada".

That's all very well but the broadcasters are still not going to buy and install new transmitters if they don't have the money. If the CRTC tells them they HAVE to 'cuz they made a lot in previous years I don't think that's going to change anything. No money means the transmitters go off the air, period and end of story. Then what?

Sometimes jdobbin your points remind me of Rush Limbaugh, who wrote a book entitled "The Way Things OUGHT To Be!" I agree the government is not enforcing the present laws but the deeper question would be "...is it even possible to do so?" It seems to me you're talking a problem so large that it would require several times what the Liberals spent on their Gun Registry to enforce! It's easy to demand that someone else just "wave a magic wand". To me, you just don't sound at all practical. We have laws against pot yet millions smoke it. We've always had laws against digital piracy yet millions still do it. The traditional approach to trying to discourage breaking laws that are difficult to enforce has been to make the penalties levied on the few sinners you do happen to catch exceedingly harsh. The problem with copyright laws in this area is that politically it would be suicide to levy huge fines or jail sentences on 13 year old kids who stole some music through a file-sharing site. Laws directed at the file-sharing site are also ineffective. The sites are usually not in your own country! This problem has been with us for over a decade and so far governments have been totally ineffective at addressing it. The reason why is simple - there's really nothing "real world" they can do! Frankly jdobbin, you sound like a grandmother scolding her grandchildren, who know that granny's too old to get up from her wheelchair and chase after them! Musical artists long ago recognized that the old business model simply could and would not be enforced. Even if the "system" tried, the artists would long have starved to death waiting for something concrete to happen. So they have been developing new revenue streams, with much less emphasis on royalties from the sale of the media carrying their work and much more on live performances and promotional material like tshirts and such. While the club scene is almost dead for making money the small concert venues are growing. Digital piracy of their songs has been morphed into advertising and support for concert tickets. Meanwhile, my server's home page had this link that you might find interesting, re what we both wrote a few posts back in this thread: http://technology.sympatico.msn.cbc.ca/New...c&date=True It's an article about how TV broadcasters petitioned the CRTC to explain that they simply don't have the money to replace many local area analogue transmitters with the new digital ones mandated for August, 2011. These things aren't cheap! So they intend to close them down. This means that those without cable or satellite who depend on traditional broadcast TV will be shut out. The estimates run to about 7% of the viewers. If you read through to the second page you will see how the chair Konrad Von Finckenstein responded: "Fecan told the CRTC on Monday that he thinks universal access to TV signals is a matter of public policy. "The question is who pays for it," he said. He began to add more, but CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein interrupted before he could finish his sentence. "Precisely - you see it as a business reality," von Finckenstein said. "I see it from public policy reality. I don't see we can live with nine per cent being disconnected." Von Finckenstein said he is disappointed that the industry working group didn't come up with a solution for what do to with the viewers who will lose their service, other than recommend the government set up a fund to help them." Perhaps it's just me but I took the tone of his words to mean that he was ignoring the fiscal realities faced by these broadcasters, or at least had no sympathy for them and expected them to just "pony up", taking it for granted that they could afford it. It goes to support the long-standing suspicions that the CRTC looks upon the broadcast industry as something to be "bled" for political purposes with no thought that it has to be profitable to survive.

"First we kill the lawyers!" It's not the corporate system. It's our public system! If you stop to help someone who has been in an accident you can't help but think of cases that have actually happened where the victim sued the person trying to help for not being qualified. If someone steals your property and gets hurt while you chase them they can and do press charges against YOU! What's more, almost any daily paper has reports of where the thief or assailant gets off with far fewer charges than the victim. A local school bus driver was tried and CONVICTED of molesting a little girl! What happened? A little girl was crying her eyes out and wasn't getting up to leave at her stop. The driver went back and tried to comfort her, giving her a hug. This was in broad daylight with a full busload of children. He walked her off the bus to her mother that was waiting at the stop. Later, when the mother found out that he had hugged her little girl she decided to "make a federal case out of it" and brought charges! Unfortunately, before it ever went to court he lost his job and his reputation. The judge threw the charges out but it didn't matter. The damage was done. Now, if a child is crying no bus driver in my town will do anything. Who can blame them? We have a society where Good Samaritans are looked on as villains or at the least, easy targets for a lawsuit. Perhaps you can explain how I've missed some corporate connection.

Anything can happen but nothing then would change. The Liberals would still be nowhere in the West. We still wouldn't have a united country. I'm slowly coming to believe that East, West and Quebec are so different that it is impossible for any party to ever make all regions feel included. I haven't seen a united country since Mulroney's majorities. It just may no longer be possible. That being said, perhaps we should stop flogging a dead horse and admit that our Confederation is a failure! We stay united because we have to, not because we actually like it! If the country breaks up I'm moving to Alberta. They have better beer and steak!

Pay attention, jdobbin! TB is nailing the point you seem to keep missing! Who is going to be around to watch or listen in 10 years? I pointed out how the listening/watching habits of my daughters are so different from my generation. I have friends that are DJ's who tell me that the "elephant in the room" that no one in radio wants to talk about is that there is little or NO new blood emerging from the younger generation! This is a totally new factor that has never been seen before. Your confidence in radio continuing to survive is based on a world that has come and gone. Radio survived because no matter what they did to their programming to attract markets with new tastes and interests there were always markets there that would buy the products and services of the advertisers. The same could be said of TV. The ratings services break audiences down into programming categories and age groups. Some age groups are known to spend more money than others. The scary thing happening today is that ALL the groups are shrinking! Older folks die off and younger folks are not replaced. We're not talking about a 10-15% drop here. We're talking 50-60% OR MORE within 5-10 years! If the CRTC doesn't wake up to the new realities then radio and TV stations are going to go off the air in droves! Several have been closed here in Southern Ontario by CanWest-Global over the past few months. My local CHCH-TV is in imminent danger, hoping desperately for a buyer to save them. This is only the tip of the iceberg. The CRTC just seems like a bunch of old men and women, still wondering why nobody buys 45's anymore.

Oh dear. You touched one of my buttons! I make my living from Canadian musicians so I have a closer perspective than many folks. You might want to go here: http://www.letsfixcancon.ca/ CanCon today is a dismal failure, if you define success as helping Canadian artists. Perhaps it did in the beginning but today it only helps OLD artists! The number of plays for a new group or artist on Canadian radio is virtually zero. For years broadcasters fill up their CanCon with the same songs they have played for decades. Occasionally something new may break in the States and THEN get added to the playlists but never given a chance first in Canada. Artists and groups like Rush, Anne Murray, Rita McNeil and Kim Mitchell do very well by CanCon. Hardly "emerging talent". The person who created the "Let's fix Can Con" site is from the broadcast ratings industry and has access to all the pertinent numbers. He paints a fascinating and well-documented picture. He also has some realistic suggestions for how to fix the situation. If the CRTC implemented his suggestions it would provide working incentives to give new Canadian artists a break, that they haven't seen in Canada for perhaps 25 years or more. I'm not excusing bad management choices on the part of radio and TV execs by blaming it all on the CRTC, although the CRTC is a strong factor. It controls what stations are ALLOWED to do! They cannot adapt to changing conditions without CRTC approval. Still, I would be the first to accuse said managers of being "boneheads". I just thought you might appreciate some closer perspective on the CanCon situation. I sincerely believe you'll find that site interesting.

Easy to take the long perspective when it's not your money, jdobbin. You're right when you say that TV and radio have adapted over the years. That was predicated on them always having options and new ways of approaching market problems. It is a non sequitur to assume that because something always was it will always be. You're really just expressing your confidence, without having to provide any specifics on how radio and TV can cope with today's market forces. The businesses involved HAVE to cope with those specifics or they will go bankrupt! Someone will pick up the pieces but only if they see a market paradigm that gives them an opportunity to make money. Since the previous businesses were unable to do that it's obvious that without change that simply won't happen. Meanwhile, the issue is that the CRTC imposes political, non-market forces! That's what this is really all about. It's all very well to say "We think that more Canadian programming is important, so YOU GUYS have to do it!" If it is too expensive for the number of people that watch it and generate ad revenues it is NOT the CRTC who has to worry about making payroll. It seems to me that the CRTC is still imposing political ideas from the 70's when the markets were completely different on today's markets. If they don't ALLOW radio and TV to adapt then HOW can it happen?

Well, I certainly am! Still, the young hippy inside me has never totally faded away. Deep inside I'm still high as a kite, groovin' on Foghat or Janis Joplin played SUPER loud! I still think formal dress means ironing my denim shirt. I will never respect hiphop as an actual form of music and I think that only 'plastic' people would shop at the Gap.