Wild Bill

I appreciate your frustration but I think you are making the old mistake of expecting rational thought from people in what is essentially a political situation. Make no mistake about it. The public perception of our justice system is totally political, by definition! The Americans have always understood that it is instinctive to human nature for a community to want their justice system to reflect their own views and values. That's why they elect their judges. You would be better qualified than I would to see parallels in the concept of British Common Law. In a political arena people notice failures far easier than successes, particularly "routine" ones. The problem you face as a defender of the system is that there are so many spectacular failures! The media ensures we hear about Karla Homolka much more emphatically than thousands of offenders getting a suitable sentence every day. Here in Canada for years we have had a disconnect between the values of the common man and many of the sentences in our courts. Concurrent sentences, for example. To many, this seems not only giving multiple murderers a "freebie" but also making the expense and time of trial for the other offences a waste of money and resources. Of course not all plea bargains and wins by a technicality are a symptom of a failed system. On a percentage basis the system might be working quite well, although that's not MY personal opinion! Still, even a small percent of failures represents a respectable number in the eyes of the public. As I said, we tend to focus on the negatives. As in any political situation the justice system is rated by political factors. When Supreme Court judges appear to be making law because politicians duck the hard cases the public doesn't blame their cowardly representatives. They blame the judges if the ruling doesn't jive with popular values! I think Canadians stopped giving their institutions unquestioning respect about the time of Mulroney's fall from grace. I don't agree with everything Bill Gairdner wrote in his book "The Trouble with Canada" but he was bang on in describing our broken faith and rising cynicism. I don't think you can win this one. You'll only break your heart.

Well, by your polls it would seem Canadians favour "None of the above". That's FAR from being ready to give the reins back to the Liberals. It's not enough to put the other guy down. You also have to give reasons why your guy should be favoured! It seems obvious that at least a sizeable portion of Canadian voters have no respect for any of the choices. In that sort of a mood it would certainly be a challenge for Dion to campaign with the slogan "Trust us! The Carbon Tax will be revenue neutral and won't hurt a bit!"

How do you know this? Have you talked to most of them? Perhaps you could give us some links. I suspect you may have fallen into the same trap as what happened with Stockwell Day when he first won the leadership of the Canadian Alliance Party. He seemed to believe that the 'silent majority' of Canadians were Christian fundamentalists like himself. He then promptly tried to govern as if majority support would be automatic. Of course, he went down in flames. His sad lesson was that his views were NOT that of the majority! Even if we agree with you just for the sake of argument (which I certainly don't, BTW!) a lot depends on how you ask the question. If the poll asks: "Should Canada support the Kyoto Treaty and help save the planet?" you would get a majority agreeing with you. If the question was rather: "Should Canada support the Kyoto Treaty, given that there is disagreement among scientists as to what's really happening with the climate and how much is within Man's power to affect and also that it may cost you personally in the form of increased prices and taxes?" you'd likely get a very different answer. Personally, I don't know anyone in my social circle of a practical frame of mind who supported Kyoto. Only school teachers and the like, all of whom taught english or art and NONE of whom taught maths or hard sciences like chemistry and physics! Not a true poll of course but it reinforces what I've learned over the years to listen to physics from physicists and politics from politicians.

I'm in my 8th week of recovery after a quadruple heart bypass. I'll take the white man's technology, thank you! If I had had to depend on native shaman medicine, I would have been dead years ago. And don't give me any crap that eating pemmican would have kept my arteries clear and native food would have kept me disease-free, hale and hearty till I died peacefully in the arms of Manitou on my 100th birthday! Incidently, there was a native american in my ward who had the same operation. He too was grateful for the white man's technology. So was his family, come to think of it. Just like mine!

Just out of curiousity, did the north american natives develop any musical instrument more advanced than the drum? Just about every other primitive culture, including the Inca, developed pipes and other wind instruments. The Africans developed those little boxes with the metal strips tuned to different notes that you play with your thumbs. All I ever remember seeing with American and Canadian natives is drums and vocal chants. What's more, although I can understand that they may not follow the same scale of notes as european music many of the chanters seem to have no concept of a musical key at all! Perhaps someone could enlighten...

No, but it means that those who insist that SOMETHING HAPPENED have to keep coming up with more and more complicated conspiracy stuff to make it sound like something happened. Carried to enough of an extreme, the Tories eventually will be suspected of having faked the moon landings.

Well, Vic may not be a nutbar but he obviously is a hard nut! I'm just happy he's not appointed to the Supreme Court. After all, they are the ones who make all the decisions on lifestyle laws in this country and NOT the people through their elected representatives. It's been that way ever since Trudeau enacted our Charter of 'Wrongs'.

Agreed!

There is no possible way there will be a Liberal leadership convention before the next election at all! Unless Dion walks under a bus. The moment the Liberals would call a convention Harper would precipitate an election, the new 'fixed election date' rules notwithstanding. The Liberals just don't have the resources to survive such a situation. They would be decimated in the polls. And why shouldn't Harper do such? The Liberals did it to his side, more than once! Turnabout is fair play. No, the Liberals are stuck with Dion and have to make the best of it. They have no other choice but to put on a brave face and tell us their leader will personally save the planet! Without any pain to the average Canadian at all, of course.

Well, at least we agree on the 5000 figure as being unreliable data! However, when YOU state "I would think..." we're talking opinion, not science. The fact that the man in question has impressed you cuts no ice with assuming he's right. That's just not science. He is right or he is wrong. It's up to him to prove his premise, not for others to prove him wrong. I'm still waiting for proof that climate change is the fault of Man. Or that polar bear populations are truly under threat. I don't believe someone just because they are impressive. I wised up after voting for Mulroney! Reputation can offer confidence but not command blind belief. And yes, I wasn't really targeting your scientist hero specifically, just commenting on what I see as a common tactic of many green spokespeople. We can agree that a specific datum is questionable. If they offer it as contributing to a proof they'd need more to be convincing.

So did Martin. And Chretien. And Mulroney. And Trudeau. And Clarke. And Pearson. And Dief. And, and, and. What's your point? Are you the only Canadian left who believes such words? I admire your faith.

I think your underestimating the depth of that cynicism! Partisan appointments have gone on for so long that Canadians now see them as just part of the odious nature of politics. Trying to link them to one party or another no longer is an effective tactic. Patronage accusations worked against Turner for Mulroney because both Trudeau and Turner had disgusted us with patronage. Then Mulroney did the exact same thing. Our trust has been shattered for about two decades now. We still don't like them but they are now a factor more like the weather. We can't do anything about it so why think about it? Work in a horse barn for a surprisingly short time and you no longer notice the smell.

What's more, what this situation really proves is the lack of experienced managers in Dion's team. Under Chretien or Martin there was no way a Liberal would be so stupid as to make such comments outside the protection of privilege in the House. Warren Kinsella would have flayed them alive! Virtually all of Dion's gaffes can be chalked up to a lack of an experienced team. This reinforces my belief that he was always expected just to be a 'caretaker' leader. No high level candidate wanted to be leader with Adscam still so fresh in the public mind. They knew their party had no hope of government for at least a term or two. So they let Dion hold the fort. Harper's likely to be in power for another term, maybe even with a majority. After that enough time would have passed for the electorate to forget. The Liberals will have a REAL leadership convention with lots of media hype and hoopla! The big names will come out of the woodwork and the big money will be donated. When that happens, I wonder what kind of shape Harper and his party will have left themselves in? After all, the immediate election will be easy, especially if Dion asks Canadians to believe that a Carbon Tax won't hurt them on an individual basis. It's the one after that will prove to be the challenge...

Just because one knows little or nothing about how their car works doesn't mean that the air intake vents for the heating/cooling system are not STILL THERE! How do they think that button with the pictograph showing re-cycling of internal air for a quick heat boost on cold mornings works? The air has to come from somewhere! So opening just one window is NOT like blowing air across the top of a pop bottle. It's actually like blowing across the top of a pop bottle that has a bottom opening from under your hood. I still maintain that the anti-smoking movement is really about telling your neighbour what to do. What's more, the tactic was deliberate! We've all likely heard the stories about how during the 60's and 70's some teacher or professor would divide his class into silly arbitrary divisions, like who had blue eyes. Then he'd select one group to be discriminated against. After just a surprisingly few days the discrimination would get out of hand. He'd stop it and then explain to his class how easy it is for discrimination to take hold in a community. These experiments were done to show how easy it is to be racist or whatever. This was only 15-20 years after WWII and Hitler's Holocaust 'solution" was still fresh in the public mind. Teachers were trying to make young folks understand how people could hold such illogical and frankly evil concepts as racism. These experiments brought home the message that it appears to be a sad streak of human nature that must be constantly fought. When I hear many leaders (many self-proclaimed) of the anti-smoking movement speak I am constantly reminded of these tactics. I'm NOT calling anyone against smoking some kind of nazi! I AM saying that a similar propaganda tactic is being used! And it's a VERY effective one! To me, the 'cure' is worse than the disease.

You really should do a google. The population explosion idea has been dead for a decade or two. Virtually every developed country has a negative birth rate, even China. We are rapidly becoming a world of geezers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count..._fertility_rate Look at the figures and remember that you need a rate of at least 2.0 to replace parents, with no margin for childhood deaths by sickness or accident. Notice how the countries with the high rates tend to be the smallest and least developed but even they are often showing significant drops over the past 8 years. Once you get lower than 2.0 you find virtually ALL of the developed nations! Despite all the immigration, we're seeing empty classes right HERE in the lower grades! There are a LOT of school closures going on. Apparently, even opening up immigration to ridiculously high levels would not be enough to appreciably change the demographics. It seems to be a universal factor in human psychology that as education levels rise in any given population people tend to voluntarily limit their birth rate. Mechanization has removed the need for a large family to supply hand labour on a farm. Most people no longer live on farms! When they know how they choose to have fewer kids that they can support at a higher level than more children where each receives much less. Right now I'm telling my kids that when they grow up don't expect to make a living in building new houses...

I can understand how data from years ago may not be as precise as that available today. What puzzles me is how in any argument about the environment it is always assumed that when the data is questionable it means that the "green" argument MUST be true! If we cannot be sure that the bear population was only 5000 how can you state that it was actually more to bolster your argument? It is equally likely that it was less, or perhaps even 5000 was true? If you don't accept the initial data then you can state it to be ANYTHING YOU WANT! In which case, it means nothing!

This is an odd statement, don't you think? Considering that the public obviously DID accept all the Liberal ones! After all, they happened, tons of them, for years! No, it's pretty obvious that most Canadians don't really notice or care. I can understand your partisanship but usually you're much more logical. Perhaps you just needed a coffee?

What makes you think we have to move a billion people into space? If you compare the situation with that of colonizing North America the vast majority of folks wouldn't want to go! Or Australia, where Britain sent her convicts and other unwanted. Since they wouldn't want to go anyway it would be more likely we'd just ship food and resources down to them. This is essentially free - again, it's just ballistics to aim where it falls. Or in the case of solar power, we'd beam it as microwaves to huge antenna farms of chicken wire 10 feet in the air. You could still grow crops underneath it. Perfect for many Third World situations, where the country might not be able to afford a transmission grid. What's most important is that until we actually are there most of the advantages will be things we've never thought about. No one knew what resources were in North America before Columbus. The Hudsons Bay Company was not planned years in advance of the exploration of Canada. We expect to make money with metals, drugs, crystals and medicines but until we have enough people in space doing the research there will be uncounted things we will only discover at that time. Zillions of years ago, when fish were arguing about why evolve up onto the land they might have brainstormed up all kinds of things they might find up there. It's a cinch though that none of them would ever have thought of fire!

Sadly, I agree with you about the 'Luddites', religious or otherwise. Still, we've always had those in our midst. If we had listened to them we'd still be in the trees! Actually, since we had to leave the trees to find new food sources as the climate changed, if we had listened to them there wouldn't be a human race today at all! It shouldn't be too hard to maintain a sufficient investment in space development with modest financing. The average person has no idea of how small a percentage of the American GNP goes into space. The entire Apollo program to the moon, complete to every mission, cost less than the number of helicopters shot down during one month of fighting in the Viet Nam war! We are on the verge of private enterprise picking up where governments have left off. To my mind this is the ONLY way we can succeed! Governments are too slow, too expensive and frankly, too unintelligent! Also, politics makes funding capriciously dependent on public mood. The failure of universal suffrage was proven long ago in Rome. Allow the common folk the ability to vote themselves "bread and circuses" and they certainly will, until there's no more bread and no money for circuses. Business of course doesn't depend on political support. They are interested in profit and when they start making more money from space the level of investment will increase. I predict that some day heavy metal mining and smelting will be "extinct" on earth, as simply being uncompetitive with asteroid and lunar industry. This is one of the reasons I've always been such a fervent champion of the issue. I think the green movement truly lacks the vision to understand that investments in space development offer us not just the chance to green the planet but access to infinite resources. If you need more power it's so limited to argue over nuclear vs. hydro dams that can silt up or whatever. If you're running solar powered satellites in orbit you just build a few more! There's NO extra pollution factor! The best thing about it is you don't have to convince or coerce industry to go green! They will anyway to achieve their profits! A much more effective situation than that of the present, where industry too often sees greening as extra costs, particularly when not all countries have such costs and all you achieve is making your domestic industry uncompetitive and watching it die off while filthy old China and India take all your jobs! Besides, wouldn't you agree we desperately need a "B Ark"?

I know very few people who have enough trust in ANY party to believe that a tax will be revenue neutral. Most folks have heard that so many times in their life. It has always meant that you pay more, with a thousand excuses and lame denials afterwards. You imply Mulroney couldn't be trusted. Do you really believe that Dion can successfully sell his plan by saying "Trust us! We won't screw you about being revenue neutral. We're Liberals!" This could be the best thing that's ever happened to Harper. Even high profile Liberals in their caucus have told Dion he's nuts! It sure looks like they want an election so that they can blame him for the loss and then dump him!

No, but there's something to be said for NATO compatibility. It's not just the copters. It's all the spare parts for the future. It's like being the only soldier in a mixed nation offensive with oddball sized ammunition. When you run out there's nobody who can spot you some. I'm wondering if since the Liberal Sikorsky deal has run into problems if Harper could hurriedly jam through a new contract for the EH-101's? After all, they were always the better choice and they're what we would have ordered again if Chretien didn't want the embarrassment and rigged the bid to keep them out. He always had the soldier's welfare at heart, that man!

Now you're being logical! Mathematically, of course you're quite correct. 'Over 50%' cannot fit into less than half. Still, you have to remember, you were quoting a half-baked Marxist who would never feel himself limited by crass mathematics. After all, as we have been lectured before, reality is a mere perception that can only be understood from his own viewpoint. We should all strive to believe at least 6 impossible things before breakfast. "How many fingers, Winston?" Or for a more contemporary allusion: "There were FOUR lights!" - Jean Luc P. Live long and prosper, Angus!

Well, if you consider that since WWII the Liberals were in power for all but a few years with Dief and then Mulroney, who ELSE could you blame??? It was Paul Hellyer under Pearson who unified and then downsized the forces, decimating morale and pride. What Trudeau did is common knowledge. Chretien will never be high on the Armed Forces Hit Parade. Or Martin either, for that matter. Except for Dief's idiot move to cancel and scrap the Avro Arrow, pretty well ALL the military cuts were from Liberal governments! The right-wingers never really got much opportunity to 'cave'. Why should they have to share the blame?

Well, duh! And the other half was in the top half of the class! It's like the old socialistic definition of the lowest 20% of the population being poor. There will ALWAYS be people in the bottom 20%! So what? The poorest of us in Canada may have a living standard higher than a king of 500 years ago. It hasn't been that long since a dry roof, a warm bed and a full stomach was an idle dream for most of the population. Under the socialist definition, the bottom 20% could have golden toilet seats and they would still be poor if 80% had seats of diamond. Which of course would mean a perpetual need for socialists...

Good point! These cases are unusual and while I too believe in the rule of law I am starting to believe that "circumstances alter cases". Some folks treat the 'Golden Rule' as a loophole in games theory. They know their opponent will turn the other cheek and they count on it as an advantage to grant them a win! Those who continue to 'play by the rules' lose! With things like terrorism it can be so difficult to protect your society that perhaps the only way is to get a little looser with 'guaranteed rights'. The alternative is to allow a LOT more innocents to be killed! This is essentially the same argument behind questions like "is it better to allow a thousand murderers to go free than to falsely convict one innocent man?" To my way of thinking, those who do take on the blame for the thousand murdered victims. I'm not calling for a police state either and am far too libertarian to want to see further eroding of individual rights and liberties. Still, when I see a case like the Kahdr family it sure looks to me like a textbook example of someone abusing the Golden Rule against a naive opponent. Suppose one of them had managed to use ricin in downtown Toronto? Suppose we managed to set young Khadr free and it was HE who did it? The odds are FAR from trivial! I don't have the answers but one thing I do know, I don't feel comfortable anymore in any major population centre.