Wild Bill

Not me! Canada had this discussion when Trudeau first started talking about constitutions and charters of rights. The problem for some of us is that this is more of a "republic" thing than what we had as the descendants of a British constitutional monarchy. When you have as little as possible in document form the British tradition is that we are born with all rights inalienable, that the state can limit only in cases of clear and obvious necessity. What Trudeau did was more of a (forgive me, some will take this the wrong way) French thing, in that you have such documents that spell out your rights but anything not specifically written down is NOT allowed until and unless the government says so! The simple example used at the time was a "keep off the grass" analogy. Under the tradition of British common law, walk on any grass you like UNLESS there's a sign! The sign lets you know that it's private property and/or that particular patch of grass is protected for some reason. Under the tradition of French and many other european countries, stay off ALL grass unless there's a sign that says it's ok! This is a VERY significantly different approach to government and rights of citizenship! Myself, I've never been totally happy about what Trudeau did, especially for leaving out the right to property. Most important, the amending formulae to alter our Constitution and Charter as times change or as errors crop up is such that amendments are all but impossible to ever happen. To change anything requires such an impossible combination of provincial approval and legislation that in day to day reality it likely will never, ever happen! In effect, ours are carved in stone. The way they were written is the way they will always be, and we'll be liking it!

I wish! I could use the money!

Nothing wrong with questioning teachers, but in effect you were attempting to take on the role of teacher yourself, to convert her to your point of view. If so, you might consider that teaching is more than simple preaching and rude screeching. The tone of your posts is quite aggressive. Nobody here is forced to sit in your class. And people can easily vote with their feet! If you want people to play with you, it helps to be nice. If you don't care that no one will play, then it is not logical to be surprised that no one will.

You get more flies with honey! I'm surprised she stayed with you as long as she did. A young girl just starting out who took on a project that few of her peer group would have attempted and you pounced on her with both feet! You may have tainted her experience with boards such as this one for life. Go back and read your own posts. Try to put yourself in her shoes (if you can!). How eager would you expect her to be to stick around?

I had thought that the biggest "build more coal plants" country was China...by a wide margin! OOPS! Sorry, I forgot that China and a few other countries are "special" and are entitled to pollute as much as they want, even if it makes our own efforts trivial in the grand total.

I keep getting reminded of that scene early on in the Monty Python movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where Arthur comes across some peasants piling up mud (hopefully just mud! ) and politely asks for directions. The peasant refuses to answer such a simple question and launches into a leftwing, loony political diatribe. Arthur is shocked and confused and keeps trying to get a civil and sensible answer and finally just leaves in disgust. The bit was obviously taking a swipe at the loony left in Britain at the time. Thank you Posit for bringing back the memory!

These friends of yours, did you meet them while you were in the army?

Did you notice the braying, jeering voice of the protester taunting McHale? What a lout! I don't care if McHale is really Charles Manson. The other guy doesn't sound like anyone I'd ever want to associate with! If that's the type of people on the native side of things then I'm sincerely glad I don't live anywhere near them! I'd want nothing to do with them and if I have any choice at all I fully intend to follow that philosophy! He sounded like a thug!

Big flippin' deal! From none to a teaspoon full! Tell it to Garth Turner, or anybody else thrown out of caucus for refusing to be a ventriloquist's dummy! Tell it to Manning and those of us who supported Reform, for the idea of free votes not being just a token but actually SOP, for the idea of policy coming from the grassroots and binding on the leadership! Remember the cry "Your MP should take his constituents views to Ottawa, not Ottawa's views back to you!" The age old point of pride in Canadian politics: "Gee, I don't stink as bad as the other guys!" Harper will get my vote and that of others who feel as I do, but only by default. We'll hold our nose and vote Tory, the same as we did all those years ago. We'll do it grudgingly and not with any sense of being inspired. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose. Comment veut dit "forever!"??

Ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem... It's futile for each of us to keep going at this. The point is impossible to prove in advance by nitpicking forum arguments. History will show who is correct. Some bands will be more successful than others. My arguments pertain more to Six Nations and the situation here in Southern Ontario. If I live long enough, I will see if you are right or wrong. Your predictions frankly sound like "rah rah jingoism" to me but as I say, the proof will be in the pudding. You might not believe this but I sincerely hope you are right and I am wrong! I have no ill will towards natives or wish long term estrangement between the peoples. It's just that the real world evidence to me does not support your views. I see and experience a huge real problem and you seem to be saying "No it's not! Everything will work out wonderfully! Minor details only!"

Exactly! Nothing new! That time in history was far more racist than today, at least for western society. Today the most racist man I ever met was a Hindu. The way he treated his employees was a total shock for an old Canadian hippy like me. Cavemen dragged their women by the hair. What's that got to do with us today? Should modern males issue apologies and pay compensation? (Actually, if you asked my wife... )

You still don't get it. You would make a poor politician. Perception is the reality and that's how people are going to act. The ordinary non-native doesn't know about 10 years notice. He just sees cottagers kicked out. He knows many of them may have invested sums of money into their cottages. He hears nothing about any compensation. It doesn't matter if the natives are legally within their rights! The people who leased the land for the cottages never imagined that someday the same native band that welcomed them at the beginning would have such a change of heart and would evict them someday! Rest assured they tell all their friends. No one wants to lease cottages from that band again. Businesses rarely will commit to short term leases, or even long ones for that matter. They know that if the business is successful there will be unwanted costs in having eventually to relocate. So why bother locating there in the first place? If it was your money you'd have to consider this too! As for being interested in their own development, they might as well be! No one else is going to get involved! Let's hope they have the resources to make what they want happen. Sadly, their record has not been very good. Indian Affairs money is allocated for a water treatment plant. The local chief has control and he insists that his band be trained and given all the jobs involved with building and operating the plant. This of course really means his relatives and cronies get the jobs, contract fees and salaries. Usually they're not the best students in the training sessions either. Why should they be when their jobs are guaranteed? So the plant gets built but it either never works well or it breaks down quickly. No real resources have been developed to properly run and maintain it. They demand the Feds give them another plant but the Feds are worried how this would look to their own voting support next election. Taxpayers have become less tolerant of waste and corruption. Meanwhile the ordinary members of the tribe are buying bottled water. I'm not saying this is a guaranteed scenario but it's common knowledge that it's happened too often before. Natives understandably want control on their own land of such infrastructure but complicated machinery demands well-educated maintenance. You can't play games. Look what Mr. Cable did at Walkerton, getting his job through connections so he never had to actually be well trained or pay attention to the proper procedures. The water didn't care that he had "pull" and all his pull didn't save him from the wrath of the outraged citizens of his community. I really don't think the natives have thought this through very deeply. They can reach agreements with governments but sooner or later they may want to deal with individual people or business interests. This becomes a whole new ball game and they should not take it for granted that they only have to get a government to "cave". Other people care about their own interests and are free to "vote with their feet". Again, don't waste your time trying to prove who's right and wrong. If you are courting public support it usually doesn't matter.

Well, consider the other possibility. You're the party that spends tons of taxpayer money and imposes sacrifices on millions of Canadians to catch up to the Kyoto commitments. You ride fairly high in the polls for a couple of terms. People seem to believe it hurts but it's worth it to "save the planet". Then one day everyone wakes up to discover that we had it all wrong. Either the warming trend was totally natural and beyond Man's power to do anything about or maybe it was only a cyclic blip and temperatures have been falling. Perhaps it was a short warming period that introduces the next Ice Age as some scientists have suggested. We wasted all that time and made all those sacrifices for nothing. Worse yet, we spent all our time trying to handle heat when now we have to switch gears, scrap investments in machinery and start to cope with increasing cold. So you tell the people "OOPS! Oh well. Better safe than sorry!" Then comes the next election. What do you think would happen to that party? How long would they be lost in Opposition? Now I know you might reply that you absolutely believe that would never happen but it's easy for those of us to take such stands when we're merely debating amongst ourselves. Would you want to be one of those responsible to the party who took them down that road with no "cover your ass just in case" strategy? Having something like that on your political resume would be the kiss of death to your career! I think we shouldn't be surprised at Harper's caution. It's all very well to get out in front of a parade but you do have check once in a while to be sure you won't be branded as Krusty the Clown for life. Look what happened to Stockwell Day with the Barney the Dinosaur label. He cost his party the election and burned his chances of ever again being party leader forever! As for Dion, he's still harping on Kyoto when it's obvious the treaty is dead. Many countries will continue to give it lip service but the big countries are making their own plans and the smaller ones will have no choice but to follow. They tried to mix actual emission reductions with exemptions for the biggest polluters like China and India out of some sense of guilt for colonial history with global welfare schemes that effectively taxed the US and the rest of the G8, except for Russia. Never ask a politician to stick his neck out too far...

I say again, who cares? My original point still stands. No one will want to lease the land either, at least not with any permanent business or structure. It would be like those cottagers winding up long term leases up near Ipperwash that have been refused new leases and kicked out. You'll only sign a lease if you have no intention of anything permanent. Like cropping off the hay from fallow farmland, maybe. Six Nations has a perception as not being a credible business partner. An outsider wanting to make a deal now feels it would be like making a deal with the regime in Sudan - subject to be broken at any time without notice. Even if Six Nations proved every single one of their claims it doesn't matter. The perception has be pounded into the non-native head as they've watched the events unfold. All these people will have to grow old and die before someone might give it a try. Meanwhile, it would be surprising if anyone risks development capital anywhere near the disputed areas for the next hundred years. If the natives' intent was to protect every square inch of that land from development and to keep it farmland then I'd say they succeeded! If they want any development they'll have to raise every dime themselves. Smart business doesn't care about your politics. They simply suss you out as to possible risk. There's no shortage of land and towns away from native claims, where you can count on a business deal being protected by law.

Well, one thing's for sure! It will be a LONG time before anybody makes a deal with Six Nations again! You could take all the signatures, fingerprints and miles of videotape when signing and 20 years from now it may not matter. Another native protest group may refuse to recognize the original native signatories and start another occupation! That's the perception Six Nations has created for itself. One can argue all they want whether or not it's deserved or unfair. It doesn't matter. Business will only make agreements when they have a reasonable expectation that they will be considered binding and under legal protection. The natives may feel that THEIR deals were not honoured in the past and that too is moot. Any developer making a deal with Six Nations after what has been demonstrated these past two years needs his head read! Anyone who cares to argue doesn't have to convince ME! He has to convince potential developers. Over the years it will become obvious who is right and who is mistaken.

Hasn't this claim: "The 1990s were the warmest decade in the series. The warmest year of the entire series has been 1998, with a temperature of 0.546°C above the 1961-90 mean. Eleven of the twelve warmest years in the series have now occurred in the past twelve years (1995-2006). The only year in the last twelve not among the warmest twelve is 1996 (replaced in the warm list by 1990)." been discredited? Didn't NASA make a retraction?

How do you come to that conclusion? I may be disenchanted with Harper but I don't see any other alternative so unless a miracle happens I WILL vote for him! How likely is it that a conservatively inclined voter would choose Liberal or NDP? Particularly with the record so far of Stephane Dion? And what about the CP rising in Quebec and the Liberals down there at par with lawyers and used car salesmen? No, far more likely that Harper will keep his base, if only by default. I fear he and his advisers may be making the same mistake that Mulroney's crew did all those years ago. They shamelessly took the party grassroots members for granted, keeping them busy with non-binding party policy platforms. They fully expected them to show up to put up campaign signs, of course! And to donate money! There was even a term coined at the time: "disenfranchised conservative", meaning one who had no real desired candidate at the polls and was left with the least of all evils. This was one of the strongest cards put into Manning's hand by the old Tory gang. The Tories seemed just too blissfully arrogant to understand that the world had changed. Any salesman knows that you can be successful rigging your customer's choices only as long as he has no alternative. He may keep buying your product but he's likely fully aware of what you've done to him and he will hate you for it! As soon as an attractive alternative is offered him you've lost him for generations, which is exactly what happened, as we all well know. As for Reform's demographics in its supporters, I beg to disagree! Reform polled over a million votes in Ontario. That's not too shabby for a brand new party! To come from nowhere to the Loyal Opposition that quickly cannot be dismissed. Many of us felt that the party was being too impatient. It seemed that we were always growing even if not that quickly in some areas. The old Tories held the Maritimes but we were seeing modest growth even in those provinces. I mean, just how fast was a new party EXPECTED to win power? As for the blue-haired white bread membership, I can't speak for anywhere but my own riding and I can say from direct experience that we had nothing like that! Lots of visible minorities and young folks! I still remember that election night when I was volunteering as a scrutineer at a polling station. The Liberals paid their scrutineers and they were easy to recognise. They wore suits and frankly looked either like mafioso or young company MBA's from a global corporation. We Reformers were unpaid volunteers and more salt of the earth in our wardrobe but we not only had a scrutineer at every polling station, we had a volunteer for every single polling box at every station! The Liberal guys were obviously kinda shocked! Still, I actually wound up feeling sorry for the Tory scrutineer when the time came for the ballots to be counted. The Liberal guy and I got along famously, considering each other more rivals than enemies. The Tory refused to be friendly with us. As the votes were tallied however his face started to go sheet white in shock! For the first half of the count Reform was in the lead but as we passed the halfway mark the Liberal candidate was clearly going to win. The NDP got their usual handful but the poor Tory...his man got fewer votes than that of the Yogic Flyer! This from a riding that had elected a Tory in Mulroney's first majority! So obviously my experience was quite different than yours, certainly due to geographic location. However, many of us were sure that if we just gave it another election or two we'd make it on our own! We'll never know, I guess.

Ah, it's not called Global Warming anymore. The term today is "Climate Change". I've been dating myself, too. It's hard to keep up when they keep changing things. It seems like only yesterday but it was back in the 70's when we were all being told that Mankind was precipitating an Ice Age. Anyhow, near as I can figure from a quick google, the new term was adopted just a few years ago after some reports showed evidence that average temperatures had DROPPED since 1998! The new term is an excellent tool as it is all inclusive. If temperatures go up that's because of Climate Change. If they go down that's also the result of Climate Change. If they stay constant that is also (you guessed it!) the result of Climate Change! With such a definition Climate Change can never again be denied! Makes it easier for the members of that church, I guess!

Most interesting! I had a post in another thread stating how I am an old Reformer and think completely the opposite. The new CP seems to be a clone of the old Mulroney/Campell party, the one I bailed on nearly 20 years ago! I completely disagree that Harper is a fundamentalist religious conservative. I still remember how in the early days of the Reform party Harper gave a speech telling all the bible thumpers that if they thought they could mix their fundamentalist views on gays and abortion with the platforms of the party they would take it down to a disastrous electoral defeat! Stockwell Day should have listened to him and then Warren Kinsella wouldn't have been able to stop his campaign dead in its tracts with the "Barney the Dinosaur" joke! So I can't agree with you on this one. It's Harper's rigid party solidarity and total abandonment of grassroots populism that makes me think the old PC rump is now in control. As I've said before, I'll vote for the new CP for lack of an alternative but if another Manning ever comes out of the wilderness I'll be gone like a shot!

Well, perhaps for you! Not for me, I'm afraid. I wouldn't care to say if most Canadians agree with you. I don't know them all and I haven't asked all of them. I'll wait for the next election to see what happens. I DO know that back in the early 90's when Harper was part of Reform he stood up and gave a speech where he told us that if the social conservatives in the party ever succeeded in pushing an anti-abortion, fundamentalist Christian agenda they would doom the new party to a flaming death at the polls! Then came Stockwell Day, a fundamentalist Christian. He kept pushing the bible thumper views until he took it too far and said he agreed that the universe was created only a few thousand years ago, with dinosaur bones included. Warren Kinsella, the Liberal campaign wonk, stuck the "Barney the Dinosaur" joke on Stockwell and the rest of the campaign was a slam dunk! I don't think abortion is high on Harper's agenda...

I'm more curious about how once the inquiry is over who do we punish? Mulroney? He's already in the Canadian Hall of Shame as regards public opinion. He may always have a tarred legacy in the history books. Harper and the Tories? They are anything but the same Tories! You can't blame this crop that came from only a pitiful remnant of Mulroney's party and a much larger group of old Tory adversaries from Reform/Alliance. I guess we'll have to drag out poor old Joe Clark and hang him for it! Or maybe we could take it out on David Orchard. That is, assuming we could find him!

It is kinda juvenile, isn't it? Does it seem to you that posters like him seem to slip and "go juvenile" when you really score a point? I mean, most times you might not agree with his posts but he seems overall mature, if a touch preachy. Hit him with a zinger and the tone of the response slips "big time". I'm starting to wonder if we human beings are actually two entirely different species. The differences in how we think and perceive the world are often dramatically different. It's more than simple disagreement. It's as if some folks literally can't be objective, they can't distinguish between a datum for it's emotional value to them or it's actual truth or validity. In other words. they know what they like and anything else is "evil". No amount of new argument or evidence will change that. And it's more than being confident in your beliefs or not finding opposing arguments sufficiently well thought out. They actually get angry! That's why if you're on the wrong side of an issue you're a homophobe, a bigot, a racist, a running dog capitalist lackey of the bourgoisie who should be censured if not imprisoned! Or at least kicked off this board! It doesn't bother this type of personality to be dishonest and play tricks with the truth when he posts. He's already decided that HIS truth means that any means is justified! I see this attitude a lot in my neighbourhood circle of fellow citizens. Something has been lost these past few decades in the common baseline of our society. Or maybe I was just too naive when I was younger and it actually was never there! I'm talking about why a schoolboy would run for a student council position and instinctively be polite to his opponent. Why someone could not pad an insurance report after being robbed, even though he knows full well the insurance company will be trying to depreciate his claim as much as possible. Or a housewife who finds some grocery item in her bags that wasn't hers or on the receipt, so she gets her husband to return it. Or maybe her husband comes across a car accident and stops to give first aid/CPR, even though he read in the paper that morning about a case of an accident victim suing a good samaritan for not helping properly or professionally enough to prevent further harm. Or why someone would lie in an argument about his background as if that makes his points more valid, even though it's just an Internet discussion board. Being from a military background I'm sure you've already guessed the term I've been talking about, Angus. I'm talking about honour! I really think that in too many areas today it is considered either too old and hokey a concept or it has been forgotten altogether! Anyhow, the differences I see in how people around me think and believe are getting more and more deeper and profound. I getting a bit uneasy about the trend...

Well, I'm sure they had at least one noble goal! If ethanol could deprive the Arab world of all that oil money then maybe they couldn't afford as many guns...or nuclear bombs!

Here's the link: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119...4_20071228.html Many of these problems were predicted at the start of all this by people who could think more than one chess move ahead at a time! Now Bush and his crew have got a bit of a problem, as well as all the "greens" who jumped too quickly as taking ethanol as an easy quick fix with little or no negative repercussions.

Are you kidding? Both these countries had and have the resources to build themselves nuclear bombs and have space programs far more sophisticated than that of Canada! China has put men in space! A little bit of that money on pollution controls would have been a start. In fact, spending ANY money on pollution controls would have been more than they have done to date. Why should they get a free ride? Because of some naive outdated impression of China and India as underdeveloped third world nations? Wake up! They fill up our Wal-Marts and they man all our call-centre help lines. Let's be realistic here.