Wild Bill

Do you really think that a woman who has grown up in such a culture will be politically sophisticated enough to take advantage of a secret ballot to defy her husband's orders? If she has been kept in the kitchen since she arrived in Canada and still doesn't know English, she will be able to make an informed choice for a Toronto councilor? Whatever. We obviously place a different value upon citizenship and thus have no common ground. No point in further debate. Me, as I have said many times, I consider Toronto to be a foreign country, with values of its own not shared by any other part of not just Ontario but even Canada. This is not a concern unless they bleed more tax money from the rest of us. I would support Toronto becoming independent and no longer financially tied to our provincial or federal governments. Calm down all you anal-retentive types! I'm kidding! If you take something so outrageous to be true then you have a bigger problem! Still, I confess I do think about the idea from time to time. This citizenship issue is one of those times. I suspect that Toronto is the only place in Canada that would ever entertain such a notion. I truly think that they just don't have much pride in being Canadian! Perhaps that thought deserves a thread of its own.

Yep! That's the simplest and therefore most likely explanation. We have seen so many examples of bonehead RCMP leadership over the past couple of decades. Something has changed in how the Mounties recuit, train and promote their leaders. We used to have Sgt. Preston. Now we have Dudley Doright. I have always believed that politicians don't like policemen to be TOO intelligent! They like them smart enough to follow orders but not enough to question them. The RCMP used to be considered the ideal enforcers of justice. Now, they seem to be more "Deputy Dawgs". Certainly, during the Chretien years it often seemed as if the PMO ran the RCMP. It looks like the politicians have succeeded.

Interesting, Boges! Did not Andrea Horvath cite the cost of an election as one of the reasons she has been propping up the Liberals? If that's the case and 5 byelections would cost 2.5 million dollars, perhaps she should bring down this government and force a general election! She could then take credit for saving the taxpayer 2.5 million dollars. Of course, she will do no such thing. Saving us money has nothing to do with why her party doesn't want an election.

Your American example is probably mice nuts compared to the total number. I have met many people in my life who have been permanent landed immigrants. Toronto has special ethnic demographics. There are large numbers of people in some ridings from cultures where women are not treated as well as we practice here. Not just some Muslim cultures either. There are large numbers of Italian and mediteranean mommas who not only have never taken citizenship but also have never learned English or French. Would you go so far as to deny that significant numbers of these women, if allowed to vote, would simply vote as their husbands told them? For a political candidate who focuses on ethnic voters, allowing such non-citizens to be counted could sweep him or her into power, not because of the free choice of the women but because of the power of their men! Is that really the sort of thing we want to see happen? I am suspicious of why this issue has suddenly become a cause celebre. Why? Is it from some new found outrage about the supposed injustice of our system? That system has been around a LONG time! Why now? I would say we should be considering who benefits the most. It seems obvious that it would not be councilors from Ford Nation who would be likely to get the majority of those new votes. IOW, this is not a drive to correct a social injustice. It is just yet another example of political greed wanting to rig the game.

"on track to become citizens"? How do you know that? Many people remain landed immigrants or whatever until they die. Do you have anything to back up your opinion? As for people having homes, businesses, pay taxes, etc, some do and some don't! I would think that those who have made such an investment would already have become citizens! Do you have a breakdown to offer of all the non-citizens in the municipality of Toronto as to how many work or run businesses? How many are simply dependents? How many are on some form of government assistance? I would think that anyone astute enough to run their own business would see the advantages of citizenship and apply as soon as possible. If they choose NOT to apply, I would be very interested in WHY they don't want to be citizens yet still want to be allowed to vote! Such an attitude would strike me as not just odd but outright suspicious.

Canadian citizenship is of great value, Scrib. You can live in Lebanon and collect Canadian pensions and benefits. When you need to be evacuated because the people in that region are so uncivilized that killing each other is their national sport, you get to complain about the quality of the cabin in the evacuation ship! Even more, when the violence of the moment is over you can get some more aid in returning to Lebanon! Our citizenship is indeed a precious thing.

The most expensive military you can have is one that is guaranteed not to be up to the job.

Topaz, I'm not sure what you are hoping for, or expect to happen. It truly sounds like you want a Tory party led by someone just like the Liberals or the NDP! What a tragedy that would be. We would have only a phony choice between three flavours of ice cream that all taste like vanilla. Democracy is not supposed to be a rigged game where one group always gets its way. We are SUPPOSED to have clear and different choices!

" Well, you are entitled to your own opinion. Some of us need more! Claiming the issue was invented by gun nuts is just that, an opinion. None of us at this point has any verifiable facts. All you have to offer is your trust in the RCMP. Many other Canadians do not share that trust, because of grievous mistakes made by the RCMP themselves. Of course the Mounties have many fine officers but they don't seem to have the high average that they once had. Some of their leaders have seemed a bit inept, too! These are not opinions. They are mistakes in RCMP behavior that are public knowledge. A google will turn up pages of them. Sadly, times appear to have changed. That is no logical reason to automatically call the RCMP wrong but it is sufficient to no longer trust them as implicitly. After the tragedy at the Vancouver Airport, I am sure there are many folks in Poland who do not share your trust.

Please see my answer to Sheogorath. I ventured no opinion on who was right and who was wrong. I merely pointed out that the poster was giving an unsubstantiated opinion as if it was gospel. It was as if he had seized an opportunity to castigate those he labels as "right wing". I prefer to keep an open mind. The RCMP may or have not acted properly but their own recent history has proven that only a fool would believe them carte blanche. At least this time they didn't taser someone 5 times simultaneously, killing them by heart failure.

Really? It seemed a logical conclusion from your words to me. I have been reading for a very long time. I am experienced with what words mean! I agree that SOME people have been making unsubstantiated charges against the RCMP. Just because I pointed out that YOU DID EXACTLY THE SAME from the opposite viewpoint doesn't change that such charges are wrong and unfair. I pointed out that you also had made charges without backing. Nothing wrong with "being inclined to believe" but that's a long way from having the authority to blame the whole controversy on "rghtwing gun nuts".

I'm curious as to how you can state that "Right wing gun nuts are overplaying their hand on this one". So far no one has cited any proof as to exactly how the RCMP have conducted their search and seizures. You could be right or you could be wrong. Do you have some info that we are all unaware? Without such, you are essentially just saying that YOU trust the RCMP in this instance and therefore everyone else should do the same! Even more, you are branding those who disagree with your argument as "right wing gun nuts". Isn't that a bit arrogant? A POV more suited to a Moses on Mt. Sinai, carrying wisdom carved in stone? If your words do not mean what they appear to say to me, could you please explain how I took them i error? I'm not saying you are wrong, necessarily. I just think you should offer something more concrete than blind faith.

You would seem to be right, BC. It seems the new Joint Support Ship Project for 2-3 "canteen ships" is facing pressure to downsize or at least drastically delay any construction. The goal of some would seem clear. They wish Canada to have either a very cheap and thus almost totally useless military consisting of perhaps a dozen or two snipers with unlimited passes for commercial air travel or better yet, no military at all! Again, I can understand how some could have such a view, even if I don't agree with it. What I can't understand is why they don't simply be open and honest about it.

How do we know now who may be a threat in the future? We can be reasonably confident we will not be aggressors. It's not really in the Canadian character. Still, we have allies and peoples we champion in other parts or the world. If we have commitments to defend our allies or a wish to defend helpless people in countries like Syria or Rwanda, don't we need to have something that is actually effective? I am having a great deal of difficulty with the argument from posters such as yourself and of course, Waldo. I can understand the argument that we don't have a lot of money. However, why waste money on suggested alternatives that are a waste of time? So far I have yet to see an alternative that could compete with an F-35 or a possible Russian or Chinese equivalent. Certainly, an F-35 equal would likely just blow a Super Hornet out of the sky, barely pausing as it flies on to complete its own mission. If we have no will to be competitive, why bother spending any money at all? We would only be fooling ourselves with a false sense of security. Worse yet, we would be making sacrificial lambs out of our pilots! No, it seems obvious that either we are prepared to "do it for real" or we should just not bother at all! We should accept the fact that we don't want to be an effective partner in such things. Perhaps we could keep a couple of "canteen ships" in case the real warriors get hungry and need snacks.

Eyeball, I'm through fighting. When someone can say what you did to me, proves I'm right about how far MLW has drifted away from civility. It's not you, it's me. You seem to be what is now the typical MLW poster and I just don't have the inclination to fight it anymore. The problem is me, I realize, for having overly high expectations. By expecting more I seem to just cause hard feelings. So "Good bye! And thanks for all the fish!"

I vote for the CPC only by default. It's possible I might switch (again!) in the future but only if one of the other parties drifts closer to MY values! As for your other comment, I will be interested to see if you get a warning for it. It always seems comments like yours get ignored while some of us get warnings over thread drift or saying something less than nice about "rubble". For some reason personal attacks, which I would think are much more significant, must be specifically reported. And as for "Maybe you're just full of shit." I suspect that the real problem for you is that I sometimes disagree with you and for you, that is the same thing.

Michael, when you called my opinion "unrealistic" you implied that it was because my scenarios for how teachers could be screwed over were "unrealistic". That is the part that I found strange! As I said, you appeared to be focussing on my models and ignoring my points.

I made my accusation based on every post of yours I have read, and I have read almost all of them. Preston Manning used to joke that if Reform came up with a cure for cancer the papers would report it as "REFORM THROWS DOCTORS OUT OF WORK!" I got the same sense from your posts. Anyhow, YOU called my defense of Harper's treatment of the media "explicitly partisan". Since for some years now on this board I have often criticized him I could see no other logical reason for your opinion. If you HAVE some evidence that I am a blind Harper partisan perhaps you could throw it out for discussion.

I am defending Harper's attitude towards the press. I would do that for anyone who appeared to be unfairly treated by them. I have my own issues with Harper on most other matters. I blame him personally for throwing the Reform portion his merged party down the Orwellian memory hole. He allowed the party to be taken over by the remnants of the old PC party. Now, I see little or no difference between the present CPC and the old PC party that so many millions of us had abandoned. You seem to see people in stark blacks and whites. I defended Harper's retaliation towards the press so therefore I must be a total, blind partisan supporter. The fact that you could even suggest such a thing is telling.

Michael, I am NOT going to get into an argument to nitpick the details of HOW a government could screw teachers! I don't care! If a government is motivated they would know how to do it far better than you or I would. So what's the point? As I said before, we are not trying to write the manual for such deeds here. I am trying to debate whether or not public opinion could be used by politicians against the teachers. Who cares how? So far, you don't seem to want to address MY questions at all! You won't talk about the level of popular resentment against teachers, if any. You won't talk about how that might influence votes in an election, positive or negative. You just keep demanding I give you a precise and working blueprint for how a government might actually screw the teachers! I think we should just agree to disagree and move on.

Hey, the teachers helped to put McGuinty in! They thought they had their own muppet. Reap the whirlwind.

I don't understand you. You seem to be saying that people do not have the right to recognize when they are being insulted or treated unfairly. I think that you are simply being partisan, as usual.

I think you are missing the point, Michael. You are attacking the models of how a government might fire or punish teachers. That is not important. We are not trying to work out a manual here! I thought we were discussing the possibility of some party or politician using popular resentment against teachers as a tool to get votes. HOW they do it doesn't matter! Or are you saying that the discussion is unrealistic because a government CAN'T do negative things to teachers? That such actions would NOT be popular? That it would NOT result in more votes for the antagonists? That is what I thought we were debating, not trying to come up with a specific master plan as to how things could be legally done.

Michael, YOU believe it's not realistic! Others might disagree. I thought that was how discussion is supposed to work. Is it your position that you will now judge what is or is not realistic and summarily end discussion? That really isn't the role of a facilitator, IMHO. I think you may be making the same mistake Stockwell Day made when he became leader of the Reform Party. He was an evangelical Christian and truly believed that they represented a silent majority not just within the party but amongst Canadians at large. He simply had never questioned his beilefs and thought they were mainstream. Hindsight shows how wrong he was, after all the damage he caused. He was never trying to manipulate the situation, he simply had a blind spot in thinking that his beliefs were "gospel", if you'll pardon the pun. We all have blind spots but I think you may be showing one here, again in just my humble opinion. Even if you are convinced that the premise is unrealistic is not a good reason to discourage discussion among other members of MLW.

Well, I thought it likely enough to be worth discussion or I wouldn't have brought it up, Michael! You may think differently but other people have posted in this thread, some for and some against. I don't think that McGuinty is the one to take on the teachers but trends do tend to escalate. Apparently, proroguing Queens Park tosses the issue to arbitration. Some posters have said that this is McGuinty's way of giving teachers what they wanted without appearing to do so. That suggests to me that he knows the teachers' cause is not all that popular with the voters so he doesn' t want to look like he gave in to them, doing it instead by a backdoor method. He wants it both ways! No, I think we are at the start of a trend in public sentiment towards teachers, not a crest. No doubt teachers will be encouraged as they win much if not all of their demands every confrontation. Still, that also will likely piss off parents even more over the years. I am reminded of when the posties were true government employees. It took a couple of decades but eventually they were almost dispised by many citizens! We had a case here in Hamilton back in the 70's during a postal strike where some guys hid in bushes and jumped a letter carrier to beat him up. I remember feeling how that was rather unfair at the time because it was the inside workers striking, not the letter carriers. Obviously these guys didn't make any distinction. We won't affect anything today with discussion Michael. Still, I think we should keep it in the back of our minds. This issue is not going to go away. Over the next decade perhaps it will keep festering.