Wild Bill

I'm confused. Is his role to be impartial or to represent the views of many Canadians? Is this a process to arrive at something better to serve the people or some kind of trial?

Sorry for the "Modest Proposal", Waldo. I just get a bit touchy at times. Often, it truly seems as if the family and relatives of victims ARE so cavalierly dismissed! I wasn't trying to make out that YOU don't have a heart! That being said, I don't buy this argument that collateral victims are simply after revenge because they are blinded by their emotions. This to me seems a simple rationalization to not have to deal with them at all! It's akin to saying that you don't have to address any rights of a smoker, because his brain is fried from his nicotine drug addiction. Or like saying someone dying in insufferable pain has no right to make a decision on euthanasia, since their brains are too clouded by the agony! Justice is about payment and always has been. If there is no price to be paid by the murderer then it means there is no value on the life that he or she took! This principle is as old as man. In our own British history, there is the Saxon Dane Geld, where if you took someone's life you owed a price to the victim's family, for taking away their breadwinner. As the centuries wore on, we allowed the State to more and more take over applying justice. This seemed more effective, since the State had far more resources to bear. Let the King deal with crime! This allowed individuals to give up personal feuds and duels. No more Hatfield and McCoys murdering each other for wrongs that were past history. We even largely gave up our right to defend ourselves and our property, trusting in the State to do a better job of it than we could on our own. In academic circles, they call this "consent to be governed". Fast forward to today and we see sentences whose lack of severity seems to trivialize the victim and its relations. When a collateral victim tries to question this, they are gently but firmly rebuffed. They are treated like people who are insane - unable to make rational decisions. They seem to be viewed as an impediment to the process. To me, this all stems from an innate philosophy that has grown not in the population at large but rather within the justice system itself. The attitude is almost a cliche of "white-assed" liberal thinking. Jokes of how a man who murdered his parents and then demands leniency for being an orphan are black humour rooted in reality from those frustrated by the system with no ability to change it, like Russian jokes told by Russian citizens in the days of the USSR. I don't expect you to agree with me and I rather hijacked your post to make my point. It's just an expression of how I feel. That being said, I don't think I'm the ONLY Canadian who feels this way! I don't think it healthy for a country to allow a disconnect to grow between the values of its mainstream and those of its judicial system. Sooner or later it has negative consequences. Corrections are never as smooth and efficient as doing it right in the first place!

Well, I've never heard that before! I heard a great deal of whining from the PCs at the time over no longer having official party status. I heard voices crying that they should be given status out of some kind of pity! Plus we have this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Conservative_Party_of_Canada "Kim Campbell, who led the party into the disastrous election of 1993. The Progressive Conservatives went from being the majority party to holding only two seats in the House of Commons, which was not enough to maintain official party status despite garnering 16% of the popular vote. It was the worst defeat ever suffered for a governing party at the federal level; " "Campbell herself was defeated, as was every member of the Cabinet except Jean Charest, whom Campbell had defeated in the election to succeed Mulroney. Campbell resigned as party leader in December, and Charest, as the only remaining member of the previous Cabinet, was quickly appointed interim leader and confirmed in the post in 1995. Charest led the party back to official party status in the 1997 election winning 20 seats, with the exception of one seat in Ontario, the rest of the seats were all in the Maritimes and Quebec. However, the PCs never won more than 20 seats again, and only two west of Quebec (not counting by-elections and switches from other parties)." It's a shame you weren't there at the time. You could have explained to Parliament how they were all wrong!

Yep, as I keep saying, there is no discernible difference between this CPC and the old PC party of the Mulroney days. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

I quite agree, Waldo. People who have lost family to murderers should be totally shut out of the judicial process! They have no right to any expectation of redress or closure! They should trust in the State to look after the matter. After all, the State has an outstanding sterling record of such responsibility! Besides, they are all too focused on their own pain. Murder is a crime against society and families of victims have no right to believe that their feelings are any more important than those of anyone else in society. Relatives and friends of victims all have their minds clouded with base emotionalism and should simply not be allowed any involvement beyond a short victim's statement which can then be filed and forgotten.

What are you talking about? Google up their loss in the Kim Campbell election. They won only 2 seats!

http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s320x320/403835_314540041914443_160258774009238_815355_901345848_n.jpg Sorry, but I don't know how to post a picture! This link shows the cover of Time in 1977 and 2006, relating to my claim about warnings about the coming Ice Age.

That is your opinion, not a fact. I have my opinion and I am entitled to it the same as you. I would just never be so arrogant as to assume my opinions are gospel. That being said, could you explain to me the right wing bias of the Toronto Star?

Merging of policies? Forgive me for asking Scrib, but are there ANY Reform policies left? Either core policies or even trivial ones?

Well Scrib, I just spent some time googling and you'd almost think the numbers at the time of the merger are a state secret! I just couldn't find the specifics I wanted. Maybe it's a conspiracy! Still, at the time of the 2000 election I know that Joe Clark managed to bring his party back to official status, from only 2 seats to 12! I know that at their peak, before the Stockwell Day fiasco, Reform as Opposition held 66 seats and peaked at 30.5% of the popular vote. The intriguing thing was that except for Clark's 'pity win' in Calgary, the PCs had been virtually erased in Western Canada. The Tories held a lock on the Maritimes, although of course there is a much smaller population there. I know from a personal position of visibility back then that Reform's popular vote in Ontario was as high as the PCs, although that was only a million or so each. Both parties had little to speak of in Quebec. I also know that the PCs, while perhaps having a large membership on paper, were so broke they couldn't have afforded doughnuts for a meeting! The papers used to joke about it! So it was hardly an equal share type of merger, in terms of money or people. Plus, Reform had grown so fast because it acquired virtually all of the PCs privates,corporals and sargeants, who did all the riding work. The PCs found themselves a small group of generals with no army! Therefore, I stand by my opinion. You have picked at my model but my point still stands!

Yes, he should! Like it or not, one should never forget that when the old PCs and the Reform/Alliance merged, there were almost NO PCs left! Their percentage of the party membership was mice nuts in comparison. Harper has been following a policy of taking his Reform support for granted and appealing to what was left of the old PC support to "put him over the top" and win power. It worked of course. His majority is testament to that. However, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of what is likely the majority of his party and its support base. Remember, at the time of the party's merger Reform had won Official Opposition status with a healthy number of seats. Their growth rate had been such that it was clear they represented a large enough percentage of the popular vote to have a good chance of taking power in another election or two. The only reason Reform merged with the PCs was impatience! They were frustrated with the fight and didn't want to wait another 10 years to win power. They thought that by adding the PC numbers they would get a quick shot at the brass ring. If there had been no merger the PCs would have gone the way of the dodo. Never forget that! The math is so obvious that it cannot be denied. So I hope you weren't trying to imply that the Reform portion of the Tory party is just a bunch of insignificant whiners who should be ignored. The whiners are the old PCs, who have been given a FAR better channel to Harper's ear than they deserve for their numbers! The tail is wagging the dog! That might be good politics and give Harper the Prime Ministership, but as I said, it has left a bitter taste in the mouths of a majority of his support. I'm not sure if Harper realizes just how fragile his base actually is. If another alternative like Reform came out of the wilderness perhaps 80% of his support would drop the CPC like a package of hamburger left out in the sun on the picnic table all day! Clearly, he thinks that if the Reform element has no alternative but to vote CPC they will be forced to stay with him. That is EXACTLY what the PCs of the Mulroney/Campbell thought and look what happened then!

I think you may have missed the point, CC. It's not that so many of us refuse to hear the arguments of the RCMP and many police chiefs. It's that we have heard this one note many times and we simply don't believe them! There have been so many scandals with the RCMP and politics, going back to the petit gar from Shawinigan, that a large number of people don't believe there isn't politics behind the RCMP stand. Also and perhaps even more pertinent, many of us "deniers" have a view of the typical police mindset that says a policeman will often want to both obtain and hang on to ANY tool, no matter how ineffective or inefficient it might be. Why not? They don't have to care about that part of the equation! If it works once in a million times and costs a billion or two, it's still a plus for them. Moreover, there's always that belief that the problem is not with a bad law or one that was written clumsily. Just give a cop a bigger club! If it still doesn't work, give him an even bigger one! For a case in point at the futility of such thinking, I cite the incredible lack of success with the war on drugs, going on for almost a hundred years! Finally, has anyone ever heard the RCMP spokespeople defend the details of their stand? In debates like those right here on MLW people have easily torn their stand to shreds. Surely there must be some official rebuttal? Once again, I'm a techie. If something can't be shown to actually WORK then it's just BS! Frankly, to most of us who don't see the value of the Liberal gun registry, listening to someone defend it, particularly with quotes from the RCMP, is like listening to someone use the Bible in an evolution argument. So while I'll admit sometimes you are answered with rudeness you should understand the frustration of those being rude!

I have no problem with the fact that many posters here don't like SunNews. That's freedom of choice, after all. However, please keep in mind that many of us LIKE SunNews! Many of us find CBC-NW to be so frigging predictable, leftwing and boring as to consider having to watch it a punishment! So please, allow us at least this little tiny bit of choice! Lord knows the rest of the media is all slanted your way. Waddaya want? The entire thing?

No, but like it or not we CAME from there! Just because we let in a bunch of new people who want to return the favour by changing the country to THEIR liking is no reason to give up our heritage! Certainly, if all the newcomers FORCE us to do such there's no reason we have to smile and thank them for it! Sometimes I'm truly sorry we opened the doors...

Well, as far as the Liberals and the Tories go, that's the OFFICIAL line! True, they occasionally allow MPs to break solidarity. However, it only happens when the whip has carefully counted noses and sees that it makes no difference! So it's all just smoke and mirrors! An MP can make a pleasing pose to his constituents, the party's Bill has no chance of being defeated and everyone pretends that democracy was served! It's all a sham and nothing more. This has nothing to be compared to the Reform principle that MPs were supposed to vote according to their constituents' wishes and not just be barking party seals! Just more evidence that we Reformers should never have bothered! The present CPC is no different than the party Mulroney led. The PCs won! The people be damned!

Yes, I hear they do. Both of them! I love how people will make mice nuts and mountains morally equivalent.

CC, please! I'm not trying to be disrespectful but you didn't even know that consecutive sentences are virtually non-existent in Canada! I have been following this 2/3 policy for my entire adult life and I'm 59! So for you to demand numbers to me is like someone demanding I come up with numbers that the sun rises in the east! When it has done so for the entire history of the Earth it is simply self-evident! For that reason, I will not spend the time digging up numbers for you! If you choose not to believe my premise that's your right. I'm just too busy to chase down EVERYTHING! I have to set priorities. If you want to just believe that I'm full of it, go right ahead! I was married for over 25 years. I'm used to it!

That's just the law hiding behind a definition. It's likely that a majority of Canadians believe that Life means Life. They would be appalled to learn that it means 25 years, with automatic 2/3 parole in many if not most cases, meaning 15 years. With double time for jail time awaiting trial, even less. Maybe a large number of Canadians DO know! It doesn't matter. Nobody has ever asked them what they think. No one in the judicial system has ever cared! It's a safe bet that if Canadians were happy about concurrent sentences and all that goes with them they would have been polled long ago and the results trumpeted to the skies! We can argue about the right or the wrong of concurrent sentences but one thing seems certain - it would be very difficult to defend as a populist, democratic choice. The people have been TOLD what they will get, not given what they wanted. Perhaps Harper will indeed change things to more properly reflect the wishes and values of the mainstream voter. I don't know. I just know I won't hold my breath.

Yep! And the sentences were indeed concurrent. What else is new?

I'd like to believe you CC. I just can't! I'm not saying it's impossible, just more like winning the same lottery several times! I'm willing to be proven wrong, though. Shall we wait and see how the trial comes out?

I've wondered this too, Derek. I've heard mixed reports. Most negatives have to do with a short time lag for hot water to appear. That seemed to me to be a non sequitur - ordinary water heaters have always done the same! What is true is that the technology has no proven history. Does one of these on-demand systems typically last as long as a traditional one? That's a question I would like answered.

This is a good point, Derek. While it is true that conditions in some of these countries are frankly revolting by our standards, few seem to recognize that without such jobs most of these people would be starving in the streets. I rather doubt if some who criticize got their way and had plant close would be thanked by those "exploited" workers.

CC, I'm surprised you didn't know this! Right wing talk radio has been shrieking about this for years as part of what is seriously wrong with the Canadian justice system. Canada has not delivered consecutive sentences on ANYTHING in years and years and years and years! They are always concurrent. In effect, for a multiple murder, you pay for the first one and the rest are free! Supposedly, we are still protected by the concepts of habitual or dangerous offender. This means that on a regular basis legalists will be paid to form panels and consider whether or not to grant parole, the assumption being that they would never allow someone who is a real danger to get out. We also have similar panels with medical types who would decide if someone is sane enough to be released. This approach of course employs a great many people and ensures that their kids can get a fine education! However, friends and families of victims have often felt that the "system" couldn't care less about their pain or the value of the life or lives taken when it releases an offender after what seems an incredibly short term served. Of course, their feeling are dismissed as merely a desire for primitive vengeance and they are simply too coarse to be allowed input. I personally witnessed a man be sentenced and served with only 4 years for waiting outside his ex girlfriend's place of work for her to show up and blowing her away with a shotgun under his coat. His crime was reduced to manslaughter. It would take pages for me to properly explain why. I also have first hand knowledge of a man who carved his wife up with an axe. His lawyer got him sentenced as criminally insane. This meant that he did not go to ordinary jail. The doctors in the white coats took him away. Eventually they decided that he was no longer raising snakes under his hat and he was released. He served only 2 years. As I said, Canada has not delivered a consecutive sentence for decades, if not a century. The "system" doesn't seem to advertise this much.

I've been expecting this for a while, MG. The CRTC has some strange rules and some obsolete ones that they still apply. SunTV started off being broadcast over the air directly from a local transmitter. The rules, dating from who knows how long ago - the birth of cable, perhaps, say that over-the-air broadcasters within a certain radius of a cable company must be carried as a basic cable service. Back around Sept 1 when the TV world converted to digital, SunTV had been carried by southern Ontario cable networks as a basic service but when SunTV swung a deal to be carried as a specialty channel on cable networks across the country, like the History Channel, Discovery, or SpaceTV, they stopped broadcasting directly over-the-air. There are advantages of course to doing this. Transmitters and their upkeep are a bit of a cost. Cable reaches most viewers these days anyway. I wondered how long it would take for the CRTC to notice that SunTV was no longer being broadcast over-the-air, or OTA as the industry calls it. No OTA, no obligation for cable companies to put in on basic service. It's worse for guys like me, who don't have cable or satellite. There's a huge movement since things went digital to go back to having an antenna and receive for free. I get 20 some odd channels, including all the major US and Canadian networks. I don't of course get the cable only specialty channels but I can pick much of their programming up from their websites and feed it to the HDMI input on my TV. Plus being digital, you either get the channel perfectly or you don't. There are no snowy digital signals on your TV. What's more, since the stations all broadcast in HD, that's how you get it on your TV, with no surcharge since its free anyway! And direct signals over the air are ALWAYS a bit sharper than ones put through all the equipment necessary to carry it on cable or satellite. So I'm quite happy with OTA for free, except that I NO LONGER HAVE A SUNTV SIGNAL AVAILABLE! Doubleplusungoodcrapola! Depending on the CBC and that George Snuffleupagus bores the ass off of me!

I just can't understand how someone can be a Leaf fan! I was 15 when they won their last cup. I will likely be long dead before they win their next one. The blame falls squarely on the ownership and yes, the fans! The Leafs have absolutely no business need to be a winning ream! Their ownership knows that they can get $400 for a pair of gold seats and they will fill the arena, no matter what. They don't have to spend the money on salaries. They don't have to do anything but just collect the ticket receipts. Thank God the teachers have pulled out! Few of them likely knew which end of a hockey stick was supposed to be on the ice! They didn't care. It was all about their pensions. So the ownership has been all 'suits' and accountants and the fans have all been sheep! What a waste of time! A team doesn't have to always win but it's hard to keep interest without an impression that at least they are a contender. Look at the Blue Jays. After their 2 back to back World Series wins, the ownership obviously adopted a "Leafs" approach to spending money. They figured they could just ride the tide for a while and make some profits but after a few years fans got tired of being told "well, this is a rebuilding year". The season would start out and you'd have high hopes but by May it would be clear that the Jays didn't have a hope of winning a pennant. It is the chance, the hope and the anticipation of a win that motivates fans, not just going through the motions! Yet that's all the Leafs have done for 25 years. I'd rather watch a tiddley-winks tourney than a Leafs game!