the janitor

Wow, hard to argue with logic like that! I stand corrected. Cheers

You have an EXCELLENT point here. Close to 30,000 children die of poverty around the world every day. Let's start looking at the overall picture.

I've got a better idea...make everyone who buys Coke pay a carbon tax because of the greenhouse gas it produces in people and save the environment.

Right on! You hit the nail dead on the head. Good for you! I agree with you 100% and I'm glad you were perceptive enough to see the point I was trying to make. I also find it a little bit ironic that most conservative thinkers, voters and governments are all for standing up for the rights of the unborn, but get a bit uncomfortable when it comes time to pony up some federal funds for things like daycare space. "Vote Conservative: we won't let you terminate your pregnancy and we won't do a thing to help you make sure the child grows up healthy and loved and above the poverty line if the jerk who got you pregnant decides to just skip out!" What a load of crap!

It's easy to say that it's stupid, but obviously beyond you to explain why. Canada spends billions and billions of dollars on defence so the Navy can go sail two or three frigates around in the Persian Gulf? So more soldiers can get killed because the Taliban hasn't been contained? So that on any given day the Air Force can only count on having only about three dozen outdated F-18s supposedly"protecting" Canada's entire airspace? So a big honkin Globemaster III can fly aid to Burma when we don't even know it will be delivered? So the Canadian government can have an excuse not to build more daycare spaces? Or an excuse to not spend more on foreign development and maybe give poppy farmers in Afghanistan an alternative to supplying the west with opium, or to Taliban recruiters? Take away the military and yes, Canada might be at slightly higher risk of terrorist attack. Take away the RCMP, provincial and municipal police forces, CCG, CBSA and the risk is exponetially greater. I think the men and women in Canada's armed forces do a superb job, but let's face it, the return on investment isn't there for the amount spent. I can see the United States being justified in having a large military industrial complex, but not Canada. Terrorists aren't capable of large scale military operations and no one else is going to attack us. I'm not saying we shouldn't have a small reserve military capability, but learn the lessons the war on terror is teaching: warfare has changed and large-scale linear battles are a thing of past wars.

No more begging? Canada spent x-billion dollars on C-17s and now we have to plead with the gov't of Myanmar to let our emergency aid even get into the country. Let's hope the victims get at least a little bit of it.

That's because Diet Coke is overpriced. You dirink enough of that junk, you won't need to buy gas, you'll have your own internal supply.

Canada's military is outdated and we don't need it anymore. Canada should be spending as much on foreign aid as on national security. Foreign development should be at .7%GDP as Lester Pearson recommended and national security spending should be roughly the same, which is doable if we get rid of the military infrastructure that doesn't really secure anything. If Harper is going to announce 30B for the military when Canada isn't facing a direct threat he's taking a real chance at the next election, especially when our foreign aid spending isn't up to standard.

Abortion was more of an issue for me before I became a man.

Spend alot of time on the Stormfront site, do we?

Assuming I've never been to the U.S. (or any other part of the world for that matter) without knowing me strikes me as being utterly stupid.

This is hardly true. Try looking up the word "life" in the dictionary. All abortions are life threating if not to the woman then to the baby. Having said that, I think legally the viability argument is a reasonable compromise. Just outright disallowing abortion will not stop it, just make it more dangerous. Obviously the right to end a pregnancy at anytime with no medical justification. It dismisses the right of the baby to live. I don't think Hitler was justified in killing six million Jews either. But if I had lived in Germany back then, just claiming that I didn't directly do any of the killing wouldn't absolve me of responsibility. I respect your position, but sorry, it isn't that simple.

There is a reason the universe is the size it is. (It was covered during a science course I took at McMaster.) If the universe was any smaller, only the gaseous elements would exist, if it was any larger only the heavy metallic elements would exist. For life to even exist in one place the universe has to be the size it is. I don't think any one of us, given the state of the environment and the number of wasted human lives lost every day to poverty, is going to accuse God of being wasteful.

Rights in the United States have been fought for and died for by Americans. In Canada, our charter of rights is something people hide behind to justify inaction. The charter is worthless. The only people who are dying for charter rights are unborn children. The elthical issues around abortion will never be solved until it is agreed that life begins at conception. On the other hand, women never used to enjoy the rights we now have in society. If our rights were taken away again, perhaps the whole abortion issue would dissolve. The attitude of some women I know is "everyone respect my rights, but to hell with yours." Sorry, but it will never work that way.

Don't let any Americans hear you say that...they think Isreal is theirs to bless and keep.