Moonbox

Why? You don't need that to become a teacher and most teachers don't have it. As for what's required to become a teacher right now, here's the guideline for Ontario: http://www.oct.ca/~/link.aspx?_id=25CD74DDD6A14F3BA968490666FB1733&_z=z The minimum requirement is a 3-year undergrad and 1 year of nearly-impossible-to-flunk Teacher's College. That's the equivalent of a normal 4 year undergrad and the average compensation for someone with a 4-year undergrad is waaaay below that of a teacher. Before you go ahead and tell us all that most teacher's have way more than that, I'll assure you they don't. They mostly have 4-year undergrads instead of 3-year ones, but the majority most assuredly DO NOT have Masters in Education.

Your totally BS and self-serving testimonial is noted. I know exactly what it takes to become a teacher. The information isn't exactly classified. For a teacher trying to mock someone else's education and spelling ability, it's rather ironic how poor of a grasp you have of sentence structure and comma usage. You're not nearly as smart or hard-working as you think you are.

I don't really have an answer to that. Selling citizenship only cheapens it.

A lot as in a tiny fraction. Lung cancer rates have been declining steadily for over a decade now, despite the odd person buying bag'o'smokes. The LCBO, as you know, is a crown corporation. If it wasn't concerned about Social Responsibility, it would be still be allowed to sell Laker for a buck a beer. It's about companies pushing highly addictive lifestyle choices on high-risk people. You've obviously never heard of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement in the United States. As you're probably aware they don't have universal health care.

Then we can tax it more, as well as adding other foods to the taxable junk-food categories. Sure. For the people who want to eat it in moderation, the cost won't be noticeable. For the people who go through a box every two days, it will be. and I don't think we'd have to look far to see how alcohol and tobacco taxes have curbed consumption. As you know the percentage of smokers, alcoholics and fatties increase as household income declines. The taxes won't be discriminating based on that, but they will be indirectly targeting higher risk demographics.

Where did you draw that conclusion from? Nowhere? I'm more concerned with our teachers (who are supposed to be passing off intelligent reasoning skills to our children) are trying to spread brainlessly canned phrases like "neo-liberal agenda" in an attempt to flog their pro-teacher dogma. Anyone who thinks full-day kindergarten is much more than babysitting is delusional. The kids are 4-5 year olds and are practically still babies. They're not even old enough to walk home by themselves (even from the bus stop). They need ~11-12 hours of sleep every day and unless they go to bed at 6pm every night they'll need at least an hour or two of nap time at school every day. The idea of paying $70,000+ a year for a glorified babysitter is a joke. As for education, mine goes well beyond an undergrad and the laughably easy (truly comical) 1 year of teacher's college most of our esteemed educators go through.

Nothing like that. It's more about attempting to influence behavior. Making it more expensive and less convenient to continue undesirable behavior is the goal. Smoking is still legal, but it's far more expensive than it used to be. The amount of money smokers save ends up being a form of short-term gratification for quitting. Making it uncomfortable and inconvenient to get your fix is another way. If you can't just light up in the middle of a restaurant or on a patio, the habit can become frustrating and uncomfortable. Similar things can be done with obesity, particularly with obvious offenders. Taxing fast food eateries and processes could make it more expensive and less convenient. Taxing chips/snacks, soft drinks, candy and prepared meals at the grocery store could be another.

I guess you've never heard of the Teacher's Unions? Considering that the vast majority of education spending is teacher salaries, we can safely conclude that incremental would be very high. Four year-olds don't need a teacher and the $70-90,000 salary one would command. They need a babysitter and a play-time mediator. That's such awful BS I don't even know what to start with. Subsidizing public daycare doesn't need to go any further than sending a cheque to the parents in the mail. You have a 4-year old? Great, here's a cheque for X dollars. Whether you spend that on private daycare or if that subsidizes a stay-at-home parent doesn't matter.

No, it's certainly not all about free healthcare. Anyone that wealthy would have no problem paying for private health insurance in the US on a long-term basis. When making a decision on where to choose as your "Plan B country", it would just be a perk to consider along with all sorts of other things. I'd suspect free healthcare is much more of a consideration for refugee and family-unification aspects of immigration.

Alternatives? Private daycare, grandma & grandpa, one parent staying home for another year or waiting to have kids until you can accommodate one of the above options. Full-day kindergarten is literally useless for education purposes so the idea of paying a teacher's salary and benefits for what amounts to babysitting is dumb. I'd be way more accepting of subsidized day care than full-day kindergarten. The wage deflation and prince inflation is a question of economic theory. I'd expect it to be way too hard to actually measure the real effects, but the basic idea is that unless each extra person (on average) in the workforce is adding the same value/productivity to the economy, you're likely to see a deflation in wages. More available workers = lower wages. The wages don't get cut in half, however, so overall your household income is still higher, just not double what it was with one income.

These people are obviously interested in foreign citizenship for a reason. It's likely a form of insurance for them. If political/legal problems threaten them, they can flee to Canada and still get cheap healthcare despite most of their assets being frozen at home.

Obesity is self-inflicted, self-preventable and self-treatable. It's ultimately a lifestyle choice, much the same as drugs, alcohol and tobacco addictions are. We use taxes and laws to control those activities and we should do the same with obesity. Maybe we can't make it illegal to be fat, Scotty goes to far there, but we should definitely be less accommodating. We can make it a lot more expensive and a lot less convenient to lard up.

and produces more energy than all of the other forms put together...reliably...without emissions. I shudder to think what our rates would be if Ontario was generating 55% of it's electricity from wind and solar farms instead of the ~4% it is now.

What being Canadian means is very different from person to person. I'd never consider myself anything but Canadian. My background is some mixed bag of Irish/German/Swiss but I'd never identify with any particular group. When someone identifies themselves as Italian-Canadian (tons of then in Guelph), they are identifying themselves as something separate and acknowledging/affirming that this is an exclusive community.

You said, specifically: Like I said, this would probably require arresting half the population of Canada, so the suggestion is literally insane from the start. What's even more insane is how you're trying to say the plumber going to an investment advisor to set up an RSP is essentially the same thing as a wiring money to Al-Quaeda. From where you're sitting 2 + 2 = 5 and mixing red paint with blue makes yellow. I'm sure you see threats everywhere, including under your bed.

Yes, you're right. I was more commenting on Topaz' "Harper burnt his toast" comment of the day. It's not just Fantino orItalians though either. Voters are racist.

/yawn The fact that Fantino was in Italy when the report came out is hardly the news that Mulcair would like it to be. Mulcair is just desperate for attention as he watches NDP support tank.

You're clearly not over it. You've suggested that 20-50% of the North American population needs to be arrested simply for the contents of their retirement savings plans. Such a statement doesn't just suggest you're angry/resentful. It shows you're hysterical. Do your grandchildren a favor and encourage them to get an education and to save. Spare them your ignorance.

but not for an extra 100 lbs of body weight. If you can afford to get that fat off of Kraft dinner, you can afford the occasional sprinkle of broccoli or protein.

There are many factors that affect weight, but really only one reason for obesity. When you eat more than you burn off, you gain weight. Genetics might explain why someone metabolizes food slower, and that might explain a slightly wider waist-line, but it would virtually never account for someone being 80+ pounds overweight. Financial considerations may explain a poor diet as well, but the idea that poor people can only afford bad food and thus end up fat doesn't make a lot of sense either. Being poor might explain a poorly balanced diet, but it doesn't explain eating way more food than you should. Most grocery store fries are baked and thus way better for you. You also have to cook a grocery store burger yourself and buy it from the grocery store in the first place. These are both conscious decisions that lead to a higher likelihood of eating something else. If you're already going to the grocery store and you know you're going to have to prepare what you buy there, the burger and fries isn't such an easy option anymore. Even so, there are tons of things at the grocery store to worry about too. Microwave dinners, chips/snackfoods, large quantities of cheap pop etc are all very convenient fast food options for the average grocery shopper. These are every bit as bad as a fast food chain.

Sure, but I don't know why it has to be revenue neutral. Obesity presents a very real cost to the health system, so the things that lead to it should shoulder the burden.

Literally the FIRST definition given in your own freaking quote tells you exactly what the word means. You're so clueless you didn't even see that. Un-freaking-believable. Okay, well what about the restaurant manager who buys the fish? Is he expected to research each fish he buys all the way back to the original catch? He's making a profit too, right!? Find out more? Sure. Enough to have a detailed and full understanding? No. They're perhaps capable in the very strictest and most literal sense. The idea is completely insane, however, in a practical and realistic sense. Except my investments aren't my activities, or my livelihood. They are simply places I put money that I've earned and would like to save and see grow for my retirement. No, that's what the regulators and the government are expected to do. They have the resources to actually investigate it. The average shareholder has a full-time job and a life and doesn't spend his time on websites like rabble.ca like you do. You get talked down to because you've made it painfully obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about and a lot of the stuff that you write is raving lunacy. Ignoring the fact that your suggestion to "arrest the shareholders" of Canadian mining companies is ridiculous based on pure justification alone, it would also require you arrest probably 10-20% of the population of Canada. Yeah.... I thought my mockery was pretty obvious. Let me be more clear then. I think you are an angry person and are upset about how your life has turned out. Vague ideas like shareholders, corporations and profits are just vaguely defined bogeymen you've decided to blame it all on.

Not really. High oil prices offer very little good to Ontario. I highly doubt the equalization we receive (lol) and the relatively minor business we do supporting the oil industry even come close making up for the increased manufacturing and transportation costs or the competitive hit our exports take with a higher Canadian dollar. I'm happy Alberta is doing well, but I'd be happier if they were exporting more oil at a lower price than the other way around.

Look up the definition of 'feasible'. Obviously you don't understand it, along with a great many other things. I didn't say that. I said for practical purposes (as in actually doing it, rather than talking about whether it's possible), it would be so onerous and time-consuming that it might as well be impossible. Assuming you even had the education to understand a large corporation's books, the quantity of information would be so overwhelming that you'd never get through it on your own. That's why it usually takes a team of professional accountants to audit big corporate reports. Also, things like, "Bribed local official" or "Slush fund for foreign exploitation" are not usually items you'd find in this material. It's not feasible for the average shareholder. It is feasible for government and large auditing firms. Only they have the immense resources required to investigate this sort of thing. Even then, it's not certain that they'd always catch it. Regardless, individual shareholders invest with the (hopeful) assurances that auditors and lawmakers are doing their jobs. 1) You can account for your fishing activities. The consumer at the grocery store buying your fish cannot be expected to. 2) A corporation and it's accountants/executives can account for its activities. The minor investors buying the stock cannot be expected to. You've already admitted the validity of statement 1. Statement 2 follows the exact same logic and is no less valid. The only difference is that in your simple/goofy fishing world, words like corporation, shareholder and profit have some level of mystical villainy attached to them. Another insane leap in logic. I wasn't defending the virtue of remaining ignorant. I was explaining what a shareholder can reasonably be expected to know based on a financial education and actual experience investing. Explaining this to someone whose panties are twisted in resentment for people who do have some money to invest was probably a waste of time. Dragging a net around in the water must not earn a great living. I'm sorry for that.

That's the remarkable part of our system of law. It's not based on what's possible in the literal sense, it's based on what's reasonable. It's not reasonable/feasible for the end consumer to know who caught the fish, who cut the fish up, who packaged it, delivered it and whether it was kept refrigerated at the proper temperature. It doesn't matter that it's possible in the most literal sense, if a consumer wanted to do that the fish would spoil before it was ever served. The Law, therefore, would never hold this consumer liable for serving fish that was contaminated somewhere from catch to grocery store. As a shareholder, I have only the faintest notion of where my profits are coming from, much like a grocery store customer has only the faintest of notion of where their food comes from. The reasons for both are virtually identical. The information is not readily available to the average consumer/shareholder and the effort required to get it would be unreasonable. Also, for large corporations with thousands of employees, the information would be so vast and complex that the average shareholder couldn't hope to understand it. Even CEOs need teams of people to keep track of all the goings-on. How is a shareholder with $10,000 invested going to be able to? He's not.