Moonbox

If you say so. As for the voting public (the only group that matters), gazebos are clearly not hot topics.

I wonder how much this will actually change things, because good faith and whatnot were already factors in a lot of contract law....

Well Trudeau Sr single-handedly made Western Canada a wasteland for the Liberals for 35 years. The gazebo etc might be more recent, but as we saw back in 2010 the only people who really cared were the ones who complain about the Tories by default anyways!

Yes you've been plugging that line for as long as I've been in this forum. Anything Tories do = Bad. Anything Liberals do = Good. Thank you for your, as always, insightful contributions.

Cyber out of curiosity, how much credence do you give to Fraser Institute, or Canadian Taxpayer Federation reports? You can probably guess why I'm asking...

What you posted was a doltish attempt to trivialize the actions of a man who put himself in potential danger to keep other people safe. If anyone needs to rethink anything, it's you. Mr. Vickers did a brave thing and it was a small positive to take out of a really sad story. Your mean-spirited belittlement of even that raises some questions about your state of mind.

Gee, thanks for the explanation. We needed it... or they could pay back the deficit....

Mileage varies on pure air campaigns.

Why not just use the usual 4th gen vs 5th gen commentary?

70's root design? What does that even mean? You could say the root design of the plane goes back to the early 1900's...engine, wings, cockpit...etc

Maybe if we were bombing dump trucks with Tomahawk cruise missiles, otherwise I'd be curious where you read that. Was it rabble.ca? It doesn't cost $1M every time you fly a CF-18, nor are we using ultra-sophisticated weapons for basic interdiction. Also, it's not simply a matter of comparing the cost of a mission vs the cost of enemy equipment/infrastructure destroyed. Presumably, people die in these strikes, and every dead enemy is worth something.

Having kids just gives you tax credits. It makes it more affordable for people to have kids. I can assure you the tax credits don't make much of a dent in the cost of raising a child. I take it you'd prefer more immigrants and refugees getting citizenship instead?

That's a pretty bad thread necro.

Except that this is categorically false. People earning ~$18000 or less (I can't remember right now) may get their income tax credited back, but these are part-time workers who aren't even earning a living wage. Anyone beyond that IS paying income tax.

I'm not missing any point. They have plenty to gain. While their marginal tax rate might be low, they also have extremely low disposable income so any tax breaks are a relatively big deal for them. There's also a HUGE number of people that this would benefit. Income-splitting, on the other hand, is just an ill-conceived bone the Conservatives are throwing to the relatively wealthy. It really doesn't make sense to me because those are votes they generally already have.

I didn't say they did. You were the one suggesting we emulate the Scandinavians, but they certainly have their own 'demons'. If you have to bring hockey fighting into a discussion on Canada's relative measure of civilized/savage on the world stage, I'd have to say we're doing pretty well!

Statistically, it SHOULD give them the most amount of votes. Unfortunately, the lower tax brackets tend to be the least educated and the least motivated to vote, so that clearly ends up not being the case!

Honestly, I don't think this is really going to help the Tories much. The right-of-centre voters who this will mostly benefit (SITK's) are likely (outside of downtown Toronto/Montreal) already voting Tory and the ones who aren't weren't going to anyways. This is just a bone to their base. Personally, I'm strongly against income-splitting, as the wealthy already have innumerable ways to reduce their tax burdens.

Some government spending does yield positive investment returns (healthcare, infrastructure, education etc), and some of it most certainly does not.

Topaz no offense, but this is one of the dumbest things you've ever said on this forum. A government surplus is a bad thing for a country? That's a supremely ignorant/delusional comment and ignores both common sense and basic math. First, the only alternative to a surplus is a deficit, as a perfectly balanced budget is practically impossible. Next, western governments are burdened with enormous loads of debt from the failed Keynesian economics of the 70's and 80's, so the surpluses of today aren't just going into the "piggy bank". They're going to pay back the excesses of the previous generation. While I agree with your point that income-splitting is a bad idea (it is), the national debt should be a top priority. Surpluses should be directed to paying as much of it back as reasonable so that we're not mortgaging the future for short term comfort like the Baby Boomers did.

You grossly overestimate how much attention the rest of the world actually pays to Canada, as well as how much Harper's foreign policy has affected the world's vague and ambivalent perception of us.

It is true. The Finno-Ugric (Lappish/Sami) and Norse (Norwegians/Swedes) were in Scandinavia when Europe was still speaking Latin. Both cultures developed alongside each other (fought and traded with each other) over probably ~2000 years. Calling the Sami aboriginal is about the same as calling the Welsh/Scots or the Sicilians "aboriginal" in the UK/Italy respectively.

Who aren't really any more "aboriginal" than the Norwegians, Finns or Swedes themselves. They're certainly a minority and they've certainly been discriminated against, but comparing them to Canadian aboriginals (and the treaties they signed with the Crown) is pretty far off.

and your response was to bring up "Scandinavia". Maybe you were suggesting that they don't have a significant underclass(which they do)? Regardless, you mentioned the standard cliché that the Scandinavian model is the one the Western world should emulate. I didn't say that they did, but I'd be willing to bet we're not selling them to Somali warlords. and I responded by saying this was a really silly gauge of how 'civilized' Canada is. Maybe we should follow Scandinavia's model instead: http://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2014/apr/01/footballviolence-photography The Swedish football season began in tragedy when a Djurgarden fan died from his injuries after he was beaten up in Helsingborg.

What am I not understanding? Scandinavia doesn't have an aboriginal people. That is one of the MANY challenges that it is not required to tackle. I'm okay with it if it means that the people they're shipped to are fighting people who have even worse human rights records. It's a sort of "enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of situation, and there are enough examples of this in history netting out on the positive that should have you thinking a little less black/white. I didn't say foreign aid can't work anywhere. I said it's mostly wasted when it's sent to a failed state. Rwanda came out of the genocide with a strong central authority and might as well have been a new country. A lot of the places that need aid the most, however, are the places where it'll be the least useful (ie. Somalia). If I was that worried about it, I wouldn't have signed my (non-existent) son up for rep hockey in the first place, especially not AAA rep hockey once body contact starts. As for what's worth discussing, I just think it was a really silly point on which to judge Canada's standing in the world.