Moonbox

case and point.... What are you even talking about???

No. It makes a lot less sense. I'll at least entertain the argument that both should be abolished, but with the per vote subsidy you're not 'donating' anything. The party you vote for gets money for your vote, sure, but the actual subsidy is being paid largely by taxpayers. By taxpayers, I'm talking about the people who actually pay their fair share of taxes, and not lowlifes, students, unemployed etc. Those people are donating MY money and it costs them absolutely nothing to do so. At LEAST with the political donation subsidy your donation is actually from your own pocket and you have to make the effort to actually do it.

Not until whitey is out of Canada

I can only shake my head in wonder at you. If getting to the point for you means frothing at the mouth and spouting MEANINGLESS rhetoric, then you certainly are getting to the point. Unfortunately, getting to the point for most people means dispensing with the pointless rhetoric and actually presenting rational arguments. I'm afraid that's where you clash with the majority of posters here. Speaking of meaningless rhetoric, "Oh hey look! Oleg posted here too!"

It's voluntary because people have to choose whether they're going to contribute in the first place. At the very least, people have to make the decision to contribute their own dollars to the party they chose. They'll be out 25% of what they contribute at the end of the year and they have to make the conscious effort to donate in the first place. The federal voting subsidy, on the other hand, is a tax on the vote itself. The only way to avoid that cost is for me to choose not to vote at all. It's a lot worse. You can't fairly criticize the first without damning the second.

Disregarding whatever biases people may or may not have, however, is there not reason to question this guy's credentials? Trudeau was one of the worst PM's we've ever had for foreign relations. I know it can be popular to intentionally antagonize the Americans like he and Chretien did, but it serves no purpose and only hurts us. He accuses the Conservatives of pandering to the Jewish ethnic community for votes, but as already mentioned it's not even close to the same size as the Islamic community so that's kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. It doesn't make sense. He's indicated we should leave Afghanistan immediately, but you would think that a former foreign policy advisor would understand the implications of abandoning your closest allies well before the commitment date you set for yourself. There's also the fact that he was held by Al-Quaeda for 130 days. Perhaps this little tidbit has changed his view of the world a little bit??

Okay...so let me get this straight...it's better to have a mandatory subsidy that every canadian has to pay for instead of a voluntary one??? I'll agree the tax credit is pretty hefty and maybe we could amend or do away with it altogether, but if that's bad, then the actual subsidy should be considered an abomination. Regardless, the taxpayer is choosing where his money is going to go and it's 100% voluntary. The system is so generous that there shouldn't be any need for the direct and automatic subsidy.

I don't expect them to know who our PM is, or who Mexico's president is, or what our capital is or anything like that. Canada is small potatoes in the grang scheme of things. It's pretty sad how smug and indignant most Canadians get when they catch an American who doesn't know these things. August you're right. People only know about things that are relevant to them. On the other hand, elementary level knowledge of world geography and how people live in the rest of the world you would think at SOME POINT would come to them. The sad thing is that there actually ARE a lot of people that think we live in igloos. There are millions in the US that wouldn't be able to point France, Iraq, even China or the Pacific Ocean out on a blank map. I'm not even making that up. It's unbelievable.

Why do you always have to dumb the discussion down with inane rhetoric? Tyrants? Go look up the definition of tyrant and tell me how it applies to Dalton, or Miller or Layton. Liars and morons perhaps...but tyrants? Really?

Sucks to be us doesn't it? Don't you just love Dalton?

I can't think of one. Could you please clarify?

The aide at the very least. The PM as well IF we could find a worthwhile alternative...anywhere...

madmax you've basically explained everything that's wrong with politics...everywhere. From the sound of things it seemed like you were presenting the NDP as a meaningful alternative...but I'm sure that couldn't have been right...

This bum needs to be fired already. He's a total goof.

The opening post was a slam against Harper. What did you expect would happen? The guy's an idiot and his foreign policy record makes that pretty clear. We have a 2011 withdrawl plan. That's a year from now. What else does the fool expect?

I'm sorry I had to laugh at this. You and I both know that doesn't make you in any way an expert. Any business worth anything plans by projecting multiple scenarios. One (or many) of these could be the proposed tax decrease. While it would be stupid to make plans entirely DEPENDANT on the tax cuts, it would be equally stupid not to plan to take advantage on them. Either way, you guys are just mincing words. Cancelling a tax cut leaves corporations with a higher tax burden they would otherwise have had. That's plain fact and however you guys want to word it makes no difference.

Haha. This is so true. Well said.

Dumb for Ontario yes. Unfortunately most Ontarions are dumb and will forget it happened 2 years later...

So it was this guy who was advising Trudeau on how to intentionally piss off and spite our American allies and trading partners just to bump his ratings up a few notches? Foreign Policy advisor...indeed.

That doesn't address the problem. They're talking about selling the LCBO. It's a cash cow for the province and it would be akin to Mike Harris selling off the 407. It makes the budget look good for a year . Then what?

Your choice of language is comical enough, but the fact that you're nitpicking the use of an expression just pushes it over the edge. If not for our military, democracy as we know it may not exist.

Strawman indeed. Nobody is denying their right to express their opinions. They're still idiotic opinions nonetheless. To suggest that giving children scholarships whose parents died serving Canada 'encourages military imperialism' is the biggest pile of steaming poo I've heard in a long time. These professors are snivelling and contemptible worms so far removed from the real world that they'd probably have a panic attack if they ever left campus and went to a public place.

He has a point. You get some really stupid things posted here (Mr. Canada is one of our top offenders) and all they serve to do is mire any potential discussion down in stupidity. The original post for this thread follows that trend.

I'll agree with your first point, that being there's no good way to go into deficit, but I have some problems with your second point. While it was almost unavoidable to go into deficit due to stimulus spending for the recession, program spending was going sky-high leading up to it in the first place, particularly in Ontario but on the federal level as well. Recession and stimulus can account for a few years of deficit, but when it takes close to 10 years to get back to the black there are obvious structural shortfalls. On the federal level, much of our continuing deficit comes from tax cuts. Personally I'd rather they use what they would have earned without the cuts to prevent or pay back the deficit, but that's another story altogether. In Ontario, however, we've had significant tax increases since McGuinty came to power, and we're still going to be running a deficit longer and harder than even the federal Conservatives are. The main thing you and I seem to argue on regularly (and I'm sure we'll never convince each other otherwise) is that you seem to think program spending and big government is inherently good whereas I take a much more cynical view and see it as wasteful. I don't think I could think of a better example than the one you brought up of drug rehab centres. Those are the epitome of useless and wasteful spending. The success rate for these abominations is something like 2-6%. I'm almost positive you could come up with a 2-6% rehabilitation rate without any rehab centres at all. I could go over all sorts of things like this that I consider wasteful government spending and you would probably disagree on all of them. There is no slight intended to you when I say this, but it would be very interesting to see how your opinion changes when you're a little bit older, have a career/family, and are paying any meaningful taxes yourself.

You and I both being from Ontario probably know that this would not do the Liberals much good.