Moonbox

How many more dumb things are you going to say? Strip clubs are just money laundering fronts? The fact that money needs to be laundered in the first place is indicative that there are illegal activities going on in the background. Criminal organizations generally don't restrict themselves to one type of activity. Often they're amalgamations of all sorts of different enterprises. Drugs and prostitution are two of the most common. Don't be daft. Not allowing highly likely future victims to make themselves vulnerable in Canada IS protecting victims. The whole point of the law is to prevent them from landing in a bad situation. You clowns have taken the extraordinary position that not allowing them easy entry into the country somehow MAKES them into victims, which is ridiculous. If we're preventing women (currently not being exploited) from putting themselves in positions where they're very likely to be exploited, that's not victimizing them. If we're forcing criminal organizations to smuggle women into the country for the purpose of exploiting them, we're not making the situation worse than it already was.

You win for the dumbest post in the thread so far. Frankly, your logic sucks. Sure, some women will be smuggled into the country. That's a matter for the Coast Guard, Customs, Immigration etc to sort out. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't seriously curtail the operations of criminal exploiters. If they have to pay to smuggle women into the country, it'll cost them a ton of money to do it, put them at risk and make it very hard for them to pretend they're running legitimate and legal business. It'll make it much easier to prosecute the EMPLOYERS as a result. The argument that we shouldn't de-legitimize something simply because criminals will break the law and get around it is beyond stupid.

Did I say anything about banning strip clubs? That's not my suggestion at all. My suggestion is not to grant them to young women working as strippers. The basis for this suggestion is that the women put themselves in very vulnerable positions and the likelihood of them being criminally exploited is high. I only mentioned the term 'essential service' ironically, but it's interesting that this is what you latched on to out of my whole argument. I'm looking for a good explanation on how this in ANY way makes Canadians worse off, because realistically, your critism seems based more on being an anti-Harper hack rather than any review of the proposal's merits.

Actually it looks like he's arguing with a bunch of children. You guys haven't really made an intelligent point in 4 pages. The argument is really simple. The likelihood of trouble for a young foreign woman who comes to Canada specifically for the purpose of stripping is exponentially higher than for the born-and-raised Canadian woman. Stripping is far from an essential service and the Canadian economy isn't exactly going to grind to a halt if our strip joints aren't full of 18 year old Russians. By not granting work visas to strippers, the government eliminates a very obvious, visible and vulnerable supply of young women for criminals to exploit. Since Canada is neither morally nor legally obligated to grant work visas to these people, and since it wouldn't hurt our economy in the slightest, it's difficult to see how this is bad for Canada. I mean, you guys are ACTUALLY making the argument that preventing young, naive, likely poor and uneducated foreign women from putting themselves in EXTREMELY vulnerable positions is HARMING/VICTIMIZING them!?!? Holy crap...

Aspersions...nice! Use the thesaurus for that? Sure, but the thread is about not allowing work visas to strippers and the rationale behind it, and cybercoma for some reason brought up that Canadian and American girls get exploited too, implying that this was just a misguided puritanical crusade against stripping. Young foreign women coming alone to Canada to work as strippers are putting themselves in positions of risk where the likelihood of exploitation is amplified probably 1000 fold. Maybe you could just say, "Sorry for trying to sound smarter than I am and for trolling you with lame gotcha statements." Try to contribute to the discussion instead of just being a glib little weenie okay?

No. They're really, really not. A testimonial. Well that's reliable. Interesting that you know so many women in the business...I myself know 'none'. Regardless, if you can't see how easily an Eastern European girl with weak English language skills and no friend or family support could get exploited, I don't know what to say to you. Yes, there are exploited Canadian girls as well. A lot of them are coming from dirt poor, abusive or neglective families, however, and it's a lot harder for the government to anticipate who and where these girls are, and therefore much harder to do anything about. When an 18-25 year old girl from Russia comes here alone, however, and it's pretty clear she'll be stripping, it's much easier to see where things are going. Your assertion that the government is targetting victims is just really stupid. The government is looking to prevent scenarios with high likelihoods of unfortunate outcomes. Personally I don't really see the value in granting work visas for strippers in the first place. Why are you upset that poor girls from out of country aren't going to be able to come here and take their clothes off for dirt bags and old married men?

You do sound like you've been listening to your toaster. If you're serious, and you actually think that this is possible right now...I'm sorry I don't even have a good suggestion for you...just good luck

I'd say that the safety records of pipelines are pretty good and that the alternative is to not drill the oil at all, or transport it by truck. I don't like the alternatives. As far as the environmentalists are concerned, the oil sands shouldn't exist at all. In terms of pipeline location, the goal for them, it seems, is to delay the process as long as possible and hope that eventually people give up altogether. If the goal was to actually find the most practical (both environmentally and economically), then perhaps people would take their concerns more seriously.

I think it's just indignation that the gravy train, which a lot of people have been willfully abusing, is being reigned in a TINY bit.

Harper is a cat man. He would be more likely to eat puppies. I, on the other hand, love dogs, and, if forced to decide, would rather eat kittens.

What difference does it make? It's smarter to borrow on your house than just borrow from other sources. Payment terms and interest rates are better. Unless he had tens of thousands of dollars sitting around for his election campaigns, refinancing his house was probably the most financially intelligent way of getting the funds necessary. I'm wondering what you're basing your opinion on though. Clearly you're managing your finances well and not spending beyond your means, but that's less typcial of the average urban Canadian than the opposite. Look at Carney's warnings about record household debt levels. Housing prices and household debt levels have grown in tandem over the last 15-20 years. That should tell you all you need to know, without having to listen to my first hand experiences. You're right, but the problem isn't unique to Mulcair or a 'select few'. It's systemic in Canada. It's been this way since Trudeau and it has never stopped. Canadians, like Americans, are big spenders. The only things that saved us from a US-style housing collapse were stricter regulations. Vancouver/GTA are prime examples of the attitude of the 'average' Canadian.

Argus come on man. I don't think you're really thinking this one out right. It might be reasonable to perhaps make sure that candidates are dilinquent with their repayments, as an MP under considerable financial pressure presents possible conflicts of interest and even security threats, but making their finances fully public? No way. Disregarding the gross intrusion of privacy it would be, it also wouldn't be fair at all. Certain careers, family backgrounds and other factors can provide big advantages or disadvantages from the start which have no bearing on the candidates personal financial skills. Such a system would lean us even more heavily towards a House filled with lawyers and the like as opposed to a more balanced representation of Canada as a whole. Good for you Argus. 11 times isn't as unusual as you would think, however. Working in the industry as I do, I can tell you it's quite common. The list of reasons WHY you would refinance is pretty long, and if you consider all the things a homeowner can do over 20 years, you'd be less surprised. If, for example, you move four times into a bigger house, you could port and increase your mortgage, which would be four refinances right there. The guy is a politician running a federal party, so over his career it's not much of a stretch to see how easily the rest could follow.

Yeah these mid-term polls are always sooo accurate...

Has anybody even considered the cost of running a leadership campaign for a federal party, or the costs of an election campaign? It's not cheap. This isn't unusual or cause for concern AT ALL. I'm not a Mulcair or NDP fan by any stretch of the imagination (quite the opposite), but the number of times he's refinanced his mortgage is less than useless as an indicator of his suitability for PM.

A question worth asking, but one we already know the answer to sadly. It's the same reason that Bernier still has a career.

Yeah it sounds pretty honky to me.

Chronic seasonal workers pay a FRACTION of what they take out of the program. It never even comes close. Nice try.

Well said. I'm totally with you on this.

Sounds reasonable to me. and so the need for changes. In this regard your argument has no merit. An employment assistance program that rewards non-productivity provides no net gain to the economy as a whole. Sure, someone earning EI spends the money into the economy, but that money had to be taxed from productive sources in the first place. EI, as an institution, is good. It's necessary. In its current form, however, it is incredibly flawed and needs changing. Not subsidizing lazy assholes' snowboarding seasons isn't going to cause the collapse of the economy. It will improve it.

How did such an inane OP end up being a 7 page thread??

I see a lot wrong with it. If you're a 'seasonal' worker then you should be paid seasonally. That's what you chose to do or that's all that you ever made yourself qualified to do. I have a lot more respect for someone who works at Timmy's all year than someone who fishes, or does landscaping or plants trees for 7 months a year and then f's the dog on EI for the rest of the year. That is NOT what EI was originally intended to do. 'Landscapers' in my area can make $40-50k over a spring-fall season with overtime etc. Invariably, every year, these same people apply for EI, and get it, for the winter months, while at the same time doing snow removal and odd jobs for cash on the side. They make the barest, most token efforts to find employment while on EI, because they don't actually want to find anything. It happens a TON. I'm betting this actually goes over very well for them. They were never really perceived as the EI friendly party in the first place, yet they still won a majority. This is likely only going to increase their popularity with the WORKING public.

Welcome to the forums, even if your point is kind of goofy. Fact is that people have different ideas about what's right to do. Add to that the fact that the majority of Canadians would rather watch Dancing with the Stars than to spend 20 minutes a day trying to stay informed...

The language police in Quebec, Smallc. I don't know how many changes there have been in the last year or so, but I recall reading articles in the Globe about how a lot of people in Quebec weren't allowed to send their kids to English language school or where an anglophone running an online business in Quebec was ordered to create a french language one as well. It's a not quite as straightforward as someone like Tilter would make it out to be, since an Anglophone in Ontario operates with a triple majority (English is the majority language in the province, country and continent), whereas Francaphonie in Quebec is proverbial drop in the bucket, but if you were an English speaker there I could certainly understand why someone might feel things are unfair.

It IS a little lopsided.

No. The votes in Ontario gave him the majority. Harper would have done better overall if Quebec wasn't even part of the election. Nice try though.