Moonbox

Harper's like the anti-christ to a lot of the Quebecqois, so naturally they do talk about it.

Unfortunately intentions and realities seem to have turned out differently. EI for seasonal workers etc is very much indeed a social program.

The whole world experienced a major crisis in economic policy. For various reasons, some countries came out of it better than others. Greece, however, is a pretty cocktail of ineptitude. Like madmax said, it is a puny economy and barely accounts for a fraction of the overall Euro zone. The big fear, I think, is that European banks have led heavily to it and if the Greeks default then it could occur further financial instability in Europe. That being said, eventually enough has to be enough. The Greeks have, for a very long time, nurtured a culture of corruption and inefficiency that would make Soviet Russia proud. The Greeks don't like paying taxes (and make every effort to evade them, illegally), and there's very little political will to put an end to this. The public service, and their social services are far too generous as well, considering their budget. A people who rely on their government to employ them, insist of unaffordable social services, and then refuse to pay taxes to support them deserve everything they have coming to them. If I was a German right now, I'd be screaming for them to cut the cord, and angry that they hadn't done it years ago.

No. It would take far more than Quebec separation to turn Toronto into Detroit. The whole point is moot, however, because it isn't going to happen. Quebec can't afford to separate. That's the cold, hard, truth. Disregard the billions worth of equalization they get every year, their economy would be ruined. Businesses and manufacturers would leave in droves. Anglophones would bail. Montreal would probably hold its own referendum and elect to stay in Canada. Quebec would end up a small and culturally/economically irrelevant state. Their only export would be hydro power. The separatist talk is just that - talk. It's bluster and chest thumping. I'm less concerned with Quebec separatism than I am with a decentralization of power within the Federation. That's what Quebec should be worried about. With the different regional idealogies, I think it's very likely the provinces make moves to manage their own affairs more extensively.

He's echoing my sentiment. You seem completely out of touch with Ontario. Trudeau alienated the West for 35+ years and counting. It's been a wasteland for the Liberals ever since. He did more to divide the country than any PM ever as, disregarding the attention he paid to Quebec separatism. People in southern Ontario care little for how people in Quebec are feeling. We don't talk about it. We don't worry about it. We don't really think about it. As to the 'polls', they're not even worth considering at this point. We're 3 years from an election and Harper doesn't even really have a coherent opposition yet. Mulcair JUST became party leader, the Liberals are invisible and the BQ is dead. Mulcair and the NDP don't present a reasonable alternative. That's the problem. I would love it if the Liberals got their act together, but it seems unlikely. The Liberal Party has always been idealogically closer to the PC/CPC than to the NDP. It's more likely that, should they be sliced and diced, the Conservatives would benefit more. We saw the same phenomena elsewhere in the Commonwealth, where a centrist collapse led to conservative pre-eminence. If we examine things further, however, it's even more likely that your scenario won't materialize. Most of the NDP's seats are from Quebec. Ontario's 'idealogy' is so far removed from that of Quebec that if the NDP aims to cater to their base there, they'll struggle to win any new votes here. The spectre of Bob Rae's NDP days is still very real as well, and we saw very clearly what happened to Conservative support once it looked like the NDP was a contender ---> the Conservatives won the GTA. The comment was inane Michael. That was what I was getting at. Ontario doesn't really want Quebec to leave, that's true. I feel that way myself, despite holding much of Quebec in contempt. Truth is that it would be economically disastrous for Eastern Canada for Quebec to leave, but it would be unmitigated catastrophe for Quebec itself. They can bluster all they want, but only the diehards and the vapid actually want it to happen.

No. It's still about idealogy. That's democracy how democracy works everywhere in the world. The fact that idealogy changes significantly from region to region in Canada is notable, but by no means unique. It's the same in the USA. The only difference is that we have Quebec, whose idealogy is so completely removed from the rest of Canada that it's almost impossible to find common ground. Wait...what on Earth are you talking about? Ontario becomes Michigan without Quebec? Please explain, because that makes no sense at all. Harper may very well lose Ontario (I'd love to vote for someone else), but it would have nothing to do with Quebec. Ontario is idealogically much closer to the West than it is to Quebec, despite what you'd like to think. Mulcair and the NDP will flop in Ontario everywhere outside of Northern Ontario and bits of Toronto and London....just like they always do. Thank Rae for that.

I always knew you were a honky...just not that much of one. <3

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/globe-to-charge-readers-for-online-content/article2429120/ Pretty self explanatory. I remember they used to charge people to access a lot of their articles online, but they stopped doing it probably 5 years ago. This has been my newspaper of choice for some time now, but I have to admit, I'm cheap enough to start reading elsewhere if this costs more than a few bucks a month. I don't buy newspapers themselves because I don't get $1 worth of interesting reading out of one of them, so I wonder what the cost model will be for the Globe moving forward...

This thread should just die. What an inane question....

I've expressed in other threads relating to it that I think the F-35 is the biggest boondoggle in American procurement history. It was SUPPOSED to be the replacement for the F-16, which was a relatively cheap, lightweight fighter that could be produced in large numbers and satisfy all sorts of different needs. Instead, it's turning out to be every bit as expensive as the F-22, which by almost all accounts is a far superior plane, and which was cancelled because it was too expensive. Odd.

I think he was joking smallc. It is a pretty funny picture. At any rate, the whole idea of "5th generation" is pretty ridiculous in the first place. As mentioned already, it's just a buzzword, and what it actually means was pretty arbitrary in the first place. It's sufficient, I think, simply to say the aircraft is vastly superior to legacy aircraft from the 1970's and 80's, and likely quite a bit superior to contemporary modern aircraft like the Typhoon and Super Hornet in most regards as well.

This is really starting to seem like a pretty one-sided negotiation to me. They tell us what we need to do, and we do it or f off....

Provincially, I've literally voted PC every time in Ontario. Federally, I voted Liberal until the sponsorship scandal, then gave Harper a chance, and haven't liked any of the alternatives since.

Topaz is the forum's most zealous Liberal hack Fletch. You'll soon learn to ignore him, other than for the sake of mockery. Welcome to mapleleafweb. Bang on.

We don't have a shortage of water like, say, Palm Springs does, but water supplies in all sorts of municipalities have needed to be rationed. It's not like everyone is just hooked up to the Great Lakes or the Muskokas and we are running our showers from those.

Large parts of southern Ontario have had lawn watering bans pretty much every summer for the last 10 years. Canadian and US cities aren't allowed to just suck the Great Lakes dry. My city, for example, relies on underground aquifiers for water. Much of the surrounding area relies on the Grand River. They're not inexaustible. We have lots of fresh water in Canada yes, but we shouldn't be stupidly throwing it away.

This is such a dumb thread.

China, India, Pakistan and Russia are all very close together and all have enormous militaries. China wants to be the pre-eminent power in Asia and be able to exert their influence over the region and India, in particular, wants to counter act this as much as possible.

It's exaggeration, but there's some basis for it. There's also a lot of history showing how much lower the NDP's support turns out to be come election time.

What's the use of polls 3 years away from an election? These are less than meaningless.

Fair enough. I have trouble handling it myself, but it's never a good idea to feed into it. First of all, the problem posters will take you 100% serious because that's the way they post. Also, ironically, the posters who would normally listen to what you have to say might not get the joke .

eyeball why would you even bother posting garbage like this? I think the thread title and topic are pretty specific. We're discussing our BS immigration system. Hack-responses like this trash you just posted here are the types of things that are dumbing this forum down to nothing. Yes, there are lots of hack-conservatives on this forum. There are a lot of hack NDP'ers and even Liberals too. Don't feed into it with inane posts like this. That's so dumb and you're smarter than that.

Point is that Albertans don't get the money back that they pay in terms of social programs. They're a net contributor and Quebec, for a very very long time, has been the biggest drain.

If I was a little older and wasn't something like 35+ years from retirement, I'd probably be pretty upset about this. Unfortunately, like most Canadians, if it doesn't affect me or my family directly/immediately, I don't pay it much thought. Realistically it's another example of previous generations absolutely screwing younger generations. Over-generous pensions set up in the gravy-train days of Keynesian economics are dumped on my generation so that when the people paying them finally retire, they don't get near as nice a benefit. It's enough to make you sick.

Section two was a joke in terms of job creation. A tax credit to businesses for new hires with additional credits for having them stay employed for 12 months. Hmm...No way that would contribute to frictional unemployement is there? There were subsidies for commuters...which makes no sense at all to me. Then there was something about ensuring that foreign investment creates Canadian jobs and net benefit for Canada, but it was so vague it's hard to even talk about. Regardless, I didn't see a lot of stuff in there that was going to be great for the economy and make up for even 1/20th of the cost of the promises from sections 1, 3 and 4. That was brought up on the first page of this thread. That, my friend, is a combination of idiocy, hypocrisy, bad memory and ignorance with Canadians and a lot of posters here.