Moonbox

My Canada is fact. Your Canada is fantasy-burnout world. You're making it pretty clear you don't understand common law, or our Charter of Rights, which is typical of the hippie cry-about-everything protester crowd. Uh huh. Maybe with idiots who like to show up at protests and start shit with the cops it is. Other than that, police violence is one of the last things the average Canadian worries about. It's a right every Canadian has. This is where your juvenile logic starts to fail. The right to protest is not the same thing as the right to protest wherever, whenever you want, with as many people as you like. You've decided they're the same thing, but they're not. No, you're being obtuse, and you're quoting things you don't even have a fundamental understanding of. You don't understand common law. You don't understand the Charter, and clearly you don't understand the Constitution either. It's hilarious watching you try to dig up quotations to prove your point, but without understanding the basic principles behind those documents, all you're doing is making yourself look dumb. This is a common tactic of the deadbeat protester though. Quote the Constitution and scream about it until your lungs are hoarse, but only the little snippets you THINK support your cause, and all the parts that crap on your parade are ignored!

Oh my god man. How thick are you trying to be??? Your own quotation proves you wrong: (b) obstructs the public in the exercise or enjoyment of any right that is common to all the subjects of Her Majesty in Canada. You're STILL completely ignoring the most important part of the Charter, which is Section 1 - the limitations clause. What it means is that every item of the Charter is subject to limitations. In a common law system like our own (do you even know what common law is btw?), that means that your 'rights' are basically always up for legal interpretation, usually following precedent. Your right to assemble and protest, therefore, is valid only insomuch as it doesn't obstruct the public in the exercise or enjoyment of any right that is common to all subjects of Her Majesty in Canada unreasonably. Again, the Charter of Rights was specifically written with arbitrary limitations so that moronic arguments like that can't be made. Read Section 1 of the Charter. Read it again, google its meaning, and then read it again until you finally manage to understand what it means. Whatever vapid response to this you want to come up with doesn't hold any water. You right to protest, even peacefully, absolutely has limits. Your right to anything in Canada has limits. IT'S THE FIRST FREAKING THING WRITTEN IN THE CHARTER. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. It doesn't matter what it is. If you're blocking traffic and preventing people from getting to work easily, that can be considered a nuisance. Making too much noise can be considered a nuisance. Simply standing in front of local businesses and intimidating (intentionally or not) people from visiting them can be considered a nuisance. It's all up for interpretation. If you're assembling in large groups, you're expected to show some consideration and allow authorities to make arrangements to make sure the rest of the population is not negatively affected as much as possible. If you don't do that, the authorities can often reasonably decide your right to protest is not above people's rights to living their lives normally. Let's be honest here. This protest was moronic. Police brutality and intimidation is one of the last things that Canadians are worried about on a day to day basis. The fact that we need a protest for this at all is comical, and the protest was full of the same losers and deadbeats who travel around and look for something/anything to protest about. When the same losers, time and time again, show up for protest after protest, eventually authorities decide that they're just being pests, especially when they're making every effort they can not to cooperate.

You're not listening. We're saying the 'right' to protest and assemble is limited, in the Charter, to tests of reasonability. Protestor's do not have carte blanche to assemble whenever and wherever they want. The VERY FIRST section of the Charter addresses this. This clause overrides every single other part of the Charter and it was put there specifically to prevent morons from trying to use wide interpretations of the Charter to defend idiotic behaviour. In a Common Law system, essentially a judge (following precedent) can say, "No, that's completely stupid." and a moronic Charter-based defence crumbles. If protestors insist on assembling in busy public spaces and make themselves a general nuisance, they need to cooperate with local authorities. If they're not doing that, then they DO NOT have the right to disrupt the day to day lives of the rest of Canadians. Blocking traffic isn't reasonable, for example. You can protest without blocking traffic. If you have such a big crowd that you're going to be blocking traffic, you need to be reasonable and allow local authorities to make plans around that (ie. making sure alternate routes are clear). When the protestors are being unreasonable and not being at all cooperative, their right to assemble, effectively, vanishes in a puff of smoke.

You can gather peacefully in groups and associate with whomever you wish, but Section 1 of the Charter (the most important part of the entire Charter), extends those rights to only reasonable limits. When you interfere in the peaceful lives of non-protesters (ie. blocking traffic, preventing access to buildings and places, keeping people awake at night etc.), your rights to assemble and protest are limited to the discretion of local authorities. Sorry bud, but that's a fact, and it's 100% Constitutional. I always find it funny how the loser professional protestor will wet their pants screaming "CONSTITUUUTION! CHARTER!" and never bother to read it or have any real understanding of it. The fact is that the people who wrote the Charter made sure that Section 1 (right at the beginning) explains that the Charter rights extend only so far as is reasonable. They did that so that spastic bed-wetting idiots can't just wave the Charter around and think that means they can do whatever they want.

It's the ignorance, apathy and stupidity of the general electorate. We on this board here are about 1000x more interested in politics than the average Canadian, and regardless of how much I disagree with various people's opinions here, I'd say I respect the opinions of most of them more than the average Canadian's. Most of them...

It would be much better to have proportional representation for Liberal leadership right? Trudeau is 85% leader only right?

Right on dude! Fight the good fight and down with the 'man'! Let's grow shaggy beards and make a difference!

Realistically, someone who can afford only their rent payment and not any savings whatsoever is already in a precarious situation. If there are any shocks to their income or expenses, (ie. a diability, layoff, car repair), then they're in trouble. The person would need to start borrowing to make up the short fall, usually on credit cards, and if they're living paycheque to paycheque with their existing expenses, how are they going to afford the payments on their borrowing? Rent is the only option that should be available to them, not only because there are all sorts of protections avaiable to renters vs landlords (you have to be pretty late to get evicted) but nobody is really out a lot of money if rent payments are missed. If a mortgage defaults, a BEST case scenario would probably be tens of thousands of dollars in losses for CMHC/Genworth. The actuaries run these numbers, as does the government, and they can see that the reliability and rate of default for these people suggest they're terrible candidates for mortgages.

Don't be dense. Protesting is legal. Disturbing the peace, blocking traffic and making a nuisance is not. The protestors refused to cooperate at all with police from the get-go. If you want to protest, do it legally. Share you itenirary, tell the police where you're going and they'll usually let you be. Refusing to do even that, however, was ridiculous and shows that the protestors wanted a confrontation. This wasn't entrapment by the government. This was a bunch of loser 'professional' protestors trying to engineer an incident. It's a protest against police brutality, so whatever negative PR they can get on the police is going to be deemed a success. The police called their bluff and ended things before they really began. The protestors have nothing but their own stupidity to blame for it. It looks good on them too. I always find it funny looking at pictures of these sorts of things. It's like they all shop at the same consignment stores or something...

The race is over and the leadership is already decided. The turnout is low because there's no point in bothering anymore. This isn't a signal of vanishing support. It's plain and simple common sense.

Flaherty grossly overstepped his bounds here. It's the Bank of Canada's mandate to control rates and monetary policy. The Finance Minister's job is fiscal policy. The two are seperate for a reason and Flaherty knows this. I have no idea why he is trying to play around with the markets like this, especially considering he tried to do the same thing with BMO earlier and they summarily ignored him.

What a stupid thing to say. That's the whole point. The programs aren't training people for areas where work is available. I never 'submitted' to anything you said. Whether or not post-secondary education is worthwhile was never something I questioned. It's pretty funny that you're trying to imply otherwise. No, it's not going to be beneficial to the tay payers, and no, it's not just a matter of boomers retiring. Some degrees just don't offer enough work-relevant knowledge for the average grad to compete in the job market. You can't do a number of things very well. Free writing explains your grade 7 writing level? Okay...sure. What about your broken logic, juvenile arguments and sad excuse for wit?

What's really appalling is that someone who can't form a proper sentence (that's you, in case you're wondering) is telling me my view is retarded. It's equally appalling how badly the education system is failing you, when basic argumentation and understanding of statistics (taught in university) so clearly escape you.Here's my argument, summarized concisely: There are a lot of university programs that, statistically speaking, offer on average no/little/negligible returns in employment prospects upon graduating. This isn't something I'm making up. These are numbers we get from the census data and university surveys. I listed some of them for you showing that the average unemployment rate for graduates in these programs was higher than the national average unemployment rate. Considering the majority of the population doesn't even have post-secondary education, that's a pathetic. Argumentation fail. We weren't arguing about the merits of post-secondary education in general. Post secondary education is good overall. There are enough useful programs out there that make the overall system worthwhile. Certain programs, however, are (on average) failing to make graduates more employable. Education makes the country wealthier!? What?! It cannot be so!!! Unsurprisingly, you've brought another bone-headed and completely irrelevant stastistic to the discussion. Now the overall picture of you is getting more clear. You can't have free tuition because of the 'man' right?? The evil corporations and the conservative government is out to screw you...(insert eye roll). By virtually all economic measures, it's doing significantly worse than Canada. The unemployment rate, GDP/capita, Human Development Index etc are all way lower than Canada's, despite the free tuition. Maybe before you go off ranting and nattering, you should get a freaking clue about what you're talking about. It's not going to cost taxpayers less at all. Someone is paying for it regardless and we've already gone over it with you and the problems associated with it.

This is just getting funny. Student loans are too much paperwork and that's a reason people shouldn't have to pay tuition!?? I'm not inventing anything. I live in a town where probably 25% of the population are university students. I'm young enough still to have friends in university. There are tons of people already who coast their way through university for as long as they can. Sorry 'bro', but the student lifestyle is actually a lot of fun. I'd go back to school in a second if there was free tuition. You know what the best part of those 9am lectures is? You don't have to go if you don't feel like it. Most professions don't, sorry. US History majors have a 15% unemployment rate. Political science grads have a 9.1% unemployment rate. Philosophy grads are ~11% unemployed. Humanities majors are 9.5% unemployed. Guess what the overall unemployment rate is? It's about 8%. You can disagree all you want. I don't care. The actual job statistics tell us all we need to know! Yeah, SOME people. Graphics designers are 12% unemployed in the US, fully 50% more than the average member of the work force. There's certainly money to be made by exceptional artists, but not as much as you'd like to think! Communications is generally one of the easiest programs to get into in any university, and most companies will take a BA specializing in marketing or PR well ahead of a communications grad. English language grads have over a 9% unemployment rate, and most of them end up teaching. My position is supported by job statistics. Yours is based on what you want to think. The less this happens, the better. The focus should be on improving the selection process, eliminating spots for degrees that are in excess supply and promoting training for areas in high demand. There are always going to be exceptional grads for any program that end up doing neat stuff. The vast majority of geography majors, however, will not even be employed in anything remotely related to geography. Thanks for the riveting example though... There's a difference between a 'geologist' and a geography major genius, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't have geography programs. If a student specializez their education and works towards a field in high demand, they're going to do just fine. Maybe before you call my positions retarded you should actually have a freaking clue what you're talking about. The actual job statistics are a lot more reliable of a gauge than your vapid 'opinions'. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/why-are-we-training-our-arts-grads-to-be-baristas/article4507579/

Very good point bambino. The Toronto Star and The Sun are two of the worst newspapers in the country. It's unavoidable that there's going to be an editorial 'lean' in any newspaper, but these two push the dogma out unapologetically and with so much misinformation that I can't stand either of them. I used to like reading the Globe, as it seemed to be the most professional of the bunch, but I'm sure as hell not paying a subscription to read the news online. Now I'm stuck with CBC and the Post, and I'm not fond of either.

You're missing the point entirely. The taxpayers subsidize your education as an investment in you for near future productivity. The individual students have to pay a large portion themselves, either from family or through student loans, and this acts as an incentive to actually focus and complete your program rather than drift through different post-secondary degrees trying to 'find yourself'. There's an incentive to finish and start working as soon as possible.Under this joke of a scheme you're proposing, things are turned ass-backwards. You put an incentive in for students to stay students for as long as possible and you start to de-incentivize entering the work force. You give them all the opportunity they need to play student through their 20's on the public dime and we lose years and years of potential productivity if they were part of the work force. The riots say nothing. This is Quebec we're talking about, and those students will find something to protest about regardless. As far as I recall, Quebec has the cheapest tuition in the country already, so their 'rioting' suggests something altogether different going on there. A nanny-state mentality a tendency to whine/compline/be outraged about everything has more to do with it than anything. I'm not wrong about accessibility. I had enough dirt-poor (ie single welfare parent friends) to know that the provincial governments will happily finance student undergrads. Education, in aggregate, leads to better jobs and better productivity, which is an investment that the government and the population both want to make. Not all of this education, however, is value-added. In aggregate, enough people learn enough good things to make the overall system beneficial. There are, however, way too many people earning worthless degrees that give them little more than a piece of paper in terms of resume material, while skilled-trades jobs remain empty. Making tuition free doesn't help this at all. Of course there are jobs in arts related fields. Statistically speaking, however, there aren't even close enough to fill the number of people graduating from related programs every year. There was an article in the Globe last year that gave us average salaries for people with different degrees. Unsurprisingly, English, Geography, Fine Arts, Communications and History were all degrees that had a minimal impact on increasing salaries after graduation. History teaches us lots of things. Unfortunately, a history degree doesn't make you very much more employable. Knowing how to make an orderly society isn't really a job skill many employers are looking for, sorry. The only thing that distinguishes a history grad from a highschool grad in terms of most job applications is that the history grad at least had the minimal work ethic to complete a university degree.

The Conservatives were hand-fed easy targets for character assassination. The last two Liberal leaders were totally out of touch intellectuals with the combined charisma of a potato. Dion proposed an expensive environmental/wealth distribution plan during the middle of our worst recession in 70 years, and then his successor is a man who lived outside of Canada for most of his adult life, coming back only to attempt to be its leader. From the drawing board these should have been obvious no's, but the Liberal brass was too dumb to know any better. As for Trudeau's agenda, you're right, it's irrelevant. I've been saying this for years. He could probably win an election right now without making a single policy point, vapidly smiling in the debates and winking at the audience. Canadians, by and large, are dumb voters.

In a sad kind of way it is hilarious how he's just slipped into the position. The Liberals for years now have been talking about how they need a new leader with 'fresh' ideas and based on a true leadership race, and then they pile on to follow the leader with the least experience, fewest credentials and foggiest platform.

I think Garneau was legitimately trying to win. Kudos to him for attempting to make this into a race, but the Liberal Party had annointed Trudeau from the get-go. There was never actually a race, but Garneau would have liked there to have been. Nobody listened to a single thing he, or any of the other candidates, had to say. Personally I'm terrified at the prospect of Trudeau. I'd bet my life savings right now that he'll win the next federal election at least, and probably a majority, and I'm not upset that the Liberals are going to knock off the Conservatives. What I am unhappy/scared about, however, is how blindly everyone is going to follow him. Whether or not it's into the abyss is a matter of question, but Canadians are going to follow him regardless for no better reason than his father's name.

Shortlived, Your argument is pathetic. There's zero merit to basically anything you're saying. There's no argument against free education? It's expensive. That's all the argument you need. The other argument is that free education would encourage the half-assed students taking half-assed majors like geography, history or (god forbid) communications to apply for more education when they almost inevitably find out that their degrees gave them little/no practical employable knowledge and they can't find decent work. The point of post-secondary is to improve the skills/knowledge of young adults and make them productive members of society. With provincial and Canada student loans, undergrad degrees are affordable to basically everyone. We will not and should not, however, support the deadbeat students who want to stay in the system as long as possible and avoid growing up and actually working. With all of the useless degrees people are graduating with these days, and the rate of unemployment for a lot of program graduates (such as the programs referenced above), we don't need to make post secondary more accessible. We need it to be a lot more efficient, however, and making it free isn't the way to do it at all.

Absolutely. If I had a dime for every 25-30 year old undergraduate girl I met here in Guelph, I'd be a rich man. With free tuition, you could bartend 10-20 hrs a week and be a student as long as you wanted, all on the public dime. Well said. Affordable education is one thing. Free education is another. Education should be affordable enough that everyone should have access to it if they're good students, but expensive enough that they need to make it count and can't drift through their 20's earning undergrads and avoiding entering the working world (which is +100% more work than university/college most of the time).

The nature of our political system makes it so that the amateurish, ignorant and incompetent can actually be a desireable set of traits for an MP. If you look at the Conservatives, for example, the vast majority of them are muzzled, leashed and fed talking points. The votes are whipped and they do little but follow the party line. There are others who, if they have the proper knowledge, credentials and political acumen, are given significant responsibility and leeway with the press, but these are exceptions. Canadian Federal politics are all about the brand and about the head of the party. The rest is trivial. This isn't ideal, but it's reality. Ruth Ellen Brosseau is a perfect example of the monkey parliamentarian. She was a paper candidate and didn't even speak French, yet she won a French riding for the NDP without even really running a campaign. Her success will depend largely on keeping her mouth shut and following instructions from the NDP brass.

Derek, are you suggesting that the Super Hornet and F-35 are on par for costs??? I'm just wondering...because they're not...and not even close either...

It was cyber's 'premise', sorry. Regardless, he was trying to imply that Scandinavia and their socialist model or whatever was some sort of ideal that we all needed to aspire to. HDI or IHDI both show a different story LOL!

First off, Norway (#1) has almost identical public spending numbers to Canada, so it doesn't support your premise that 45-50% of GDP going towards public spending is the ideal model. Norway, at #1, has similar spending figures to Canada, and Australia, #2, has significantly lower numbers. Ireland rounds things up at spot #6 so we have spots #1, 2 and #6 supporting Canada's model, and #3, #4 and #5 supporting a "Scandinavian" model. The funny part is that this ignores the fact that there are other European countries (like France, Austria, Hungary etc) that have significantly higher public spending %'s than Canada, and also significantly lower IHDI numbers, suggesting that it's not a simple matter of the Scandinavian countries being successful because of a relatively high level of public spending support, but rather something else altogether. That something else could be things like having a small, modern, highly concentrated and ethnically homogenous population situated in an extremely tiny area, with with ample natural resources and easy access everywhere to shipping and trading routes. In short, they have an ideal (and small)population to govern with easy logistics and little/no ethnic/regional diversity.