Moonbox

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.

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.