Moonbox

Certain provinces, particularly in the West, have been vastly under-represented for a long time. I don't think anyone could make a reasonable argument for NOT allowing a more fair distribution of seats. Realistically, I don't see why the number 308 should be sacrosanct. The population has grown significantly over the years and I see the additional seats as merely keeping up with the changing demographics of the country. It's not as if Harper is trying to skew the distribution unfairly. He's merely amending the currently lopsided arrangement. There's a reason why western voters, particularly in Alberta, feel so disenfranchized. They were something like 30-40% under-represented.

Like changing the constitution difficult.

For the love of god Topaz. What the hell are you even talking about? It's going to cost us billions in pensions and benefits? REALLY!?!? Do you even know what a billion is??? 1000 million....or 1,000,000,000. They're proposing to add 26 new seats to the legislature. Even for this to cost us ONE billion, that's going to mean around $35 million PER new MP in costs. If we're talking BILLIONS, then you're saying that it's going to cost $70+ million per new seat. From what I've read, this is going to add $15-20 million per year in extra legislature costs. Topaz is this another case of you just wetting your pants over anything the Cons do, and then making all sorts of shit up to get other people on your side? Also, for the record, yes, I think the majority of Canadians support making representation more fair. Maybe not Manitoba. Sorry.

Psst. Topaz. Your phone lines are bugged too.

Wow Topaz. Wow. Not only is the theory of conspiracy to join Canada and the USA together flat out ridiculous, the reason you're giving for it (debt) is even more ridiculous. Do yourself a favour. Try and spend more than a week off the internet (particularly forums, news sites etc) and get some perspective on the world and what's out there. Excuse me while I sneer in contempt. This is getting pathetic.

Good cashiers don't closely examine every single bill. Some of the counterfeits are EXCELLENT. In my line of work I've seen counterfeits so good that even the holographic strip on the left of the bill first glance. Realistically, counterfeiters aren't expecting their bills to pass close examination. They're not going to make much of an effort to duplicate some of the more complicated features because the operation to do so would be too large to remain hidden. Things like raised ink, watermarks, micro-print and UV features are usually not there on a counterfeit. These, however, are all things that 99% of people passing the currency don't look for, because they're largely not visible to the naked eye. What the new polymer bills do is exponentially raise the required scale of a counterfeit operation. The security features in the new bills are clearly visible for all to see. There are transparent parts, large holograms of faces etc etc...These are all things you'd see just picking the bill up and putting it in your wallet. The best part is that they'd be EXTREMELY difficult and expensive to reproduce. You'd need a large operation to put it all together.

Topaz, you already said that exact same thing. What I said is that Federal hiring made barely a lick of difference in overall employment numbers during the recession. There weren't enough new federal hires to budge the numbers. 10,000 employees = 0.0006% of Canada's working age population. If they were hiring federal workers to make the numbers look good, it would have had to have been more like 100,000 to make any sort of real statistical difference. This is just a case of you getting your underwear bunched up no matter what the cons do. "They spend too much!" but then "Oh no they're laying off workers and trying to save money!" Hilarious.

Harper didn't hire hundreds of thousands of Fed workers. That's what he'd have needed to do to make any meaningfull dent in employment numbers. Well I can't really argue with the gold-plated pensions, but cabinet expenses are a mere drop in the bucket compared to the actual budget problems we have. Laying off 10,000 fed workers > decreasing cabinet expenses, by a LONG shot. Like I said, I think it's hilarious that you'll wet your pants when Harper increases expenses, but then wet your pants even harder when he does something to decrease them. That's the very definition of a fanatical idealogue, or, in simple terms, a hack.

No, like having to deal with the welfare First Nations and the archaic and goofy institutions we have in place to continue throwing money at them pointlessly so they can continue to do nothing but complain and mooch more and more. How many big oil leaks have we had in our pipelines lately??? Actually, I think most of 'us' are tired of the First Nations and their belly-aching. Pipelines have been in use all over Ontario for decades and as far as I know there haven't been any significant problems. Pipeline technology isn't exactly complicated.

Topaz you really need to pick your battles. Just the other day you were fussing about how the conservatives were running the biggest government and the biggest deficits, but now you're wetting your bed because they're making cuts. How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when you throw a tantrum either way???

So is anyone else picturing an 8 year old girl whining to her stuffed animals at a fake tea party?

You can say that about all of William Ashley's ideas.

Yet that same 16 year old can't be held accountable for any other contract he/she signs. They can't sign a car loan on their own. That's a voidable contract right there. If they're not responsible/mature enough to do that, why are the responsible/mature enough to decide who leads the rest of the country?

I don't really see how it's any different than an opposition that votes against or abstains from every piece of the government's legislation... Of course they're idealogues.

The point is still a big yawn.

Dalton McGuinty is not all that well liked in Ontario. His record is bad and the only reason he won the last two elections is because his opposition is incompetent, much like how Harper won his majority this year.

Argus, that was one of the most brilliant posts I've seen on this forum in a long time. It was funny, concise and highlights how backward the OP was in a very obvious way. Well done.

The middle class, inflation adjusted, saw a $53 increase in median income over a THIRTY FIVE year period. That's not a good statistic Smallc. It's aweful. Productivity and GDP, even inflation adjusted, have grown FAR faster than that per capita over that time period. The average income in Canada from 1976 to 2009 increased by 17%, inflation adjusted. Sounds great right? Well...no. Median income, the stat that would show what the middle class is making, only grew by 5.5% over 34 years. Why's that??? It's because despite enormous productivity gains over the last 30 years, the wealthy have been pocketing those gains and the middle class, despite improved efficiency, has not seen much benefit at all. I'm not sure how I'd feel if I worked for 30 years straight and I got a 0.16% raise per year. What about you? http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/hot-topics/canInequality.aspx#anchor3

As are the bedwetting sensationalists who whine and fuss and spin every little possible thing into grand Tory conspiracies. What a boring thread.

smallc this was going on long before the recession hit. The middle class was making less in 2007 on average than they were in 1987 and, if I recall correctly, that wasn't even inflation-adjusted. It's enough to make you want to puke. The fact that the rich in Canada have continued to get richer, and that the poor are poorer (thus requiring more in the form of social servicing) leads us to a middle class getting squeezed on both ends. Things are not peachy in Canada for the average Canadian, although at least our banks didn't collapse.

As mentioned before, any court in the world would have trouble believing that someone firing a bullet at the window of the White House hadn't given serious thought that this was the residence of the President of the United States. Perhaps he was insane, but he'll still be locked up for good. Whether you want to call this an assassination attempt, or an attempt to make a statement (something akin to terrorism), he's toast.

I'm wondering why the world's ~13th largest military spender wouldn't even have a military satelite up in the sky. Is that the case?

Bingo. Wyly, maybe you don't understand what proxy means???

The US involvement in Vietnam was neither imperialistic nor colonial. It was idealogical and at no point were they interested in occupation or subjugation. They just didn't want to see communism spread any further. Except the US civil war didn't occur in a third world butthole, and one side wasn't massively supported with arms from one of the world's largest powers. To say the North Vietnamese invasion of the South was just a 'civil war' is beyond dumb. The sound of your own ranting? Oh...that's too bad. You must not get a lot of 'exercise' then....

wyly I know that using words like 'imperialism' and 'corporations' etc give you a huge hard, but this statement just shows how naive you are and how little you know of Vietnam. North Vietnam didn't go communist on its own. It did so with MASSIVE Soviet and Chinese support. The invasion of South Vietnam was supplied with immeasurable Soviet and Chinese equipment. South Vietnam had no chance without American help and it's idiotic to think that Vietnam was merely just a civil war. The USSR and China were fighting the USA by proxy.