Moonbox

The Liberal Party may be bankrupt but it is far from gone and there are enough of you around to make sure it stays for a long time to come. Maybe it transforms itself into something more relevant or maybe it just has a few quiet years but I think your scenario is getting a little too ahead of itself.

which you yourself constantly fail to do. Your response included: When you start using rhetoric like this, particularly big scary words like 'dictatorial' you lose all credibility to any argument you might have been trying to make. Referring to the leader of a MINORITY DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT under a British Parliamentary system as a dictator is a clear sign of failure in intelligent reasoning and a resortment to passionate and baseless rhetoric.

Harper never wanted her in the debate. She and Dion have quite obviously shown that they have each other's backs and why would Harper want to debate against two very similar positions? Harper still doesn't want her in the debate but decided that since Canadians want to see her speak he might as well not protest it. This is altogether a poor analogy anyways. It's a completely and 100% different situation and I'm surprised you would even try to compare them.

and after two elections in which Harper was demonized by the Liberals, you somehow find it scandalous that he would focus Canada's attention on an assinine Carbon Tax plan that Canada doesn't want and the bumbling fool of a Liberal Leader who suggested it. You're ignoring everything everyone is saying! You CANNOT muzzle every member of your party. Sooner or later one of your representatives WILL say something idiotic for the simple fact that you can't be in all of their heads. EVERY party has idiots making spectacles of themselves and the Liberals have had one recently themselves. I don't call the Liberal Party sexist because one of their MP's was telling his opponent to go back to making tea and biscuits for her man do I? No! I notice that he was forced by his party to apologize. Let his riding decide if they want to vote him back in but don't make broad and baseless conclusions on a whole party just because it suits your political view. That's the definition of ignorance.

Nobody is saying the majority of yanks aren't ignorant just like the majority of Canadians are ignorant as well . If a yank came here and tried to mention how the US has helped Canada (and they have) you'd have Canadians frothing and telling him he is the spawn of Satan's land.

40% is typically the threshold needed to gain a majority. 41% shows if anything a VERY modest majority with a margin of error in the polls.

But your community is presented. There are plenty of reasons why proportional representation is a bad idea the first of which is that it makes politics even more regional than they are now. An elected Senate, on the other hand, is pretty hard to argue against isn't it?

Personally I can't justify it any further than saying it's really just throwing the Liberal tactics of 2004 and 2006 right back in their faces. Like I've said many times, I don't think Harper can claim moral high ground on some of the issues, but I don't think anyone can. The "Dion is not a Leader" tactics I'm betting will work quite well. They're not trying to turn him into a monster like the Liberals tried to with Harper. They're saying he's a bumbling and ineffective leader and they have plenty of examples to back that up with.

Please provide your evidence that Harper is working for big oil. Also, while you're at it, tell us how the Green Shift is going to help us out with fuel prices.

Unfortunately, biofuel is more expensive to produce. It's more expensive and the environmental benefits to it are negligible. Supporting biofuels is nothing but subsidizing unprofitable farming. Actually, I can provide you with probably hundreds of links where economists from places like the World Bank have concluded that biofuel is the DIRECT CAUSE of the increase in food prices and the subsequent starvation in the third world. WorldBank - Biofuels and Food Prices At least his opinions are informed and supportable whereas yours are generally just passionate nonsense. If you would like to start a thread I'd love to debate the benefits of biofuels with you. I can provide you with plenty of evidence showing you exactly how it's more expensive, exactly how it's causing starvation and exactly why it has little to no environmental benefits to offer.

It would 'fall flat' because any drastic environmental initiatives are likely by ANY theory to make doing business more expensive in Canada. Now I'm totally for a greener Canada but making the environment your #1 issue in an election during an economic downturn is not likely to strike a chord with Canadians. Campaigning on the economy will. I wouldn't be surprised if the Greens do better this year, but I certainly don't think they're going to explode like some people think.

You're right that he hasn't made it a priority. The reason for this, however, is that the economy is having trouble, he's doing everything he can do avoid a deficit and most centre or left of centre Canadians are violently opposed to any extra military spending. Increased military spending would upset these Canadians who know nothing about Afghanistan or our military and would probably lose Harper the LPC/CPC swing voter. Once defeated in a minority, the LPC would just reverse whatever changes he's made.

I didn't say his french was ridiculous. I said Harper's bilingualism is miles above most of his contemporaries. Pearson happens to be one of my very favorite Prime Ministers and was a huge boon to Canada. He was from a different time, however, and the things I liked about him are hard to find in the present crop of Liberals. and I'm not so sure he'd be proud about what his successors have accomplished. Things like massive debt, high taxes and strained relations with our neighbours were not really Pearson's legacy.

Technically, you're right. He is remarkable nonetheless in that he's a WASP that can speak non-ridiculous french. My french is better than Dion's English and I'm not running for PM.

I think their message will fall flat as gas prices continue to rise and the economy continues to deteriorate. I'm also 100% certain May will not impress anyone in the debate.

Attack attack attack is something Harper learned through two elections where he was made out to be a dangerous villain with the secret agenda of turning Canada into baby USA. The Liberal campaigns of 2004 and 2006 were just as bad if not worse and I'd love to hear you argue otherwise. Yes, some of the adds and comments by the CPC have been assinine, but that happens with every party. We can go through Liberal foot in mouths if you want too, but that's not the point. It's HIGHLY suspect of you to be going on about CPC mud slinging when this is exactly what your Liberals did last election. To be honest, I would like to see a campaign on the issues themselves. Unfortunately, I think the people on this forum are an exception in at least that we try to stay informed on the issues. Most Canadians don't know anything about anything when it comes to the government. With the ignorance of the average voter, all you're left to campaign on is rhetoric and half-truths. CPC attack adds have shown Dion to be a poor leader. His record hasn't been impressive.

Harper is also severely constrained by the debt that Trudeau, an overspending Liberal, accumulated with the help of Mulroney AFTER he cut back our military spending. It's hardly an effective argument to say that Harper hasn't spent 'enough' money when his opposition's plans are to spend decidedly less or nothing. The fact of the matter is that the Chretien and Trudeau Liberals let our military deteriorate into one of the most ineffective independant fighting forces in the western world. What troops we have are highly trained and effective fighters from what i've read but that hardly matters when they don't have the equipment to keep themselves safe. How sad is it that one of the richest countries in the world doesn't even have a few helicopters to move their troops around in Afghanistan? I think it's despicable that the Liberal government would slash military spending, then send our troops to Afghanistan unequipped and then make a stink about them dying AFTER they're voted out of office. Our troops aren't just soldiers. They're Canadians as well and the sooner people realize how badly we've let them down the sooner they'll allow Stephen Harper to spend MUCH NEEDED money to help them out.

Except most (almost all) comparably modern countries with comparably less resources and wealth than Canada have much more robust militaries than us. I don't think we need a big military, but the lack of spending under the Liberal government and then their subsequent decision to send our troops to Afghanistan with equipment that dates back to the 60's and 70's is a little hard to justify. I would consider that Canada's manufacturing industry isn't competitive even compared to the USA yes. Having pretty much the highest corporate tax in North America in Ontario certainly isn't helping. Trudeau helped win a referendum. Mulroney borked everything up you're right. With that said, Seperatism remained a significant cause from 1993 pretty much until the Harper government. Now most of Quebec doesn't even think it's relevant. It wasn't an argument won with any difficulty. The argument was won (with the help of international lawyers) on some very basic assertions that you or I had probably already come up with ourselves. The Clarity Act didn't defeat the spirit of separatism, nor did a francaphone Prime Minister over something like 10 years. It was a Prime Minister who could show Quebec that they were better off staying in Canada.

but there weren't any Liberal candidates out there stupid enough to take shots at a grieving father. This father would have liked the Liberal position just as little as the CPC position, so there was no point in arguing with him.

Agreed. The minister in question should have just kept his stupid mouth shut.

This is just silly. Liberal Policy paid back the debt that was Liberal Policy to accumulate in the first place? Liberal tax and spend was what got us into debt in the first place. Mulroney didn't help things, granted, but at the same time his government was dealing with Bank of Canada interest rates up in the high teens along with recession at the end of the Trudea/Turner Liberals and also another recession in 1991. With that said, saying the Liberals balanced Canada's finances after putting them into shambles is about as remarkable as cleaning your own vomit off the floor. All they did to balance the budget which they ruined in the first place was drastically cut transfer payments to the provinces and accumulate massive EI surpluses by being cheap with it. Effectively, they just cut social and health care services and left us with less than we even started. What's funny, however, is that these are the very thing that they campaign on in an election. I'm not saying that I disagree with balancing the budget, but I AM disagreeing with any assertion that Trudeau-esque Liberals have demonstrated themselves to be sound financial managers. Anyone saying that right now needs to look at the carbon tax. The green shift will by no means in any way possible be revenue neutral for the average Canadian. over budget yet posting surpluses and paying down the debt.... Also, in an economic downturn, a small deficit isn't even really a bad thing. BASIC economic theory suggests that the last thing you want to do in a recession/semi-recession is cut back spending and slow down the flow of capital/spending in the economy. That only makes the recession worse. You spend more in a downturn so as to minimize its impact on the average Canadian so thousands more Canadians don't lose their job and the economy recovers more quickly. Because of how the average Canadian perceives a deficit now (thanks to Trudeau), the CPC has to do everything it can to keep the books in the black. The word 'deficit' is unthinkable in Canada these days.

Yep I agree. It's an election campaign. This is where politicians go around acting like they care. Layton, Dion and Harper are all doing the same.

Marksman to be honest it's very refreshing to get a reasoned explanation from an opposing perspective. You've at least addressed some of the points I made and in some ways you and a very few others in this thread have served to somewhat damper my image of Stephen Harper. I say somewhat because in the end, I think he is doing mosty the right thing. Yes, it's quite clear that some of the promises he makes did not entirely hold up. Things like the income trusts, Newfoundland equalization formulas and fixed election dates come to mind. It's impossible to argue that his promises were either broken altogether or he bent the rules on some sort of funny technicality. With that being said, just like you've already mentioned, some of these promises were completely misguided and stupid to have made in the first place. Should he be chastized for making them? Sure. Should he be also chastized for breaking stupid promises? Well...maybe in so much as they were stupid to make in the first place. The income trusts for example, were impossible to justify as they stood. Yes, the promise was made, but after seeing how unfair a loophole the trusts offered what decision should you make? Should you uphold your promise even though it would be unfair and to the detriment of most Canadians, or should you do what is ultimately right? There are also all the things Stephen Harper said he'd do to make elections and politics more fair. The election gag laws, fixed election dates and many other things like Senate appointments that the Liberal government had been abusing before and since Mulroney are all things that Harper campaigned on and really did nothing about. Mostly, he's just kept the status quo. Does that make him a liar? As much as any other politician I guess. A hypocrit? Sure, but show me a governing politician who isn't. What I'm trying to do in this thread is explain why he would have done what he's done and why it's silly to expect him or think he would do otherwise. Stephen Harper's broken promises in terms of election laws and campaign laws are really just him giving the Liberals a taste of their very own medecine. Does he hold the high moral ground in this matter? No, but nor does his competition. Does it look good on Dion and the Liberals? Most assuredly yes. Liberal policy has been disastrous over the last 35 years in terms of finance and international relations and I would love to see someone argue otherwise. We can pin both our current debt load AND the lack of social and health care services squarely on the Liberal government's (and to a lesser extent Mulroney's) feet. Given what they've done to the country and how blatently the Liberals abused the political system (particularly Chretien and Trudeau) to their own advantage, I think it's very suspect for them in particular to be complaining about what the Harper conservatives are doing. Again, yes, I'll agree it's hypocritical for Harper to be using their own games against them, but I think they are past due for some severe humbling and that this is almost poetic justice.

My view of this is it doesn't really matter. With that being said, I think it IS something people should know about and we can let Canadians decide how they feel.

Well the increase in oil prices really would offset any costs of exploration. That's really not the point though. Williams is a cranky PROGRESSIVE conservative who is still crying that the federal conservatives won't pretend the province isn't earning any money from oil and gas drilling when calculating the equalization payments. In short, Williams is fussing because the Conservatives won't allow him and his province more than their fair share. Put a soother in his mouth and a rattle in his hand and you couldn't have a more fitting image.