drewski

we have a piss poor environmental policy and yet we're giving away hundreds of millions to help the environment elsewhere? I guess this way Harper can say he's helping the environment buy not hurting the oil companies out west. How about we invest the money in NSERC with the mandate to fund engineering and science projects HERE to develop green technologies, with the caveat that in return, these people/companies sell (for well below market value) or donate for free to developing nations. Then they can sell, for profit, these technologies to developed nations for whatever price they want

if we're just going to allow our political ssystem to degenerate into a collection of regional parties (more then they already are), then we might as well break up the country cause nothing will ever be accomplished

what kind of "ongoing commitment" are we talking here? voting? military service? volunteer work? That would go against what I believe part of the freedoms we enjoy here is the ability to do or not do whatever we wish (within the limits prescribed by the laws) what about children and/or the mentally disabled, who, through no fault of their own, don't have the ability to "earn" citizenship?

while I'm sure there were a number of informed Ontarians against PR, from my experiences talking to people the majority of uninformed people were against PR an when I explained the system they typically changed their minds

another personally big issue is Iraq. Harper agreed with Bush's plans even if thee is not widespread global support. McKenna on the other hand rightfully believes that Canada should only become involved when there is lots of multilateral support for military action

i've acquainted myself with his position on abortion. While his personal position might be anti-abortion, like Paul Martin, he is not anti-choice and never tried to remove the choice from women in NB. some use his opposition to Morgantaler's clinic there as proof of him being anti-choice, but I don't think it was as he didn't try to make aortions in approved medical clinics illegal

well Mckenna is fiscally conservative, Harper isn't as evidenced by the last 3 budgets. then there's the anti-choice stance that many conservative's have.

one is a product of the other. its inability of Harper to win a majority because Canadians don't agree with him sure, but irrelevant since this thread is about Liberal leadership Not really, as I believe there are more issues, both social & fiscal, that McKenna & the Conservatives don't agree on then they do The liberals aren't/shouldn't be right wing, they should be centrist and McKenna can help them get back there

how does it take away a connection between voter and local MP? there are still directly elected MP's accountability to their riding (electorate) in their system

I think you'd see somebody like McKEna would run because he could unite the party a lot faster then the current crop of leaders like Rae or Iggy. to paraphrase an old saying, you can that the politician out of politics, but you can't take politics out of the politician. As i said in another thread, i also think he'd have a good chance to beat harper because of his obvious inability to win a majority given a relatively poor opponent

Nobody expected the leader elected last time would be able to win the next election, which is what kept a lot of the expected front runners out. With Harper's obvious inability to get a majority, the draw is back form the front runner's who passed last time to join in now. A good charismatic bilingual leader would have a good chance of becoming our next PM. Given his executive experience in both politics and the business world, his experience as US ambassador & his fiscal conservatism, McKenna could be a great draw to the right wing of the party who stayed away or voted Conservative in the last election. Given that and all the other intangibles he brings, like my personal belief of being able to unite a divided party I think McKenna will run, and win (if you couldn't tell from my sig )

in the ridings in Ontario where they ran last time and again, they managed to increase their vote a little. In BC, one candidate had the same vote share and the other went down just a little. Overall they averaged 1.2% of the vote in the ridings they were in (.45% in BC, 1.6% in NL, 1.43 in ON). Other then Surrey North, they finished 5th in all ridings behind the "Big 4" and in NL, Tobin finished 2 votes behind the Green candidate in 4th. I think if the liberals go any more left ie Rae or Kennedy as leader, there is a chance that there will a defection away from them and possible back to the PC party

my thinking goes that because discarding it could, in theory, change the rules for provinces, it would require application of the amending formula. I feel this would make it a lot harder for any PM to ram it down our throats

if McKenna runs, I think he'll take it easily. Some other ex-Chretien ministers, like Tobin, or Manley to a lesser extent (Liberals pissed at him for running a Harper commission?) would have a decent chance too. If it were down to Ignatieff or Rae, I think Iggy would/should take it cause Rae will alienate the base in Ontario and the right wing of the party

we have the strongest banking system in the world http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE4981X220081009 I don't even wanna imagine how bad things would have to be for us to need to start buying into the banks

I think most of the excuses were just to cover voter laziness. if they really wanted to voted, they could get documents relatively easily http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?sectio...tonly=false#two if they lived in residence, they could get a letter from there saying thats where they lived. if they lived off-campus, they could have used their lease as ID as for aboriginals

frankly, its hard to trust the books given Harper's Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty managed to hide a $5.6 billion deficit in Ontario

not the globe, but here's what he said from the star http://www.thestar.com/article/518196

I see where you're coming from. What if it was some kind of MMP system so there was still riding based accountability, and each province got x number of "top up seats" (at the same ratio as riding based seats) and they were distributed amongst the parties based on provincial results. ie if there were 100 "top up" seats, Ontario would get 34 and alberta would get 10. its not a perfect solution because smaller provinces like PEI and the territories would have very few seats to distribute but at least it could still be more representative of popular opinion

its being discussed here http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index....=12356&st=0

well parliament is currently set to sit Nov 12 so it would to be before then

I think the end of the careers of the last 2 have had less to do with Harper then it does themselves (ie no clear message and no connection with voters) and recent history (ie adscam) Nobody expected the leader after Martin to be able to win the following election, which is why many of the favourites decided not to run. As such, Dion, "the best of the rest" was essentially setup to fail

while I disagree with most of his polices as premier, I will concede to him that he inherited the government of a province headed into a nasty recession, which severely limited his options

if he's really opposed to any of these opposition party rider's he could always just say no and make the bill a confidence motion

1993, 1997, 2000? I think a majority is possible, but the Cosnervatives or Liberals need to do 2 big things to acheive this. 1)They need to move closer to center 2)They need a charismatic leader, which neither Dion or Harper are