Molly

I don't believe that's true. I'm betting that most folks who are members of visible minorities are Canadian born amd as articulate as anybody else.

(Well, if the conversation is to stoop to these partisan depths ....) $2 billion? The Harper GovernmentTM did that in a single weekend!

That's like saying a gift of free room and board wouldn't help with the car paymentss. The question is whether the federal money going to that provincial/municipal jurisdiction suddenly expanded by $25 million in consideration of a new arena, regardless of how the money might be earmarked. Nicky obviously suspects it did, and so do I, though it will never be proved without the equivalent of Nixon tapes and so the case can never be properly made- but neither is the general merit or the appropriate funding status of an airport vs. an arena any defense at all from the accusation.

And by God, you, of all people should recognize a strawman argument!

You do not want to know how many members of my family that touches.

I bow to your perfect knowledge.

Sounds like one to me. Particularly, it would sound like one to Canadian voters.

No, it's not a hamlet. It's a town. http://www.municipal.gov.sk.ca/Administration/Guide/Comparison-Formal-Entities

They are made out as being not strict at all- in fact the requirement is routinely ignored- but you are misrepresenting your own law to suggest that renouncement is not a requirement. It is rarely checked up on, but anyone who fails to do so can be stripped of US citizenship if 'found out'. In effect they swear they have renounced, which no doubt would also be extremely badly recieved in the supposedly renounced nation, too. The political hay that could be made of it is far more dramatic than present petty foolishness.

Bill, this whole tangent is a digression, but really, LOOK! Just LOOK. : http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cansk/maps/ethnic-bloc.html It doesn't matter how many Hutterites there were... but the straight up fact is that western Canada is simply not a British construct.

Not so odd. Your nation demands, as a condition of citizenship, that all other citizenships be renounced. Now, most people just don't do it, considering it to be a MYOB issue, but honest ones do, and the declaration is part of the citizenship process. Can you imagine the incredible uproar if he did have dual citizenship? It would be assumed to be a renouncement. He would not be elctable, could easily be ruled ineligible to runhj, could actually find himself holding neither citizenship!

There's a lot more to it than that, Bill. They pointedly settled in ethnic communities, even though those communites were small and had large admixtures- and some came here specifically because they were granted greater group-freedom than in the nation of their origins. Doukhobours, Hutterites and other communal groups stand out, but they were not unique. What's more, they were recruited. Even more than that, the British/Ontario class structure was not accepted nor respected, and it wasn't just 'some' who came from non-British sources- it was the vast majority. You'll find that as a group they love Canada dearly, but they aren't English/British now, never were and never will be. They assimilated-- into the (multicultural) Canada that they made, not into the British way of life.

How very odd. I had noted a couple of times over the last few days that there was a certain lack of continuity to some threads, and thought that it seemed as though something was missing or had been removed. It didn't even occur to me to check my ignored list because I never use it either. ?? Somebody messing around?? There is nothing on my ignore list now, but I wonder whether there might have been for a few days. (I suppose I should temporarily 'ignore' someone just to know how it would appear.)

http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/ethnic_bloc_settlements.html This is for you, Bill. You might find it interesting.

You are right. That was dumb. Point stands, though. The relationship any number of nations holds to Queen Elizabeth is independent of the relationship other nations hold to her and/or to one another. It indicates some level of common history, but similar history is also shared with other nations that may or may not consider her, or anyone, their queen.

Spoken like a true-blue Ontarian.

Anecdotally, comfortably in excess of 90%. A lot get massaged into playing roles they want no part of, PDQ, because they are idealistic enough not to see it coming or know how to stop it. The manipulative slimeballs are far fewer, and the larger number of those prefer to work in the shadows... or at least are forced to work in the shadows, because they've already been caught once or more and thus can't get elected. They can, however, go to work for birds of the same feather whose lapses of integrity have not been publicly noted...yet.

We have a monarch and Britain has a monarch. Australia does, too, and so does India It happens to be the same person, but doesn't have to be. All it really means is that we have some shared history-- most of which is also shared with your nation. That citizenship should ex-clude instead of in-clude is an especially US concept. In Canada, we care whether someone is a Canadian citizen. What other countries think of them is irrelevant to that relationship. Dual (or more) citizenship is generally advantageous, whether birthright or earned, and it's not offensive in any manner. I have friends and family who are strewn across the globe, some Canadian, some US citizens (and some both, some neither)--every last one of them at least semi-regularly refers to the people of wherever they are as 'us'. Every one of them will go where their job takes them for however long it takes them there, and not feel confined by their citizenship to living in North America. Citizenship is an open door, not a trap or a restriction.

No. That's a common enough whine and certainly true of some, but a very large portion are idealists, and self-sacrificing.

Yikes. I'm no stranger to home-grown food, but there's no way I'd touch uninspected meats, poultry and dairy products unless I knew the folks who raised 'em like I know my own family. Even then, there is plenty of stuff folks would feed to their own families that I still wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

This is how it's a scandal for Harper, Toadbrother. When you roll with slime, it gets on ya. It's not as though no one knew this guy could be trouble, but he was made completely welcome.

I'm also interested in why successive Conservative PM's would hold close a disgraced, disbarred lawyer who spent 18 month in jail for robbing his clients. That such a person would try to sell influence with the prime minister is a completely unsurprising thing. That such a person would be kept, for decades, in a position where such influence sales were possible is apalling. I need a clear explanation for this man's presence, not for his ejection.

"Or this: I dont criticize the complainant, the judge said. She was, he said, frightened, and alone, with a large, perhaps loud, overbearing man. Butand this is the one point someone could easily take issue withhe noted there were signals, such as the kissing and handholding that occurred prior to the rape, that Rhodes read the wrong way and was not considerate enough to make sure of what they were saying. The judge explicitly says in his decision, contrary, again, to virtually every media report, that this was not about the manner in which the victim was dress. It was more than that: it was these misunderstood and unexamined signals that were, along with the lack of any sign of intimidation, violence or expressed threat thereof, he believed, relevant and mitigating factors to the case." She asked him if he was going to kill her.

(Not to mention the apparent Tory penchant for busty hookers. There seems to be a theme developing around that.)

It's certainly enough a WTF?!!! statement. How brain-dead do you have to be to place someone with those credentials in a position of (public) trust, held close to 'the heartbeat of the nation'? Even if he was a best bud, and you had absolute faith that that period of his life was OVER, he still doesn't belong in association with a PMO any more than a convicted pedophile should be entrusted with a kindergarten class. There are some things that, when you disqualify yourself, you are disqualified. Full stop. That's one of them- or it ought to be. Ducky that he was fired and the RCMP was called, but what the heck was he doing there in the first place?