Molly

$300 million is the next biggest number for any G8 at any time, from any source, that I had run across... but the truth is, it came from the same place virtually all of the estimates have come from: straight from someones ass. You might expect that sort of cost, but I would not. If that truly is 'just what it costs to run a summit', then summits bloody well aren't worth the price tag- not to the host country, and not to the world. It's not just unseemly; it's obscene. http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/evaluations/factsheet/factsheet_costs.pdf Pages 2 and 3

Whew, August! Good comment. Byline material.

I'm thinking that we could manage to skin by on a frugal $300 million, though. After all, the number being proposed actually exceeds what was spent on security for the Olympics!

National Post and Jonathan Kaye? Now that makes more sense... Conservative partisans as the push behind the merger gossip.

In other words, you couldn't possibly support them if they'd actually succeeded in doing what they were trying to do. That's my problem, too. I can't support the Conservatives when they successfully accomplish what they try to do, either.

Only for those desperately seeking a way to make it go away. It's either okay or it isn't. I see nothing at all wrong with proposing coalition, but if you do, then you should be embarrassed to defend one while condemning the other.

Shipping export grain on the lakes is dreadfully expensive.. What do those boats haul? Iron ore to Hamilton? What else?

No, no, no! $930 million is just the tab for security. (Security at the Olympics was less than that.) Food, lodging, meeting rooms...... gazebos, lakes... That's all over and above the $930 million, so the tab is $1.1 billion and climbing, to host three days worth of meetings about dealing with the recession. You just can't make this stuff up.

BWAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA!!! Lake Flacid!! Lord! I love these!

Prodigal Pond is wonderful-- and Lake Wannabe-- Never to be forgotten- Boondoggle Bay... (Let Them Eat Cake Lake; Lac Des Deux Millions; Lake Outtatouch; Squander Swamp and even Loch Mess.) but the best one of all is Lake ShamWow.

"A for a lay" not a firing offense? I find that hard to believe.

The US is a rediculous standard to use. http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending •The USA with its massive spending budget, is the principal determinant of the current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for just under half of the world total, at 41.5% of the world total; The USA has about 4% of the worlds population, so they are spending at a rate about 10 x average. If we spend 1% (not 10%) of what they do, then we are a bullseye hit on per capita average.

I do like Ignatieff (and liked Dion, too), but the two of them have disappointingly similar political instincts. Potentially privatizing AECL is, alone, enough issue to instigate an election. A $2 million fake lake is a political gift. Questions about 'openness and accountability' would go nicely with the central question of spending priorities.... Pishposh on polls of the moment. The CPC is extremely vulnerable. People don't really like them, but the opposition is invisible. A decent campaign exhibiting that alternatives exist would 'hold them accountable'.

Aye. I'm not fond of quite where that post strayed and how it was phrased, but I certainly share the sentiment. What we are experiencing, and have been, is a major shift in what constitutes acceptable (normal) conduct. Those lines, once stretched so far, won't snap back to something we can be proud of. Baird's antidemocratic antics have become, and will remain, the new normal. We can look forward to governments that will lie outright, ignore the will of parliament and even their own rules, misrepresent history, events, and their own intent, treat voters as though they are completely stupid, brazen their way through when caught dead-to-rights, obstruct, bully, shout down... because the precedent has been set.

From me as well. It's quite the show.

If the Liberal party folded into the NDP (and make no mistake, that's the direction such a merger would go), then a Liberal party would simply have to be invented to replace it. The NDP is not centrist, and even though many try to convince us that the CPC is both centrist and conservative, it is neither. An interesting poll would ask what portion of voters hold their noses to choose.

The NDP has, through the governing of provinces, proved that they have no more claim to a higher democratic morality than any of the other parties. Liberal and Conservative governments have both proved to be mixed bags of cost and benefit for me, but NDP governments have seemed to make it a mission to screw me and mine.

I'm wondering how long it would take you to get over similar treatment. A good many decades, I'd imagine. You'd likely take the clear remembrance to your grave, and teach your children about it, too. (I'd agree that it's pointless to bring it up in discussion with non-Albertans- probably always was pointless. Those folks thought it was small enough spuds to be justified then. There's certainly no good reason to think they'd understand the magnitude of it now.)

Wow. Don't you feel just a little foolish wailing about the Devine boogieman, like he was Diablo incarnate? For someone who can say with a straight face that "the problem in sask was always low market value for commodities", vehemently denying that internal actions/philosophy had anything to do with the Alta/Sask prosperity differential, it seems just a tad inconsistent. The Crow rate was a statutory rate intended to provide a subsidy of the railroads, by farmers... and that's exactly what it was until into the 1970's when inflation caught up and reversed the flow. The Feed Freight Assistance Act, though, directly subsidized the shipment of prairie feed grains for domestic use, wiping out any competitive advantage of feeding it to livestock at point of production. And... truckers still make bread and butter hauling Saskatchewan steers to Alberta. Less than one in three sticks around for finish, much less slaughter.

Far be it from me to say anything to defend the ethics of Mr. Harper, but this timeline is sort of interesting: http://stevejanke.com/archives/251723.php

Oh, gosh, yes... that list is endless. One that particularly chapped my britches was the deemed federal title to all those lovely grain-tank rail cars, purchased by the Canadian Wheat Board using money that belonged solely to producers, reciepts for sold grain.... Old news, but memorable nonetheless. Since Grant Devine has already been mentioned: he was fond explaining a lack of industrial 'value-added' developement in Saskatchewan by pointing at freight rates making it cheaper to ship a carload of calves, along with all of the feed it would take to finish them to 'central' Canada, and to ship the butchered meat back to Sasktchewan-- than it was to ship just the butchered meat from Sasktchewan headed east. That sort of thing makes establishing a meat packing industry kind of tough.

A liberal/NDP team-up would be an abandonment of the centre. The Liberal party needs to re-assert the centre. When they get around to doing that, they'll be government and in majority again.

You are right that the NEP was 'the straw'. The west- the prairies- had a long long history of , well, any time it looked like we had something good going, a regulation change would snatch away the benefit and grant it to Ontario/PQ. By the time that one hit, folks were already objecting, but still not being heard. It hurt large, and for paying the nations bills alone for a few years, those two oil-producing provinces were spit at instead of thanked. So a few people shoot off their mouths inappropriately and in anger... it doesn't invalidate the grievance. If some are hypersensitive, IMO it's a 'fool me once' situation. Small-c says there will never be an NEP II. I agree... because the consequences of such an attempt would be very grave, and a whole lot of people know it. (Newfoundland knows something of the same brand of broken word and exploitation.)

That couldn't possibly be because Saskatchewan's two most consistent exports for the last 50 years have been 'people' and 'opportunity'. Alberta has Saskatchewan's workforce.

Suck-er!