Molly

...Giggle... Someone should work up a colourized map of Canada highlighting the areas that are within 50k of a traffic light, much less public transit.

They each make their own rules.

The notion that daycare is an urban problem misses by a mile. Providing suitable daycare options in an urban setting is a piece of cake (with icing) compared to the challenge rural parents face. It's one of those basic things that, in choosing a rural location, you enter knowing you will just have to live without. Attempting to diminish its importance by calling it a 'baby-sitting service' just exemplifies the need for more feminine input into law-making/program design. The lack of acceptable daycare crushes opportunity for women, and by extension, their children. The functional availability of childcare is one of the major reasons people- economically challenged people, who want not to be so challenged- congregate in cities!

What a stunningly rediculous conversation! As a nation, we're throwing $85B on the credit cards. We can hope like heck that we get some more work/income, or can cut enough discretionery spending to cover that bill, but it's a whopper of a number, and one (in particular) of our big, big money-making industries has taken a staggering blow from which it won't recover any time soon. Anyone who guarantees they can make that bill go away without raising taxes is blowing smoke. Anyone who would believe such an assertion is a fool.

Dichotomy again? How about 'No' and 'No'. It is my heartfelt hope that tax funding of religious education end entirely and soon, but I believe that the provinces can do that administratively, without touching the national constitution. That segregation of people is wholly unhealthy, and so is state involvement in religious instruction funding. I'd also like to see state disengagement from religion-sponsored hospitals. No church should have any say in the availability of health care services, but at present, they do.

LOL I've often thought that should I ever be found to be Bill Gates' love child, I would establish a foundation with the sole task of countersuing the butts off of folks who sue others frivolously or unjustly, in order to recoup the harm those lawsuits do to the rest of us innocent bystanders. This one is a classic.

"Reasonable chance" and "success" both require definition. If 'success' is inadequate to phone for emergency vehicle repairs; a functional vocabulary of under 200 words, all grotesquely mispronounced; text comprehension not up to reading a bus schedule or a menu and verbal comprehension too weak to understand directions to the loo... Cumpulsary programs necessarily aim very, very low. Their existence consumes resources that might otherwise contribute to the 'reasonable chance' of presenting voluntary classes with a far higher standard of 'success'.

I hiccupped at that phrase 'a month or so', too. Heck! We're still on the downward slide, and it will take longer to fix the wreckage than it did to fall. The issue of manufacturing might not be resolved for some years, much less a month or so. The stats don't tell about the folks who've had hours or days cut, or those who've taken a pay cut. There are even more of those, I think, than of the unemployed. (Around here at least.)

'Founding' only means 'at one time, long ago'; does, and should have little bearing on the present. Time moves forward in a linear fashion. Enforced language instruction in school is a different matter from official bilingualism. I don't really have a problem with the latter (except the manner in which it is executed and/or defended, at times), but the former is a rediculous waste of time and money. Languages will not be functionally learned without a willingness, if not eagerness, to learn them. The resources that are now thrown away on demanding 'la plume de ma tante' from unwilling kids, who plan to forget the entirety of what little they may have absorbed as soon as the summer holidays hit, could be better spent providing much better, more functional--pointed, goal-oriented real, usable second- language classes for those who actually want to learn that particular skill, and plan to use it. Let's aim for 10% learning a useful, enriching skill, instead of 100% learning a useless smattering of nothing.

I agree with the above, but am not so entirely satisfied with the answers to 5,6 and 7. The uniform 'no's describe what we must expect, are the 'real world' answers, and I would not change them... but.... Certainly these are public conversations, but I, for one, would generally consider them to be primarily for the consumption of the folks sharing in them. There is a degree of comfortable, assumed anonymity that encourages an extremely high degree of candour. The loss of that sense of 'semi-privacy'- establishing an awareness of a larger audience- would/could interfere with the easy flow of conversation, and in so doing, harm the medium. I would not want the public nature of this medium to put those who spout falsehood, hate speach, threats, hyperbole... what have you... at any risk of legal action. Those messages are part of the search for real understanding that brings us here.

... duck hunters are more likely to meet and interact with criminals than, say, convenience store owners? Is that really what you just suggested? And that duck hunters and farmers who keep a 22 to control the racoons, dispatch animals for the larder, and euthanize sick ones.... are the ones best equipped to be entrusted with the control of firearms smuggling? If I followed that correctly, then I really must know: What is your planet of origin?

And now... I honestly see the conservatives on the defensive. There is a touch of an air of desperation about them. To me, that is more telling than any poll.

It's a small issue within itself, but speaks to character, values, and manner of thinking... which are very important things to know about someone who is speaking and acting on your behalf.

Blessing? I suppose. I saw Dions elevation to the leadership as an act of cleansing in the party-- a slapdown of 'the usual machinery', and a very sharp tug on the leash by party members. I seriously doubt anyone expected Dion to do well politically, but simply to be what he is-- an ethical man who cares deeply about what kind of Canada we live in- a 'time out' for apparatchiks who had become too complacent in their belief that they were in charge, and untouchable. He was given a particularly difficult job- that of 'holding the bag'. He did what he was put there to do, and now we've all moved on. (edit: I have to add that I think he did a better job of it than Kim Cambell. Her party had to be completely erased to expunge the spots, and has yet to be rebuilt.)

Our local Conservative is currently being raked over the coals for a percieved abuse of official communications for campaign purposes. The little local papers are keeping her toes to the fire, and challenging the explanations aggressively... ...so, it's a REPORTED $5M more, but actual numbers may never be known.

LOL No, WIP, we don't have to open the door for 'chattel' marriage, with one-way, gender-based rights and obligations. The charter simply wouldn't allow that, nor should it. Without gender discrimination, there's no discernible difference between religious plural marriage, and non-religion-based plural marriage. (And my own question is really about whether an employer might be obliged to extend one of your wives' /husbands' health benefits to the rest of your/their extra wives/husbands.) ;o)

Whining about cancelling Don Messer, and the Friendly Giant?!!!! How about cheering that those programs ever existed in the first place? Without the CBC, they wouldn't have. Not those, nor any number of other great Canadian programs. CBC is a pretty darned important national education service. I'm happy to pay in order to have it. (Even while being really PO'ed that they've so botched curling and skating coverage, and given us such through-the-looking-glass dreck as 'Little Mosque on the Prairies'.)

Tango-- that they 'just want to be legal' is so excessively simplistic as to be a non-comment. Until one answers the question of what aspects of polygamy (that are not already legal) require legal sanction, there's no way to even know what we are agreeing to. One more time... In any given threesome, would each of them married to both others, or would only one of them have two spouses, while the others each have only one? While I figure WIP is flogging the 'culturally undesireable' drum way too hard, that broader picture ties in to the answer to the above question. I giggle at the very thought of Winston Blackmore facing a division of matrimonial property action-- particularly needing to list the rest of his 'wives'/children in order to defend more assets... No, I don't believe that he, or any of his fellow 'good men' 'just want to be legal'. In fact, I figure they'd go to great lengths to avoid it, because if legally recognized, 'sister wives' would have some serious rights protected by the state. The Canadian model of marriage is mutual care/responsibility/dependency/sharing/equality, NOT the ownership/subordination model that religion-based plural marriage proposes. So, the existing Canadian model would demand the collective/mutual form, in which all are married to all and all have equal rights, responsibilities and obligations. I don't believe that model would satisfy the wishes of the folks who want plural marriage recognized. They are seeking a 'one is special, and the rest are chattels', and our charter simply would not bear that.

So gossip-mill backstabbing, outright lies, and bald attempts to slither out of the loop are now defined by our dear Mr. Harper as 'having a moral compass'. I'd call it 'chutzpah'.

Unfortunately, the state is still stuck with mediating disagreements, and covering dependents butts.

LOL... which pretty much means dumping defining/licensing/recording 'marriage' at all.

It's all very well to say ' We should allow multiple marriage', but at some point we are going to have to define what that actually means. Entitlements and commitments were clear and obvious with regard to SSM, but even the very basics of plural are... out there, unaddressed. I ask again, within a threesome, would we percieve all three to each have two spouses, or would one have two, and those two only be married to one? In the real world, and with just a bit of hyperbole: If a 'good man' dies, are his sister-wives still married to one another, and required to either divorce one another, or only marry again as a collective unit? If not, then are we clearing the way for marriage chains, in which I sponsor an immigrating spouse(or two, or three), who sponsors a spouse, who sponsors a spouse, who sponsors a spouse.... Anybody?

Polygamous 'cults', WIP? Separate that out. Aspects of the 'cult' may well be harmful/deeply undesireable, but is actual polygamy, sans cult, harmful to either the individual or society in general? I mostly doubt it. We aren't talking about throwing a wrench into particular religious groups (and would be committing direct religious discrimination if we were), but are limited to actual multiple marriage, which may or may not have any religious connection at all. and Tango... "Why not?" How about, as I've pointed out a few times, because multiple marriage doesn't fit, and can't be readily made to fit, existing law pertaining to marriage, so blanket exemptions to the point of rendering it 'name only', or wholesale rewrites, would likely have to accompany the change. It's a cheap retort to ask in response, "Why?", but it's the question I've been seeking an answer to all along here. What is there about multiple marriage that makes it important, or desireable to define, licence, record and legally acknowledge it? What benefit (even benefit of improved fairness) accrues to anyone because of it? ("Others do it" is not a reason. "Others" jumping off a cliff does not compell us to follow.)

GADZ, Michael! "Why can't they just live together?" was not part of my comment, and certainly nothing that I intended to say. I SAID that there is nothing at present preventing any sacramental aspect of plural marriage. Nothing at all. (Buying a licence is a secular act, not a sacramental one.) So the argument that the sacramental practice of plural marriage is somehow restricted because the state doesn't licence and record multiple spouses is FALSE. Unless you can figure out some aspect of sacramental plural marriage that is actually restricted, then your proposal that we are interfering with religious observance is a big fat red herring! "It's not a 'normal' arrangement" is a fact, not a moral judgement. Law pertaining to the state of marriage doesn't fit, and can't be made to fit, because the underlying assumption- two, mutual- is false, and what the actual intent of the arrangement is, is unknown, likely varying from spousal collective to spousal collective. Changing one word, or the definition of one word, or removing one word, doesn't make it all fit any better... It's a little like expecting that labor law should be applied to your childbirth: all well and good---but it just does not compute, and can't be applied, even in a circumstance of good faith 'want to comply'. Why anyone would actively seek to be bound by such misfitting law is beyond me. And affordability has nothing to do with it. We no doubt pay greater amounts now, through child tax credit and welfare and any number of other benefits that are 'one to a family', than we would to the folks who presently consider themselves engaged in plural marriage. But if one to a family is a legitimate, reasonable limit, then one to a customer is as well. And last but not least, I'm not arguing against plural marriage-- I'm arguing that there is no compelling reason to expect them to be recognized (and thus gain multiple priveleges) any time soon. I don't buy that 'religious freedom' should compel the state, nor that anyone is being discriminated against. I.. just... don't... buy it.

Again, Michael... there is no restriction on living arrangements nor on the commitments made within a plural marriage, so long as no fraud is involved. As a religious act, it is not limited at all... not a whit or a bit! Even if multiple marriages were licenced and registered, the state would still be well within it's own parameters to deny benefits beyond a single unit, and except subsequent spouses from the normal agreements of marriage, simply because subsequent 'marriages' are not the Canadian normal, and those standard agreements/arrangements don't accurately reflect them. Where's the problem here?