Machjo

Even if his staff had given him the right information, even if Ignatieff had said that, seeing that no reporter had even asked him about it, why did he bring it up abroad in public? Cheap partisanship at its lowest. Honestly, I think Harper is the most partisan PM Canada's ever had.

Strange that. A few at another forum said that they actually pay less tax overall with since the introduction of the carbon tax. Now that's a mighty bizar tax grab.

Well, that is a national security concern, isn't it? You never know, they could be terrorist geese.

Now that could be dangerous. Could you imagine the US airforce enforcing the no-fly policy on those geese?

Gotta love attack adds: Don't vote for... Vote against! I'm your Protest Vote Candidate in this riding!

Aren't American border guards doing their job? Don't Canada geese need visas to enter the US?

She was offended because the English version was too religious? How about the French reference to Canada carrying the Cross?

True enough.

I'm useless at hockey, don't often go to the lake on the weekend, and don't even know what cleyames is. So when am I to be deported, and whereto?

Good post overall.

And who exactly is to define and impose this Canadian national identity and then dictate that those who refuse to adhere by this official identity is to be dismissed as 'non-Canadian' for refusing to conform? Civil? How exactly would we preserve or promote civility? Through the education system? I could agree with that. Liberal? Depends on hat you mean by 'liberal'. We could take 'liberal' to the extreme to mean that we can treat whoever we want however we want, which then conflicts with 'civil'. So you'd need to more clearly define liberal' before I could agree with that. And going back to civil, you might need to define that too. To the extreme, it could mean having to be on ceremony all the time. And what about democratic? At face value, it's the will of the majority. In the past, the majority attempted the cultural genocide of the First Nations and Inuit, and interned Japanese Canadians in WWII. Do we accept such abuses of democracy, or do we worship democracy as infallible? Is there any time when the majority might be so wrong that the minority would be in the right to rise up and even take up arms against it, even if it is undemocratic in the sense that it conflicts with the democratic will of the majority to oppress the minority? Or should we support a state with some restrictions to democracy to protect the minority from the potential tyrany of the majority? Again, who will define this Canadian identity? Anglophones, Francophones, Catholics, First Nations, Inuit, who? You? But then again, wouldn't trying to impose a monolithic community likely lead to a culture war between English-Canadians, French-Canadians, and Aboriginal Canadians as each side tries to have its say in how the monoculture is to be defined? Don't get me wrong. I recognize the value in establishing a common culture existing hand-in-hand with biculturalism. The question is, which political-linguistic-religious-ethnic community will be given the privilege to impose its definition of this culutre, or do we create a new interculture? But if we create a new intercullture acceptable to French-Canadians, Aboriginals, etc., would the majority Canadians of Anglo-saxon cultural influence accept it? Multi-culturalism and two founding nations? If it's multicultural, then certainly we have more than two founding nations? Where are Canada's Aboriginals in this picture? And if it's two founding nations, then would that not be bi-cultural and not multi-cultural? We need to clarify these pointes first. Right now, the official policy is multi-culturalism expressed through bilingualism, the bilingualism being founded on the two most powerful ethnic identities of the country, and the multi-culturalism being an attempt to pacify the rest. The best? I don't know about that. Maybe, maybe not, but it is a very subjective comment open to interpretation. But we have done a reasonably good job of it overall compared to many other nations. I do agree that a common culture would help. The problem is agreeing on one. It would have been much easier to preserve the already-established national culture, but since one has never existed, it's not a matter of preserving one, but of creating one, and that opens awhole new can of worms, including what this new culture would look like. Let's face it, a person in La Malbaie has a very different view of the world than one in Kitchener, as I'm sure is the case with an Inuit in Nunavut. So whose version of the Canadian identity should prevail?

What does it mean to be a Canadian? It means having Canadian citizenship. What more should it mean? Should we impose a particular ethnic, cultural, ideological, religious, or other definition to it? You could be a serial killer and might deserve capital punishment, but if you have Canadian citizenship, you're still a Canadian by definition.

I think things like this are commen, whereby in a particular riding, the local Dipper might be to the right of the local Liberal, or the local liberal to the right of the local Green, or the local Green to the right of the local Conservative. Or sometimes, one of them just has no clue about how he'll carry out his duties once elected. Or the local Conservative might be a very red tory, etc. That's why party affiliation means little in the grand scheme of things. Just to take an example, imagine if only the more left-leaning Dippers win seats in Parliament. Naturally the NDP in parliament at least will end up leaning quite left. Inversely, if most elected Dippers are centrist, then the NDP in Parliament will end up leaning to the centre. Same applies to any party, and that's why it makes no sence whatsoever to vote based on party affiliation.

We need to realise that a party is no more than a composite of its members. If the membership of the Manitoba NDP is more fiscally conservative than the federal Conservatives, while the membership of the federal NDP is loonie left, then that will naturally manifest itself in their policies. IN the end, that's why it's preferable to vote candidate rather than party. Last federal election, my local Green candidate was more economically conservative than the Conservative candidate!

I guess he mistakenly thought that not showing up for hearings is part of the genetic makeup of the Roma? Ah, prejudices manifest as the noon-day sun.

Another point: how would we distinguish, according to the skewed definition proposed by some that it limit itself to 'mother-tongue' speakers, between a native French-speaker who's lost his French over the years and a non-native speaker who's learnt French to fluency? At that stage, according to the narrower definition, then one whose French is poor would be classified as a francohone, while the one who speaks it fluently would not.

Level of fluency is not part of the definition of francophone. It just means anyone who knows French. For that reason, I'd scrap any statistics on francophones and anglophones altogether and instead replace them with statistics on fluent anglophones and fluent francophones according to some clearly defined objective test that they pass. Francophone and anglophone alone are next to meaningless, but that doesn't change the fact that a person who can scrap by in English is an anglophone, albeit to a limited degree.

Why do we insist on legalese. I usually rely on a regular dictionary to understand things, not some special legal dictionary. In a democracy, definitions should fit with the dictionaries most people have in their homes.

Look it up in a dictionary. Franchophone is a synonym of French-speaker. So if you speak French, you're a francophone by definition. If we used your definition for anglophone, then there'd be few anglophones in Torono, Vancouver and Montreal, where many speak neither official language as a mother tongue. That would skew statistics considerably, giving a false impression that if you travel to Toronto or Vancouver, you'd better have a phrase book with you. Besides, why would we want the legal definition to be any different from the dictionary definition. Do we like legalese so much that we want to encourage more of it?

Here's how I would change the Stats-Can definition: I would scrap the following two categories: Self-assessed English-speaker: one who assesses himself to know English. Self-assessed French-speaker: one who assesses himself to know French. And replace them with the following: Tested successful fluent English-speaker: one who has passed an objective test confirming his ability to function fluently in the English language. Tested successful fluent French speaker: one who has passed an objective test confirming his ability to function fluently in the French language. Failed English-speaker: one who has studied English throughout a compulsory education received in Canada but has failed to pass the test of fluency. Failed French-speaker: one who has studied French throughout a compulsory education received in Canada but has failed to pass the test of fluency. Unstudied non-English-speaker: one who has not studied English in Canada and does not know it fluently. Unstudied non-French-speaker: one who has not studied French in Caanda and does not know it fluently. Untested speaker: one whose English and French abilities have not yet been objectively tested. My guess is that based on such criteria, our Ministries of education and public schools would be red-faced with shame. I remember e-mailing the Ontario Ministry of Education to find out the real rate of success in second-language learning in Ontario Public schools. Guess what: it didn't know the answer to my question. So much for accountaqbility there. And all we have to do is stroll down Ottawa streets and ask for directions in French, and most are at a loss, and this in one of Canada's most bilingual cities. Belived me, I've done such tests for my own curiosity, and the results were shameful for the Ontario public school system.

That only applies to those of us who vote Party. I vote candidate and am not a member of any Party myself, so for me it's irrelevent who the leader is.

By any reasonable account, I don't see how we can consider either Democrats or Republicans in the US to be 'conservative'. Yes they are 'conservative' in certain respects, with regards to the military, the war on drugs, abortion, etc. But as for being fiscal conservatives, that's a whole other ball game. All they do is cut taxes and increase military sepnding. their economy is drowning in debt, their government continues to spend like drunken sailors, the American people for the most part see nothing wrong with that, and then we have the audacity to call them 'conservative'! They're among the most liberal spenders on the planet. All they know how to do is cut taxes more than spending. Overall, the US government is among the most fiscally liberal in the world. It'll bite the US in the butt eventually. In fact, it's already started.

WIP, I noticed your signature. Following the same logic, could we not arugue that socialism is a gateway drug to communism? Id don't agree with that, but then again, neither do I agree with its opposite.

Parties are nothing mroe than composites of their members. If we look at it that way, then it's natrual to conclude that the BC NDP and the Manitoba NDP, in spite of their common name, will have policy differences. Same with the Federal Liberal party and the Liberal Party of Ontario, or the PC Party of Ontario and the PC party of another province, etc. They cannot always be so simply categorized according to name. In theory, it could even happen that the Liberal Party in one provicne is to the right of the PC in another, or the NDP in one province could be to the right of a Liberal Party in another. Same applies to the Green party of course, as with any other party. Also, it may be that the members of a particular political party are more competent than the member of a party bearing the same name in another province, or at the federal level, etc. In the end, it makes more sense to consdier your own local candidates on their own independent merits rather than try to stereotype them according to any kind of party affiliation. After all, in a given riding, you could end up with a Liberal who's more to the right than his Conservative counterpart, or a Dipper who's more to the right than his Liberal counterpart, os simply a competent member of a frindge party or an incompetent member sporting a major brand... er, I mean party, name. In the grand scheme of things, party affiliation says little about the members who comprise that party.

Not quite the way I would have expressed it, but essentially yes, you're right.