Machjo

What about Harper's 'Old Stock Canadians' comment?

The separation of Church and state in Canada is hogwash. The reigning monarch must profess the Anglican Faith and cannot be married to a Catholic and the Constitution itself entrenches the separate denominational school system and the government imposes Christian holidays onto the private sector. Even Quebec has a crucifix on the wall of its National Assembly. Separation of Church and State you say? And what about the Christian Heritage Party? I say eliminate all official recognition of political parties and have them all run as independents like they do in Nunavut.

The point still stands that the Charter violates the Covenant.

Thanks. I fixed it.

Now there's one problem with that party. A Canadian who professes Islam probably does so sincerely. In Iran, there's no way of knowing who's a real Muslim. For all we know, maybe more than one in ten professes Islam just to keep his head, so in Iran, it's meaningless. Is that really what that party wants to bring to Canada?

Those are precicely the parts that attract me the most.

Actually, the religious-school provisions of the Charter violate the International Covenant in Civil and Political Rights. Just read Waldman vs. Canada.

Your voting style exhumes so much patriotism there. A few catches though. Islam tends to respect contracts, so if they voided the contract, you'd be giving everything back or they would have had a grandfather clause to exempt you. Also, if banks don't want to give mortgages anymore, house prices would plumet.

The opposition benches have no real power anyway.

What are they going to do with 72 virgins? Think about it. If they're virgins, they.re not easy.

If they banned interest, you might never have gotten a mortgage in the first place. Why would a bank agree ti an interest-free mortgage? The NDP proposed a cap on credit-card interest rates a while back. I actually liked the idea but probably not for the same reason the NDP did. The obvious effect would be banks to refuse credit cards to any high-risk applicant. I doubt that's what the NDP had in mind though.

But what do we do when there is no other real conservative voice? I agreed that I would never want to see that party form government, but I could certainly support it in the opposition benches as a kind of protest vote to signal ti secular conservative parties that they want to become a little more conservative in their own right to win back some of those votes.

How do you know they would get no non-Muslim votes? I don't profess Islam and I actually agree with many Muslim ideas nonetheless.

I prefer first-past-the-post, thank you very much.

I don't profess Islam and from what I've read on its website, some of it does worry me. That said, I also agree with many of its proposals at least in principle especially when it comes to regulating addictive products and services like alcohol and gambling. That said, a candidate should be able to promote similar ideas without joining an Islamic Party. I think Ontario should cease to give any offiical recognition to any political party. Ballots should show only the names of the candidates and the members of parliament can vote for the premiere.

So in other words, English domiinance in this country is far more recent than we like to admit to, so let's stop revising our history. Anglo dominance reached its peak only in the 1960s and then plateaued as the Indian Residential School system started to wind down and the Government reformed its immigration policy to give preference to the English and French languages over British nationality. In other words, up until the 1960s, the Government was not just trying to maintain the gains of English but was in fact trying to spread it to where it was not yet even establish. It was't about preserving English identity but rather about promoting, spreading, and building it through a process of nation building. It was trying to build something that was never there initially, not to preserve something that was already there. Since the 1960's, the political clamour to protect English really comes down to trying to maintain the gains that were so cruelly acquired until the 1960s. When we consider the extreme measures that the state had to implement to spread English, are we really prepared to go back to those measures today? English is now experiencing some rollback even in Nunavut (hardly an immigrant enclave). We spread English there through the residential school system, so it should come as no surprise that it would retreat with the abrogation of that system. How far are we prepared to go to reclaim the gains made up to the 1960s?

The simple fact that the Government of Canada took such fanatical steps suggests that even it believed that it needed to implement such cruel measures to ensure the spread of English and French because these languages were not yet fully established across Canada at the time. Consider the German schools in Berlin Ontario and the Ukrainian prairie communities.

The Government of Canada reneged on its promise to give land to those Germans after their work, so they perished. As for Chinook Wawa, it remained the dominant language for a time after the establishment of the residential school system and the Chinese Exclusion Act but Wawa did begin its slow decline after that.

China is also a one-party state, so it doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the Chinese people, but of the CCP.

So if I understand you correctly, you equate Canadian with Victorian British? How would an indigenous Canadian ever fit that mold? So if I understand you correctly, unless a person is ethnically British, you will refuse to recognize him as Canadian. So, how is he supposed to become more Canadian? Whiten his face, wear khakis, and drink Earl Grey and play cricket?

In what way is Canada becoming 'less Canadian?'

So where's the problem?

China does have ethno-burbs, and huge ones at that. The largest one is the Han one, but there are also Tibetan, Uighur, Zhuang, Korean, Kazakh, Russian, and many other ones too. Most are huge, covering entire prefectures or even provinces, but small ones exist too. I remember how in Hefei (predominantly Han Chinese and surrounded by predomiantly Han cities and even provinces), there was a small Muslim quarter that was mostly Uighur though it contained Hui too.

Erroneous post. Please ignore.

People move abroad for all kinds of reasons. I first moved to China for work before knowing a word of Chinese and initially, I gravitated towards people who shared a common language with me. I learnt Chinese over time and the more I learnt it, the more I integrated into the more general community. Some move abroad or to Canada for marriage. Sometimes a person meets another through a friend or family member, or on holiday, online, etc. a relationship ensues, they realize they're compatible for one another, and then as they start to consider marriage, realize that while they may share a common language with one another, it might not be a language of one's country. In that case, they'll likely move into an 'ethno-burb.' Now I will say though that a person should not travel abroad to collect social assistance, but as long as they are supporting themselves and paying their taxes, then let them be.