CAMP

Well this is such an interesting thread with many angles to it. In my opinion teachers are paid more than well enough. It is a lovely profession that has been trampled into the ground by both non teachers and self-serving teachers who are greedy. This is the plight of a profession that has become unionized. I have no use for unions as I have lived through working in one and discovered they have run their course. They generally protect incompetent people who are lazy. Unions also create jobs for those people as union leaders and the underlings who command salaries to be Seymore Doolittles. Unions were necessary many years ago due to oppressive management which has gone the way of the dodo bird as the workers’ rights through government legislation have matured. Any organisation that is unionized in the private sector generally will kill their own jobs by costing them out of existence as the world competes with no boundaries. Teachers are essentially a monopoly in Ontario and many other provinces. I believe charter schools where by parents can direct their tax money to the most competent school of their choice is the answer. Competition kills unions and that is what needs to be done. Good teachers will always exist with a union or none. Those good teachers who want to be teachers will thrive, while bad teachers will move on fast when there is no union to cover their backside. All teachers lose respect when they hold our children hostage by withholding extracurricular activities. At some point all this will change as they play that card. Either school boards will finally wise up and remove this responsibility from teachers and farm it out to a third party either paid or volunteer. Perhaps reduce the teacher’s salary and use it to pay for a third party to look after extracurricular activities. I can go on and on but I can predict at some point teachers will push the envelope to the point where many more will go the private school route as I did. My children received a way better education that was never held up by strikes, withholding or other work to rule situations. Money was never an issue for me fortunately so the first sign of teacher unrest was when I moved my children out. It is surprising the number of people who are doing this now. Surely politicians will eventually address the public school monopoly one way or another.

The voting process would be done over a week so it would be spread out over time. It's not a problem. Funny you should say their is no motivation. Almost everyone I talk to in person loves the idea. It will happen I assure you it is coming like white on rice! Your flawless system isn't so flawless. I've heard of people taking their cell phone cams into the voting booth and marking their ballot showing someone they received money from that they voted as per request. I've also heard of ballot boxes disappearing. Convenience is the word of the day and online voting is exactly that. I've heard all the tripe about being lazy and I should think it's some kind of ritual that I should observe to go down to a voting station etc. Sorry my ritual is let my fingers do the walking on my keypad.

In my opinion the Afghanistan mission is a failure thus far. Canadians are far removed from the situation and must realize we only control a very small area called Kandahar and even that is infiltrated by the taliban. Afghanistan is a large country ruled by tribal leaders who have their own personal armies and control their turfs. Occasionally they feud against each other but for the most part that is the way it is. These tribal leaders don't take kindly to having an army come in from other countries and attempt to control them. They don't care about Kandahar because poppies don't grow in the city. We now have a dilemma to decide. If we pull out all those soldiers lives were lost in vain. If we stay the tally grows. What have we achieved so far is limited to 5 schools that children can go to that must remain anonymous otherwise the taliban would bomb them and destroy them. We have marginal control over one city. Poverty is worst than before. I fear for every soldier and their family who goes over there. I support them every way I can because they are the pawns stuck in the middle of the situation. I fear for the women and children of Afghanistan also. But I am a Canadian and that must be the priority. We can not afford to pay for this war much longer. I think this issue should be put to a country wide referendum. Should we pull out of Afghanistan or should we stay. Let the democratic process decide through the majority.

Wow what do you do Dancer hide your money under your matress? LOL! Otherwise you must be living in perpetual fear of an empty bank account every day! Rest easy my friend. Your money is safe, and for that matter so is mine. An online voting system obviously could be made equal in security to a banking system. The world is using the banking system now. It's a no brainer... Canada should be using online voting.

Really, can you back that up with data as to how many people use online banking and get hacked. Pretty much online banking gets hacked only if the person holding the account somehow does something stupid like give out their pin number. Even the credit cards are now in the process of using on board chips inside the credit card to eliminate more fraud. Revenue Canada uses online income tax filing and it's safe. I use it all the time as many others do. Online voting does increase voter turn out which is something needed. Last federal election I couldn't vote because I was on a business trip out of my area that came up on short notice. It would have been nice to dial in or hop on my computer and vote. Let's get our heads out of the sand and get with the 21st century technologies and implement them. There will always be an element of fraud even in the present system being employed, it's not pristine as you thing either.

Online voting would be as safe or safer than doing your taxes online. Which by the way is now being used more and more each year.

I think it will be more of a paradigm shift away from parties that are full of partisan politics.

There is technology that presently thwarts the system in use if one wants to. An online voting system would be as secure or more than the present one.

Global capitalism is the engine that drives prosperity. The problem with any engine is the transmission. If it's in reverse it's not a good thing. When it's in drive and moving forward then times are good. Just like driving a car there are rules like speed limits and such. When someone breaks the rules and gets caught they suffer a fine or worst case have an accident. Either way it is repairable and we carry on.

Wrong Wrong Wrong, we should gently push those that prefer to live in the 1900's into the 20th century. I'm sure once online voting is installed you'll all be using it and wondering what all the fuss was about. It's just new technology that can be made totally safe and reliable as a method of voting that will change the way we vote in the near future.

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with a dollar amount per vote, as long as it is across the board and delivered evenly. This is not the case. Elections Canada sets criteria that leans to-wards the big parties, because Elections Canada is set up by the big parties and controlled. Shame on them! Just another way our democracy is eroded away in a subtle manner.

History will not repeat itself in this situation. We now have more political parties added to the mix. The Greens are in there now and I suspect will grab a few seats. As the economy continues to sputter along at a slow pace and more people are displaced work wise, I believe the NDP will achieve some success. IMHO I doubt we will ever see a majority government in Canada again, and I'm glad of it. The longer we install a minority the closer we are to democracy.

So the woman could cut the husband off... if he doesn't prove he voted her way...lol! Visa versa. There's no honour among lovers or theives....lol!

Really, so I guess all those people who do their taxes online and do online banking should really be scared of all the fraud going on. NOT... the internet can be made very secure. The American system has flaws because they allow it. There are good companies out there that can set up very secure online voting so that people don't have to be in their riding to vote on the election day.

Achieving what? The loss of their auto sector. Their government now owns it as a majority owner...lol! Basically in debt so far they can't see a way out. They have very few natural resources and now their manufacturing base is bleeding bad too. Yes one can argue they are in outer space, and have invented a fair bit of technology. But anything that they've achieved has been based on use for military. The real thing they have definitely achieved is to be disliked by most of the world. The Russians in the cold war had a saying... The US will sell you the gun to shoot them with. The US has sold their manufacturing base out also and now it's showing just how bad off they are. Give it more time. The wounds will fester more. Unemployment will rise and you will not likely see an economic recovery of any real sustainability. And ditto for Canada. Change in our democracies is necessary to fix it.

Sadly the manufacturing of most of those blackberries are done overseas Asian rim. And the factory here pays only a bare wage of survival at approx 15$ hr. I know because I have a son working there. Yes there are some upper end jobs but not that many. The real problem here in Canada and the US has been that our manufacturing sector has not been at least protected from 3rd world country poverty wages that large corporations take advantage of. Our government doesn't seem to care. Now it has finally hit the biggest manufacturing sector right in the heart.... the auto industry. We will continue to bleed our manufacturing off to other places because our government is in the back pocket of the big big multinational manufacturers. We can invent all the stuff you want. It's all going overseas as soon as the quantity rises. Seen it many times in my business.

Well I have to say you're an optimistic person... maybe you should check out this .... http://www.debtclock.ca/ It's not going down is it. Moving up quite fast. See how much you own the government right now. 14,000 G's when are you going to pay yours? Your probably planning on leaving the planet before you do and passing it off to your children, or grandchildren.

please elaborate.

So when is all the debt coming back?... it's been like what since Trudeau years since we've entered the debt zone.

Really, and what about the debt that is still there from many other years of government spending. When is that going to get paid off?

Those who don't have computers would still have the walk in polling method as it is now. Also online voting really should be called electronic voting because you could also use your telephone or cell phone. Alterantely if you really wanted to use a computer the libraries usually have a few and there are internet cafe's. The point is to make it convient when someone is not in their riding to vote as well. Multiple votes would be very difficult to near impossilbe. The computer system knows how many votes it would have at a 100% turn out. PINs or ID's are only handed out one per valid voter from the official list. You would also have a secondary check of ID after you have passed the PIN entering mode. Electronic voting is not like American Idol. It has been well thought out and made very secure as online banking.

There is a big difference between giving up and using diplomacy and understanding to achieve peace. At least exhaust these avenues before banging your chest

Conservatives and Liberals are not all that different these days. It's more about power and who will rule than the ideologies of the two parties. Both of these parties should be given credit for running Canada over the years and at least keeping a decent standard of living going. Rules and regulations are a necessary evil to keep a social and economic engine going in a positive direction. You'd get buttered up pretty good with the NDP, unfortunately I believe we'd have gone bankrupt fiscally by now, had we ever had an NDP majority federally. Not to say we may wind up there eventually because of poor fiscal management lately. With the Libertarians we'd have the freedom to run our lives and own our properties with little taxation. The social safety net although inadequate would largely disappear. Those who could afford it would live behind barbed wire fenced neighborhoods with security patrol, while the rest of us lived in anarchy. Don't sell your country short. Their are many way worst places to live in this world!

Terrorists will always attack their adversaries. They are not likely to attack a country that has no desire to change their beliefs. When Canada has been involved has it been over a religious way of life and culture or has it been because of the system of government? Vietnam - Communism ( And who won?) non religious Serbia - atrocities ( This was a noble cause for real) Haitian - You figure this one out! Terrorists are zealous people, usually religious. Zealous people usually will do terrorist type acts to the extreme and continue indefinitely until they achieve their goal. A war you cannot win through force unless you're willing to eradicate. No terrorists are welcome in Canada or the USA. But that doesn't stop them from infiltrating us and causing problems, and they will again unfortunately.

LOL, politicians talk they don't sing. Voting for that show (which I must say I enjoy watching) can have idiots voting as often as they wish... this is why you get the duke of the road screwing up the king of the road and making it through... I know I watched that one also. The on line voting I speak of would be secure and only one vote per person. Plain and simple and truly democratic.