Icebound

That is exactly what you CAN do with PR systems. To govern, it will require "reasonable" policies, because there will be no support in the Chamber for those policies which the more extreme segments of the party might want.

Noble goal.But 2 things conspire against it.... 1... Over the years, We have created an economic system, where low income families need more than one income to meet essential expenses, ...and 2... People are raising families later in life after having already experienced the mental stimulation and satisfaction of career... And they are not about to give that up. To make it work, you need to find a way to encourage younger marriages, home child care in the early years, then pursuing a career later...early thirties, or later. It's actually better for families to do that, but they don't seem to realize it, and insist on "becoming established" before raising a family. Thinking out loud here... It might make sense to limit child care benefits based on the PARENT's age, encouraging early children... and to have some extra adult-education grants so people won't feel "left behind" if they decided not to pursue career right away. Would be lots of details to work out... but something like that would probably need to be done to meet your goal... Most likely: It will never happen.

So?Harper was a pissed-off young man.... when he and Tom proposed that PR might be a path to Conservative power, or.... as they wrote it: Of course, once the winner-who-took-all happened to be Harper and he was the one imposing measures abhorred by 60 to 70 percent of the Canadian people..... it becomes a different story, right?

$1 is not worth more or less. It buys exactly the same thing for the less wealthy as it does for the more wealthy. Having said that, the less wealthy is very likely to spend considerably fewer of them, and will therefore pay proportionally less money in taxes. And it's easy to tweak with a GST rebate for less wealthy, if you really want. Or, when transitioning from income taxes to VAT, you leave SOME extra tax on the higher incomes, and none on the lower, etc.... Now, not to say that it could not be made even MORE fair... FTT, as I suggest ... one other point in favor of FTT is that it would trap a lot of the grey-market transactions, which are now illegally avoiding existing VATs (GST) ...

Of course not. How could we? All I see in these forums is how over- taxed we are....

Infrastructure... the wire .... should be taken away from the companies and handled by an arms-length company, possibly a crown corp. THEN you should then be able to contract whoever you want to provide your service on that wire. On a similar CRTC issue, any cell phone from any company should work anywhere in Canada where there is service...again, the backbone should be arms-length from the providers. It is ludicrous that a visitor to Manitoba with an Alberta Telus phone has zero service. Same for a pre-paid Bell phone in Thunder Bay, etc.

We are arguing the meanings of progressive and regressive, but the key issue is FAIRNESS. if the whole idea is to get more of your tax revenue from the "rich", and less from the "poor", then let's look at who pays more actual dollars if the only tax was a flat 5% GST. as somebody already pointed out the "poor" guy will pay 20,000 on his 400k house... Thr "rich" guy will pay 500k on his 10mil home. That makes the tax "fair" in a practical sense,.. even if the rate is the same for both guys... Because the rich pay more. The Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is probably even more fair.... The rich will surely have more and larger transactions than the poor and thus will pay the most tax....

No doubt. Which is why the Senate's constitutional purpose has to become understood.....AGAIN..... by all parties, and appointments made for that purpose. If it was deteriorating, Harper had ten years to turn it around. Instead, he chose to allow a greater slide into abject partisanship, now followed by active neglect. so far, the only party that has publicly expressed an interest in returning the senate lo its constitutional role, is the Liberals.

Harper did not realize that demeaning the Role of the Senate would unleash this storm. Had he appointed someone interested in carrying out Canada's business... Instead of a Party bagman..... none of this would be happening.

The more we go through these progressive-regressive complicated discussions, the more I am convinced that the Financial Transaction Tax... replacing most (or all) others... Is the way to go. Of corse a bunch of accountants and CRA employees would become redundant......

... except that the Conservative Senators have not "stepped up" any more than have the Liberal senators in so far as "paying back". Many of both parties have already paid back, many have started to pay back, some (of both parties) have been sent to the RCMP. The only real difference between the parties that I can see, is that there is no evidence to suggest that somebody is COVERING UP just how that money is being paid back..... except in this one interesting case.(so far).

Some of these look like the kinds of policies Mulcair is trying hard to distance himself from. How successful he is remains to be seen.In any case, GST is more progressive than most other taxes, because the wealthier spend more and on bigger-ticket items, so they end up paying more tax. Nationalization of fossil energy is a non starter, although having private industry..., especially foreign industry... holding Canadians hostage is also not desirable. The Israeli Palestinian statement takes a jab at our political-correctness on the issue. Maybe saying what majority of people think, but won't say out loud. Some form of pharmacare is already being introduced by provinces, and a national strategy makes sense. In total 3-4 out of 10.

Agreed... It cost them money, but he paid it back, so the cost was mitigated. Duffy cost us something too, and it got paid back too. Harb borrowed money privately to pay his debt. And disclosed the transaction to the Senate. Duffy's expense was paid from the PMO's office, then covered up. What THAT cost us was trust. Why WOULD they want to cover this up?

I love these sound bites. Now let's see,..... He gave a bunch of speeches to 17 organizations that wanted a high-profile draw for their particular money-raising efforts. Questions of appropriateness were raised, so he released the financial details of all the speeches and offered to return the fees (even though contracted) to everybody. Only 4 out of 17 even "considered" accepting. Not sure how many of those 4, if any, actually did. While on the subject of speeches, maybe you could describe Oliver's illegal after-the-fact sole-source contracting for speech-writing services. In fact, I don't think that the actual speech was ever produced, so it was $9200 taxpayers money for absolutely NOTHING. ...

Well, good. Then let's implement FTT, simplify the tax code, and EVERYBODY gets to pay FTT. How can you argue with that?

Not even close. In an RRSP, I defer taxes on my income NOW.... And I pay taxes on it (and ON ANY DIVIDEND, INTEREST, GAIN, etc. generated by it) ....at some point in my aging future... And if I kick the bucket before I finish paying those taxes, my heirs have to pay it for me. In a TFSA I pay taxes on my income, but I NEVER EVER pay taxes on the DIVIDEND, INTEREST, whatever....income generated. Never ever. And if I can shelter 10k every year, in ten years I am sheltering 100k, in 20, 200k. And the investment income generated by that is not taxed ever...EVER. How can you at all say: same diff?

For somebody complaining about people making stuff up, you too do your share. It was widely reported two years ago that Harb mortgaged properties to borrow $230,000 from Brian Karam to cover his repayment and legal fees. The transaction was reported to the Senate, not covered up. ...

It's the PM who said he fired Wright.

Wouldn't have to, if governments got their revenue through FTT.... at least, not income taxes

Actually, let's stop these partisan tweaks to the tax system to favour one group,or the other and just... Eliminate all income and corporate taxes and implement a blanket FTT .... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax. ... ...and be done with it

Well, not exactly. The RRSP merely defers taxes to a later date, while the TFSA kills the tax revenue forever. ...

You mean sort of like Guergis?

Employers will continue to leave as long as Canadians refuse to work for $2 an hour.

I know... A bunch of conservative-friendly corporations destroyed the global economy, then asked for a socialist bail-out

The charts here ....http://www.pressprogress.ca/6_charts_show_stephen_harper_has_the_worst_economic_record_of_any_prime_minister_since_world_war_ii ... ....give me some hope that it won't be all that bad without Harper... Worst average annual increase of GDP since Prime Minister King Now this is a Unifor report, so we have to see if these numbers can be disputed....