nicky10013

Quebec was British long before the revolution. Just because there's a lingual and religious link to France doens't mean that the political link is as strong. Quebec was always loyal to the British, just look at the American Revolution. American leaders were deseperately trying to get Quebec to rebel alongside the other 13 colonies knowing the legacy of conquest but iQuebec stayed neutral. It wasn't until Bond-Head's report that stated we should be assimilating the French that there was a problem.

If the private market place is so good at distrubiting health care cheaply and efficiently, how come the United States, a nation with 3,000 different health insurance companies has the highest costs of any country in the western world? 45 million are off insurance and no one can sit here and tell me that those 45 million don't want insurance. The fact is that its way too expensive despite the competition. In the end, health care is an inelastic commodity. Everyone needs it so companies can charge whatever they want despite how many other companies exist within the marketplace. Companies also give out insurance and deny claims based on "pre-existing conditions." Despite people who actually pay for health insurance, another way to make money is to deny care. I'd seriously like to know how many people per thousand in the states die of denied care compared to people who wait here. Something tells me in the states it would be drastically higher. People in Canada generally get the treatment that they need. The waits at the emergency rooms are caused mostly by people who have a cold. If you go in and have a broken leg, you're going to be seen over someone who has the sniffles. I've had quite a few tests and have had appointments booked for the next week. Furthermore, the libertarian notion that since the government is involved costs are automatically higher due to increased bureaucracy etc. is also out of theory and not reality. The fact is medicaid in the states only spends 2% of it's budget on administration compared to 27% that normal insurance companies do. In Canada, health care costs are 1/3 of what they are in the states despite EVERYONE being covered. In the end, health care is indeed a right if not an economic necessity. America's increasingly incompetitve economy is due to the fact that employers have to burden this heavy load of health care for workers. When the auto-pact was signed in the 60s, GM, Ford and Chrysler all opened up plants in Ontario because they didn't have to pay the same kind of benefits that they do south of the border. Furthermore, how can someone honestly say that just because they make more money they're entitled to better health care then a person living on the street? We're all human beings, we all deserve to be cared for.

No, however, the English Royal Family is indeed a part of our history. The Queen doesn't have any "power" over Canada, but what is wrong with history if it no longer holds sway over our legislative process? If we switch to a more symbolic system like that of Germany or Israel, what the hell is the point? You're basically keeping every institution the same but just changing the name. That would be to deny our history. Even though it would probably be better for them, it would be like the Americans switching to a westminster system and tearing up the declaration of independence. Again I ask, if there's going to be no substantive reform in the legislative process, why does it need to be changed? The only thing that could possibly be reformed is the senate...even then, it should only be reformed to the point where term limits are introduced and nothing else. Having an effective check on the HoC, like I argued before, would be detrimental to the legislative process in that it would slow things down to a snails pace. Also, unfortunately, checks and balances DO have a lot to do with the bureaucracy. In the United States there are 21 different intelligence agencies and every single department (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines) within the pentagon has their own, redundant, air force which gets billions of dollars in spending. Why? Because checks and balances deem it incredibly easy to kill legislation. If lobbyists from the Pentagon or the INtelligence establishment get to a single congressmen because lets remember, there is no parliamentary discipline, that could be the difference between a higher and lower budget for said department. And so what about NEP? Short-sighted? Sure. In the end, Trudeau wanted a grand vision for us to be buying energy from the west. He wanted to unite the country west-east instead of just having our natural resources go on the north-south axis to the states. In the end, his message was pan-Canadian. My point was that the Conservatives today and the Alliance of yesterday are deliberately playing west and east off each other in order to make electoral gains. Are we different? Sure. IS there a lot we can learn from each other? Absolutely. Is it ok for parties to try and tear the country apart to win a majority? No. Considering the divide between east and west today, it's just as bad as seperatism.

Frankly, after 40 pages of responses, I was too lazy to read through them all. This argument might have been made before so I apologize if it's merely a repeat, though, the question was intriguing enough for me to want to sign up and chime in. I saw a couple responses denoting that people want more symbols to believe in, and that republicanism is reflective of democracy. While theoretically true, voter turnout these days everywhere, not just in Canada, point to the fact that symbols no longer enthrall the populations of democracies like they once did. Indeed, people seem to fall in love with the idea of a republic over the symbology alone, as if creating in Canada that catch-all phrase republic would somehow turn around the democratic malaise that, is frankly a lot worse in places that do indeed declare them to be said republics. The fact is, when we talk about transforming our political system, it won't be in name only. We have to recognize that the very essence of the political legislative process will be changed. People fantasize about the system of checks and balances but in reality in the United States those checks and balances do a lot more to harm the process than to help it. People hate government because it gets nothing done and fosters corruption and massive redundancy in the bureaucracy. The mere fact that there are so many points in the legislative process to kill legislation to "protect us from tyranny" allows private interests to easily bribe congressmen who aren't bound by parliamentary discipline and said reps (or other bureaucrats from powerful deparments *ahem* pentagon *ahem*) can easily add spending into legislation to get it passed (porkbarrel politics). In the end, this does happen in Canada but in no shape or form is anywhere close to the leve it occurs in the United States. The republican system cripples the legislative process in that legislation moves at a snails pace in comparison to that of the HoC in Canada. In the end, this has to somewhat influence electoral politics. In the technological age people and information move at the speed of light and in the end Americans can't relate to their 18th century political system because it can't keep up with society. Look at the health care debate. Though a clear majority of Americans want changes to health care, the entrenched interests in Congress with funding from the AMA and the Health Insurance lobby will more than likely kill any attempt at health reform. In fact, the fastest thing that the congress has done in the past ten years was to approve a motion to sing the anthem on the steps of the capitol after 9/11. After that, everything is a dog fight. In Canada, if there's a majority, which Canadians are now again craving, the government can get down to business and get things done. In the end, Canadian democracy is entrenched to the point that if a majority government is doing thing that the population resents, they can be kicked out (Mulroney) and we don't need checks and balances to keep us from giving ourselves a dictator. For those people who use regional differences and decentralization as a means to gain a republic, honestly, the west has merely taken a huge sip of the Alliance/Reform/Conservative kool-aid. Regional differences (with the exception of Quebec) never factored in to elections to the point that they have until Stockwell Day, panicky as most Conservative leaders are, started airing ads that the east hated the west even though Chretien's ads were a pan-canadian message that didn't change from riding to riding (which Conservative ads did. Clearly the we love Ontario ads during that period were never played in Calgary. Thank god we got the real message when Mr. Baird told Toronto to Fuck Off). Since then, the only way the Conservatives have been able to get in is to play on that regional divide rather than strengthening the unity of the nation. In my opinion, thats as bad as seperatism.