nicky10013

Sure does. The government is claiming it was an accounting error but ex-MPs are now coming out and saying they were specifically asked by the national campaign if they could accept money and then send it back to Ottawa. That doesn't sound like an accounting error to me.

So you're denying that he was going to slash bus service? You're calling me a liar? That is riiiiiich.

Since when is slashing bus routes enabling people to get to work? We've had 2 strikes in the past 11 years, one of which over a weekend. Something tells me that the escalating cost to use the TTC due to mandatory arbitrated settlements (they always favour labour) will hurt the working poor far more than the off chance of a strike.

This is idiotic. With the TTC network privatized, you'll see fares skyrocket. You can't break up the network and therfore there won't be any competition. You'll be giving a private operator a blank cheque to fleece riders as the private operator would be the only game in town. We've been down this road (pun intended) before with the 407. The government built it and sold it off to a private company and since then rates have skyrocketed. The notion that private companies handle things better and for cheaper always is flawed ideological nonsense.

So if we pushed on lumber they wouldn't want to develop our oil fields? Did that ever stop them from coming up and developing the fields before? Oh, yeah, that's right...no.

It could but as I recall there were going to be cuts last year too, as I recall.

Trade with China helps the Canadian economy. What doesn't help the Canadian economy is settling the softwood lumber dispute by effectively letting the US government screw us with our pants on.

Who is blaming Canada for what? More of the same from the "I don't have a clue" crowd.

One of the quotes at the bottom is "Canada an economic superstar" from The Economist. Well...here's what the Economist actually says. http://www.economist.com/node/16060113

Most classical liberals called for laissez-faire government up only until a point. John Stuart Mill, pretty much the father of Liberalism believed very much in the most freedom possible. He said in "On Liberty" that people should have freedom to the extent where such freedom doesn't harm others or impairs their own freedom. Considering conservative rhetoric today, this philosophy is the bedrock of what Conservatives believe. Of course, though, modern Conservatives read that and closed the book. They don't read the rest of that work nor do they read his work "On Political Economy" where he calls for the foundation of the modern welfare state. So, before we get into the terms of voting on the basis of what a classical Liberal is or not, perhaps we should assail what precisely a classical liberal is. In this sense, you're voting for people who YOU think are classical liberals. As I've pointed out, there is a distinction. So really, all this boils down to is you calling yourself something you're not so you can feel better about not calling yourself what you actually are. You're a conservative. Just admit it.

Exactly. Punked comes on here and whines about how the Liberals get nothing done and how Jack will stand up to make lives better, but Happy Jack is only in that position (which is wildly spun, Jack is doing it to avoid an election) because Harper picked Layton to deal with. Even though he refers to a coalition of separatists and socialists, he knows that dealing solely with the NDP and cutting out the LPC entirely splits the left and makes the LPC look extraordinarily weak to it's own supporters. Ignatieff can't deal and "make a coalition" with an unwilling party. All they can do is support or not support a government until they have the money and the platform to put up a respectable fight. Prior to contrary belief, they've got the former and I suspect we'll have to wait until a campaign to see the latter.

Where is the waste exactly? We've been hearing this refrain for over a year now. Incidentally, even councilors who were Ford supporters are coming out and saying there is no gravy. In addition to this, how much money will 1500 job cuts save the city? Will it be enough to wipe out the deficit next year? Will it be enough to cover that 350 million he went hat in hand to McGuinty for? No, at most a few million dollars. That's the idiotic thing about Conservatives. They bitch and whine left and right about the waste here and the waste there and how horrible the inefficiency of government is yet they never take the time to actually figure out how much money certain services cost.

Ahahahaha wow. The Liberals don't want to destroy anything, they just want to see the contract put out to tender. The Conservatives basically said this is the plane we want quite arbitrarily. Normally, there's a tender is put out, companies submit bids and a plane is purchased. The fact that there is a competition usually lowers the price. It also usually guarantees more contracts are handed out to Canadian firms. The price was exorbitant for the F-35s and there was absolutely no provision for any of the maintenance to be handled by Canadian firms, something that's ALWAYS included in terms of the procurement of expensive and highly technical equipment. The Liberals don't want to scrap purchasing a plane. Besides, the contract isn't to be signed for another two years anyway. So, by all accounts, we have the time to put the contract out to tender to fish for a better price and actually have a comptetition to see which plane best fits our need. Conservatives are for competition, right? They were the last time I checked. Then again, this thread isn't to get answers as to why the Liberals don't support the F-35. If we're going to be completely honest, it's to smear the LPC as Canadian Military haters and ultimately Canada haters. If this was to be a true debate on policy you wouldn't have included the last line.

Bingo. When he made the deal he honestly thought Hitler would keep his word. Stalin's intelligence agencies were warning him for months that an invasion was coming but he didn't believe it because he didn't think he could be two-timed. He wouldn't even believe the German ambassador that warned him of the coming invasion only a day or two before it commenced. There has but it was made exponentially worse after the revolution. A relatively unknow fact is that the US, Great Britain, France and yes even Canada sent troops to fight with the White Army against the Red Army in the early 1920s.

It's nothing like Putin. Putin isn't a dictator and frankly the only dictator in the world is Kim Jong-Il, but at least in Venezuela there are free and fair elections. As much as he wants to consolidate power, most of his referendums have failed and surprisingly he's respected the decisions the voters have made. In Russia, ironically there hasn't been a free election since the last days of the Soviet Union. Opposition leaders are arrested or assassinated, protestors are beaten to a bloody pulp. Just recently in the case of an imprisoned oil tycoon, allegations were that a judge was threatened to re-convict the man (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) on trumped up charges pushed by the Kremlin. He was orginially charged for tax evasion which was probably true but he wasn't tried until he became an opponent of the regime. Now, since he's served his time, they're charging him with some kind of treason so he can't get out. Putin is "popular" in the sense that no one else can be. You can't really say how popular he'd be if others were allowed to present an alternative. In Venezuela it seems as though the support is truly genuine.

What damage? Even Ford staffers are now saying they can't find "the gravy" and to try to fill the almost billion dollar sized hole they dug for themselves by giving away goodies such as cutting the vehicle registration tax, they're talking about slashing funding to cultural items such as the Zoo, TIFF and Caribana - festivals and attractions that bring in millions in terms of spending. So who was it that did the damage? What exactly did Miller do? You're right, it seems that problems can't be solved in a matter of months. However, as we've seen from Ford, they can be made 10x worse in a matter of weeks. http://www.thestar.com/news/torontocouncil/article/942289--looking-for-the-gravy?bn=1

You said it yourself that the woman is an incompetent so this being one of the worst conspiracies ever laid is completely reasonable. You said it would be next to impossible to prove motive and though it would be hard to "definitively" prove it in a court of law, lets ask ourselves these questions. She does have control, so why did she feel the need to write in not? Couldn't she just have sent a letter to deny funding? Why did she sneak it in? Why did she deny doing it? Why did she feel the need to attempt to hide the opinion of her bureaucrats? The answers to all those questions point to her trying to cover up what she did. Considering the political grief the bureaucracy has caused the government, most notably over the census where the CPC was pilloried for months by the media after ignoring the advice of the country's foremost experts, they had a decidely prudent political motive to make it look as though her top people within CIDA agreed with her. Even if you can't prove fraud, in any company anywhere it's grounds for immediate dismissal. The fact that Harper and the entire CPC caucus have wrapped themselves around her speaks to the fact that not only is this probably close to the truth, but that the order to do it came from the PMO. Considering how reactionary the government has become even by CPC standards, it's sad to say that this isn't surprising.

This is splitting hairs. Sure she doesn't know specifically which of her staff actually forged the document. She did in fact admit that she ordered it to be changed, though. It doesn't matter if she didn't do it herself or still doesn't know who did it. The fact that she ordered it to be done speaks for itself.

I don't think it's baffling at all. I know that KAIROS funding is political and of course there are issues around breach of privelege. She's certainly allowed to go against the decision of her bureaucrats...my point was never to say that she couldn't. My point is the fraud lies where she altered documents. Your opinion that the worst thing here is that she breached privelege and that's fine. Forging...or directing someone to forge a federal document pertaining to funding to the tune of 6 million dollars is illegal fraud. I view that as being worse. If she had just come out and said I disagree with the heads of CIDA and I'm not going to fund this, there would've been a debate but no one would be accusing her of doing anything wrong. However, she directed one of her staff to forge a document to make it look like CIDA supported her decision. To me, that's the worst. The fact that she lied to parliament isn't shocking and makes matters worse, but the fact that she did it to begin with I think has to take precedence.

If you order someone murdered, you're still charged with murder even though you didn't kill the person. Just because she didn't physically alter the document doesn't mean she isn't responsible for the act. You're splitting hairs and failing badly.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Hilarious. Now it's the NDP saving us from a boogie man majority that will never happen. Too funny.

You're missing the point. She didn't scribble in NOT to reverse one of her own opinions. The NOT written in the paper was to change the signed opinion of someone else. No matter how utterly stupid we think it is, it's still fraud as she's misrepresenting someone elses signed legal stance.

I voted no because Harper thinks Canadians are stupid. Who knows, maybe they are.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-takes-corporate-tax-cuts-off-the-table/article1913724/ NDP takes corporate tax cut off the table. So what was that about the NDP standing up for principles?

To include the Bev Oda situation to "wafergate" and Guergis getting upset at an airport, or Lisa Raitt calling cancer sexy is horribly wrong. The things you lumped Oda in with were unfortunate, ill timed and certainly distasteful, but they weren't illegal. This was.