Anacoluthe

Well, sorry, but listing three political projects that people didn't understood and saying that they find counting up to three is confusing isn't the same thing at all. Especially if those projects weren't well understood mostly because people didn't take the time to think about them. Very, very few are willing to think by themselves and question the surrounding way to do the things. You usually need a charismatic leader with a vision and a project to make them love the leader first. Then, through the focus that charismatic leader bring, people start to talk about and think about a project. As long as there's problems around, people need changes and they know it. But they need people to propose those changes in an appropriate way to adhere to those changes. So: People DO want changes, but there's no one around charismatic enough to propose them in a global project, in a vision that will rally them, that will touch them at an emotional level so they feel concerned and involved by the needed changes. Yeah, but guess what: I am absolutely opposed to any attempt to shrink the government: The bigger is the better for me. I firmly beleive that a government is the fairest way to redistribute wealth in a society and that it need to be quite bigger than what we have right now. Without going up to comunism and socialism, I beleive that a government should be able egality of chances (not plain egality, it's not the same thing) for everyone. And right now, we are far from that. I don't think Bob Rae will ever become the leader of the LPC. It would be the same mistake as Dion was: Dion was much hated, both by sovereignists and federalists, in Quebec for the Clarity Act. From what I've heard of, Bob Rae was as much hated in Ontario. May be Ignatieff will manage to do Ok in a general election, then he will stay, if not, I guess we will see either Martin Cauchon or Denis Coderre (yes, I know, it seem unbelievable right now) move on for the leader place. My guess is for a leader from Quebec... It's usually the historical way to go if you want to achieve a majority (Dion is the exception, but he was so much unpopular in Quebec...).

I don't know where you guys take the idea that people are angry with tax. The Charest government was never as impopular in Quebec as when they try to cut the tax by a billion. Almost everything that move in Quebec stand up to say that they disagree with that and wanted instead the opposite: more money for the government. They fell under 18% of approuval rate (absolute lowest historical reccord in Quebec) with that project. That would be the most unfair way to collect tax. Consumption tax are almost equally paid by everybody. People with low income still need to buy a lot of stuff to make a decent living and have usually almost the same overall spending than the middle class. Otherwise, such consumption tax are those who have the biggest impact on the economy, because it allow for some people (those earning a lot of money) to not pay tax by not buying stuff. And buying stuff is what make the economy turn round. Allowing people to both save tax AND put money aside of the economic circulation (ie: banking account or other form of long term investment) is the worst way to go: it's unfair for the poorer and it will also hurt the economy by encouraging savings. It would be much better to do it the other way around: removing all consumption tax and increasing the income tax. I don't think so. People don't want the same things. I think that the majority of Canadians want changes. The point is that the progressive party (NPD, LPC and the Bloc... though for this one it's a special case) haven't managed to propose something that will rally the people around them already. In the last century, the LPC did great at this, but now they have somehow lost it. The ideas and plan of the NPD aren't rallying most of the voters, but their support is increasing as more and more see them as a better non-CPC vote than the LPC. Very kind of you, thank you.

Hum... I'm not a simpleton, I don't think so. I just think that if you elect a government, it's a bit idiotic to also elect someone to eventually also impede it. Logically, you vote for the party who have the plans you prefer for the future of the country (at least for the next few years), so what's the point to elect also someone to impede it decisions? The USA system looks pretty much redundant and dysfunctioning to me.

The problem with the LPC is that they doesn't have a vision of the Canada anymore. They were the "natural governing party" in the past because of that. They were the one who were used to know where to go and bring their values and the country along with them. The conservative were there to act like a break on a car: to slow them down a bit when most of the people thought that the changes were going too fast. Now, the LPC doesn't have much ideas, nor vision, they don't even have a program that you can read to know what they want to do. To make everything worst they are a lot disorganized. I think it will take sometime for this party to reorganize, find new and younger faces with new ideas. 1) The "Green shift" was, at least in french, clearly explained as a reorganisation of the tax: the more CO2 you produce in a province, the more you pay. Of course, when in Quebec you produce about 11 tons of CO2 par person (wich is extremely minimal compared to the world average) and in Saskatchewan and Alberta it's about 5 to 6 time this... I could understand that it was explained more obviously in french than in english. The point of the "Green Shift" was to create a very strong incentive toward provinces with lot of pollution to make less (and I guess that a 500% tax raise is a good incentive to reconsider the benefit of exploiting the tar sands... though the changes in taxation were'nt that dramatic and more progressive than that). 2) What you described, looks a lot like what we see here in Quebec and that is defended by the Bloc... Unfortunately for you, they are separatist and doesn't run MP in the ROC. So I guess they won't do for you. I guess so... But you know... those stuff you paid for people living in big cities also provide a lot of benefit to you: it's the price to pay for the rural Canada to have a market to sold their stuff and earn that money. Without those people working in cities who need all those things that you don't want to pay for... you wouldn't have job nor money. At best you would be a farmer barely able to grow enough stuff to feed his family the way it was 200 years ago. And about welfare... well, you also benefit a lot from it. It's the best tool to reduce crime rate. Where welfare is decent, people manage to avoid doing crime. When you don't have that what do you think will happen? Hint: look at the Zaire permanent riot/civil war since the last 20 years to know. You may think that people qill quitly starve in the street but truth is: they will fight for surviving whatever if it mean to broke the law: someone hungry and desperate will commit crime to survive. Just look how the crime rate is 4 time higher in Calgary than in Montreal. Yeah, may be people in Quebec are a bunch of social-democrat-leftist, but there's 4 time lower chances for them to see their child raped or get murdered. You don't live in a bubble. That money that is used to solve problem far away from you KEEP THOSE PROBLEMS FAR AWAY FROM YOU. Oh... and by the way... the market is faster and smarter than you... if you cut the taxe by 10%, very soon the prices raise up by .... 10%! So the only result of a tax cut is more money in the pocket of the big company that hold the biggest share of the market. High tax mean higher redistribution... wich is the only way for 99% of the citizen to effectively receive a biggest share of the common wealth of the country. The only way you can benefit from low tax in the long run is if you are part of the 1% wealthiest population. Otherwise you're only shooting you in the foot. Nope. What's happen in Quebec is that even the PQ have ceased to call for a referendum and instead move for an autonomist path. In Quebec, there's two kind of sovereignist: urban and rural. Urban sovereignist are social-democratist-leftist while the rural sovereignist are much more conservative. So now, we see that under the very high pressure of many millions promises, some of those conservatives sovereignist start to move toward the CPC. It started in Quebec city area but could eventually reach most of the Quebec rural area (save the Beauce wich is usually liberal... though Maxime Bernier is the exception). The Bloc have kept the conservative at bay by keeping out of reach of the conservative a lot of sovereignist voters... now that seem to be less true up to some extent. On the other hand, the liberals don't manage to get back the leftist sovereignist voters. They probably would have to admit that the way that 1982 events took place was unacceptable before the Quebecois could ever start to trust them again. They also have a bit too much of a "centralized Canada" ideal, without room for an asymetric federalism, to make the Quebecois feel really confortable, especially the leftist. That's why the CPC may expext to win up to 30-35 seat in Quebec (under the best circumstances), while the LPC is totally unable to win the 40-45 seat they could expect in Quebec (save for the dozen of stronghold they already have) if they manage to cut with their Trudeauist past and get a way to proove that they are a better alternative than the NPD. Right now, in the eventuality of a collapse of the bloc, the 75 seats of Quebec could looks like (accordingly to the right/left division of the vote by seat): 15 LPC, 30-35 CPC and 25-30 NPD. The problem of the liberals in Quebec is quite simple: Trudeau did great at first, until he was commonly recognized by the francophone as a "treator"... and they seem to cling on the Trudeau heritage... while Pierre Elliott Trudeau is probably the most despised politician in history by the Francophone (most of them will know that Hitler or Staline were worst, but they will HATE Trudeau more). All this because of the way he manage to make the new constitution without Quebec in 1982 (doing it sneakyly by night). Quality of living or egality of living isn't the same thing as egality of chances.

Adam Smith? Surely not... unless if you're refering to the "invisible hand" concept that was used few century later to justify a totally unruled market while Adam Smith himself explained that the "invisible hand" could only works in a very small place (like a village) that will also have to be isolated from any foreign influence. About Rousseau: Right, he was more behind the french revolution, but still, his concept of the right for the people to get happiness (meaning: enough goods to make a decent living) was used a lot to build the american values. Well, just look about what they talk about. It's obvious that they try to substitute values about social-egality, egality of chances and other sharing values by much more individualist values. Even worst, those are values with a smell of religion around them too (fighting homosexual mariage, marijuana decriminalization, etc.) The Canadian values aren't "social" values in the way the comunism is, but a sense of duty toward the country and other fellow citizens was always there in the past history of Canada, along with a firm beleive in providing some egality of chances for everyone (huge difference here between communism/socialism who tried to proveide egality and a social-democracy who try to provide egality of chances). Otherwise, the Canada had always been a progressive country, a country that try to work out new solutions to problems coming from an ever changing world. But now we see more and more people wanting non-sense stuff... Why beeing against homosexual mariage? What coult it ever change in your life if two homosexual person get married? Will it suddenly turn your grass blue? NO! The only reason people may want this is because of morale reason and the evangelist/baptist movement in both USA and Canada have been the most active about this (wich of course doesn't mean that all the baptist/evangelist are against that). Why wanting to improve police enforcement and put people in jail for longer while it's already have been proved numerous time that 1) The length of the incarceration have almost no influence in the people who commit a crime because they ALL firmly beleive that they will never ever be caught (yeah, I know criminals are often stupids) and 2)Whatever the only thing that can reduce the crime rate is crime prevention. Adding policemen, giving them more power, giving them better equipement is absolutely and totally useless: It's have been tried since many century with NO sucess at all while crime prevention works a lot where it is used. Here again, people want this because they feel like it is right (no pun intended) to "punish" those who have a bad behavior, even if doing things that way doesn't works at all. They don't want to consider that if a teen comit a crime, it's not a failure of the kid, but a failure of the community and so, it belong to the community to fix things up by paying reparation to the victim but also by working with the teen to correct what's wrong with him (instead of puting him in jail wich is the best "crime university"). And here again, the baptist/evangelist movement is the most intransigeant about those things. There's many more, of course, but you asked for few exemples... Well, there's a mechanism to stop a party in Canada, it's called voting. Otherwise, you didn't mention that in Canada money take a much lesser part in the result of the election by limiting the autorized spendings. In USA, it's often the one with most money that win. I much prefer the Canadian system than the US one.

I would say that it depend a lot of your attitude toward the police. I once receive the visit of the police at my door because they were looking for a runaway teen girl and they asked to come in and I refused. They find it strange and insist at first, but I stay firm, polite, courteous and cooperative simply explaining that I was alone at home. They asked their questions and asked to call them if I learned anything but they didn't suspect me or anything like that. I'm sure that if you are very hostile and somewhat aggressive toward them, then it can quickly become worst... of course... they are human beeing after all.

No, I was thinking about: Montesquieu, Beaumarchais, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and many others that have writen the concept of individualism, free speech, search for happiness and so on in their books long before the American Revolution. They also put a lot of pressure and influence toward the french monarchy to support the American Revolution. The basics of the American society and ideals was taken almost as it was fromn their books and enforced in an attempt to create a "perfect society". Agreed. I would also add that the Conservative are obviously on the offensive to substitute evangelical values (wich are definately an american thing) to the usual Canadian values.

This is hardly related to the Canadian identity. If you want to talk about the Conservative party and Canadian identity, at least you may talk about how the right social/religious wing with the complicity of the Conservative party, is working hard on a propagandistic ideology to carry false informations and rewrite historical facts about "traditional canadian values and identity". It's a shame they do so... It's even worst that everyone seem to let them do it without protest or statement about their lies.

I think we should keep in mind that the Confederation was partly made to dissuade the USA from attacking the Brits colony of North America after the Civil War. In those old days, USA was a very expansionist country and they were angry for the support Britain had given to the South in the Civil War. (And for this part, it worked well since the USA finally choose to move west and after that go toward Mexico and Cuba for their expansion) So yes, to some extent, NOT BEEING american is a part of the Canadian identity. But it's a legitimate part of our identity. We should remember that the USA are our "traditional ennemy"... or at least the closest thing to that. Ok, now times have changed a lot and the USA move from closest ennemy to closest friend, but the Canada is borned from the will of it citizen to not become american. After saying so, does the Canadian identity is something more? OF COURSE! Indeed, beeing a Quebecois, to me it's extremely obvious how much I'm different from an american (language and culture are both very very different). But even in my non-english-mother-tongue-speaker eyes, the english-speaking Canadian are very very different from american too. Ok, you share almost the same language... I say almost because it's true that American speak... well... American while the Canadian speak english (it's a bit like how here we speak a different french language than in Europe). But sharing a closely-related language and beeing able to listen the same TV shows doesn't seal the deal fro beeing the same. Just look at the religion: In the USA, religion is something extremely important even in the public life. Here, in Canada, religion importance is much more discret... and please don't tell me that religion is not a strong aspect of a cultural identity! Another very important point: The way Canadian perceive beeing successful. In the USA, beeing successful is often directly linked with HAVING money (not making money)... whatever you get it from your wealthy family or you climb yourself all the step to success: only the final result count. While in Canada, the personal path in life is much more important... This specific value is at the core of our fairer (free) healthcare system and our better education system (more effective teaching up to the high school and then, MUCH cheaper/fairer way to reach university). It's because in Canada we beleive that, up to a big extent, we should provide a basic egality of chances for everyone to succeed if they make their own effort. Also, the way we conceive multiculturalism is quite different in Canada than it is in the USA. While in the USA they accept immigrant essentially because it's their traditional position. There's no real interest for the newcommer (and it seem none at all when they come from Mexico). In Canada, immigration is important; new cultures are considered as a valuable asset. (well, not as much as before when you listen some right-wing comment but still... they are'nt as bad as the USA right-wing comment about illegal Mexican immigration... nothing close to) Something funny to notice. In Quebec, when we were doing the Bouchard-Taylor commission (about reasonnable accommodement), the people who speak out the loudest against the religious accomodement wasn't the white french speaking Quebecer, but the newcomers. It was them who stand up to basically say: "Hey guys, we know you aren't racist or abusive with us and now it's time that you stand up a bit to put limit on this to protect your own culture, there's no shame in this." I guess they are perfectly aware of the Canadian identity and since they came here for a reason, most of them don't want to see it disappear. Now if you look at what we share as value with the USA... well... I would say it's a mistake to say that we share American values. Truth is: we share post-WWII-western-world value with the USA... as the France, Japan, UK, Germany, Italy, spain, etc. do. Most of these values don't come from the Americans anyway... most of them come from the French writer of the 18th century and the Americans choose to adopt them after the Independance War. If you call them Americans values because Americans share them and it's a part of their identity, it's ok... but keep in mind that freedom of speech, the individualism and the like are basically values developped (but of course not enforced by the french monarchy) by the french in the 18th century. The difference between the way of life of all those value are much more linked to ressource availability, geography and climatic condition than anything else. Beeing in North America, like the American, we have a good supply of natural ressources, space is cheap (while in Japan and europe it's expansive), energy is cheap... So, like the American, we tend to have a way of life that use big house and use a lot of energy... our cities also tend to expand much more than elsewhere because space is available. If you beleive that Canadian have almost the same identity as the American, then point me out the specific American values that english canadian share with the US and do not share with the other western country AND that are not linked to the fact that we have a tremenduously big supply of energy, space and natural ressources available. So in the end: nope, Canadian identity isn't just a matter of not beeing american. Oh, and by the way: It's true that having a canadian flag on your backpack grant you an almost automatic positive and friendly response from everyone all over the world. And when you're doing some hitchhiking, the cars drivers don't have the opportunity to listen what your accent is.