Bryan

You still haven't even come close to explaining what the problem is. I'm not married to the idea of the public poll -- like I said I didn't even realize it was until it was pointed out. I can repost the poll as a closed one, that's not a problem at all. I just don't understand what the issue is.

I got my results in 3 MONTHS. Results anyone could get. Government equipment programs are not needs for even high level fitness. All that is required is for people to stop being lazy.

But all the members here do volunteer info like that all the time in other threads. Opposition to doing the same in poll format is irrational. I'm not trying to claim I have right to know anything, I had no intention one way or the other WRT the poll being public or not (I didn't even realize it was until someone pointed it out). I just do not understand what the problem is. If I did know your real name, you do know I could just look up your contributions on the Elections Canada website, right? Anonymous donations are actually not allowed.

No I'm not. You don't need any of that, those are just excuses. I lost 54 lbs in about three months a few years ago. My body fat dropped while my muscle mass increased. I got in the best shape of my life, and I did all of it with only one piece of equipment: a bicycle. I biked to work everyday, went jogging, and did body weight exercises (pushups, pullups, dips, crunches). Moving your body creates fitness, machines are only one of many ways to do that.

You aren't making sense. You ARE anonymous, but the poll isn't? It only shows your online username, it's no less anonymous than your posts. What is the objection?

You can only make a promise within the framework of what's in front of you. example: "We are allies with country- A." But then country-A attacks one of our NATO allies, so we/they take action. That's not a lie, nor is it incompetence, it's just a change of circumstances. Income trusts was the right decision, just implemented poorly.

Harper answered more than 5 questions the last few days.

Plenty of small businesses are corporations. Most smart business owners want to insulate their personal liability from the liabilities of the business itself, regardless of the size of that business.

Thankfully, fitness already is free if you want that. More crunches, less croissants!

The income trust issue is one of the ones where the context is key. The situation changed after the election when large corporations like Telus and BCE wanted to try to avoid paying tax by declaring themselves income trusts. As bad as it was optically, it was something they absolutely had to do. That doesn't mean they handled it properly either though. There should have been a grandfather clause for the ITs that existed at the time of the promise, or something.

They don't receive tax money. Their entire budget is from insurance premiums. Those premiums are already lower than what you can get privately, AND we the rate payers get a refund when the company shows a profit. I'll openly admit that in the abstract at least I'm no fan of scoialism, but in practice I'm really happy that we have MPIC here, especially compared to what they have in Ontario.

The problem with the OP's list is the majority of them either never happened at all, or the phrasing is a deliberate mischaracterization of the context of the events. The rest are mostly of the "yes, and that was good policy" variety. There are only a couple in there where one could realistically say, "yeah, that wasn't a good idea". The only actually true one that he definitely should not have done is the fixed election date issue, but even there the problem was that it couldn't apply to a minority parliament unilaterally unless that also meant the end of non-confidence votes as well. The whole legislation was just not fleshed out well enough before it was enacted. One has to wonder why the opposition passed it. What they should have done, IMO, is the way municipal elections are done (at least here in Winnipeg). The fixed election date stands, no matter what. And if for whatever reason a election is required between those dates, that term still ends on the original fixed election date. Happened here in Winnipeg. Mayor Murray quit, the election to replace him was only for a two year term. Essentially it's just a by-election.

This says it pretty clearly:

I understand the sentiment. You don't think there's a difference between actually paying people to vote (or paying the parties for their votes), compared to giving people a tax break for getting more directly involved in democracy? The latter seems to at least be the lesser of the evils, IMO. Tax breaks at least are just letting me keep more of my money as opposed to giving people's money to a political organization.

Agreed. Using 1997 NCC material to try to attack Harper only gets traction with the people that already would never vote for him anyway. First, these are the position statements of a think tank. Think tank's jobs are to throw partisan ideas against the wall to see what sticks. It seldom has anything to do with what they actually believe, just an exercise to see what floats. They aren't running for office, and they aren't writing personal memoirs either. Do you think that everyone at the Fraser Institute or the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives actually believes every word in their official campaigns? They are alternative policies for the express purpose of being alternative. Second, much of what Harper said resonates well with conservative leaning voters anyway. The 40%+ of the Canadian public that are telling pollsters that they will vote CPC actually like many of the things he said in 1997. About 90% of it is right on the money in my book.

It's really interesting to see how the economy of voting applies even within a riding. Parties have certain pockets, and even the also-ran candidates have neighborhoods where they either led or cam damn close for (that particular poll at least). In my riding at least, the CPC candidate blew out the while riding with the exception of some very small pockets that were LPC, and the NDP candidate was strong second (LPC third) in many of the CPC polls. (Do you call the actual spot on the map the "poll"?) I wonder how hard it would be to calculate a hypothetical FPTP model in adding up the polls won (rather than votes), and see if the seat count would change. Is the Elections Canada per-polling-station data available as a spreadsheet?

That's just another reason why the rules have to be tight. Not just the debates, I'd seriously like to see the definition of official political party status tightened up to include a minimum number of elected officials and a minimum number of ridings represented in a minimum number of provinces. Then just make the criteria for participating directly in pretty much anything be "official party status".

Agreed. Regardless of what he might have been inclined to do, Mercer is never going to be involved. If the broadcast consortium was proposing mercer as the original moderator (over Paikin), I'm quite certain Harper would have pulled a Trudeau. I would.

It doesn't crush the argument, it's a completely irrelevant red herring.

46.3% is significantly higher than the CPC's national average. That is a lot of breathing space. Swing meaning a fantasy direct corresponding increase for LPC and decrease for CPC. Not the more likely scenario is possible 2-3 % increase in LPC support at the expense of the NDP and Green. The polls are clearly showing just that: CPC and LPC are both holding if not increasing, while NDP and GRN support is falling.

Huh? The point of the poll is simply to tabulate the answers given in the thread. You aren't allowed to post anonymously.

Depends. Is the government their only client?

While I absolutely do see that the vote compass is heavily biased, I'm not so sure that it was deliberate. The answers that it would take make you considered a Conservative are considerably farther to the right than the party actually is. However, most left and centre-left voters think that the CPC is a lot further right than they really are. It's quite possible that the bias involved is just the author's misconceptions of the Conservatives. We may be attributing malice in a place where the problem is merely ignorance and/or incompetence.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I can't see Harper agreeing to an ADDITIONAL debate. A different format for the two already scheduled debates on the other hand, I'm sure would be perfectly fine. The best compromise I could see happening would be a segment during the regular debate where the discussion is limited to responses from Harper and Ignatieff. They could even write that into the "rules" of the future debates that it's whatever two parties are polling the highest at the time get that one segment.

Certainly explains some of the complaints from the left if that is the kind of number crunching they do! They aren't dishonest, they just don't understand basic math! :lol: ..that's pretty much socialism in a nutshell anyway, isn't it?