Bakunin

Exactly, and since there are divergent moral position in the country, as a government, harper must learn when not to express his feeling, that was the mistake. Bakunin, Levesque on Point de mire brought many people in Quebec into the modern world. As Quebecers once left their names all over this continent, they now are all over this planet. They have moral opinions. Quebec's isolationism is partly in the past. I'm not certain Quebecers will share the same opinion as knee-jerk English-Canadians but Quebec must be involved. Bakunin, if Quebec were an independent country facing a critical vote at the UN, would its ambassador vote for Hizballah (as many Lebanese in Montreal want) or would it vote for Israel? Or would Quebec vote to abstain? ---- Levesque as a TV journalist in the 1950s willingly tried to explain all this. I doubt Harper as an Anglophone PM wants to explain to Quebecers why Quebec should get involved in the world. Yet, Harper took a clear position. And voters in Quebec know what he thinks. IMV, Harper's claim to Quebec votes is that he's a "fair play Anglo". C'est pas un crosseur. Politics is politics, government get elected then fall, it has always been like this and its no different with Harper. Those mistakes can accelerate the processus, this is my responce to your thread. Social conservativism is as popular in alberta as social liberalism is in quebec. Evry time Harper remember us he's a social conservativism, he'll dig his grave because social conservativist in quebec could shift to the liberal in a heartbeat and i bet most of them did not vote for the conservative last election. The adequist are the closest thing you'll get from a conservative and they aren't social conservative.

It's a moral position. Exactly, and since there are divergent moral position in the country, as a government, harper must learn when not to express his feeling, that was the mistake.

Actually, it did hurt my support to harper... 2 thing piss me off about the conservative, social conservativism and foreign policy. Its definatly the first major mistake by the conservative government, but thats all it is, a big mistake, if they learn from it, they will get stronger, if they don't they will get weaker. And when i say this, im not making politics, either if your for or against the war in lebanon, the way the government acted was a bad move.

I have been watching CBC and they have reported the death toll on both sides, last I checked I think it was 2 dozen or so Israelis and 300 or so Lebanese. I have not seen anything more in-depth about the victims than that, so how is it imbalanced? Actually, 2 kidnapped israelis = 300 death, +1000 wounded and countless deportations. Looks like lebaneses stocks are pretty low at wallstreet vs the israelis stocks...

Yes, i think your confused as there is no contradiction in what you say and what i say... What are my confederalist notions that does not make sense ? What I am pointing out Backunin is you describe yourself as a "confederalist" who has trouble understanding that even Quebec's Father's of confederation knew that central government was a prerequiste of a successful country to help ensure provinces don't acquire to many provincial rights to cause civil war like what happened in the U.S. I don't associate plain confederation with the celebration of Canada Day without of course including federalism and am proud to celebrate that fact. You on the other hand question "why celebrate confederation when it is a federation" and with making it clear your a 'confederalist' -and by definition-who supports decentralization and self-sustainability along the lines of nationalism. Yes, im a confederalist and i don't see canada as a confederation, i don't care if you disagree with my opinion, evrybody have their opinions, however i fail to understand why you are trying to explain me that some guys may not be confederalist when this is exactly my point... i don't see canada as a confederation. I guess its because of my bad grammar.

Yes, i think your confused as there is no contradiction in what you say and what i say... What are my confederalist notions that does not make sense ?

Well, how else to get money from Liberal-friendly ad agencies back to the Lieberal Party? Its quite funny, i found in a newspaper that the liberal party announced they paid back their whole debt a week ago..

Please explain yourself Bakunin. If your making reference to Quebec, it was part of New France until 1760 and then became a province within the Canadian confederation at it's very beginning in 1867. Maybe you don't like it but fact is fact. I don't understand why we call it a confederation when it is a federation... As a confederalist i think it doesn't make sens. Its a little bit like if north korean would celebrate freedom day or those dictatorship that call their regime a democratic republic or popular republic. its a little bit like if we would celebrate bananas for the apple day.

The money is not for firework its because if they don't pay there would be no artists and no show unlike other provinces where they can get artist for free... Anyway i think it stupid to celebrate confederation day when canada is not a confederation... they should call it the federalism day... i wouldn't celebrate it either though...

Brébeuf and le Petit Séminaire are subsidized by taxpayers. The CPE of Outremont too. Elsewhere in Canada, that doesn't happen. I don't think the real debate should be about subsidized cpe or not, i think it should be about organized cpe or not. I understand that once it is subsidized it is more criticized though, i beleive in other province the media never talked about accessibility of child care even if it is more deficient than in quebec while here it is criticized because it is subsidized by the taxpayers. I beleive one of the major problem of the cpe is equality but since our society is so much based on that sacro-saint equality, i don't think it become a problem in a general percpective. But anyway, i know ppl that worked in cpe and in private child care and from their point of vue, the cpe is a major imporvement for the care.

I think its alot easyer to attack an organisation than attack an unorganised child care system. If there is anything wrong with the cpe is they are too much popular and parent put their children in them too young wich is the real cause of the problem. At least if anyone want to bash the cpe system, he should at least be fair enough to analyse failure of the other systems.

Stephen harper definatly has ppl to tell him exactly what to say to the media, however his popularity will never stay that way more than one year because it takes too much time to see concrete stuff from his government, and lets face it, thats the way politics is, the media push a party then destroy it, then push it, then destroy it and etc...

Its all relative IMO, like you say, the problem is not the taxes, its the burden/salary. If we start from that, the possible solutions are illimited.

I partially disagree with that, First the government has no choice to tax the population one way or another, taxes will violate our freedom anyway so why not give a taxe break to citizens that have good habits wich help makes life easyer for the goverment. Don't give taxe cut to the poor, help them with social program if needed and teach them how to suceed. Second, im also a flat tax supporter, i don't really beleive in progressive taxation. If the government wants to help the poor, he should teach them how to catch a fish instead of feeding them and keeping them from progressing.

At this point, i agree with those taxes, i prefer to taxe consumers than to taxes salary. Those kind of politics will conditionate and educate the consumers. However, politician must also deal with the side effect of those politics.

Im wondering, is it the PQ that is becoming more to the right or is it quebec itself ? one thing for sure, QS won't be much popular in the region of quebec city and the ADQ always had trouble in the region of montreal. I wonder if the new conservative county will turn to the ADQ and the new Bloc county will turn to the PQ.

Charest will not win the next election, i beleive when the election will start, the liberal federalists will find out they don't have enough % to elect the liberal again and during the campain they will turn to the adq by hoping to beat the PQ, then it will be a fight between the PQ and the ADQ. In other word, it will be 2003 inversed. when ADQ supporters jumped to the liberal to get rid of the PQ, now the liberal will shift to the ADQ to beat the PQ. In fact it also happened in the last federal election... many liberal supporters joined the conservative to beat the bloc.

And this is where the problem lies. I live in Canada first; my Province comes next, not the other way around. I applaud Trudeau, and feel he was totally right with his not "giving in" to Quebec with concessions. Your language and culture is protected, you have your own civil code...from the Westerner point of view it is all a little too confusing and frustrating. It must be hard to understand but their is a strong barrier, i beleive we know more about american culture than canadian culture. Im interested in canadian culture unlike most of quebeckers and the only canadian TV artist i know having a career in canada is Rick mercer and Don cherry... The only show i do listen once a year is this hour as 22 minutes. Other than that i know canadian air farce, the redgreen show,or something like that and the mercer report. Thats all i know about canadian culture, thats all i found wich i beleive is highly above average for a quebecker. The only other link is politics. Are there anything else about canadian culture i should know ? It is hard to beleive that two cultures ignorant of each others could form one day a stable central government. How could quebecker care or at least be loyal about something they don't know.

I really like the idea, ppl on this forum should at least understand that an idea must be develloped to be realist (Subey only wrote a dozen lines), it would be great if we could talk about how to make it a better idea, more structured and a more practical instead of only reveiling whats wrong with the idea. My point isn't to blame anyone, its just an observation i want to share, mainly an observation on me because i do criticize so much myself Here is my share of ideas for Democracy 2.0. First of all, if we split powers according to those branch we would need a special branch to give a budget to those sub branches, wich is a bit hard if we want them to be autonomous and have their own philosophy. I beleive we would need to vote also on how much % we want the government to be able to spend on that particular branch or to vote knowing they would be able to spend that much % or to give them the right to taxes ourself wich could lead o fiscal imbalance or that could be a task for the senate (vote a budget to those branches). Anyway i beleive its one part that need to be worked on in order to make it a better idea. Here are some other idea about what i want and don't want: -I want my government to inspire a philosophy, i dont want it to be partial, we can't ask them to be partial if we want them to inspire a philosophy and do politics. We can't ask a debater to debate on both side or a lawyer to deffend and attack their own client. It is just impossible for a deputy to be for and against his own party. -I don't want it to be in control of anything that must be partial, i don't want them to tell me how much we are in debt or our financial situation. In other word i don't want to place them in a situation where they would be tempted to lie to us because they want to go higher in the polls... -I want to know evrything about how my money is spent. I want to know who spent how much, when and why. I want it to be accessible via the web, just like my groceries invoice. I beleive politicians must not be treated like they want our well being, they must be seen as philosophers and project managers, in no circonstance we should put our entire trust in them. I don't mean we can't trust them or that they doesn't want our well being, it just mean that corruptions need power to exist so we shouldn't be surprised if political powers is very attractive to the corruptors and we should be aware of that fact and prevent it as much as we can. One way to instore this philosophy would be to split politics in two. One part would be in charge of political philosophy and manage the country's money with that philosophy while the other side would be only in charge of the mathematics such as collecting taxes, financial reports and prevent fraud. They would be in a way our national bank. The political philosophers would then ask for some kind of credit card to the national bank wich would write down its owner and on what that money was spent electronically. The political philosophers must by no mean get free access to our money. This way evry politicians become accountable of the money he spent. If he spent it bad then it is a philosophical error and the voters will judge the politician accordingly with the information the banks give us, if he doesn't use it for what he was ellected for or there is a suspect unusual transfer, then if its fraud the national bank would know immediatly how to deal with it and take actions to protect us.

A good sample as what would happen is what happened in montenegro. They just separated from yougoslavia less than a month ago. Its a good sample because they are composed of an important minority wich is also the case in quebec. The yes side won with a 0,5% margin and even in an unstable country like yougoslavia the world didnt end.... I hate it when ppl dramatize stuff and think there will be a civil war... common... a civil war ?? the morning after another possible referendum is not much different than a day after an election. The ppl that lose may not be fully happy but the life goes on and they go to work and later in the day they watch there favorite tv show, eat chips and go to sleep. The day after they already forgot what happenned. I just can't find a more frustrating way to lose for the sovreignist in 1995 and you know what the day after it was halloween and ppl already forgot what happened. It was a great halloween, i put on my ninga turtle costume and then i went get candy and i ate them and life goes on... nobody rallied ppl to start a civil war or another stupidity like that...

You can steal this money from a bank, a company or anybody, its the same thing for the government. You can steal public fund but eventually you will get caught and that is what happened. There is a justice system for that and you can't get away with it unless you are or work for a politician.

Free trade is a great thing IMO, i would be very happy if we could merge even more canada,usa and mexico's economy and we should have some kind of political union to unify our policy and strenghen our partnership. However, to be successfull, the unification must not be compulsory, it must be built on consensus.

I beleive an English PM will always be nicer to quebecker to make sure he doesn't get a bad image in quebec and a French PM will always be harder on quebec to make sure he doesn't get a bad image in the rest of canada. So i beleive down the road, Harper in the next 2 election will either lose the support of one of the 2 cultural groups.

The current constitution was approved by a majority of MPs in the House of Commons which included most of the representatives elected by the people of Quebec. There was no referendum for the orginal BNA Act. The tradition of holding referendums for constitutional change started in the 1990s. Changes made before then are as legimate as the original BNA Act because they were approved according to the norms of the time. That said, I agree that any future constitutional change should require a referendum. Sometime representativity doesnt mean a strong consentment. The constitution is a good sample, evry provincial government in quebec refused to sign the constitution. I totally agree with the second segment of your reply on the BNA act. For the 1982 constitution it was supposed to be a referendum. I think it was one of the worst mistake ever from a canadian prime minister.

I beleive a constitution is the hearth of a country, it is what should be the consensus of a group of people to form a country, its the rule of the game we are all in... Any constitutional change without an unanimous consent is a major failure for a country IMO. Also, forcing constitutional change without a strong consent and a referendum is an insult to democracy.