[Wynne says Hydro rates an "Urgent" Issue]

On 3/1/2017 at 2:51 PM, Boges said:

Not sure what Brown can do to break these contracts or re-negotiate them. But regardless, the Liberals should be turfed for getting us in this mess in the first place.

http://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/companies-people/governments-can-cancel-contracts-without-huge-penalties/1003320601/

Quote

In “Cancelling Contracts: the Power of Governments to Unilaterally Alter Agreements,” author Bruce Pardy argues: “Government contracts are not the ironclad agreements they appear to be because govern¬ments may change or cancel them by enacting legislation.” Pardy is a law professor at Queen’s University.

Common law interpretation requires that the government place the intent to cancel specific contracts in legislation. It can't pass legislation that has the indirect effect of cancelling contracts and argue later that it should not have to pay compensation.

[Constitution of 2018]

2 hours ago, -TSS- said:

I would change the bit about presidential elections that if a candidate receives more than 50% of the popular vote he or she wins, no matter what the EC-numbers point.

The US electoral system balances individual rights with states rights. The EC system gives each state 2 votes in addition to their allotment based on population. I can't see any reason to change this because electoral systems are supposed to balance different objectives. i.e. do why you think a president elected with a large majority in only New England and the West Coast but no where else would be more legitimate than a president with support across the country?

[The end of the empire of Japan]

1 hour ago, GostHacked said:

That will take a couple decades at the minimum as it is expected to take about 50 years for the clean up at Fukushima. No one is going back anytime soon.

But that is largely due to the insane over-reaction caused by nuclear phobes:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/fukushima-residents-exposed-far-less-radiation-thought

Quote

[Scientists] have taken the thousands of data points from the Date dosimeters and compared them with the ground-level estimates from the helicopter data. The scientists concluded that actual radiation doses were roughly 15% of what the helicopters were measuring

 

[Could someone please explain this to me?]

1 hour ago, JamesHackerMP said:

Actually, you should make that 60k, not 80k from the page you showed me.

There are maybe 30 ridings with less that 80K. So what? The vast majority of the population is living in ridings of comparable size. 

The constitution is filled with historical crap that is much worse than the over representation of smaller provinces representing less that 10% of the population.

It is not worth worrying about.

 

 

 

 

[Could someone please explain this to me?]

1 hour ago, JamesHackerMP said:

but then there is the matter of your disparity between provinces in the electoral districts.

Not sure what you are talking about. The districts are about as balanced as they can be given the irregular population distribution in the country. It is not reasonable for ridings to cross provincial boundaries nor are physically large ridings desirable so some variation in riding size is perfectly acceptable. If you look at this page http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=cir/list&document=index&lang=e you will see that the vast majority of Canadians live in ridings >80K but < 120K. I see no issue.

[Could someone please explain this to me?]

19 minutes ago, -TSS- said:

Do people in Canada trust that the constituencies, or ridings as you seem to call them, are not gerrymandered but honestly divided to include as equal number of voters as is practically possible?

Gerrymandered ridings don't have straight lines for their boundaries. Most ridings in Canada have straight lines or a natural geographical feature as their boundaries. I think that is fairly good evidence that no gerrymandering is at work. 

Here is an example from Texas where the urban ridings are quite clearly gerrymandered:

Now contrast that with the Vancouver riding map:

 

[Chinese multiculturalism in Richmond, BC.]

13 minutes ago, herples said:

It is only one strata council that is doing this and I am most confident the human rights tribunal will rule in Andreas Kargut's favor. More likely the strata will be forced to adopt English to Mandarin translations. 

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/richmond-townhouse-strata-meetings-revert-back-to-chinese-language-only-amid-human-rights-dispute

 

[Impeachment]

1 hour ago, hernanday said:

Which is exactly my point. White privilege means Obama could be indistinguishable from Clinton and still not get the nomination because of his skin color.

Those words don't mean what you think it means. Nothing in Obama's background would have made him a better candidate than Clinton in 2008. He won because he was black. If anything that would be called "black privilege".

[Impeachment]

5 hours ago, hernanday said:

Constitutional Law professor for 12 years at one of the top law schools in the world and most prestigious US law school, national senator, state senator, ran for congress, author of 2 top selling books,

And this makes him qualified for managing an organization with a trillion dollar budget?  Sorry. It does not. Running a billion dollar company is certainly a better qualification. Obama was white he would be indistinguishable from Clinton and would never have gotten the nomination. So you can say he got his position because of his skin colour. Trump, OTOH, could have been elected with his anti-immigration platform no matter what his race. 

BTW: a degree from Harvard is perhaps the best example of "wealth privilege" that you could find. The only reason so much status is conferred on Americans who graduate from ivy league schools is that status is what the wealthy need to protect their privilege for the children. If Americans wanted to do something about social mobility and "wealth privilege" (the real issue) they could start by changing their attitude toward graduates of schools whose main claim to fame is it costs huge sums of money to attend.

[Chinese multiculturalism in Richmond, BC.]

2 hours ago, taxme said:

If an immigrant who comes here from wherever and they cannot understand English well what are they doing here?

People come here who do not speak English. That is a fact of life. The only question is how to deal with it. Telling a strata corp to use only English even if the majority of residents speak another language is a violation of their free speech rights. The only reasonable requirement that the government should impose is that English has to be one of the languages used and that all documentation with legal significance must be available in English. Whether that is accomplished with the use of translators or by using English from the start is up to the strata council.

[Impeachment]

53 minutes ago, Omni said:

That's correct, and it (the EC) is highly gerrymandered. They ought to dump it.

That word does not think what you think it means. The EC is set up the way the founders thought it should be because the founders believed that state representation matters. That has nothing to with "gerrymandering". To all of the people whinging about the EC: why aren't you complaining about the senate too? 

[Impeachment]

1 minute ago, Omni said:

He actually was elected by a majority of the voters for starters.

So? That is irrelevant. The system in the US balances individual and state representation. States all have an equal number of senators and two extra electoral college votes. This means that if someone wants to be elected president they have to appeal that extends beyond the heavily populated urban states.

[Impeachment]

1 hour ago, hernanday said:

He stands for incompetence and white privilege.  Didn't have to be qualified, didn't have to be intelligent, didn't have to do anything except be white,pale male and politically incorrect.  That is it.  The fact that his detractor cannot see that boggles my mind.

So what did Obama do to qualify for president? Community organizer? Oh right. He's was a black man with good public speaking skills. BTW there is no "white privilege" - only "wealth privilege" . Obama and Trump are both "privileged".

[The US election has taken bigotry to another level]

41 minutes ago, Boges said:

No you aren't. His term is 4 years. Congress could impeach him, but not based on what we've seen already. 

Trump has clearly violated the spirit of the emoluments clause in the US constitution.
Trump is trying to argue the letter of the law by saying that 'fair-value exchange does not constitute a gift'
The ultimate interpretation of that clause is unknown but I think it is pretty clear that congress has grounds to impeach should they be so inclined:

http://time.com/4658633/impeach-donald-trump-congress/

IMO, as long as Trump does what congress wants he will stay. If he tries to bully congress or if the dems retake control he is gone.

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

1 hour ago, The_Squid said:

Australia uses various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. 

Preferential ballot is not PR and I am not that opposed to it. It does not change my point: PMs are disposed in Australia by MPs which gives MPs a lot of power. Canada party constitutions prohibit this and that is why PMs have so much power. If we want to fix that we force parties to change their constitutions ti allow MPs to depose PMs as was originally intended.

BTW: Australia has preferential ballots because the vote on the right was split and a conservative PM thought it would improve their chances. Not unlike the Liberal machinations here.

 

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

46 minutes ago, The_Squid said:

This completely ignores the reality and the complete impotence of an MP if they are not in cabinet.  

Well that is an artifact of the Canadian system where we have allowed parties to control the process. In the UK and Australia MPs have the ability to dispose a sitting PM. We need to bring that back to Canada. Legally entrenching the power of parties is the opposite of where we want to go.

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

5 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

Since you claim there is a large overlap between the two major tyrannical parties, they obviously hold the people hostage for their own payoff far more frequently. You paint minority as monsters, when in fact they are often the victim of the far bigger monsters.

The major parties have to appeal to the large moderate middle. If they piss off those moderates they lose power. This is the way it should be. Under PR these moderate parties can't govern with making payoffs to fringe parties that represent small portions of the electorate. 

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

1 hour ago, ?Impact said:

So tyranny of the 40% is what is good for the country as a whole? Those who don't conform will be assimilated?

Except "tyranny of the 40%" is an "alternative fact" because there is always some overlap between major parties. i.e. the Liberals adopt a number of policies which Conservatives like and vise versa. Governments want to get re-elected and that is not going to happen if they piss off the majority of the population. Under PR the parliamentary dynamics mean small minorities can hold the government hostage unless they get a payoff. Government by blackmail is not good government.

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

4 hours ago, ?Impact said:

FPTP is so bad because is forces people to park their vote in parties that are likely to get 100% of the power that those parties think their are entitled to and actually do exercise. 

Vote "parking" as you call it is called compromise. Something that you seem to think would happen in a world of perpetual minority governments. Why is this bad? The reason I don't like PR is because the compromise occurs after the election and is usually designed to justify the existence of minority parties rather than what is good for the country as a whole. The fact is that governing a diverse country requires a government that can make unpopular decisions from time to time. Regular elections are more than sufficient to provide a check on this power because no government likes to lose power.

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

20 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

You are forgetting the 8.1 million people, representing 59% of the voters, that got 0% say for the next for years - they, the significant majority got screwed. This country is run by parties, and party leaders.

Again - a false premise: you are assuming that every voter is a rabid partisan who can only be represented by the party they voted for on election day. Most voters are more fluid than that and will find that all parties represent their interest some of the time. So it is simply false to say that 59% of the voters got zero say. 100% of voters had their say on election day because they voted. In the next election all parties will want those votes and will keep them in mind when they make policy decisions.

Your view that governing is a cake that can be sliced up and handed out as spoils is also very problematic. It is this kind of thinking is what makes PR so bad because it leads to parties like Green party with 5% of the vote thinking they are entitled to demand concessions that 95% of population does not want. Governing means looking out for interests of the country as a whole.

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

55 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

Let's see, both the Reform party and Progressive Conservative party had more support than the Bloc Québécois in 1993, yet it was the Bloc that became the official opposition. FPTP is completely screwed up in both selecting government as well as opposition. PR doesn't screw anyone, FPTP does including supporting fringe parties.

You are assuming that parties should be the center of the political system and the outcome should be judged by the effect on party standings. That is a false assumption. In 1993 we had 270 or so races to elect MPs. In each one of those races their could be only one winner and the winner had a plurality of votes. No one is getting "screwed".

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

3 hours ago, ?Impact said:

It is very clear the FPTP & Ranked ballots favour major parties, it is almost impossible for a smaller party to get representation in the house with them where a major party can get 100% of the power using them. How can you possibly dispute that fact?

FPTP favors individuals at its core. Parties are not essential to the system and we could do what the NWT does and choose the PM after the election with a free vote among all MPs. Any sort of PR makes parties an essential part of the system and gives fringe parties too much of a say in governance which why the voter gets screwed under PR. Some forms of PR use party lists which takes all control away from the voter since people high on the list can never be voted out unless the party support collapses entirely.

[Electoral Reform Abandoned]

5 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

No, proportional representation will support the voters. FPTP and preferential ballots are ways to screw the voters, they end up giving all the power to a minority of support.

That is your opinion. It is not fact. Many people disagree with your opinion and think the worth of an electoral system is measured with other criteria such as local representation or the whether elections can trigger political housecleaning.

[Impeachment]

Give the system a chance to work. The courts can and should strike down unconstitutional orders.

[What if your employer fired you for supporting Trudeau?]

On 2/3/2017 at 9:15 AM, segnosaur said:

I guess in the grand scheme of things, if you were a Trump supporter I'd have to label  you as being "OK with racism".most always wrong".

Do you think that every person with moral objections to abortion votes for an anti-abortion candidate? If they do will you denigrate them as hypocrites? Voting requires prioritization and it is unreasonable for you to expect that everyone else shares your priorities. When it comes Trump's "racist policies" a voter could reasonably gamble that the courts would prevent him from acting which would make Trump a safer vote than Hillary who promised to enact policies that many people find unacceptable. IOW, Trump was a reasonable choice for people who had fundamental objections to Clinton's policies. The fact that he is a despicable individual does not make it an irrational choice - especially if one believes that the checks and balances built into the US system actually work.