Evening Star

Voted Trudeau, in the same way that Lincoln or FDR were more divisive than Gerald Ford. Greater accomplishments create greater divisions.

No one has backed this up with anything but anecdotes so far.

But at least acknowledge that this is a different issue than actually trying to block/silence/censor/shut down a media outlet. The issue of funding the network with our cable fees is the specific issue addressed by the petition (regardless of what language is used or what hidden motives anyone might perceive). Why shouldn't Canadians care about their cable fees? Since all Canadians fund the CBC, it makes sense that it should be made available to all Canadians. I don't know the details of every network that has a must-carry licence but I have to assume that the decisions are made on the basis of whether a public good is served by this. I certainly think it's fair to question that in this case. Whether TVA should have a must-carry licence is a separate issue. "American-style hate media" may or may not be a simplistic OTT generalization but I can't see how it could be interpreted as a slur against all Americans, certainly no more so than if I were to describe the Sun as "British-style tabloid sensationalism". It's clearly a reference to a particular sort of media outlet that is found in the US. Of course, you are always free to lodge a hate speech complaint against Avaaz on those grounds and see how well you do...

Actually, it's 15%, sorry.

Yeah, lol @ "widely suspected", sorry. Also, at the idea that the country could benefit from the secession of a provincial capital and financial centre of the country, whose metro population is approaching 20% of the whole country's.

They're not trying to interfere in what Canadians "get to watch". They're getting involved in the question of whether a channel should become a mandatory part of cable packages, which is a different issue. Both groups have the right to get involved in these debates as long as they abide by Canadian laws.

Yeah, this sounds like fearmongering. The groups should certainly abide by Canadian laws but if they've been investigated and have not been found to be doing anything illegal, what's the issue? Foreign-owed businesses and media spread information and opinions all the time. Even the Post article acknowledges If Avaaz has no dedicated staff devoting at least 20% of their time to pressuring Canadian public office holders, however, it needn’t register, likely making all of this legal.

Ha, your WorldNews link pretty much convinced me to support it though.

Um, what is this actually based on? I don't have a strong position on the registry but I'm curious why you think police groups have been lining up in favour of it if it is in fact ineffective at preventing crime or at least making it easier to track criminals and weapons.

Incorporating a feedback mechanism doesn't have to mean a privatized option though. Maybe people are relatively satisfied and complacent because, like me, they think the system is mostly working very well?

I'll be honest, though, that I don't know exactly what is involved with the accreditation process for foreign-trained doctors and am mostly going by things I've heard from others.

Not exactly the same as making a life-threatening error on a prescription? (Also, many educated Indians speak English without a difficult accent, although I suppose that's in the ear of the beholder. Should we also slow the accreditation process or require accent coaches for doctors from e.g. Scotland or New Zealand or West Virginia?)

Wait, which countries that rank above the US on that chart are you including in the developed world? Brazil?

Yeah, that comment was specifically in response to bush_cheney2004's comments about the US system.

How many people with a medical education from India have major problems with the English language? Seriously, I'd be interested in numbers on that. What are the differences in basic medical training? Not saying they don't exist, just curious how serious they are and how fairly they are represented in the current requirements wrt accreditation.

As for Mays' theory, it seems plausible enough, especially given the dumb shit Ignatieff has said (one reason why I remain a federal NDP voter BTW).

It does seem though that things could be helped along by e.g. speeding up the accreditation of doctors from countries such as India.

Sorry, I wasn't myself trying to make any comment on punked, whom I don't know well and often agree with AFAICT, or whatever his or her 'attitude' may be.

Actually, I'm not 100% convinced of this. My experiences with US health care did not leave me especially impressed and it will take more than sheer assertions to change my mind. From Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada#Cross-border_health_care : A study by Barer, et al., indicates that the majority of Canadians who seek health care the U.S. are already there for other reasons, including business travel or vacations. A smaller proportion seek care in the U.S. for reasons of confidentiality, including abortions, mental illness, substance abuse, and other problems that they may not wish to divulge to their local physician, family, or employer. * Canadians offered free care in the US paid by the Canadian government have sometimes declined it. In 1990 the British Columbia Medical Association ran radio ads asking, "What's the longest you'd wait in line at a bank before getting really annoyed? Five minutes? Ten minutes? What if you needed a heart operation?" Following this, the government responded, as summarized by Robin Hutchinson, senior medical consultant for the health ministry's heart program. Despite the medically questionable nature of heart bypass for milder cases of chest pain and follow-up studies showing heart bypass recipients were only 25-40% more likely to be relieved of chest pain than people who stay on heart medicine, the "public outcry" following the ads led the government to take action: "'We did a deal with the University of Washington at Seattle' said Hutchinton..to take 50 bypass cases at $18,000 per head, almost $3,000 higher than the cost in Vancouver, with all the money [paid by] the province..In theory, the Seattle operations promised to take the heat off the Ministry of Health until a fourth heart surgery unit opened in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster. If the first batch of Seattle bypasses went smoothly..then the government planned to buy three or four more 50-head blocks. But for weeks after announcing the plan, health administrators had to admit they were stumped. 'As of now..we've have nine people sign up. The opposition party, the press, everybody's making a big stink about our waiting lists. And we've got [only] nine people signed up! The surgeons ask their patients and they say, "I'd rather wait," We thought we could get maybe two hundred and fifty done down in Seattle..but if nobody wants to go to Seattle, we're stuck,'".[72] * In a Canadian National Population Health Survey of 17,276 Canadian residents, it was reported that only 0.5% sought medical care in the US in the previous year. Of these, less than a quarter had traveled to the U.S. expressly to get that care.[73] * A 2002 study by Katz, Cardiff, et al., reported the number of Canadians using U.S. services to be "barely detectible relative to the use of care by Canadians at home" and that the results "do not support the widespread perception that Canadian residents seek care extensively in the United States."[74] I'm not saying our system is perfect by any means and I'm willing to believe that there may be better systems in the world. But, actually, punked's belief that we can maintain our system with higher taxes seems quite sensible to me. Why is this so wrong?

Wait, your only comment about the NDP I found on that thread was a comment about punked's attitude, which isn't typical of all New Democrats.

When has something like this happened, that mainstream scientific opinion was totally neglected by the press in favour of a fringe view? Interference by politicians is a much more dangerous threat to public information. But the point is that the more mainstream scientific information did get out and was heard and accepted by the majority. Quacks will always find some audience and they have a right to! You can't expect non-specialists to read and understand peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings. I certainly don't expect non-specialists to do so for journals in my field. The mainstream media is the general public's primary source of information.

It seems like it should be quite easy for other scientists or higher-ranking people in the ministry to then contradict one rogue scientist's claims in cases like this. Segnosaur, you're obviously right that this policy doesn't impact communication within the scientific community but ToadBrother has made what are IMO excellent points about how publicly funded scientists should be able to communicate to the public via the mainstream media without needing political approval. That is what is being threatened by this policy and it is important.

I dunno, do you think this issue is crucial enough to urban voters that they will switch allegiances because of it? AFAIK, the NDP has always been split this way on gun control, right? I'm an urban NDP voter, federally, and I lean towards supporting the registry, though I'll be the first to admit both that it's not the most important issue to me and that I am not extremely knowledgeable about it. It would be one thing if my MP was to vote against the registry but I sure as hell wouldn't change my vote just because Jack Layton allowed his rural caucus to vote against the registry if they wanted to. (Honestly, even my own MP's vote on this one issue would probably not be enough to get me to vote Liberal, especially considering that the NDP has owned my riding for the past decade anyway.)

Why would it be unprincipled for him to allow his caucus members to vote according to their consciences and their constituents' wishes?

Yeah, on Afghanistan, I side with the NDP not the Liberals. I even said that I scarcely trust Ignatieff any better on that score. Actually, speaking of immigration issues, at least the NDP should be able to get some mileage out of the immigration reforms in Bill C-50. (It should be the sort of thing that the Liberals would normally ride but, given that they abstained on the vote, it might be a little hard. ToadBrother is right about the current 'coalition'.)