Evening Star

As American Woman pointed out on another thread, that might not be the end of the story: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8110 I think I actually have more respect for Mulroney's government's opposition to US involvement in Nicaragua and their response to Ethiopian famine.

I don't know that much about Glen Clark but I think the difference between Rae's NDP and Doer's NDP (or Dexter's NDP) was mostly one of confidence and preparedness as opposed to a major ideological difference in terms of policy. Both Rae and Doer were centrist New Democrats. I don't see any major reason why Rae's government is a more likely indication of what a federal NDP government would look like than Doer's is. Here's a question for you: do you think Rae's government was more of a disaster for Ontario than McGuinty's (who just won their third election)? If so, why? I'm guessing you dislike both. I've defended both but I'm not sure that McGuinty's policies have been obviously better in any real way.

I'm not really sure what you're on about tbh but i) I also mostly vote NDP federally. I do not, however, have any illusions that every NDP government is great and every Liberal or Conservative government in history has been terrible. ii) My point was just that it's silly to say "Rae's government in Ontario is a good indication of what a federal NDP government would be like" when Rae governed 20 years ago under different conditions; there have been many other NDP governments one could use as a reference, many of whom enjoy better reputations than Rae's (including two that were just re-elected with majorities); AND Rae himself is no longer in the NDP but is in fact leading another party. Moreover, I'm sure that jbg knows this. Having said this, iii) I tend to believe that Rae's early-90s provincial government was actually better than many like to give it credit for anyway. Edit: Ha, somehow I thought Nova Scotia just had an election too. My mistake: there are two NDP majority governments but only one was re-elected this year.

Mulroney probably had a much better record when it comes to the environment and human rights, actually. And Chretien didn't do much to resist US dominance anyway.

Seriously. If anything, it might make more sense to say "Bob Rae's mandate in Ontario is a good precursor of what a Rae-led Liberal mandate in Canada would look like."

I'm sure Joe Clark would be thrilled to hear this. Also, does this mean that you consider Harper's CPC to be a brokerage party then?? "Your mileage may vary": you may disagree with my highly subjective interpretation. Fair enough.

Clark's was a PC minority, not a CPC minority! They're two very different things in my mind. I'd forgotten about Meighen, actually. My reference to minority CPC governments was strictly a reference to Harper's two minorities. I tend to interpret the Liberals' abstentions as tacit support but ymmv. Anyway, what I'll give you is that Douglas's NDP had no expectation of winning an election and heading a government so they had every incentive to work with the Liberals, despite any ideological differences. Despite the ideological ambiguity of the Dion/Ignatieff Liberals, they were clearly hoping to wrest power from the Conservatives and, as such, were probably not 'reliable partners' in the same way. So, ultimately, you're probably right but it's less an issue of having opposing views per se.

(If that's the case, they might well be an improvement.)

I'm having trouble gauging the CAQ. They're centrists and, essentially, federalists, yeah? So are they more or less a substitute for the Liberals without all the baggage of the actual Liberal Party?

I wasn't suggesting that he compromise with the Liberals on anything. That wasn't the point of my post.

This article suggests that public health care may be perfectly sustainable after all. Seems credible to me so far: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Leading-Economist-Shatters-Myth-That-Public-Health-Care-is-Unsustainable-Pins-Blame-1277755.htm

(So my suspicion is that some conservatives actually believe the latter but claim the former in order to undermine the legacy that they hope to destroy.)

I mean, you can't have it both ways: if you believe that the Liberals are a brokerage party (as I believe you've said before), then their 'views' are not fundamentally opposed to or incompatible with the CPC's; there's no reason why a Lib-Con alliance is less likely than a Lib-NDP alliance, especially if the CPC has more power. They seemed to work reasonably well as partners in the CPC minority Parliaments imo. If you really think that the Liberals hold views that are fundamentally opposed to the Conservatives', then they're not just a corrupt brokerage party at all: you're saying that they really have strong principles and values.

First definition of "fair" in the 'British Dictionary' on my Mac (Oxford British Dictionary of English, I believe): Letting a 12-year-old stay up later than an 8-year-old is fair: the 8-year-old will also get to stay up later when he becomes 12. Thus, he is not being disfavoured or discriminated against. I don't see how this is analogous to the situation of Catholic school funding. Certainly, if everyone contributes to the same secular public school board, they would be treated equally without discrimination.

Is political expediency one of the criteria for a good argument now? Is this a new development in logic?

Cars are mass produced to basically be identical to other cars of the same make and model. Human beings are not manufactured in anything close to the same way. Thus, it seems much less reliable to say that people of type x have characteristic y than it is to make generalized statements about the performance of models of cars. Seems pretty straightforward.

That's your counter-argument? The world is unfair so we should never do anything about that unfairness? I'll give you that I was mostly venting on this thread since the status quo seems so obviously wrong to me. The best 'argument' I can come up with after a couple of beers: i) Even though it is not part of the Canadian constitution, I do believe that church and state should be separate. This is just a core belief that I hold. Reams have been written about this principle already so I'm not sure that it would be a worthwhile exercise for me to actually argue this belief myself from first principles on an Internet message board. ii) Whatever Catholic schools might be doing to make their schools less Catholic, they still clearly have some affiliation with Catholicism or they wouldn't be called "Catholic schools". And MCC's posts suggest that these are not insignificant. Thus, if church and state should not be separate, as I believe, public funding should not be provided for these schools, i.e. I do not believe that people should be able to direct their tax dollars towards Catholic schools. The argument could (and probably should) end right here. But to continue: iii) It is not as though this system is standard practice in other jurisdictions anyway so I do not think that this is simply an issue of my inability to adjust to a basic condition of the universe. iv) Having said this, if we need to have a system in place where people get to choose where to send the portion of their tax dollars that go towards education, it seems especially unfair that the only two options are "secular public schools" and "Catholic schools". In a multicultural (and here's something that is official government policy) society, I believe that it is fundamentally unfair to allow people to direct their tax dollars towards Catholic schools but not towards Jewish schools or Hindu schools or Satanist schools or secular humanist schools etc. It is essentially preferential treatment for a particular faith. While I do not personally support a John Tory-style system of funding schools that cater to every faith-based school board, it would at least be less unjust in my eyes than the existing system. v) I believe that fairness is a principle that has value and that when it come to matters of public policy that human beings create in the first place and have the ability to change, fairness can and should be taken into account.

Uh, yeah, I do think the LPC were effectively partners with the CPC. Do you think Pearson was a Tommy Douglas-style Fabian socialist? Anyway, "he hasn't had a majority for very long yet" seems like a weak reason to pick someone as the all-time greatest PM, equivalent to "Clark would have been the greatest PM but he just didn't have the chance for long enough".

I like the idea that the answer to this question is "tax-free savings accounts".

So it's not that the money isn't there. You just want the responsibility shifted more to the provinces.

Thought public day care was meant for people who do work?

I'm not convinced about this yet. Do you have figures on the cost of Tory tax cuts (throw in the TFSA as well) vs the cost of sustaining health care funding? (And what is the cost of "discussing environmental initiatives"?)

Got to give him this one.

It's not about the money for me. It's an issue of principle. (And, yes, the existing Catholic schools could be converted to public schools without too much difficulty. Besides the name change, it would mean that religion classes would be dropped and that all the policies MCC mentions would be changed.)

So you're agreeing with me that it's not unconstitutional but is just politically risky? We're on the same page then.