Evening Star

I've never been an Ignatieff fan but: More arts/culture funding, less of a business-oriented focus for SSHRC funding, less restriction of govt scientists' communication with the media, preservation of the mandatory long-form census, no anti-abortion foreign aid policies, less funding of Bible colleges, less severe drug policies, less of a focus on building prisons. I do agree that they'd be pretty close on other major issues.

This is correct: from http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/03/04/pol-kenney-letter-reax.html

Hm... Which Sarah Palin or George W. Bush quote should I pull out first...?

You know the root of the word "English", right? (Hint: It's not "America".)

Me? My impulse is to agree with you but, honestly, I don't know that much about military equipment or our military's needs.

I suspected that factors like these would enter into it... Honestly, it doesn't seem reasonable to try to regulate/legislate how people dress or who they can marry. Someone already gave the example of Orthodox Jews wearing yarmulkes. By the way, I can say from direct observation and experience that one of the great things about Canada is that even when traditional parents try to control their children's lives in terms of dating and marriage, the children tend to exercise their freedom of choice anyway. Do you see any contradiction here? I'm not sure that all Canadians have accepted this, including our present ruling party. (It's plain fact that many American people have not accepted this.) I would also oppose this. Sadly, many Canadians do still believe in the death penalty. I certainly don't see anything wrong with learning languages. It's a valuable skill that more people could benefit from (myself included). We have established compulsory educational standards as it is.

It has been government policy for four decades. We live in a democracy. Surely this could have changed by now, if Canadians wanted it to.

The staffer has already resigned: (from the Globe article in the OP) And the targeting of 'ethnic communities' was not what anyone was concerned about.

Come on, the disappearance of the manufacturing sector doesn't have anything to do with McGuinty. If anything, his stimulus spending has probably softened the blow in cities like Windsor. Blame NAFTA or globalization or the American auto companies if you need to blame someone.

See, this gets at why I asked my question upthread. The term "integration" is a little problematic... I'm mainly interested in whether immigrants are finding employment and obeying laws. (So I'm totally fine with this hypothetical fellow working for his uncle.) I suspect that some of the immigration sceptics want more than this however...

(Clearly, if they're able to balance their budgets, it seems that those tax rates are not hampering productivity to the point where revenue is actually diminished.)

Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean when they talk about the "integration" of immigrants? Just finding employment, participating in elections, and obeying the law? Or does this mean something more?

I agree, which is why I question this government's spending priorities. The huge increase for Correctional Services, for example, seems unwarranted, given all the other areas that need money.

Makes sense to me... In any case, we agree about the Senate and the foolishness of this particular stunt.

Because Bob Rae is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to NDP provincial governments. NDP governments in SK and MB have run balanced budgets many times since the 30s. (xpost)

Yeah, I actually agree that this is a stupid referendum proposal but when someone attempts to generally discredit the NDP's record with provincial economies by saying "One word: BOBRAE", it doesn't really suggest that he is being more thoughtful than the ostensible 'emoting classes'.

GWiz, I don't really have anything against this thread. I just don't have that much to add. I would tend to oppose Layton making a deal with Harper if it means some BS deal where we increase spending and reduce corporate taxes at the same time. However, what I've read does not necessarily suggest that that's what's going on. (AFAIK, Layton did bring up corporate taxes when they met.) I also don't think that Layton should refuse to even talk to Harper. I'm waiting to see how it plays out. My suspicion, honestly, was that Layton mostly wanted to get media coverage for some of his major kitchen-table policy proposals. As such, it worked.

Yeah, this sounds especially dubious:

Did the Fraser Institute make their calculation based on total tax dollars or by averaging the percentage of each person's income that is paid in taxes? If the former, I think I'm still right. If the latter, then it gets more complicated. I'll concede that I'm not an economist and haven't actually looked at the Fraser Institute's figures anyway.

Say what you will about the NDP, this is certainly not true of them. They've got pages of specific proposals listed on their website and have even been actively putting forth private members' bills. I can virtually guarantee you won't agree with most of them, though.

They say more than that: (from http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/tax-freedom-day-not-really ) You're technically right that "one could also say that inclusion of very low income earners also distorts the picture". However, what is important is that the "wealthiest income groups" are actually a relatively small number of people who hold a very large proportion of the wealth in the country. As such, this seems to be a greater distortion: http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2006/12/07/wealth-distribution-in-canada/ http://www.td.com/economics/special/dt1206_wealth.jsp

Stream online: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/youshouldhavestayedathome/

I have to question this as well. The 1982 Constitution was ratified by every province except Quebec.

But what would you actually change from their current actions? They are primarily focusing on bread-and-butter economic issues at the moment.

The LPC has been quite neoliberal ('right-wing') on the economy for about 20 years now, although they seem to shifting surprisingly to the left now, at least in rhetoric. And Ignatieff's views on foreign policy are generally known to be rather in line with American neoconservatism (though he rejects the label), to the point of strongly publicly supporting the Bush administration at the time of the invasion of Iraq and defending the use of torture in maintaining US hegemony and 'counterterrorism'. Again, now that he's actually in party politics, who knows what he'll do? Edit: So, according to Wiki, he would not apply the label of "torture" to the practices he endorses but you can judge whether it fits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ignatieff#The_Lesser_Evil_approach