Evening Star

While I would never vote CPC, I can understand why someone would. They've at least been competent. It's easy for them to excuse the huge deficits by saying they were necessary to soften the blow of the recession and pointing to Canada's relatively strong economic performance. Note that I don't give the CPC credit for these things and even suspect ulterior motives for the deficit. I can, however, see how they could spin these things. They've lowered taxes, which makes people happy. And, furthermore, the Liberals have not offered a particularly compelling alternative vision. I'm not sure that they've offered a clear vision in any area other than foreign policy, where the differences between them and the CPC are real but not major enough to make a big difference in an election. They've mostly voted along with the CPC and the ideological difference between Ignatieff and Harper, at least the Harper that we've seen in power, are not huge. (I do think that with any other leader - Bob Rae, Ujjal Dosanjh, Gerard Kennedy, Dominic Leblanc, Justin Trudeau even - the Liberals could potentially be a much more compelling alternative.) As it is, the NDP and Bloc seem to be the parties who appear to offer something truly different and voters who are not prepared to go that far may find themselves backing the CPC.

There's a difference between speculating the worst about a government and actual evidence that an outgoing govt left a hidden deficit (which seems to undermine your characterization of how the 'left' and 'right' operate in this province). We know, for example, that the federal Liberals did not leave a deficit for the CPC. Besides, we also don't know for sure that McGuinty won't win next year.

See, I would have said the same thing about what McGuinty had to contend with in terms of the hidden deficit the PCs left him. I don't think the eco-fees were a terrible idea, for the reason Michael gives, but I can see how it makes some sense to cancel them if people were that upset. Overall, I'd tend to agree with Hampton though that the producer should pay.

Actually, the CBC article makes it sound like his background is pretty corporate:

I don't know that that necessarily seems like the alternative for people in some of the particular communities that recruiters target...

OK, yes, I read the enlistment contract and it is quite clear. This is a messy situation, where it does seem that people can be pressured and/or misled into joining a military to fight potentially unjust wars, but you're right that they are adults who are making voluntary choices to sign a contract. Hm.

But why should we not give sanctuary to people who object to just the Iraq War. It is a matter of record that the rationale given was false, by Bush's own admission. http://intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=298775 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/02/george-bush-iraq-interview Doesn't seem quite fair to require people to risk their lives in this context.

How do you figure this? By looking at the total population of the city, including children and other people who are not eligible voters? In a three-way race, he got 40% of the vote from those who were eligible to vote and chose to do so. We don't know what the remaining eligible voters wanted, since they clearly didn't bother to express it on election day, but we can't say for sure that they didn't want Nenshi or that they prefer someone else. By the way, this was the highest turnout for Calgary in three decades: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Calgarians+flood+voting+stations/3692722/story.html?cid=megadrop_story

Fair enough, actually. I guess we'll see what Parliament makes of it.

I mean, it does seem, looking at the article, that Pat Martin and Michael Ignatieff have pointed to specific instances of overspending.

I agreed with both of you, actually (including your posts from before Black Dog posted here).

I get what you're saying. At the same time, the difference between $679 million and $20 million (for the UK summit in 2009) seems hard to attribute to bookkeeping issues like this. I don't know much about accounting though. I will grant that our security was better than the UK's.

Yeah, I actually quite agree with Dancer here.

FWIW, this document gives some rough comparative costs between different summits. I'm not sure if it's by U of T students or faculty: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:G77syU18H_EJ:www.g7.utoronto.ca/evaluations/factsheet/factsheet_costs.pdf+g20+summit+cost&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgbDf8EqF4sfGiicHMN9_Sh85WF-shoacH86wQqh6lYxOhfj-KQqE-WQYjnjgBK7Q_yaS2HcoR5sQAWOi-Z91OjzLd1WDZYT3QNMvv0uQH1o9-MqviIs-l7QaHMjfE_VVJld0qN&sig=AHIEtbRQw5u6LzJRT0wYvzSKjbEH9H1UrA While their estimated G8 summit costs don't seem too wildly out of line with the costs of other summits, the G20 costs do look high. Segnosaur is right that I can't point to specific instances of overspending since I don't have the actual budget or know the typical costs of the individual items. Still, it does seem that we spent more than other countries have and that, despite this, our security was still less effective than it should have been.

Ha, that still doesn't deal with

I'm not sure what you mean by "those hard to the left" but as far as "proponents of Liberal multiculturalism" go, Trudeau himself was a churchgoing Catholic, as are e.g. Turner, Chretien, and McGuinty. (At least the latter three identify as Catholics. Not sure about their church attendance. Mulroney too, for that matter.) I don't really see how it's ever been open season on Catholic traditions, especially considering how e.g. Catholic schools still get full public funding in Ontario.

We treat them the same way that we treat Catholics, who, as you explained yourself, also practise sexism. We allow them to practise their beliefs, within reason, in their private religious spaces.

That's the distinction that makes it not sexist?? As your own example shows, 'liberals' don't for the most part intervene in the private practices of believers of other faiths. That doesn't mean anyone is embracing subjugation of women in public spaces.

Maybe the Ottawa Valley and western Quebec should form their own province?

Because it's spinning multiculturalism - and the resulting social changes, which are an obvious and not unintended effect of any multiculturalism policy - as some sort of outrageous conspiracy. Or maybe there is something about the British context that I need to grasp. In any case, it does not seem to me that there was anything blatantly secretive or conspiratorial about Canada's policies wrt immigration and multiculturalism. As justme notes: By the time of the 1984 and 1988 elections, the social effects of multiculturalism and immigration should have been evident. Canadians continued to support these policies, even the right-wing party. Presumably, this was because enough people actually liked the social changes.

In Windsor: http://www.citywindsor.ca/003338.asp 6 mayoral candidates, with two clear front-runners (Eddie Francis and Rick Limoges) 5 candidates for councillor in my ward, with two front-runners again 5 candidates for two public school board positions in my ward

I mean, seriously, Winnipeg? Minneapolis??

I can see how this could be possibly true of Thunder Bay, since it is so far west, but I'd be amazed if this were generally true of Northern Ontario. Even with Thunder Bay, it only makes sense to me to the same extent that many people in Buffalo feel closer to Toronto than to NYC. (TBH, I think upstate NY has more to complain about than Northern Ontario.)

All that article has taught me is that the Daily Mail is in fact as creepy as my British friends tell me it is.

Were people voting for Trudeau thinking that his policies concerning multiculturalism and immigration would promote a "society defined by a common religion, language and traditions"? (Or two languages and sets of cultural traditions in Canada's case?) I don't even get how this is some sort of secret plot. Did Mulroney continue those policies in the 80s because he was under this impression? Is it not possible that people might have realized and noticed that these policies would cause changes in society and that people might have liked some of these changes?