Queenmandy85

How much does it cost for a trip by the Vice President of the US?

The cheapest and simplist system would be to get rid of the splinter parties altogether. No Social Credit, no NDP, PPC, Greens, or Bloc. We return to a two party system with the Grits and Tories. Lets forget idiotic ideology and vote on the basis of who is the best administrator.

If we absolutely wanted to change the voting system, about the only way would be have run-off elections in those ridings where no candidate received a majority. Two weekes after the first vote, the two candidates that received to most votes in their constituency would be on the second ballot. Of course, it would be much more expensive.

How would you get PR to work in our system? As voters, we are electing our Member of Parliament. So, you have about 4 names on the ballot. One candidate receives 41% of the vote, another 31%, another 16% and the fourth one gets 12%. How do they divide up the seat? Does one get 41% of the sitting days per session? etc. What order would they sit over the session. Do they share a second residence in Ottawa? Are they paid proportionally? PR is a slick NDP trick that would only result in Parliamentary chaos like they have in Italy, Germany and Israel.

I guess that makes me one of the Conservative Party's Red Guards...?‍♂️

The only Conservatives to ever form a government were Red Tories. I'm a Red Tory, so I win. It would be a bad thing for both countries. We are very different cultures. The United State is a great country, but I wouldn't fit in. Our communists would take over their communists because we have better politicians. I will say, the Sheriffs Deputies in Omak Washington are the BEST.

Insightful commentary as always, my friend. ?

Why not? What sort of change are you looking for?

That would be a fast track to be sucked into the American maw. Remember the Conservative Party's campaign motto: "No truck nor trade with the yankees." Why do you hate the French language? You want to travel, but French is the language you need in most countries if they don't speak English. If you seriously wanted to defeat Prime Minister Trudeau, you would be working to elect Mr. Charest, Mr. Aitkinson or Mr. Brown as leader of the CPC.

Jock Andrews. My response to Mr. Andrews was published in the Edmonton Journal. The only bilingual Province in Canada is New Brunswick. The rest of us are unilingual. I remember when Alberta was a have not province and Saskatchewan only stopped getting equalization payments because Stephen Harper broke his promise. The value of having French is it is one more cultural difference with the Americans. French was traditionally the language of Court. We never had a king who spoke English until John. I understand it is the second unofficial language of Florida. ?

I don't know what you are talking about. The election is only 3 years away. When is the next AGM for your riding association? You should be getting ready to stack the executive now?

Regardless of whether climate change is real or not, a massive shift to nuclear power around the world will allow us to extend petroleun reserves for more centuries, because when there is no longer viable supplies of lubricating oil, nothing moves. No electricity, no vehicles, no trains, only sailing ships...we return to the dark ages. The same applies to coal and iron. Why the rush to burn up our coal and oil now? These resources belong to future generations too.

There is no "if." To get people on board, we have to minimize the sacrifice. The Amazon rain forest is the "lungs of the earth." It is vanishing. The other factor is photo plankton in the oceans that is dying off due to acidification. The addition heat we have now is melting the permafrost, releasing all that methane that has been locked up for thousands of years. Nuclear power is the only energy source available that can meet the needs of the planet. If we start now building lots of nuclear power plants around the world, we have a better chance of turning this around. The thing we have to face is that we need to stop emitting carbon, not for a few years or even a few centuries. This is literally a long term project over millennia. We can never allow what we have done over the last 250 years to ever happen again. We also need to reduce the population to under 1.5 billion, and never let it get back up. If we are successful in transitioning away from burning oil, we may be able to conserve it for an extra few centuries and try to find an alternative viable lubrication source.

"Democracy is the political theory that the people should get the government they want...good and hard." H. L. Menken We get the government we deserve. The election of the current government is our fault, because we did not work hard enough for someone better.

No. You nominate someone everybody knows, likes and trusts. You get together with your friends and pick someone from your community who fills that criteria. You all go out and sell memberships, but quietly, because others will have the same idea. You put your candidate's name forward for the nomination. Because he / she is well known in the community, he'll already have members who know him and are prone to support him. On the night of the nominating meeting, you fill the hall with all the memberser you have recruited and overwhelm to opposition. After she / he wins the nomination you get the organization to begin preparing for the time the writ drops. Your people take the candidate around the constituency to make sure every voter knows and trusts her. If you don't know your candidate and your MP, it is not just her fault. It is your duty as a citizen to know who you are voting for. Politics is not a spectator sport. You have to participate or it isn't any fun.

But everybody has the opportunity to nominate a candidate they do like. If you refuse, or don't care to participate, you are leaving the choice up to others. Those candidates you don't like were chosen by people who do like them. If you don't campaign, you have no right to complain. Would you trust someone else to buy a car for you and then would you complain because you don't like it? Electing your candidate for MLA, MNA, MPP or MP is no different. You need to get to know the people involved and organize your friends to make your needs known. We only get the opportunity to vote every few years, but the organizing for the nomination meeting takes months, if not years.

Is this what you learned in your physics classes?

You might be right. The suggestion of committees selcting people from working men and women sounds familiar. Then it came to me. It was implemented about a century ago. Working people formed committees and created a governing system that lasted about 70 years. It was suggested by a political theorist named Ulyanov. They called them workers committees and they created a network of committees who selected the head workers committee. The term workers committee translated into their language was "soviet." The network of Soviets was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the head workers committee was the Supreme Soviet. Tovarich Ulyanov went by the alias Lenin.

Your basic premise is to eliminate elections. So, you would be happy with drafting a security guard or a mechanical engineer with no legal training to be voting on the estimates and the budget and to be overseeing trade negociations like NAFTA? How would you vet people who hold views that are outside social boundaries, and thus not reflective of the people in their riding. Who is going to volunteer to select these MP's and how do you deal with volunteers who are unacceptable to many people in the constituency? I know a couple of wing nuts in the local Peoples Party who would love to volunteer to select the MP. Parliament votes on hundreds of bills a year. You are suggesting all those bills be subject to public referendums. We have had two federal referendums in our history. Remmember Meech? That one referendum consummed months of chaos with zero result. You want to multiply that by hundreds? You would basically be duplicating the Senate, only without the competance current Senators bring to governing. How would the Ministry be able to hold the confidence of the House with that kind of system?

I'm not sure what the issue is with the carbon tax. The purpose is to get people to lower emissions. It is like the GST. It is a voluntary tax. You reduce your tax burden by consuming less. The alternative is rationing. As we saw in the Second World War, rationing works, but it is expensive and draconian. That is where we are headed though. The other alternative is to throw your decendents into the oven and put it on broil. Actually, they will die of thirst before that.

How many people do you know who have the blend of legal expertise, the aptitude for governing and the personal financial resourses to put their career and family life on hold for 4 - 8 years, supporting two residences and willing to put in the time. All that if you are drafted. If you are not selected, you are out thousand of dollars it cost you to go through the selection process. Also, who is going to be on the selection committee. How will you stop the lawmakers from increasing their salaries.

I was going to say the Harper government, since it came out of Reform that was the spawn of Social Credit, but okay, no, ther has never been another party in power ither than the grits and tories, thank God.

What ever floats your boat.

I'll defer answering that to your physician.

Anyway, on your proposal to merge the grits with the NDP, all that would accomplish is to split the vote on the left even more. As a tory, I'm fine with that, unless Poilievre gets to be CPC leader. In that case, Jagmeet can start measuring the curtains in Stornaway.