fellowtraveller

I don';t mind if you tell the moderators, but I'm begging you not to tell Mom or the teacher.Why am I required in your mind to respect Jack Layton? Is it because he is dead?

and he can sleep in his own bed every night.

Where does it say I am required to respect St Jacques?

Are you developing a stutter. Muclair could have visited the oilsands and met with Muclair right after, while all that new information was fresh in his head. Instead, the politics of hate and division. in the tradition of Saint Jacques. is 'Alberta is f**king Ontario and Harper is helping'. Nice.

You are being wilfully blind if you think Mulcair is not trying to wedge ontario and the West, not coincidentally the power bases of the Tories. It is a natural political ploy and may play well in Central Canada, but unlike you I won't put lipstick on the pig. He could have at least had the courtesy to schedule his trip so he could nmeet with the Premier, but like his predecessor he has no interest in courting anything on this side of the country. Pointless, innit. Instead, he'll do the minimum: flyby, presser with full phot ops, gone for another year.

I have no love for Charest. But as a political manouever, there is no reason to delay an election call, he has a couple of wonderful rallying points given to him giftwrapped. And if only 40% of students voted, about the same % of general voters took part as well- and they are far, far more numerous. Note also that the 25% of students who took part in the boycott seriously pissed off the rest of the student body by denying them an education. How will they vote. Anyway, the student vote is nothing compared to the general populace. There are parallels to the recent Alberta election..... The tide was turned there by huge numbers of people who were motivated to get off their asses and vote, the turnout shot up dramatically, about 18% which is massive. Can Charest get them out by pointing to the unions and students and rallying them with the story that these folks are going to cost them even more money, even higher taxes. It is a powerful tool. Everybody in Quebec is paying attention, many have taken sides. Of course, the unions already had a side and vote for the PQ, They will have trouble now convincing the middle class to come their way. Consider that the middle class are the ones that will have to pay whatever eduation costs. Their choice is to pay big subsidies or pay big subsidies plus some more. Charest could do OK on that point. More importantly, combined with the nastiness on the streets every day, he could get ut a vote that is sympathetic to not paying more.

Fixed it for you. Classic wedge politics by the NDP. a 10 minute flyby with a token wave to local politicians, then a big press conference to analyze the findings. The only question is will Tom manage to fellate the entire province of Ontario in a single presser?

I believe the ideas is to provide as many vehicles as possible for Canadians to save for their retirement, which will perhaps reduce the mighty burden about to descend on the spawn of the boomers. RRSPS, TSFA, deferred OAS, modified CPP, private pensions, corporate pensions, pooled pensions- all to take the heat off the few remaining working people in a generation or so.

Why is the UN in the travel industry?

Disagree.By far the main deterrence to WW3 has been the existence and cohesion of NATO, not the UN. The Warsaw Pact countries had no fear of the UN, but had no desire to get frisky with NATO. Try as we might we are violent, tribal creatures who constantly feel the need to dominate others. The best deterrent to that is superior force, the certainty that serious misbehaviour will be met with overwhelming defeat by force if necessary. The UN could presumably serve the same function as NATO in fielding a strong combat force, but that would involve a loss of command that many nations cannot tolerate. THat is the UNs fault, not NATOs.

Incorrect. This meeting has been schedfuled for about a year. The focus has nothing to do with Mulcair, and a lot to do with Alison Redford. She campaigned for both leadership and the Alberta election on the need for a national energy strategy, and this meeting will kickstart it. Next stop: the upcoming Federation meeting this summer. Note also that Mulcairs comments were not on the agenda. Note also that the gutless Mulcair picked a day when he knew Redford would be out of province (out of country actually) to accept her invitation to visit Alberta and the oil sands for a few minutes. Tommy is a real consensus builder. Actually he is just following the tradition of St Jacques, who always had different things to say publicly depending on whether he was in Quebec or those rare times he came to AB.

Convicted murderers are released all the time to return to society.At least in his case we know why he killed and what prevents him from repeating it. And of course he was sentenced, you have to have something on paper to confine anybody. His verdict was not guilty, because he did not have mental capacity to commit a crime. His sentence was indeterminate, no minimum or maximum.

What is to stop any convicted murderer from killing again while in prison? Answer: nothing. There are no guarantees. What is to stop Li from murdering sagfe house staff? The threat of going back to hospital? Why would that stop him. What bothers me is that his crime was not just horrific, it was planned. He bough a knife. He bought a bus ticket. He got on the bus. I can accept that he was crazy, but I don't accept that he can just be released with the promise of taking meds. Tracking devices are not foolproof, but when taking it off or tampering with it means back to the nuthouse will make his lizard brain think twice. I don't really give a shit about the civil liberties implications of a life sentence of having to wear a tracking device.

Yep, that is exactly what life in AB is like. And the OP is spot on about the lack of infrastructure, if only we had schools and hospitals here.

You wish. Chretien and Martin failed to get me to register or pay, how is Harper going to swing it? You have no idea how many people defied the registration process. Why would that change now?