fellowtraveller

I nominate the usual source: Alberta. Those redneck fascists deserve to pay.

August, interesting OP and I agree with you for the most part. This bit is most germane This must surely panic the separatistes as well as the soft nationalists. Qubec has had great success in leveraging their vote and threat of separating into gaining advanatge, economic adanvtage, from Ottawa. With this election and no need for Quebec seats, that elverage is largely gone. With the Bloc out, the threat of separation- which is no longer scary to the many Canadians who are more or less resigned to a departure- is reduced, the threat is diminished.And the poor NDP are carrying the load for la belle province..... there are great expectations of them from within Quebec and they really have little in the way of tools to make htem happen- and risk really alienating their base in the ROC if they should somehow succeed in advancing a Quebec agenda. I don't agree with a shift to the West, nothing in that regard has changed, the big electoral shift for the Tories was in the center, in Ontario. There won't be a seat 'redistribution', but hopefully there will be some alignm,ent realized where the large increases in population in Ontario, AB and BC are ackowledged, while the growth stagnation in Quebec and overallotment in the Maritimes are simply adressed in the Coomons. It will be interesting to see how Quebec objects to that and the NDP opposes it. NDP is gonna have some hard rain ahead.

I support Bob Rae 110% in his leadership bid and hope he is around in 4 years to contest an election with Harper or whomever runs. Bob could take that Liberal seat count into single digits without breaking a sweat. Chretien is the new Mulroney, watching the decay and collapse of a political empire and taking no repsonsibility for his pivotal role in the dismemberment.

You left out the msot important reason the CPC have rebuilt and succeeded n the last couple of decades- they have moved top the center. Of course, the center is the Liberals happy place. Aside from their leadership issues, they have to figuire out how to budge the Cons from that vote rich middle ground. It won't be easy. And I peg the serious demise with Chretien, who I believe to be possibly the worst PM in our history. He left magically unscathed by Adscam, or at least did not go to jail, but he crippled his own party and turned many Liberals to the Tories, where they remain.

You are on crack if you think that either Quebec or the ROC would buy that scenario. If they are part of the political union, they get the same rights and they have the same responsibilitiesas other participants in the union. If that is utterly abhorrent to their cultural sensibilities, I think it is quite reasonable for them to wish to negotiate a civil departure if that is how they see their destiny. But they don't have any right to determine the destiny of the place they choose to leave. They don't get to choose to remain citizens on their terms. We don't get the right to insist their territory is still ours if they choose to leave. And they don't get to determine the future of First Nations, it ain't their call much as they wish it were.

50,000 comedians out of work and we get this guy. get to the point. How much?

I wouldn't mind if they did this, that approach has led to two weak leaders (Martin and Dion) and contributed to the collapse of the party. Another one with another failure could elad to the demise of the party entirely. . Ignatieff was coronated, the better of two poor choices when it became apparent that Dion had to go and go quickly.LOng, expensive leadership campaigns decimate numerous wallets and exhaust both the candidates and the Party. Why not find your man/woman, appoint them in a shocking celebration of unity, and hand the party to them. Fund them heavily. Let them build a following outside the party. And so on. What the LPC has been doing is not working and will not work. In the meantime, I'm solidly on the Hedy Fry and/or Justin Trudeau bus.

Blah blah blah. Get to the point. How much will it cost?

??? Are you nuts. She is going to make at least $157k per year, get absolutely amazing benefits and perks, and doesn't have to get out of bed ecept when she feels like it. Attendance is optional,and she doesn't have to do a thing when she does drift in to 'work'. Plus she'll make at least four times what she did slinging beer to pimply teens. She cannot get fired, Jacques Layton can't afford the press. Dream job indeed, no nightmare here.

Thank you for that expression of support for your government. Good of you to man up.

Mckenna could beat Harper, so they won't take him. Here's hoping for Trudeau.

You have made the most common mistake- a primary goal of the justice system, the primary goal, is protection of non-criminals from those that would harm them. I consider security of the populace to be the first objective of our govt, or it shoul;d be.

All the more for Manitoba. Celebrate.I don't think Alberta was getting anything for Christmas anyway. Again. The federal govt already has extensive, comprehensive information on my name, age, address, criminal record, school record, public health records, employment, income , dependents, spousal situation, photos ,friends/family/acquaintances through security clearances, international travel records, internal flight records, fingerprints, biometrics and more. They get much of this updated regularly, and surely have more info on file about me than I can remember about myself, since I've flooded multiple databases for a long time. They also know I am still alive. It is enough.

Why would they care, since they have no hope of winning the seat and don't need it anyway?or do you think this is just one small element of harpers secret agenda?

I threw mine away. Because I am a responsible citizen, I threw it away into the recycling bin.

Both Layton and Harper would love Trudeau as Lib Leader, they would eat his lunch without breaking any kind of sweat. He is a featherweight. Bob Rae might be a worse choice than Trudeau. The guy who could win is Frank McKenna, and his supposed disinterest is ....dependent. If he has to wade through all the BS of a prolonged leadership campaign and has less than complete control of the party- not interested. If he gets handed the reins as happened with Ignatieff, pus complete control of the executive wing of the party- he might do it. McKenna has the chops to be PM, and he could draw all kinds of national support. He is very well respected and pretty well known. But I doubt the Libs have the wit to do it.

Bingo. Well said. One thing I hope Harper does is redress the serious shortfall in Commons seats in BC, AB and especially Ontario. It should be done by redrawing electoral maps and consolidating ridings where there are too few people, but the game is rigged so that his only choice would be to add a whole bunch. This kind of reasoned, mature and intelligent response simply will not be tolerated here or in Canada. Edit!!!!

The NDP drew about 4.5 million votes, 15% of Canadas population. I guess that means 85% of Canada utterly rejects them. What I find interesting is that the NDP has had longterm majority govts inSK, MB and BC, yet has never acted to implement proportional representation in any of them. A few years ago, I researched each provincial NDP site and discovered that every one of them had PR as a policy. All of them- except the two that actually had NDP govts and could actually implement the system if they chose, though of course it would cost them seats and likely cost them power in both provinces. A more cynical person than myself would conclude that the NDP are the same hypocritical opportunists as the rest. That is highly debatable. Europe is dominated economically by layers of overlapping govts fighting over turf. A number of countires are in or on the verge of bankruptcy. Every country in the EU is obliges to surrender some sovereignty. Is that how you see Canada. a junior partner in a North American Union? I understand that you and Layton may feel every job should be a govt job, but understanding does not have the same meaning as agreement.

Pete Mansbridge was chirpy and cheerful early when the NDP doing well, he got decidely somber and grumpy when it became apparent the CPC was headed to victory. The other networks callled a CPC govt early, the CBC lagged in declaring both victory and a majority. They were hoping against hope for a miracle. They should worry, they produce an inferior product for far too much money.

First on the chopping block will be the necks of most of the kittens in Canada, the Tory feasting will go on for months.

Harper will use the next four years to try and keep the modest recovery from the recession moving, in spite of the ongoing mess in the USA, our largest trading partner. It won't be easy, and we need to get more happening with pacific Rim and beyond trading partners. They need energy, we've got some. If he is very good and a bit lucky, we may have a balkanced budget by 2015, in time for the next election. He'll be gone then, and I suspect a gent called James Moore may be groomed in the interim.

Nope. He will form a coalition with the Liberals and Bloc, or A Cooperative since signing anything with Duceppe would be a death sentence even for Jacko. It is the grand prize- governance. You are dreaming if you think Layton will bypass that at any price. Remember- it isn't his money that pays Quebec. Layton, Ignatieff and Duceppe did not go to all this effort, all this expense to eat crap served by Harper to them for the last five years. All three will be necessary to keep a Cooperative in govt, but their alternative is much, much worse.

No, because nobody except apparently you gives a s***.It has utterly failed to resonate with voters, they don't care. The Opposition had a budget in front of them, but they knew that going to the polls under that pretext was a non starter. Teh budget was so bland and non confrontational they had this bag of wank in the wings. You can pretend otherwise, but it is past time to drop the p[retext. Real Politik, played by both sides. The real reason we are now voting is that the Oppostion a) was weary of looking like losers at five years and counting of a minority govt and thought they could win - as a group. They still do, though an important detail of who comes second has emerged. But that is really all that has changed, they will still dump a Harper minority soon, and then start paying their very large and very real political debts. At my expense. You don't give any crdit to Canadians, they can see that every member is in contempt of Parliament every day. Most of them rarely show up, those that do spend their camera time braying like hyenas upon command of their House leaders, no exceptions permitted. Where is your outrage for that? Where is your rant on that contempt? Are you pretending that it wasn't like that during the Chretien years too? The PMOs office ran the country,always has and that is how it really works- like it or not.

They allowed a Tory on CBC? Somebody will get fired over that.Reminds me of a session of The Current heard on CBC radio about 3 weeks ago. The political analysis panel consisted of Rick Mercer, Liberal Carol Parrish and some NDP MP, forget her name. No bias there, no sir.

And a very, very expensive time when we can least afford it. I expect regional alienation to become much worse too. Quebec is going to get paid off bigtime by PM Layton. The Liberals will be a shanbles for at least two years, during which they can support Layton and at least have some influence, or support Harper and be ignored as usual. Guess which one they'll pick.Think about why they forced an election in the first place......no point in backing away from that now.