fellowtraveller

Nonsense. Type in any word or phrase on a search engine, and you'll get 80 million hits instantly, with 99.99999999999% free of charge to download and completely uncensored in any way. That is freedom of information. But I can see I'm wasting my time. You want both content and accesss provided by government. I think there is a strong possibility you work for the Chinese government.

Some of the information on the internet may be free, but to think that access via broadband should be free is just silly. The considerable infrastructure is expensive, and should be paid for by those who choose to consume it. The issue here is not freedom of information, it is excessive regulation of the marketplace. This is another nail in the CRTC coffin.

$100 is a fantastic deal for all the home games, I almost wished for a minute that I lived in Tronnna. Whew, that was close. Absolutely amazing that the new Jays GM got rid of Wellls and his $86 million contract.

Why do they have to say anything, given the Legion of Clown alternatives they face at every election? Man, you are really stepping out on a limb with those statements. Yep, they might get ten total between them, and another 6 to perhaps 8 total from the NDP and Liberals, which leaves roughly 60 for the Tories.

where do you get this crap? Winters Bone is not a crime thriller. It is an excellent, low key movie with what should be Best Actress Oscar for unknown Jennifer Lawrence.

Oh, and the Stelmach camp is complaining that 'right wing' dissent within the Party is what forced Ed out. That is codespeak for 'disgruntled Calgary power brokers who have run the province forever'. In the last leadership campaign Jim Dinning was their choice and considered a lock, but they misinterpreted their own very liberal voting system, the depth and strength of the second tier support for Morton, and ultimately completely overlooked how ridiculously easy it was for anybody at all to step in and vote for a new Tory leader. Morton nearly hikacked the game from Dinnning, but forces outside the Party entirely picked Stelmach. They won't make any of those mistakes again.

The best the Alberta Party can hope for is to pick up a few of the Liberals(who are really in complete disarrary provincially), centrist NDP and perhaps a few Tories. In the end, it won't amount to anything. The church and hard right lobby that nearly did it for Morton last time have become Wild REose and are simply too small to do anything significant. The Tories will elect a centrist leader again(from Calgary) and will win another easy majority. I think the next election is scheduled for 2012, I expect the new leader to act well before then and be coronated late in 2011.

Speaking of F-35, why don't we just buy up all the DC-3s left in the world? Solid, dependable aircraft, something the Canadian Forces could rely on for the next 50 years at a fraction of the cost of these newfangled jets.

That isn't the question at all. The lack of understanding of the actual state of politcs here is baffling. The province is driving the Canadian economy and questions as utterly as ignorant as this are asked repeatedly...... Ted Morton won't even win the nomination.....again. Review: he lost last time because he was seen as what he is: an ignorant, far right, dinsoaur with no appeal to the vast majority of Albertans who are in fact, proven fact, centrist in nature. The p[roof? Look tpo the last leadership campaign, when Farmer Ed scooted up the middle and beat the corporate champ Jim Dinning and the ne0-Nazi Morton. That happened because of the unusual voting system the Tories employ, a preferential system whereby anybody from any party can pay $5 and essentially elect the next premier. That is how and why Stelmach won: people recognized Morton was going to get a few first choice ballots and enough second choice ballots to win. Many nornally univolved voters of every stripe knew Morton would be a complete disaster and acted to deny him the premiers chair. One big, big problem though: Farmer Ned is not from Calgary, which doomed him. All Alberta Premiers must be from Calgary, no exceptions. Fast forward to now. Morton is still the same woman and gay hating bigot he has always been, except now the church people and the hard right have become the Wild Rose Party, which he is not a member ofm at least not formally. And if he were to join them, their influence is much too small because redneck jokes aside, Alberta is the same as the rest of Canada: happiest with a centrist guy. So Mporton won't win the leadership this time either. Danielle Smith will win maybe 5 seats at best. The liberals are in utter disarray and will lose a few seats to the Alberta Party. The NDP will screw the pooch, they badly need to drop Brian Mason and get the much smarter and better loooking Rachel Notley front and center. So who will win the leadership and become the next Premier with a big fat Tory majority again? I'm guessing Gary Mar is the frontrunner, a likeable and very competent guy who was a Cabinet Minister for many years and is currently a lobbyist/envoy for AB in Washington DC. Her is a centrist and he is from Calgary, two prerequisites. There are others, but I'll bet on Mar for now.

Harpers greatest failing has been his utter abandonment of the formerly booming Quebec advertising industry. They used to get hundreds of milllions of dollars from Chuck Guite alone, now they get a pittance and have to have provide pesky administrative nonsense like contracts, work orders, and invoices for work peformed. This proves Harper is a racist. F-

and OK, I'll be your Google bitch just this once Health care costs in Ontario currently at 46% of total expenses and rising at 6.5% annually, double or triple the rate of inflation and an utterly alarming trend repeated in every province. At the current rate of increase, it will be to 80% of total provincial expenses. And it does not make a bit of difference if it is due to hospitals, physician cost, drugs , whatever- unless you are speaking of delisting services, which you won't because it might stimulate a serious discussion about a serious problem.

Thanks for your support, though I am assuming you meant governments since the provinces pay for health care.Any opinion on what an appropriate cap for health care as a % of provincial expenses will be? 100%?

I am not aware of your ideology or what influences your opinions or imperatives. It would not influence the reality of the demographics we are now presented with in any case. My opinions are fueled by the facts. I have no wish to see the health of myself or other Canadians of any political view curtailed, but I am willing to acknowledge the mathematics we face. Health care costs are running around 50% of total budgets in provinces, and climbing. Assuming that citizens still want such trifles as public education, police, military, roads, social services and a bit of cultural support from their governments they will have to accept either a cap on spiralling public health funding, or a dramatic cut in other services. The only one that ius escalating rapidly is health care. The only other option is continual tax increases to cover the upward spiral of health care costs. That is why I say that govts will have no choice but to put a % cap on what goes into our mutual health care, or it will consume all. It means that =like now- the wealthy will be able to afford better personal health care, and will do so regradless of what is provied by the state. Same as always, but it will be much more widespread. The simple reason for that is that govts will have no choice but to delist services now provided by the state as critical care costs for the boomer generation increase. You can either pay out of pocket for that sports injury or pay for the insurance for same. The public system won't cover voluntary damage. It has already begun in many places, for example all chiropracty was delisted in my province recently. Many provinces cap what they will pay for people travelling poutside the country, when that used to be more or less fully covered too. Dentistry is not covered here, eye care, drugs for the general population, therpautic massage, some physio, etec etc etc That list will certainly grow. The calls here for expanded services are complete fantasy. We can barely afford what is offered now, and that will get worse as the population ages and technology inceases. For the demographics of Canada, and health care funding? Sure, no problem: these guys are often reliable In regard to this OP title, it is a bit misleading. It is not our politicians alone who will not discuss serious healthcare fixes, it is the people who fail themselves too. The demographics are unavoidable, yet we have so many who canot get beyond their emotion. Until that changes, we will stagger along unhappily and fail to leverage the obvious advantages this country enjoys, with universal access to health care being at or near the front of those.

No, we don't just go. There is a limit to how much of our GDP can be spent on health care or any public expense, and we are reaching it now. If you want to graduate doctors and hospice workers, you have to pay for their education too.... The demographics are inescapable, unless about half the boomers are killed now and the other half forced to never retire, we will not be able to fund the current system much less expand it in some sort of fantasy utopian future. There is no choice but to cap the % of tax money dedictaed to our joint health and limit services to critical care. Everybody loves the benefits of practicing preventative medicine, and having all of us live longer, happier and healthier lives. That essentially changes nothing, since right now and in the future, the majority of money is spent keeping people ticking along in the last few years of their lives. Preventative nedicine just defers it for a few years for some people, the same intensive work is required at 85 years instead of 80 years, and the costs will have gone up-not down. The route to future health care will have a large dose of self-help, and financed personally by those that can afford the extra care. Wanting it just does not make it happen. If it did, we would all be driving a Mercedes.

Thank you for your valuable contribution.

There is no reason that we cannot have universal access to some kind of universal health care, but it simply cannot be as extensive as it is now, no matter what. The numbers of boomers are too high, the numbers of their children are too low. Most likely, universal health care will be greatly reduced in scope to cover only the most critical of care, and many services will be up to the citizen to buy on the open market. This situations already exists to some degree in several areas like chiropractic, eye care, dental care, drugs, etc. It will get worse, it has to.

True that, though not always. For example, Public Works did a wave of outsourcing in the nineties. dropping thousands of cleaning staff who earned 2 to 3 times the wages/benefits of comparable private sector cleaners for exactly the same work. There was little or no increase in supervisionf the new contractors, as they already employed property managers who supervised the cleaners and now switched to watching the contractor. They did something similar in the outsourcing or property management earlier this decade, but kept pretty much everybody in a frenzy of newe job descriptions and shuffling of lesser duties. Of course, any cost/benefit analysis now comes up with the conclusion the outsource was a failure, when the process itself meant it was utterly doomed from day one, and everybody knew it. I do not blame the politicians alone, I blame the senior managers who lack both the courage and the correct incentives to act responsibly on behalf of taxpayers. There are absolutely no consequences for mediocrity at any level. Why give a shit when nobody else does?

As you well know, the PSC does not have to be directly involved with hires since they have the mandate to force all departments to hire under their guidelines and scrutiny. The average length of the process is claimed to be six months by the PSC itself, they of course do not count the numerous scams done by federal managers that will help them do their jobs in spite of the PSC and departmental HR strictures. And that includes 'consultants'. She surely cannot have performance of herself or her department as a motivator, so that leaves money as the only impediment to resignation. The PSC is as stated, an Orwellian mess that works counter to its stated purpose.

I thought this was funny until I read this .Who says Canada is boring when you have comedy like this every day?

I don't agree. The PSC is an absolutely classic example fo a bureacracy gone viral, an Orwellian organization that does the exact opposite of what was intended. The situation she chooses to manage is to perpetuate her job and those in her organization. By doing so, she maintains a pay grade and benefits that 99% of Candians would envy. It is a powerful personal incentive to change nothing. Andf in another irony, the more controls she implements and enforces on hiring and firing, the harder it gets to change her own organization.There is no incentive whatsoever to change anything, and no consequences for being utterly useless.

This kind of errant nonsense is an illustration of the inability to have an actual discussion on the future of health care. He conveniently overlooks that Alberta spends more per capita than other provinces on publicly funded health care services. Not only that, every year they kick in billions so other provinces can provide services. They are horrible people.

'Somehow' won't cut it. The money won't be there, simply because the number of people paying into nthe system will not come anywhwere near the money required by the huge bubble of aging, nonproductive and non tax paying boomers needing the care.It's a Ponzi sheme, and it will collapse unless costs are seriously cut. And I do mean seriously. What specifically is your objection to private provision of services? The vast majority of doctors right now are private sector.

Yet the federal civil service has grown under Harper. How does fit into your bit of rapier-like wit? You have the wrong end of the issue here. The larger problem is not getting rid of civil servants for the job required, it is hiring them in the first place. Anytime the Public Service Commission is involved, look at a one to two year process to hire anybody. Consultants can be hired quickly and are specifically used because Human Resources and the PSC are largely bypassed. It is a credit to managers that they find a way to bypass the system designed to stop them from getting any work done.Yesterday the CEO of the PSC was on the radio(CBC of course)and she agreed that the time required to hire was overly long but had no suggestions on how to streamline the process. I was just one of many Canadians who could have given her the solid advice to first fire all her staff, then fire herself, thus lightening the yoke of thousands of public service managers.

Sure, there are plenty that think just that and are willing to fight to at least maintain the status quo. It is impossible of course to maintain even that- the demographics, cost of technology, early retirement ages and longer lifespans all mean that we cannot continue to spend at this ever increasing rate. Many provinces spend nearly 50% of their revenue on health care now, if this continues unchecked we will spend all tax money on it soon enough. And we will all still die even then.What is really disheartening is that even this late in the game, we are unable to have a reasoned discussion about health care in Canada. Without a doubt, there will have to be many things delisted and not covered by the public purse. Without a doubt, services must be provided by whatever agency can do it cheapest. And none of that will be nearly enough to keep everybody alive forever. The % will be capped, and life altering and life ending decisions will be made within that cap. It is inevitable. Someday we will jointly have the gumption to talk about it, but it is not today or tomorrow.

Because you have to pay for information and the choices boil down to: buy it or hire more civil servants.