fellowtraveller

That is just silly. Placing kids in govt sponsored day care isn't supporting the children, it is supporting the life choices and financial position of their parents. Supporting the children might involve habing a parent involved in their early development. Call me old fashioned...... I guess that means you support a complete ban on abortion, and the banishment of all forms of birth control then. After all, you must then support govt intervention in reprodcutive choice if it is in the interest of society to breed and breed and breed. Welcome to Romania. "Someone elses children' smacks of somehting very ugly, so I won't go there. Immigrants have been coming to this country and multiplying for more like 130 years, not twenty. They will have no trouble populating the country now as they always have. What is the problem with that? Economics is not a deterrent to having children, the ridiculous and relatively expectations of the middle class to have a large home, furniture, cars, expensive toys and vacations is what drives people now. If they can get free child care, or discounted childcare paid for by others, their greed and sense of entitlement drives our social policy, not any goofy talk of low birth rates. Our economic syustem does not deter anybody from having kids, it is greed and self interest that stirs that pot.

Layton better hope that the UAW hasn't contacted Laytons tailor asking for measurements for a leather jacket.....

Yep. well said. and the NDP should be vulnerable, the last couple of years has been very hard on one of their mainstays, organized labour. The NDP has failed top protect their constituency from closures and virtual collapse of a few industries. It won't matter that there was little they could have done. "what have you done for me lately....."

I certainly hope you are right.

I think Remax is a bit optimistic, not surprisingly. The recession is not over yet, and we will see some wobbles and downturns before it is done. The real estate prospects are really quite regional, I think that Ontario is in for some longer term doldrums while the West will emerge stronger and sooner.

The first example is a benefit to the family, but we as a society are not obliged to provide financial benefits to one segment while other pay for it with no demonstrable benefit to society overall. I agree that in some cases having a single parent avoiding welfare is of potential benefit to all of us, mainly where there is an expectation that employment will eventually lead to less reliance on social services. There is njo need to rehash all that though, I have mentioned in previous posts that there are legitimate exceptions. needing before and after school chilkd care is not one of them for middle class people. Same for training of the unemployable, I have no objection at all to a hand up for those in circunmstances outside their control. But most people do control their reproductive choices and should be obliged to accept responsibility for those choices, inclduing budgetting for the care of the children if both parents choose to return to work.. So what? The facts are different. The argument for public funding of public schools is better grounded than public funding of universal child care. Different siutuations, different facts, different results.

I know you are desperate to nominate Harper as the Great Satan in this, but you'll have to try harder. Of co0urse it was not a coincidence, but save the histrionics about "the market collapsing". Canadian markets have slid backwards somewhat from 2007 highs, but those highs came from huge gains in many markets 2004-2007. And "so long"? What are you talking about? It became apparent in spring and summer that a recession was coming, Harper cancelld both the zero down and 40 year terms in the summer, with effect in October 2008. The reality is that relatively few Canadians have these mortgages, every one of them had to qualify just as other mortgage borrowers did, and there are relatively few foreclosures in Canada even now. All of that differs from the American experience, aside from the complete lack of bank failures here. I have no doubt that Canadian banks would have jumped into horrible risky retail mortgages like the US, but they were not and will not get the chance due to federal regulation- both through the hoary Bank Act, and through the Tory instructions to CMHC as social and economic policy.

More importantly, it would turn much of the Iranian population against him. It is easy to underestimate the influence and power of Iran in the region. They are the financiers and puppetmasters of Hezbollah and Hamas, to name just two groups of loons. They have plenty of money and plenty of reach, and little interest in stability, because out of stability comes power to others. The last thing they want though is their own popualtion abandoning or even questioning the 'Islamic revoluttion' that Ahminejehad represents. Closing Hormuz would mean cutting off their own lifeblood of money, and that would be felt on the streets quickly. Won't happen.

So many mistakes in such a short post! a) Martin did not resist anything, it was during his time that both 0% down and 40 year term mortgages(instruments of fiscal Satan popular in USA) were introduced to Canadian consumers, and both were canned by Harper in 2008 via govt influence on CMHC. Martin had little to do with the Bank Act, the Act has been around for over 100 years. That our recession was not as deep as the US again had little to do with Harper or Martin, it was because Canadian banks/lenders are obliged to follow loan ratios, and essentially the high ratio mortgage market is controlled by CMHC. We just don't have anywhwere near as many shaky mortgages, and we never will as long as our regulation continues and the US remains unregulated. The US has had hundreds if not thousands of bank failures, we have had none. I believe Canada is the only G8 country with zero failures, which is not a testament to any politiican but to all of them that have by and large kept their mitts off some very sensivble regulation in the Bank Act, and kept CMHC as a potent tool of social and economic policy.

Come now, you are not so dense that you cannot see public schools as the same as publicly funded, universal daycare.I already explained this, but public schools create an educated populace, a condition that ultimately benefits every citizen, not just those with young children. Personally, I don't see kids raised in government funded institutions as having any benefit to society as compared to kids raised by their parents. Having children is voluntary, and it comes with plenty of joy and plenty of responsibility. Neither of those is the role of taxpayers to enjoy or finance. Having kids can have side effects including less money, a smaller house, an older car, a career delayed for a few years. None of those are obigatory and few of those situations require the involvement of taxpayers. It is a personal choice. There are exceptions, as there alwas are, but in general there is no compelling reason to finance lifetsyles through universal access to daycare.

They think they have built a new Jerusalem there, when it fact is is a new Toronto.

Yeah, you could market that for tourists, rebrand the city as Taupe World. Man, you must be blind if you see Calgary as green.

Tough to get results until you do have a relationship, just ask Jean Chretien who somehow had nothing going with his largest and most inmportant trading partner. It was much much harder to get face time with Bush, even for the former Bushbot Harper. I konow how mightily their apparaently easy relationship and frequent meetings piss you off, but it looks like they are buddies for the duration. Obama will be around for seven more years, Harper likely less but who knows?

There you go with the assumptions again. I don't expoect other Canadians to pay for my day care needs. My kids don't suffer by having a parent home with them, the opposite is true. If people choose to give their children to others for the first few years of their lives while those parents choose to earn money, feel free. But don't expect me to pay for it.

He stands for 'traditional Liberal values". That used to be enough to win majorities, has something changed?

What sacrifice is that? A few dollars less in pocket? Baby clothes don't have pockets, so I doubt they noticed and if they found some money within reach they would have eaten it.Using your logic and love of strawmen, children should be removed from their families and placed in the care of the state, who will enusre they are correctly raised. No, I do support schools. And no, their purpose is not to 'support families', it is to provide a standard education of reasonable quality to children. Would you have them be places of indoctriantion for your ideology? That would obviously be convenient.

Yep, another weapon that the Liberals have hacked away with for years is now gone.....and this time it is all on Ignatieffs watch..... Harper was labelled as a Bushbot for years, a convenient smear that has now gone badly wrong for the LPC and NDP. Harper has met something like seven times with Obama in less than a year and certainly appears to have a friendly productive relationship with him. I wonder if Barack got a copy of Harpers secret agenda?

Finally, an acknowledgement that Calgary is a bland monochrome expanse of tedium. Ther Edmonton River Valley has greenery, leaves, grass. You could Google those, or take a drive up.

who is talknig about winter? Calgary is normally burned brown and ugly in the summer. The Edmonton river valley is a lovely place, full of parks on both sides. Calgary? Deerfoot Trail, concrete, brown, noisy, smelly, ugly. No wonder people go to the mountians. Why are Fairmont and Kelowna stuffed to bursting with Calgarians? Because the city is just too ugly to abide.

Yep, Ignatieff had to break the longstanding pattern of whining about the Tories in front of the cameras while voting for them in the Commons. It had become a Liberal tradition,eating a steady diet of turd sandwiches served up by Harper. Now the NDP have been obliged to pull a chair up to the table. Same old menu, prepared by the same chef, served to a new diner.

Your p[remise that the center of the dsebate is around home vs institutionalized daycare is incorrect, only correct if you assume that the govt should be involved in any significant way in the care of children outside social services cases. And don't assume that Canadians suppport that view.... I have two children, and both were our choices and our responsibility. B3efore we chose to conceive them, we knew that one of us would spend a lot of time at home and that our incomes would suffer because of our choice. Big deal, it is a small sacrifice. I don't seek any help or daycare subsidy of any kind, and I don't belive in offering any to ordinary nuclear families. If people are genuinely in need of help, no problem, but if the 'help' goes to maintaining the new home mortgage and two cars and the bigscreen TV, tough luck. Either go without the luxuries or go without the kids, no need to involve my money in your lifetstyle choices.

The Bank Act was first formulated in about 1870. I give credit to all parties and govts since for maintaining and strengthening it.

The Liberal vote is completely unnecessary and irrelevant for passage in the House, so 'expedite passage' makes no sense. If they want to expedite passage in the Senate, Iggy just has to make a phone call, not perform an embarassing and transparent flip flop.

No, the guy who was set to leave before any coalition talks was Duceppe. He must have though Xmas was early when Jack and Stephane offered him the keys to the kingdom. Win or lose, I reckon Duceppe is gone soon after the next election.

There are some signs in the West that the worst may be over, time will tell. Oil ahs recovered to tolerable levels. Real Estate, which led the recession, is now bouncing back both for new and resale homes. Joblessness is one of the last things to suffer and one of the last to recover, we may be in that phase.