Pateris

The Qur'an states clearly it is the direct word of God. How do you know the Bible was written by those guided by God's hand? How do you explain the Gospel of Thomas? Mohammad made no claims, other than to be the prophet of God, as he recited God's word. He led his followers to power in the desert, much as Joshua led the Israelites to conquer Jericho. There is no independent claims of Jesus or Mohammad's life. Therefore we only have the word of their followers (who should not be trusted). Why should I believe the followers of Jesus more than the followers of Muhammad. The latter's followers came out of the desert, and in the name of God conquered the middle east, north africa, asia minor, central asia, india, south-east asia, south-eastern europe and Spain. Their ability to do so coming from nothing in a short time should be taken as evidence of their divine guidance. The Qur'an explains your last statement. The Qur'an recognizes the existence of the Torah and the Bible, and that they were corrupted by man. This is why God sent his last message directly through Muhammad. The Qur'an is the final revelation of God. Any conflict between the Qur'an and the Bible is due to corruption by the followers of Moses and Jesus.

Good luck to them, since in most Muslim countries apostasy is punishable by death. You cannot leave Islam. It's the Hotel California of religions.

Any if the God of Abraham is the creator, then wouldn't the Qu'ran, said by HIM through his prophet Muhammad be the final word? It was not written by dozens of authors, but is the direct revelation of God. Can you say otherwise?

Chretien was right back in 1970 when he proposed rescinding the Indian Act. it is a horribly racist piece of legislation and needs to go. SImply make everyone in Canada EQUAL under the law. That is the only thing that is fair. I was born in this country, making me "indigenous". Whether my ancestors arrived 15000 years ago or 200 years ago is irrelevant.

So what happens when Trudeau tells the CPPIB to invest in Infrastructure for the good of Canada. On the books, the CPP will own bridges and trains, but since they don't make revenue, the rate of return for the fund would be negative, and the CPP would slowly cease to be "fully-funded"

The problem with hybrid car designs today is that they are NOT being built for fuel economy. The new Honda Accord hybrid and Lexus SUV hybrid are using the technology to provide more performance without reducing fuel economy. Transit buses that would be diesel-electric - where the diesel runs at constant load - would be the ideal fuel saving method. Also look at the fuel economy data for various makes of cars. The best fuel economy isn't a hybrid at all, it's a Volkswagen Jetta DIESEL. We should most definitely NOT be subsidizing hybrid cars - if the carmakers built a hybrid that was truly more fuel efficient (say 50% better than the Jetta diesel), then people might buy them to save money.

Paying 0.50 cents per kWh was ridiculously low. Especially considering the capital costs of those nuclear plants. Oh wait - the publicly run utility NEVER tried to recover capital cost because the politicians didn't want to charge people real costs for electricity. The fantasy is that the public sector could provide anything at all without running the system into the ground. Right now in Alberta, the spot market price for electricity is about 2 cents per kWh and new facilities CANNOT be justified economically at this price - because we have enough capacity now. And this winter it will be beneficial to me to partially heat my house with electricity because it's cheaper than natural gas. The Musings of the Technical Bard

Not True! You have made a invalid assumption in this statement. You have assumed that public sector provision of the service is very efficient and that no monies are being wasted in the system. You assume that private providers facing competition could not find any opportunities to cut costs without degrading service. You have oversimplified the problem. Therefore, your equation should be: Cost(Public) => Cost(Private) + Profit Which means it may be possible to privatize and save money.

It's actually pretty obvious. Since the government isn't collecting massive royalties as some countries do, the money stays with the petroleum producers, who then use that money to invest in additional facilities or pay it out to their shareholders. Lots of Canadians have made a lot of money in the last couple of years as shareholders of oil companies in their RRSPs. Back in the 1970s, the Alberta government raised the royalties rates when oil prices were high. This was part of the first boom from 1975-1981. When oil prices collapsed in 1986, the government reduced royalty rates to attract investment. In particular, oil sands projects got the sweet 1% deal to help justify those projects and make them go. Frmo 19868 to about 1999 the price of oil ranged between $6 and $14. If the government had taken a larger royalty cut, the oil companies would have invested elsewhere in the world and the Alberta economy would have grown more slowly. Now oil prices are very high and the economics of projects is generally good. The Alberta government could raise the royalty rate again, and be truly swimming in money. But the Alberta oil industry still competes with other world projects. If you have $10 billion to spend, and you can choose an expensive but low risk project in Alberta, versus a less expensive but higher risk project in Africa - the royalty rate in Alberta impacts your economic decision. Since we want the investment in Alberta, we need to make it more attractive than other places in the world. Is the currently royalty rate structure perfect? No. But should we automatically assume we are getting ripped off? No. If the government of Alberta decided to raise the royalty rates, then they would HAVE to eliminate pretty much all other personal and corporate taxes. How do you think the rest of Canada would act then?

Actually - AECL IS paying for Pt. Lepreau upgrades - was part of the deal NB made with the Feds to keep it open. If they hadn't they'd be paying to clean up that site plus building new COAL-FIRED power plants to replace it. And the feds don't want that because it's not Kyoto-friendly

There are many reasons why different countries get different amounts from their oil production. This is because of a variation in royalty rate and ownership. In Norway for instance, the royalty rate is quite high - in addition the national oil company, Statoil, is partly owned by the Norwegian government and it is required to pay some percentage of it's profits into the state's coffers. The regulation of who produces Norwegian oil also ensures production and therefore government revenues. In Alberta, the royalty rate varies depending on the resource. The royalty rate for natural gas is quite high (thus most of the government surplus comes from gas production). The royalty rate for oil production is lower. And the royalty scheme for oil sands projects is very low (1%) to promote investment in the resource. But the 1% rate only applies until the project capital is paid out. In the case of Syncrude, they will start paying 25% royalty NEXT YEAR. Meaning that the government of Alberta is about to gain even more revenue.

Good for you. Unfortunately, there is a very limited advance that can be made with regard to reducing CO2 emissions through efficiency gains. My house is modern and has a high-efficiency furnace, is well insulated, and has energy efficient appliances. One could buy a diesel car and be even better than a hybrid. But I still contribute to CO2 emissions. And if the economy and population are growing, efficiency gains CANNOT reduce CO2 emissions to levels below 1990. Not even close. Kyoto is dead.

China will never buy credits. Who would they buy them from??? The world economy is growing an NO country will meet their Kyoto targets. Second - there is currently NO structure to "set targets" post-2012. Therefore, so long as major countries are not going to negotiate, there will be no extension of Kyoto fter 2012. Finally, Canada will fail to meet our Kyoto commitment. Massively. And do you think the government of the day is going to have the political will to sent Russia BILLIONS of dollars a year for essentially NOTHING in return? I don't. Musings of the Technical Bard

Truths about this issue: 1) The climate of the planet Earth appears to be changing relatively quickly. However this is based on a limited set of data regarding the climate of the past. That said, there are some clear clues, such as the glaciers that have generally been retreating since the 1850s. There are of course exceptions. 2) The Kyoto Protocol will have little or no impact on the climate. This is because even if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented, the atmospheric composition would not be significantly altered. Business as Usual indicates that a 450 ppm CO2 level will be reached in 2100. Implementing Kyoto would reach that level in 2106. Therefore Kyoto will NOT affect the climate 3) Implementing the Kyoto Protocol will be VERY expensive. Reducing CO2 emissions means either: (a) capturing CO2 and sequestering it underground, or ( not making CO2 in the first place. Capture and Sequestration is expensive, costing in excess of $25 per tonne. This would significantly increase the cost of electricity generated from fossil fuels. It is also nigh impossible to do for transportation systems. Not making the CO2 would mean not burning fossil fuels. Which leads to: 4) What are the alternatives to fossil fuels? National Geographic has a good summary on this in the latest issue. Solar power still costs far too much. Wind power is getting cheaper, but it a maintenance and reliability headache (the wind doesn't always blow). Nuclear is slightly more expensive than fossil fuels, but it has it's downsides (ie. waste products, limited planetary uranium reserves). The uranium reserves issue can be partly rectified by building breeder reactors and reprocessing spent fuel to recover plutonium. Therefore, any short term reduction in fossil fuel use will mean either: SHRINKING the economy ACCEPTING higher costs for energy and accepting the requirement for many new nuclear facilities, as well as spending billions on research into nuclear fusion reactors (the holy grail of power generation)

Methinks it may be time to start flying the Stars and Stripes in my yard in Calgary.

I tend to vote with the party that most closely matches my personal views. However, if the local candidate was a complete idiot or wingnut (Rob Anders, CPC Calgary West) I'd vote for an alternate choice (say the Green Party)

What's wrong with it? I thought it was a little chintzy, but covered good material.

ACTUALLY Eureka... that precedent was set at Westminster in the 1970s. Prior to that other votes were often considered confidence. However, the Labour government in Britain in the 1970s "rewrote" the rules so that only Money Bills could be considered votes of confidence. In Australia, other votes are still considered votes of confidence. And if you look at CANADA's history, motions and bills unrelated to money HAVE been considered confidence issues that have both saved and brought down governments. I feel it is completely dictatorial for the government to postpone Opposition days simply to avoid a motion of non-confidence. Instead of calling Paul Martin "right honourouble", methinks the title Despot is more fitting.

Peter MacKay quoted Forsey in the house this morning - clearly pointing out that Forsey's opinions on confidence in the 1960s and 1970s would indicate that the current government should resign post-haste.

Because the Conservative Party is the closest to Libertarian thinking. Truth of the matter is that a Conservative government could never actually impose the strict social morality because the number of truly social conservative MPs will be small - mostly from rural western Canada.

Similarly, the Liberal Party of Canada is lead by a man who claims to be catholic but arguably under catholic law should be excommunicated by Pope Benedict XVI because the leader of the Liberal Party supports abortion against the wishes of his spiritual leader. Is he not being a hypocrit? Similarly, the Liberal Party of Canada contains individuals who support free and fair trade and those that are protectionist. Every party contains individuals who have disparate points of view. The difference in Canada is that the Conservative Party allows such discussion and debate of these issues, while the Liberal Party leadership simply ignores the disagreements within it's party. I have a better question: Where should Libertarian minded people go? Clearly not the Liberal Party or NDP who restrict free choice in health care, and wish to restrict free choice in child care.

take a number, I agree on the dichotomy of some Conservatives wanting to free people from regulation while others want to impose morality. But these are not necessarily the same people. Just like not all Liberals are crooks, not all Conservatives are social conservative, religious (let alone christian). To me the big difference between the political parties in Canada is: Conservative: Small Government - trust people to make their own decisions, help those who REALLY need help. Liberal: Big Government - trust bureaucrats to make many decisions, limit choices of the individual, try to help as many people as you can even if it doesn't make sense NDP: Huge Government - trust bureaucrats to make ALL decisions for people, help EVERYONE, make everyone the same. Admittedly, there are nuts in the Conservative Party (like Rob Anders - he's just an idiot). But hey - the Liberals had Carolyn Parrish and still have Hedy Fry. And The NDP has Jack Layton

The simple THREAT of such a procedural motion in 1926 was enough to have a prime minister resign. Now the fact a government has lost such a vote means he doesn't? I think the precedent is clear. In the name of God, go.

Sweal, I wish you left wing pinkos would stop completely distorting the views of the Conservative Party in an attempt to scare people into voting for a party bereft of a vision for this country.

That's right buddy - just belittle your opponents intelligence. By the way - what does the Liberal party stand for beyond holding onto power for dear life?