Pateris

Tax the rich... too bad that doesn't work because their simply aren't enough really rich people to pay the tab. I ask the former NDP leader Alexa McDonough one time what she considered "rich" after she made a speech about "raising taxes on the rich". Her answer? "Anyone who makes over $50,000 a year should be more than happy to pay more taxes". Guess where they got that number? In order to have enough taxpayers who are "rich" to raise the necessary revenue - you need to set the bar low. I agree that funding the military better and lower taxes are possible. I would say shut down DIAND, most of HRDC, all the regional development departments, and sell the CBC. And then I'd raise the personal exemption on income tax from $8500 to $20000 - because people making less than $20000 a year shouldn't have to pay taxes.

The average American is better off than the average Canadian.... Go live there and see for yourself. The middle class in the US can afford better healthcare than ANYONE in Canada gets. At least in the US if something is wrong with you you get help when you need it, not in six months. Doesn't anyone have a problem with the fact than thousands of Canadians DIE WAITING for healthcare? Great system we have.

eureka, Have you actually lived in the US or just listened to the CBC and Liberal/NDP propaganda? The US is not a mean society - they take care of their own when necessary. The average American is BETTER off than the average Canadian and has better access to health care and other services than we do. Admittedly, the American model isn't perfect, but for once i'd like you socialist pinkos to admit the Americans do do some things right...

I suspect the reasons behind not sending DART are: We can't afford it within the existing military budget We have no way to get the DART team there due to lack of transportation capability and the government doesn't want the embarrassment of asking the Americans for help The DART team has been essentially disbanded due to lack of funds but the government is too afraid to admit that. It is likely one of these is the real reason...

"And if the British Empire should last for a thousand years, let them still say that this was their finest hour" Winston Churchill

realwannabe, actually, it would be BAD for alberta, because while it would reduce Liberal seats, it would increase NDP and Green seats - the total number of Conservative MPs would be lower.

maplesyrup - if we have proportional representation, that would likely lead to separatism in western canada. Because the conservatives would NEVER gain power, and the parts of Canada that are conservative would get VERY frustrated.

The problem with the LICO (being half of the average) is that assuming a normal distribution of incomes there will ALWAYS be about the same percentage of the population below the LICO... And only by making everyone EQUAL will this go away. For instance, giving the bottom 5% of the population a million dollars each would actually INCREASE the number of people below the LICO (because the LICO would move).

maplesyrup, MOST of the money spent on the Gun Registry has to do with salaries of thousands of bureaucrats and the computer hardware to run the system. The database that the registry is running on was built FROM SCRATCH by bureaucrats. They didn't even go buy the underlying software from Oracle or IBM. They started from a textbook on database technology. Further, they trained bureaucrats with NO previous programming experience to be the programmers. I have questioned a number of software company developers and they say that had the government gone out to the private sector to develop the gun registry database they could have had it done for a few millions dollars (including the hardware), not billions.

maplesyrup, Have you been in the inner cities of the US? Most of them are in much better shape today than they were in the 1980s... There are exceptions of course, like Detroit and Washington. But Philadelphia is better, as is St Louis and Kansas City. Also - getting rich is important. Because rich people can invest in the economy and create more wealth. Capitalism has created more wealth for the average person than every other economic system that has ever been. Yes, the gap between rich and poor gets larger - unless you are making everyone the same (equality of outcome), it MUST. Because the poor can't really get much poorer, but the rich can always get richer - and will.

maplesyrup, I give Romanow credit for balancing Saskatchewan's books in the face of insolvency. However, he did it by raising taxes. At NO point did government spending in Saskatchewan go down. Additionally, the end result has been that Saskatchewan is a bad place to do business, and the population is FALLING because everyone if moving to Alberta. Even the senior citizens are moving to Alberta because the benefits are BETTER there...

maplesyrup, I have. The RCMP and Calgary Police Service indicate the gun registry database is WRONG about 85% of the time. Also, the statistic about it being accessed 1500 times per day is a lie. The federal government includes in that number every access of ALL police databases... Not just the gun registry. Tell me again - how does registring the guns of the law-abiding citizens reduce gun crime?

maplesyrup, So explain this - how is it that the United States has been the biggest wealth producing country in the world for nigh on 200 years? And CONTINUES to be the largest wealth producing country.... And that in all the "high-tax" places you mention there are very few people getting rich...

maplesyrup, Could you explain how the gun registry in Canada actually reduces gun crime? If the criminals don't register their illegally imported weapons, how does the registry do any good whatsoever?

The story maplesyrup posted had NOTHING to do with the ozone layer and nothing to do with global warming or CO2. It had to do with ground level ozone (a smog component) produced by atmospheric reactions with the products of internal combustion engines. Ozone is highly reactive and therefore causes health problems. But DON'T CONFUSE the issues... you simply show how uninformed you are.

maplesyrup, Oil is not the primary polluter... the users of petroleum products are... if you consider CO2 a pollutant (I don't), then the oil industry is a very small percentage of the total CO2 emissions... they shouldn't take the flak for people using their product. Because the truth is people don't have an alternative.

Big Blue Machine, Wind and Solar are not climate benign... Significant wind power generation will remove energy from the atmosphere and alter the redistribution of heat from the tropics to the poles. Solar will take up energy that current heats the earth. This is better than wind because at least most of the energy will eventually be returned to the planet as heat (except for the small amount tied up in reducing the entropy of manufactured goods). The question though is where does the heat get redistributed?

A Quebec-style child care system will be a disaster for Canada... Why the push to have the state raise the children instead of giving parents the power to choose whether they do it themselves? Shouldn't we create a system by which people can afford to have a parent stay home and raise this kids? And for single parents create a system for those who REALLY need help. If you support state-run childcare for every child, why don't we set up residential schools so that no parent has to raise their children. Worked for the natives right?

maplesyrup, The difference is that the public uses the roads. Only private companies use rails. Perhaps the real solution is that all highways should be toll roads - the users could therefore pay for them. Additionally, public transport like subways should only get money from fares and advertising. This would make the users pay the full cost. A profit isn't a dirty word. Profit is what makes the economy grow and improves standards of living. Nothing else can.

The only problem I've had with Firefox is a few sites than are "specifically designed for IE" and display funny in Firefox - but sites that meet the W3C standards display perfectly well.

What the heck are you talking about? How did Mulroney destroy the rail system? CP and CN are running near capacity. The problem in a large country is that trucks and roads are cheaper than trains. The government could subsidize trains (or penalize trucks), but that would be interference in the market.

The biggest problem in Alberta is that the Conservatives have no real opposition. The NDP will never appeal to a wide cross section of Alberta voters, and the Liberals are too far to the left (Taft is a socialist through and through). The Alliance and Social Credit are too extreme in some of their views and haven't thought through a lot of their other policies. And the Separation Party doesn't appeal to most of us. Ralph needs to be replaced, and hopefully the Conservative party can find a good candidate after this election.

The problem I see is the simple scale of it. If we STOPPED burning all fossil fuels, the CO2 we've already put in the atmosphere would continue warming the planet for a good long while. But we can't stop burning all fossil fuels. There is no economic alternative. Not even something close. Wind, Solar and Bio aren't sufficiently developed (and a long ways from it) to be technically feasible on a large scale. And recent studies show that Wind and Solar aren't climate neutral - they will change the climate too. Nuclear is the best option, but it is politically difficult and expensive. The problem is, NO one is willing to accept the consequences of higher costs of living in return for much lower CO2 emissions. The other issue is - do we really understand the climate system well enough to think we can actually engineer it? I mean, perhaps our CO2 emissions are causing the planet to heat up. But what other factors are there? do we understand them all? Likely not. Second, the climate models we have cannot predict the last hundred years accurately - why should we trust them for the future?

Eureka, So what do you propose we do about it? Kyoto alone will alter the expected date we reach 450 ppm by about 6 years. Considering the recent studies that wind and solar power are not "climate neutral", what do you propose we do?

First of all, 400 million years of data does NOT show that CO2 levels now are higher than at any time in the past... The pre-industrial level was approximately 285 ppm CO2. The current level is about 360 ppm CO2. During the late Cretaceous period (70-65 MYA) the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere rose from <200 ppm to between 1000-1400 ppm in two separate events with a low period between. This resulted in a clear greenhouse warming event. In the first 10,000 years after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boudary event, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to 2300 ppmw, which raised the average temperature of the earth by more than 7°C. This increase was caused by an extraterrastrial bolide impact (the Chixilub crater). This was a short lived peak, but over the few million years following the CO2 content of the atmosphere fluctuated between 200 and 800 ppm. The cause of these fluctuations is not completely understood, but it is theorized that the primary cause of increase was volcanic activity (like the Deccan traps), and the decreased caused by a lack of volcanic activity.