Scotty

As I understand it, according to your own cite, the local returning officer decided to hold a ballot without permission from anyone, all on his own, way ahead of the regular advance polls. Elections Canada has now accepted it, apparently so to not disenfranchise the students who voted, but told him not to do it again, or to do anything similar, and told all other returning officers not to do it. Now where anyone sane would get from that a disrespect for democracy on the part of the Tories is just beyond me.

The Liberals used to get almost all their money from corporations, and those big $25,000 a plate fundraising dinners. The Conservatives have always gotten the bulk of their donations in small amounts from a wide array of ordinary party supporters.

It doesn't help that people deliberately use the largest number anyone can find to scare them. Thirty billion? Hey, want to buy a Dodge Caravan? Step right up, only $250,000! Yes, a quarter million would be the cost to operate a Dodge Caravan for 20 years. But of course, people don't think of that when they buy a car or truck. They only deal with the purchase price, not the cost of parts and replacement, insurance, depreciation and operation for the lifetime of the vehicle.

Why do people continue to use that silly old cliche? Everyone who knows anything knows that it was the Liberal Party which has always represented the rich, and benefited with fat donation cheques from them and from corporate Canada. That's why they were so devastated when Chretien changed the rules to outlaw big donations.

You mean making pension agreements and then, due to incompetence and political cowardice not making any payments into pension funds?

How is it they're voting already anyway? My advance polling stations don't open for another eight days...

So those of us who have observed, over the past thirty years, a continual Liberal attitude of absolute contempt for truth, and absolute corruption in every aspect of their rule should just ignore that? I notice Ignatieff has followed Paul Martin's path in befriending Canadian ethnics who support terrorism, just so long as they support him too. post

Drivel. They do nothing of the sort.

Seriously? I'm having trouble taking much of what you write seriously. The whole idea is we need new prisons supposedly because of the new laws. Duh!

A major accident? Like if you lost a tire in a huge pothole and ran into a bus? I depend on roads every day. I'd like them to be good ones, please.

Look for Layton to ridicule Ignatieff's sudden about face on taxes on corporations. Ignatieff has been calling for lower taxes on corporations for years, right up through most of the recession. Suddenly it's all a plot to benefit the rich? Duceppe should not be there. He is just a distraction who gets in the way of the people actually contending for votes and trying to put their message across to English Canadians.

Federal public servants pay into their pension plan. And they pay into CPP their whole lives At sixty-five, the amount of their pension plan is reduced by the amount they can collect from CPP. This means that, in effect, their lifetime worth of contributions to CPP gets them precisely nothing back.

I think Layton HAS credibility. At least with those who are at all likely to vote for him. What he needs to do is damage Ignatieff's credibility. And yes, Harper has to bring up their economic record, including the report today from the Bank of Canada, Harp on (no pun intended) their economic stewardship. But I think he would really screw up Ignatieff's game plan if he came on as regretful about the way the last parliament deteriorated. I'm not saying he should take all the blame, and doesn't deserve to. But he choosing his words "let ourselves be provoked" etc. would do wonders in grabbing undecideds.

Has the current system improved over the system from ten or twenty years ago? Because that is not my impression. That's the average university graduate, not the average high school graduate. This evidence leaves little doubt that literacy is socially and economically important, yet 48% of Canadian adults, age 16-plus, do not have the literacy skills considered necessary to cope in a modern society and economy.9 Low literacy is the reality for a number of people who have graduated high school. For example, 73% of English latent class C are high-school graduates. literacy

I think Harper ought to surprise hell out of everyone, and take the wind out of the sails of all three opposition leaders if he comes out all conciliatory in his opening, apologizes for letting the mood in parliament get out of hand and become too partisan, and talks about how much he'd like to see that changed. He could also talk about how the atmosphere, with the opposition controlling committees digging for dirt caused a game of chicken which 'you know, in retrospect we could have taken too far in delaying providing information the opposition wanted to use in their political against us'. Or words to that effect. On the F35. Again, take a reasonable tone, say that was what the air force told him we needed and what they wanted, and that he wasn't going to second guess the experts or short change the military, that this plane is going to last decades, and the cost has to be spread out over that entire period. I'd also point out that the Liberals paid this company close to $200 million to help develop the plane. If they really wanted a free and open competition why didn't they contribute money to the development of other aircraft? Layton needs to attack Ignatieff as much as Harper. It's Ignatieff trying to steal his voters, not Harper. He needs to point out that the NDP really believes in its policies while Ignatieff, not known previously as left of centre, has been just making promises he doesn't intend to keep to poach NDP support.

More prisons for imaginary unreported criminals who may or may not exist. - You.

If you read the link provided by someone, and read the husban's side, it's not entirely clear the police didn't handle it properly...

Maybe, but now it's legal...

What you mean is politicians who only look to the next election. And as long as the bridges don't fall down before then, well, they're not worried. But if we actually had a political leader who knew how to lead, how to communicate, we'd pretty much all agree that it would be cheaper for us to fix the damn roads rather than endure the expensive wear and tear on our cars year in and year out.

I found it telling that she suggested to the hit man it would be a good thing if his girlfriend was 'collateral damage'. I don't know if Ryan's explanation is true, but it would go a long way to explain the lack of police assistance for her in the claims she made to the court.

The point is none of that matters because we are not the United States and the socioeconomic factors at play there are not at play here.

They've been doing it for years. Every time some silly little thing comes up you can see how gleeful and excited the opposition supporter are here, hoping that THIS will be the thing to stop people voting Conservative. If only any of them had a good reason why we should vote FOR them, instead of NOT voting for the Tories.

You think so? My response is a big old yawn. And I'm hardly a lifelong Tory loyalist. Now if the allegation was that the money had gone into the pockets of friends of Clements, or some other sign the Tories were secretly profiting campaign donors I'd be more concerned. But look, right in the story it says: In June, the Conservatives defended the use of the G8 Legacy Fund, admitting some of the money was going to projects unrelated to the summit. "A limited number of projects (are) designed in the legacy to say, ‘Listen, the folks in this region are going to endure a heck of a lot of security, a heck of a lot of challenges during that G8 summit, and just as a thank you we're supporting some public infrastructure projects,'" said Transport Minister John Baird. So what exactly is the shock value here? The money was spent on infrastructure. It could as easily have come from their big infrastructure incentive spending program but (shrug) it came from this instead. It's all the same wallet anyway.

Perhaps not. But those who fear what will happen if they get caught are the ones NOT committing crimes.

I expect to pay more taxes this year than at any time in my life, probably twice as much as last year, maybe three times as much. I'm not happy about it, but taxes are a necessary part of living in a comfortable and organized system such as we have in Canada Nobody likes to pay taxes, and that's one of the reasons why bridges, roads and highways are in such crappy condition. But here's the thing. You're paying anyway. You might not realize it, but you are. You're paying in the wear and tear and damage to your car every time you drive down those pothole strewn roads and highways. It would be cheaper to us, as a society, to just pay to have the roads and highways fixed rather than continually fixing our cars. Which reminds me of my post in the prisons topic. That again is shallow thinking. We don't pay enough for cops, courts and prisons so used car repair shops can rip us off daily, without fear of persecution. That's another cost which we pay every time we take our cars in and some fraud artist lies to us about what needs to be done. And the cost is a lot higher than if we just had a proper system to deal with such people. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but it would be cheaper, in the end, than seeing massive amounts of money going to unnecessary repairs and damages to our vehicles. There's only one wallet, after all. So you're going to pay either way. Globe and Mail