Scotty

China has a rapidly expanding middle class, but the majority of Chinese people still live in abject poverty much the way their distant ancestors did. They also use slave labour. There is no way we can compete with them in terms of worker salaries without reducing our lifestyle to the point of a third world state. And if that's what you're proposing I wonder just what you consider to be the advantages to Canada? Do you think a faster GDP growth makes up for making $1 hr? Who says Albertan workers compete? People working in the Alberta oil fields, even unskilled workers, are earning very handsome salaries. I'm willing to bet Chinese workers could do the job at a quarter the cost or less. What you have going for you is that you don't need to worry about the oil fields being shipped to China to be worked, and the government won't let Chinese workers come in and put all the Albertan workers onto the unemployment line.

No, they don't. I think this issue was invented out of whole cloth, much like the EH-101 was. It was a chance to portray the Tories as being militaristic and of 'wasting' money on fancy toys for the military instead of (sob) helping the poor and sick. There is no question in my mind - none - that if the Liberals had won the last election we would still have bought these fighters. He's not even saying that we won't buy the things. He's saying he'll cancel the thing, then run up some expensive, time consuming dog and pony show to see whether we should buy them. Well, crap, shouldn't the Liberals have decided that before we poured all that money into developing them in the first place? And even if we buy something else it's highly unlikely it's going to result in much, if any reduction in cost, especially given that we'd be looking at a multi year delay, with consequent increase in eventual price.

Look, does anyone know of a time in history, going through all of British Parliamentary history, when the leader of the opposition party in a minority parliament brought down the government when he was 19 points down in the polls? I mean, huh!? So either Ignatieff is a blithering imbecile, or he figured that an election would just bring in another Tory minority, which would then give him an excuse, at that point, to say "Look, the Tories are just as arrogant as last time, and we're not having it, so we either have another election right now, or me and Jack and Jacques here see how things go for us."

That Conservative candidates are gainfully employed? I'm not sure what you or the Star are trying to get at here. This candidate, as a private citizen, worked for a firm which (gasp) did business with the federal government! So? I've seen desperate efforts at creating a scandal before, but this has got to be a new low.

This year, I will make more money than at any time in my life. Guess what? I will be paying more taxes than at any previous time in my life. I will probably pay more in taxes than you make, maybe twice as much. So how much do you contribute to the public purse?

Why would we not blame it on Trudeau and Mulroney? Trudeau ran up the debt from virtually nothing, quadrupling spending, so he holds the primary responsibility. Mulroney didn't really do a lot but pay the credit bills, but given the stagflation of the day and double digit interest rates, the debt exploded upward. We've had something like 12 straight years of surplus budgets though until corrupt, incompetent American politicians caused a world-wide recession.

First, the debt problem isn't worsening it's getting better, with smaller deficits each year. Second, the government didn't give any money to banks.

Not true. The US is in debt because of decades of irresponsible, incompetent, and corrupt politicians whose answer to every problem is "Cut taxes!" Let them raise taxes - well, once they're out of the recession those selfsame irresponsible, incompetent, corrupt politicians created - and that will take care of the debt.

Like what goodies?

Duceppe is French. Quebec will always and has always voted for the French guy over the English guy. Doesn't matter who the French guy is. Doesn't matter who the English guy is.

Can you name these separatists?

By a hangnail, because of the anglso and immigrants as Parizeau said. The majority of French Quebec voted to leave, though, and still votes BQ.

It's very hard to find accurate stuff on immigration issues and statistics due to the proliferation of immigration industry sites. Also, Immigration Canada's web site seems primarily aimed at immigrants and potential immigrants, and so is not exactly user friendly for other purposes.

Is half of Mill's Caucus running as Ignatieff's cabinet in waiting?

I think the prisons are very much needed. We need to be put more bad people away for longer periods of time As for the fighters, if the Liberals didn't want them they shouldn't have put $200 million into building them in the first place.

The problem with your little theory is that you haven't made a case for why preventing Quebec from separating ought to be something most of us have much interest in pursuing.

Yeah, but it doesn't look like a lot of people really care. They don't see it as Harper vs Parliament, but as Harper vs Ignatieff/Layton/Duceppe. I think Harper was dumb to not come across with the documents, but on the other hand it doesn't exactly have me all weepy with concern.

This ought to be in the provincial section, but Duncan, even more than the rest of McGuinty's cabinet, will be tainted by the massive deficits, misspending and economic failures McGuinty has presided over. As such, like McGuinty, Duncan has no future on the federal scene. He also has no chance of taking over control of the (presumably much reduced) Liberal caucus after McGuinty because the Liberals will need to show a clean break with their free-spending, high taxing record of fiscal incompetence before having any chance of retaking power. Presumably he will retire from politics after McGuinty loses office in the upcoming provincial election.

That speaks of an ignorance of history. Prior to the BQ the Liberals generally took almost every seat in Quebec. Half the government caucus were Quebecers during Trudeau's time. He was succeeded by Quebecer Brian Mulroney, who also had a huge number of Quebec MPs in his caucus. He was followed by Quebecer Jean Chretien. To suggest Quebecers haven't been a part of the decision making process is utterly ludicrous. As to the here and now, as long as Quebecers continue to exhibit a xenophobic attitude which sees themselves as separate from Canada, and continue to elect separatist MPs who clearly articulate their lack of interest or care for anything about Canada except its money, they don't deserve any input.

Since he doesn't have one it shouldn't require much effort.

If you'll recall, there was a strong move to add about thirty seats to parliament last year in order to account for the growth in the populations of Ontario, Alberta and BC. Quebec's whining shot that down. Quebec's birth rate is very low and they don't like immigrants, so everyone knows their percentage of the population is going to continue to slide. But it's apparently verbotten to suggest their share of the seats in the house or senate or supreme court ought to go down too.

Me on the other hand understands the difference between the twisting snake-pit of self promoting weasels in parliament and Canada as a whole.

Oh well, that's settled then.

Rex Murphy quoted someone or other on the subject of 'contempt' for parliament. To paraphrase, he said "So the Tories have caught up to how the rest of Canadians feel, eh?" |

I may be mistaken, but I believe you are speaking TO a secessionist.