Scotty

It's quite smart strategy, actually. They will use that suggestion repeatedly, forcing Ignatief to promise flat out without any ifs, ands or buts, that there will be no coalition. That way, if the House comes out pretty much as it is now the electorate would be doubly furious if Ignatief forms a coalition, esp with the inclusion of separatists.

If the opposition votes no confidence right after the Tories have won an election the electorate will be very mightily PO'd at them. And they would then enter into a HIGHLY unstable coalition between socialists, the Liberals under a centre right leaders, and separatists who have no compunction about blackmailing people for votes. Such a coalitionist would be very unlikely to last very long, and when it collapsed the electorate would probably hammer all parties involved. So it would be EXTREMELY risky for them all.

Imagine if, at the same time, he had to mollify a third party, this one made up of separatists who didn't give a damn about anything to do with the country at all, but just their small corner of it.

An ndp-liberal coalition would not be able to rule without the separatists. Any coalition between them would be horribly unstable.

A coalition between the Libs and NDP would not produce that degree of resentment. The problem for the opposition is that even together they probably won't have nearly as many seats as the Tories, and certainly not enough for a majority. In effect, they can only govern then with the help of the separatists, and we know that every single vote on every single issue, the separatists would be holding their hands out, smug smile on their faces, demanding more billions for Quebec, and more powers for Quebec to buy their vote.

Yes, but we're all used to parliament being government's bitch, a bitch that begged and rolled over, and played dead with the flick of a government whip's finger. So it's easy to get into the mindset that the opposition ought to let the government govern. Then again, when you talk about 'anti-democratic' you have to bear in mind that if we grant a majority in parliament untrammeled freedom to do whatever they have the votes for we wind up with government which is chaotic and impossible in all but a majority situation. And as long as Quebec, in its innate bigotry and xenophobia insists on having its own separate party to represent it there is unlikely to be a lot of majority governments in Canada's future.

Or.. they'll get nowhere until the numbers of visible and other minorities exceed a given tipping point, as has happened in a number of places in Europe. Then, if the mainstream parties continue to blithely ignore problems with immigration you'll see a surge in support for one-trick-pony, anti-immigrant or racist groups as we've seen in the UK, in France, in The Netherlands, Austria and Scandinavia.

Most likely they had a higher opinion of his intelligence than was merited The ones who can read polls, you mean? ,And after the election he'll have some smaller caucus meetings, fewer people to worry about.

There are only two legitimate options for government; Tories and Liberals. When people hate the Tories and post all these pseudo scandals and complaints, I think it entirely relevant to respond, if the situation calls for it, that the Liberals are equally as bad on that given subject, if not worse. It is to say that this particular subject is not going to change votes since there is no alternative better. Oh, the Tories don't provide open government!? Oh how horrible! Well let's vote in the Liberals then and.... uhm, but then we remember just how 'open' Liberals are in government too, so why bother? You see what I'm getting at? At least if it had been a long time, and the very people complaining about the Tories hadn't done the exact same thing when THEY were in cabinet, you might have at least some traction. But seeing the pompous sense of indignation on former Liberal cabinet ministers only makes me want to snicker in a cynical fashion at their poor acting skills.

Or... they decided that what the others wanted wasn't something they could support. The Liberals made it clear they would vote against ANY budget, no matter what it contained. The BQ tried to blackmail them. So that only left the NDP. They added some stuff in there to make the NDP happy, but clearly not enough. Still seems a pointless waste of $300 million dollars given all the polls point to pretty much the same thing, another minority conservative government - unless the opposition is willing to form another Gang of Three and try to govern between them.

Doubt it. They let people work for Wal-Mart.

I think they form governments to keep other people who have formed governments from invading them. And to see the garbage is taken out and the pot holes filled. That's basically it.

You're being more than a little sanctimonious on this, as is the opposition. We all know that since they realized the power of their majorities on committees the opposition has basically gone on fishing expeditions, using their majorities to demand documents and information from a wide variety of ministries, searching for something they could use which would be politically damaging to the Conservatives. To see the Liberals in all their pompous self-righteousness talking about the sacred right of parliament is just plain laughable given most of these selfsame people were the ones treating Parliament like a voiceless rubber stamp to everything the Liberal government did. And it's not like this committee gave a good goddam about what anything costs except insofar as they can use it as ammunition against the Tories. Just like they don't give a damn about document dumps, what's in them, or anything else. The sole purpose of their demands, and the sole purpose of their 'finding' of contempt is to score political points.

All our understanding of how parliament works over the last half century is tossed up in the air when there's a minority parliament. Even then, most minority parliaments, and there have been very few, don't last very long. This one has lasted long enough for the opposition to play silly games with their 'majority' in committees. That's really all that's different.

Hey, I didn't say there'd be no laws or rules! Let's say you can't use anything other than a hand gun - without silencer, just to keep things sporting. Also, you can't organize kills. That is, you can't take a dozen friends somewhere to kill someone. You have to do it by yourself. No hiring people to do it either. Taking money to kill people would be illegal. All kills have to be public and recorded. Of course, that means everyone you know will know you killed someone, so they'll all be somewhat wary around you. And of course, there's nothing wrong with revenge killing. So if you kill someone, their friend or relative can come and try to kill you too. Those who pile up the kill scores are pretty quickly going to find themselves unwelcome most places, and probably shot 'just in case' by others.

Those people don't matter. Quite literally, they don't count.

Two thirds of visible minority members are foreign born. And I bet if we exclude the kids we'd find that number even higher. Stats Canada

Or maybe not. Visible minority status was linked with low income for immigrants, but not for non-immigrants. Canadian-born visible minorities were no more likely than others born in Canada to experience low income. If anything, the tendency was for visible minorities to be less likely than other non-immigrants to experience low income, although the difference was not statistically significant Stats Canada

Most visible minority members are immigrants with poor language skills. When talking public administration, not to mention any other higher level jobs, your communications skills matter - a lot.

Why is it people don't have the right to fear for their culture, or to want to protect it, unless they're from some sort of colourful ethnic minority group? There are now more Hispanics in California schools than any other grouping. Hispanic numbers are rising rapidly throughout a number of states. And where their numbers rise they're demanding acknowledgment and power, and that includes language rights. Now I have nothing particular against Hispanics but they are a different culture. And their numbers are expected to rise to 30% of the US population by 2050. Why should Americans not have the right to be concerned about that? Mexico might have lost the war but it looks like they're taking back the US bit by bit. And frankly, the economics are all messed up, bringing in millions of barely literate and uneducated people every year only ensures that the wages for lower level jobs will be so low that American born people won't touch them. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby people say Americans won't take certain jobs, and thus America needs the Hispanics to do them. But the Republican party only cars about big business interests which want that continued flow of cheap labour. And the Democrats only see a rising block of voters who tend to vote Democrat. Both parties are looking out for their own interests rather than considering what's best for the country.

Unfortunately, the provincial ministries don't seem eager to share a lot of information. Generally, you need to plug in the hospital, and the particular surgical or medical procedure, and then it will give you the wait time for that and only that. To get wait times all across the board seems more difficult, not to mention across the country. Where are wait times in Canada the worst? I don't know. I hear nothing good about Quebec, though. I did come across this, but certain people will gag on it because it's from Satan, yes, Satan himself. It does go across the country, but only 12 broad categories are listed. Within each category, some procedures will have much longer or much shorter waits. he Fraser Institute’s twentieth annual waiting list survey finds that province-wide wait times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments have increased in 2010. The total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and delivery of elective treatment by a specialist, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, has risen from 16.1 weeks in 2009 to 18.2 weeks in 2010. Compared to 1993, the total waiting time in 2010 is 96 percent longer. Waiting Times in Canada

I wonder how much of the cost is because of the insurance system method we use to pay for things. Ie, every time you go to a hospital or to a doctor, they have to draw up an invoice listing every single thing they did and everything they gave you and bill your insurance company, even if it is the government. I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to just put them on salaries. What is the point, given the government pays for everything anyway, to have all this accounting so that the government insurance corporation can be the government hospital corporation? I wonder what the cost savings would be if the hospitals and nursing homes and clinics didn't have to keep an itemized accounting breakdown of everything they did for each individual patient.

I don't get it. It doesn't seem that bad to me. If she could dance a little, and was better looking, and maybe hired someone who could write better lyrics, and could sing, it would probably be a pretty good song. The video itself was kinda boring, though.

Of course not! But the system doesn't depend on volunteers. You can certainly kill anyone who's trying to kill you - if you can. It's survival of the fittest!

The beauty is that everyone would have that right. Kill anyone you want to.