Scotty

Excuse me for mistaken the term for those who teach classes while the extremely well-paid professors DON'T. A report on the teaching workloads of professors in chemistry, philosophy and economics at 10 universities by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, an arms-length agency of the Ontario government, found the average professor teaches only three courses per year — typically two in one semester and one in the other — even though about 20 per cent appear to be involved in no research or scholarly writing. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/03/11/ontario_professors_should_have_to_teach_more_courses_reports_say.html I am not interested in paying professors to write scholarly papers nobody reads. They should be paid to teach.

You mean before the Liberals got in and created a MASSIVE deficit, and a MONSTER debt through their corruption, ignorance, incompetence and stupidity?

Am I given to understand you feel it is wrong to criticize the multimillion dollar salaries of CEOs?

I'm sure there are some professors who could do research while they're on sabbatical. I'm just as sure most don't do anything worthwhile to their students or the university. What research does a law professor do? Or an English professor? What about an accounting professor or an IT professor? Please don't say they do this to keep themselves up to date in their fields. All professionals have to do research and read trade papers to keep themselves up to date in their fields, and they don't get a year off to do it. That includes all the lawyers, accountants, IT professionals, and yes, scientists who work in the private sector or for other governments. Like the rest of those professionals, university professors can do it on their own time, especially given their light course loads and that their summer holidays are a good 3-4 months long.

Not so much! Most courses are taught by TAs. Maybe, but they don't teach a full course load. But the Western president carried out no research. He instead didn't go on his sabattical, and he got paid for it anyway. Care to explain the benefits to us all?

You apparently chose not to read my cite. If you had you'd have read that Over 15 years to 2011, the wage increases of police, firefighters and paramedics have far outstripped the cost of living, the rate of inflation and the average of other public sector workers, including nurses and teachers. They also enjoy expensive pensions and fringe benefits: coverage that most ratepayers will never enjoy. The questionable “retention bonuses” paid to keep essential workers in cities where they are already working are yet another cost. You'd also have read that Eighty-four per cent of Toronto’s operating budget increases for the last 10 years have been driven by salary increases for essential services. What difference does that make? If the police, fire and medical services are being run so badly that they have to have huge amounts of overtime for so many police officers than it's time to fire those in charge. Most of the people on the sunshine list are cops, firefighters and EMTs.

It doesn't matter what they claim. Police and firefighter wages are decided by arbitration, and the arbitration system is broken. It basically looks at whatever police service is making the most, and compares it to the ones under consideration, then bumps up the one under consideration to match the highest wages. How much work they do is not relevant. The ability of the particular town or city to pay that much is not relevant either. Only what other cops on other forces make. Municipalities have been begging the Ontario government to do something about the mandatory arbitration for years but the Liberals have turned a deaf ear. Not surprising given the way the unions are helping them get re-elected. Every year, 1,500 municipal leaders meet at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference. And every year they beg the province to help them contain the runaway compensation of first responders. Russ Powers, president of AMO said, “When it comes to wage and benefit increases, police and fire are in a class of their own . . . and it is not sustainable.” http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/08/30/contain_runaway_compensation_of_ontarios_first_responders.html

Police in Ontario make double what police in England make. A small town cop in norther Ontario makes about one third more than a cop on the NYPD gets. A cop in Windsor makes more than the police chief across the river in Detroit. Average police salary, not counting benefits or overtime is approaching $90k. Think about that for a minute. We're paying cops, thousands of them, $100k a year? Same goes for firefighters. These costs are getting out of control. We're cutting back on the numbers of police and closing firehalls, lowering our police and fire protection in order to pay extravagant salaries to people who mostly have high school diplomas and in jobs which don't require huge salaries to draw more than enough qualified applicants. We have extortionate laws which require various companies to hire police officers at $60-$70hr - which, by the way, you can get a lawyer for - to direct traffic at construction sites or walk around fairgrounds. No, they can't hire security guards, they have to pay these huge fees for cops. It's pretty cushy for the cop, because on top of that he can take the next day off (paid) sick at work so he doesn't feel overworked. Firefighters? Cushiest job in the public service. Most of the time they're sitting around watching TV, or playing video games or sleeping. Most calls are now health related (90%) so that involves riding the truck to where there's been a heart attack or someone's fallen down the stairs, or on occasion, when there's been a car crash. Ever seen one of these scenes? Most of the firefighters on-scene are just standing around and talking, waiting to go back to the fire hall. They work 24 hr shifts, which is not a big stressor given they can sleep in their beds when tired. They then get the next 48 hrs off. Needless to say, on top of their salaries a lot of firefighters also have second jobs since they have so much time on their hands. Neither job is among Canada's most dangerous. The jobs which are dangerous tend to not pay very well, like taxi driver. University professors? Okay, I was wrong. This is even more cushy than firefighters. You take a few classes, but you have lots of time free to do your own thing. TAs do most of the teaching and marking. You're too important for that. You have poetry to write and trade papers to read, and experiments to perform. And you get a full year off every seven years, as a paid sabbatical. These and lots of other jobs, like teaching, have tons of people who want to do them. There is no need to pay such rich salaries, nor any evidence those rich salaries result in a higher quality of output. I mean, how do you even measure the output of teachers and professors? No matter how many of their students fail that doesn't impact their jobs. If crime rises or there's more fires all that means is people tell you to hire more cops and firefighters. I haven't seen a listing for other cities, but for Ottawa's sunshine list, 70% of those on it were 'first responders', meaning high school guys in polyester uniforms. Seventy percent of the top paid people in all of government, at the school board, municipal, or provincial level, including hospitals are first responders! There's something stupid about that.

According to the National Post "the top paid TTC collector, Clarke Smith, raked in $141,146.29 last year." He's a ticket collector! How many other ticket collectors made over $100k?? How is the salary of ticket collectors so high that even with overtime they can pull in that kind of money? These high salaries don't just come out of our pockets they come out of what services we would expect to get for the high taxes and fees we pay. Maybe we could have buses every 15 minutes instead of every 30 minutes or have them go later, or have newer trains and buses if so many transit employees weren't so overpaid.

When you pay cops, firefighters, paramedics and teachers $100k that means you either rob other services to pay them, or you have to have fewer of them than you need. Ontario, and Canada in general have a lot fewer cops than most other jurisdictions around the world. That's probably because we pay them 35%-50% more than most other jurisdictions, so we can't afford more. Imagine if we paid teachers one third less. We could either lower taxes, or have classes which were smaller. If hospitals weren't wasting so much money on high salaries for everyone from administrators to kitchen staff we might have more beds for sick people. Universities are huge money wasters. All of those professors are making well over $100k and they don't even teach! We have TA's for that because the professors are too good for teaching! They also get one year of paid leave every seven years! Who else does that anywhere!? School boards are every bit as bad with their administrators.

Do you seriously believe anyone is going to be arrested on terrorism charges for peaceful protest?

I thought it made him seem quite sound. He wanted to do something to get off crack, so he tried to get arrested. When he was confronted with the failure of his first gambit, he explored other options to get what he wanted, and succeeded in being arrested. This does not show insanity. in fact, the definition of sanity in the legal world is knowing what you are doing is wrong. Since he knew he would get arrested for doing it that showed he was legally sane. It's sad that a human being is in such a downward spiral that he thinks going to jail will give him some peace, but no one forced him to take crack. On the other hand, another doctor suggested he might perhaps be suffering from some kind of mood disorder, but he wouldn't be treated and was never officlaly diagnosed. I feel safe in calling him a very troubled young man. But the essence of the problem with 'lone wolves' is they are almost all troubled young people. In fact, you generally don't search for a new religion to convert to, nor do you spend your time looking at jihad sites on the internet if you aren't a troubled person, at least in my opinion. There are, unfortunately, many troubled young people out there. The entire notion of 'violent jihad' put out there by extremist groups is almost a trap for the troubled, much like the cults of decades past. You cannot say that his motives were not religious, for they clearly were. He believed in the religion, as he had learned it, and was trying to accomplish something on its behalf, or on his own behalf, when he killed the soldier. The troubled background was certainly a factor, but he wouldn't have done it without the religion he was drawn to. Nor can you say the religion was twisted from 'proper' Islam for there are many different interpretations of Islam out there just as there are many different interpretations of Christianity and Judaism. When he shot the soldier, though, and went up on parliament hill, however troubled he might or might not have been, he was motivated by religion, by Jihad.

From everything I have heard Mulcair is a nasty sort of guy, an overbearing bully who can't let an opportunity to take shots at people go by, including the reporters who interview him. As for Trudeau Junior, he seems to make spur of the moment decisions based on how that will make him look in the press. Having an election with him against Harper will be a fight beween Style with no Substance and Substance with no Style.

Why not bring them ALL over here!? Honestly, even if I'm being a tad facetious no one can actually say that my policy would not result in more benefits for Canada than the current crop of immigration.

What our current immigration looks like. What it would look like under my policy! These are typical Irish girls in their traditional kilts.

You, sir, have trouble with your mind. It is locked onto a trajectory which has arisen from previous experience. Your concept of what hacking can do is based upon our history with a few adolescent vandals. You really don't understand because you have never really put your mind to examine the possibility of a state with nearly unlimited resources attacking dozens if not hundreds or thousands of sites simultaneously, perhaps including special software developed and inserted ahead of time. China's Huawei is now the world's largest builder of telecommunications infrastructure, which of course, means everything they're tied into is wide open to the Chinese government. Chinese companies are building computers and selling software, and every one of them is ultimately controlled by the Chinese government. Add in a few hundred spies directed to cut cables and blow up computers and our entire system could be brought crumbling to the ground.

We have lots of men! Attractive young women will always find men! My dear fellow, no one who is not here and has never been here has any rights here. We invite them here to grow our population. Who better to do that than attractive young women!? And if they're university graduates and probably are familiar with English, so much the better! Why attractive? Why not attractive!? We get to choose, so why not improve the looks of our cities by filling them with attractive young women!? Cynical!? Me!? This is only about the ten millionth time people have accused me of being a cynic! I can't imagine why! However, I would vote in favour of such a plan as most logically and scientifically the best to fit our desire to grow the size and lower the age of the population. And you know very well I am correct!

Limit immigration to those in their twenties and focus mostly on attractive women! Youth unemployment is over 20% in the Ireland. It's over 30% in Slovakia and Portugal, over 40% in Italy and Croatia, over 50% in Spain and Greece! That means you have a whole lot of young women who have just left university and have little hope of getting a decent job! Bring some of them here! Don't we have a problem with an aging population? Aren't we worried about a lack of babies? The more young women you have in a country the more babies you're likely to have! Keep bringing in lots of young, attractive women every year and I guarantee you our birth rate will rise! No lesbians, of course. That would defeat the purpose.

There is but one God, and his name is McPherson! He created the universe with a big bang, and anyone who insults him will leave it the same way.

But there are main backbones, aren't there? Suppose I assign say, 100 hackers to figure a way to take down every one of them? I mean, yes, there are multiple redudancies, but the North Koreans, a pretty pathetic and poor country with a fourth rate education system has, allegedly, 3000 hackers in a building to do nasty things. How many does China have? Thirty thousand? A hundred thousand? What kind of havoc could they wreak on the internet if they were ordered to do so? And hey, what if you combined that with some physical action. The Chinese have a lot of spies, after all. http://gizmodo.com/5912383/how-to-destroy-the-internet What if it's a government job? What if the networks which connect all the banks and credit cards get attacked by thousands of organized hackers with huge computing power working for the Chinese or Russian government?

I will call it Submission. The main tenet of my religion is that women must submit to men. Men will be able to have as many wives as they wish, and to divorce them very simply by saying "I divorce you". To help keep the women in line, though, they will not be able to divorce their husbands unless I say so. Oh, and their husbands will be able to beat them, but not around the face, because we don't want their looks to be damaged. Women will not be able to own anything, and their word will only be worth 1/4 that of a man. They will be required to dress appropriately, in a fitting religious way, such as this. I haven't decided if I will require collars around their necks or not as is properly befitting submissives. What do you think?

The big wake-up call will come when some hostile organization, North Korea or China or Russia or someone else with reach, manages to hugely disrupt either the power or financial or communications system in the West, especially in the US. What happens when the bank doesn't show a record of your deposits, of your account and the ATMs don't work anyway? How much money does the average person have on them? Many have almost none, relying on their debit and credit cards. What if they don't work one day and it takes weeks to sort out the mess? What happens when the power generators all shut down in such a way they're damaged or overloaded and take weeks to repair? What do you do with no cell phones, with no mobile communication? No internet? Who even has maps or phone books any more?

One does not. The best one can hope for is to not allow ones passions to be inflamed by others whose passions have overcome them. Everyone on this web site, so far as I can see, Left and Right, Liberal and Conservative, and yes, even those NDP types, means well. Some people are more passionate about their beliefs than others. But every one of them believes that their ideas, their ideology, their political program, platform or policy, will leave the world in better shape than it was found. That being the case, they find themselves frustrated at those who oppose such policies and plans. For are they not standing in the way of that which will help make the world, in some small way, at least, a better place!? Who would oppose such splendid policies but one who does not wish to make the world a better place! Someone bad, of course! Someone reprehensible! So they fling unfriendly and unflattering terms at the fellow in their frustration. But they do mean well. The problem is they don't seem to realize the other fellow means well, too.

Such as? Higher deficits and debt? More expensive electricity? Close to the most expensive public servants on the planet? Hundred thousand dollar cops?

Everything government does involves giving money to people. There cannot be any cut in spending without cutting the money they give to people.