Scotty

According to what I've read that happens frequently, and no one can remember a camera crew ever being arrested or even ordered out of the room unless they were disturbing the hearing in some way.

What do you consider 'artificially high' wages? Would that be wages high enough to buy a house with? Or more than the $2hr the workers in China get?

The company was demanding they cut that to $16hr. That is not an honest attempt to bring wages to a lower level. Further, the company managed to thrive and be profitable right up until Caterpillar took over. Nor has Caterpillar made any effort to demonstrate that it is incapable of turning a profit under the current wage agreement. And of course, Caterpillar itself is an immensely profitable company which just reported record profits.

I'm not sure I understand the question. By law, yes, sixteen year olds can make sexual judgements. It's an oddity of the law that a man can have sex with a sixteen year old quite legally but if he takes a picture of that sixteen year old he becomes a criminal. Let me explain the basis for my objection to the current law. First, it is far too broad in that it puts people who might look at seventeen year olds into the same category as those looking at the rape of four year olds. Second, it makes no allowance for the fact that a viewer might honestly not know the person he is looking at is under age. I use the case of Tracy Lords because at 15 she posed as the centerfold of Penthouse, and went on to do a series of adult films while stating she was 22. No one looking at her thought differently. And those pictures and videos would never appeal to pedophiles. Nevertheless, they are all child porn now under the law, and anyone who views them can be so charged. This leaves open the possibility that anyone downloading porn of young women could be, without intending to, downloading the odd 17 or 16 year old as well, and could thus be liable to imprisonment. The second major part of my objection is with regard to the fact that those who become aroused by looking at children cannot help being that way, did not ask for it, and must suffer considerably from it. It seems to me the overwhelming repugnance most people feel towards those who are sexually aroused by children, while quite natural, overlooks this fact. They cannot help being aroused by children, and sexuality is one of the most powerful of human instincts. Therefore, while I condemn those who act out on those impulses for the obvious harm it causes children, I am far more hesitant at destroying the lives of those who have never acted out on those impulses, ie, never harmed or attempted to interact sexually with a child, but merely downloaded a decades old picture, or perhaps, fictional stories from the internet. It should go without saying I have even more issues with destroying the lives of people caught with pictures or videos of teenagers. I'd like to point out I'm not advocating legalizing child porn. I am in favour of continuing to shut down such sites, and I believe I read in one study that the average lifespan of a child porn site is a matter of days or weeks. Second, I have been debating pornography for years, decades. I have seen over the years many claims about its influence on its consumers, and each and every such claim I have investigated has turned out to be nonsense. No unbiased study has ever concluded that the consumption of pornography incites sexual violence against women. I see no logical reason to conclude child pornography incites violence any more than regular pornography. And no one has ever presented any evidence to the contrary. I understand what you are saying about mutual reinforcement in that way. As far as I know there is no such online community with regard to rape, and it's difficult to imagine one. And so I accept this might well be a danger in that this 'community' should it continue to exist for long, could encourage real life carrying out of fantasies. But again, I'm not suggesting police should not continue to shut down such sites, or to monitor them and try to find those who sound like they have or are likely to 'act out', or who actually post 'real' child pornography. What I'm saying is some guy who has never harmed a child should not have his life destroyed because they downloaded some stories or videos. I'm not even really saying such material ought to be lawful to possess. It could be removed from them, the police could ascertain if they actually had caused any damage to children, and they could be warned without anyone's name ever being made public. As a local Ottawa lawyer said to the media today, he's had clients who have committed suicide, whose lives have been destroyed over the publication of their names associated with child porn, even those who were later acquitted. In a sense, though, that argument is the same one I've been fighting with regard to adult pornography for so many years. Ie, that the consumption of the videos and pictures might cause someone to act out on it. And there's just no evidence to support that. Numerous studies, including at least two presidential commissions, one by Nixon, one by Reagan, were formed to 'prove' pornography encourages sexual violence and they failed miserably.

If the law was more measured you might have some justification for that sort of statement. Given the law is so broadly based it includes teenagers sexting each other, artists renditions, computer animation, and fictional written stories, I'm afraid I have to disagree.

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone can make money off this, at least not for long. As I've said earlier, you'd be safer running cocaine into Florida than trying to run a child porn site.

Red Deer lawyer Lorne Goddard sued because a letter Day wrote to the Red Deer Advocate newspaper suggested Goddard might share the interests of his pedophile client, then on trial for child pornography offences. Goddard sued for libel, and asked for $600,000. Stockwell Day suit settled for $794,000

You're misunderstanding me. I did not mean that the average age of immigrants who arrive here is not far removed from that of the median average of the Canadian born population. What I meant to say was that the median age of immigrants in Canada, inc. all immigrants, regardless of when they arrived, is only a few years younger than the average age of Canadian born in Canada.

Bingo on both counts. And my belief that the average age of immigrants is not far removed from the average age of Canadian born citizens is because that's what Statistics Canada says.

And as a side benefit, you can heat your house by setting fire to your tap water...

True. But 91% are Muslims. I think, therefore, it is fair to describe it as largely a Muslim issue.

There was a time when honor killing was practiced and accepted in the US? Do please give us some cites.

No, I'm telling you TO think.

Absolutely. Who cares if scum wants to hang itself?

Perhaps you can inform us which politicians have demonstrated or at least, attempted to suggest they are impartial in terms of crime.

The majority of rapes are not reported. And the percentage which is reported is not going up, but down. If you bothered to read the stats can survey you'd find that the crimes not reported range from burglary to assault, arson, sexual assault, robbery, etc. It's not change from cupholders. As for moving goalposts, you're the one who introduced the topic, though for the life of me I don't understand why you believe it was relevant. When a crime is committed, it deserves a just punishment. How much of that particular crime is committed, and whether the rate is rising or falling, is entirely irrelevant. The punishment ought to be in keeping with the severity of the damage done by the offender.

No, they're not. That's silly. The unions and their need the companies. The companies most certainly do NOT need the unions.

Whose job CAN'T be done cheaper in Southeast Asia? People in the service industry, I suppose, but that's about it. Recall that Nokia plant in Romania which closed down. The workers there, non-union, were only making about $300 a month, but even that was too much, so production of cell phones was moved to Asia. So just what kind of accommodation do you think will help? I wonder if it's time to re-think the idea that free trade benefits all parties.

My take on this was that Caterpillar bought the London plant with the expressed intention of closing it down. Caterpillar is like Wal-Mart, absolutely opposed to any form of unions and willing to be as cutthroat as it can get away with to eliminate unions and make sure employees tow the company line. Buy buying this company it gets to keep the orders Electro-Motive had, including its longstanding arrangement with Bombardier, and its client base, and eliminates it as competition. It will now shift production to third world countries, and non-union states where it can pay workers less, give them fewer, or no benefits, and fire anyone who doesn't show sufficient enthusiasm. Caterpillar and Wal-Mart are examples of 21st century capitalism at its most ruthless. These are people who could not care less about the communities they operate in or their own employees. They feel no obligation to anything but the bottom line, and as their stock options and bonuses depend on maximizing profit, they'll do it at all costs. Really, the writing was on the wall the instant Caterpillar bought this company. If the union had actually accepted the demand for a 50% wage cut plus cuts to benefits the company would have come up with something more outrageous to make sure there was no agreement. For some reason, some of these guys in five thousand dollar suits seem to feel the need to justify their actions on some other basis than maximizing their bonuses. So they provoke a fight then throw up their hands in helpless resignation at the union's intransigence, then do what they were going to do anyway.

Thank you for demonstrating how much thought, logic and evidence goes into the support of this law, a law which, I remind people, was opposed by Canadian bar associations, the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, artists unions and representatives, and the opposition when it was put in place. Now of course, the mindless hysteria around this issue mutes anyone who dares to suggest the law might be overbroad or ill conceived.

By people who came here from another culture.

Are you suggesting their entire extended families got together to murder them?

No, it wasn't.

You haven't tried to define it for yourself. You've put your hands against your ears and gone "Na-na-na-na-na" so you don't have to consider the question.

The average age of immigrants is about the same as the average age of Canadian born people. We get very few young people coming over here. We get middle aged professionals who then sponsor their parents.