Scotty

Certainly it's legal. And certainly we can stop it. Recall that when the Chinese were making a move to take over Potash Corp the government decided (Under enormous pressure from Saskatchewan) that wouldn't be in Canada's best interest. And recall the skullduggery of the Chinese surrounding that effort, which included breaking into Canadian government computers. Given the Chinese themselves don't allow foreign ownership in any number of areas they can hardly complain if we restrict foreign ownership over key sectors such as oil and forestry, or at least put tight restrictions on what that foreign ownership can do here.

You didn't really have a point other than to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. You and a few others seem to make a hobby out of fighting determinedly to prove points which are almost entirely irrelevant to the general direction of a discussion. It's like you go through text not to learn anything, but to look for something you can contradict, and then try to make that the point of discussion, regardless of how unimportant that point is. And how does that impact the thrust of my actual point, which is that we are selling out out resources to companies controlled by the Chinese government? Even if a few of those companies are actually privately owned (though as we've seen, the oil industry is entirely controlled by state owned enterprises) even private companies are ultimately 100% controlled by the Chinese government. Do you have any actual opinion on THAT?

There speaks massive naivety. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese companies and corporations are owned directly by the Chinese government. None of the rest of the larger ones can operate without government partners, and all of them are 100% subject to the directives, orders, wishes and desires of the Chinese government. If, for example, the US government told an American company in Canada to do something drastic, the company could tell the US to get stuffed. Even if a law was passed - no easy thing in the US - there could be legal challenges, and it would all be out in the open. In China, any company, any corporation, would jump to obey any government directive, even one which is not publicly admitted to exist. A single phone call would change that companies operations overnight. As we can see from the following cite, virtually all core corporations are state owned enterprises. At some (disputable) point in the mid-2000s, the reform process was reversed entirely and SOEs began to wax again. The reversal can reasonably be dated to late 2006, when the State Council formally set aside the core of the economy for SOEs T]he State should solely own, or have a majority share in, enterprises engaged in power generation and distribution, oil, petrochemicals and natural gas, telecom and armaments. The State must also have a controlling stake in the coal, aviation, and shipping industries.... Central SOEs should also become heavyweights in sectors including machinery, automobiles, IT, construction, iron and steel, and non-ferrous metals. This omits state dominance in banking, insurance, and the rest of finance, media, tobacco, and railways. This was a daunting list, representing a wide swath of the economy set apart for state distortions. The reversal was codified by Wu Bangguo, second in the Party hierarchy, when he listed privatization with other intolerable developments. The Fall and rise of Chinese State Owned Enterprises

Oh yes, by all means. Try to lecture me about my moral compass while proudly admitting you don't really know what you're talking about and are too lazy to even do the most basic of research to find out. Sooo impressive.

I wonder how many Canadians, who have always been at least a little restless at the degree to which our corporate sector has been owned by the United States, know to what degree Chinese companies have been investing in Canada's resource sector. The difference, of course, is that Chinese companies are all owned by the Chinese Communist Party. And while the American capitalist corporations have often been accused of putting their own financial interests ahead of anything else, there's just no doubt whatsoever when it comes to Chinese state corporations. It's what's good for China that matters, not what's good for anyone else. To that end, China has bought up large chunks of the forestry sector, and, surprise surprise, we are now shipping far more raw logs overseas than every before. In fact, the numbers have gone up tenfold in just the last year. Canadian sawmills are shutting down because forestry companies - now owned by China, want to ship the logs to Chinese sawmills instead. Over the last few years China has been radically increasing its ownership of the oil and gas industry too. Small wonder Chinese money is heavily involved in the plan to develop the Enbridge pipeline to ship raw bitumen to China for processing. Now I support shipping oil to China and Asia, but I'm very much against shipping bitumen ANYWHERE. It ought to be processed here in Canada, just like the logs. And the more I read about the proposed pipeline route the less I like it. It seems to me a more southerly route which would not take tankers through dangerous waters would make far more sense. Of course, that's sense for US. As far as China and Chinese owned companies go the sensible thing is to go the cheapest route, because fears of oil spills along someone else's coast just aren't relevant. This is how companies operate when they're owned by another nation, and don't mistake the influence they wield here. The more of our resource sector China Inc. buys up the more our governments will bend their knees to them. Canada is at the brink of what is probably the most radical shift in energy and foreign policy since Pierre Trudeau and Mitchell Sharp engineered the ultimately doomed “Third Option” 40 years ago, which was all about reducing our economic reliance on the United States. This time around, everything is happening quite suddenly. There has been no debate of any consequence at all – not in the House of Commons, not in the Senate, not in the proceedings of a Royal Commission. Certainly not in the news media. China buys our forests and oil fields

Perhaps, but if so their numbers were so small they weren't noticed by the census, and they certainly weren't an influential part of our culture. In 1909, Ross and McLaren, in search of workers, recruited a contingent of 110 French Canadian mill workers from Quebec. With the arrival of a second contingent in June 1910, Maillardville was born. Named for Father Edmond Maillard, a young Oblate from France, it became the largest Francophone centre west of Manitoba.[2] I suppose that's a pretty low bar, a few hundred Francophones. But since I never made any claim about the 'western provinces', I'm kind of confused again about why you stuck this in here. I didn't say there were no francophones out west. I said that Canada's culture was a British culture for most of its history. A few hundred, or even a few thousand francophones doesn't counter that.

I can only go from what the census says, and in 1871 there was no mention of Chinese. The first numbers appear in the 1881 census, and the number given is 4,383 Chinese in Canada.

Well, I don't know, except that from what I've read the average site doesn't stay up more than a week or so, and that a friend of mine who does have porn sites - for written porn - is constantly being inspected by his credit card processor. I just don't see how you can make any money on kiddy porn to justify the extreme risk you'd be taking. Yeah, the guy had 150,000 pictures! How the hell would he ever even have time to look at them!? Defending? What I'm saying is that there's no evidence that his particular hobby leads to any actual harm to children sufficient to justify the heavy handed penalty - a penalty which might actually be heavier than actual molestation. AND that the law itself is far too broad in that it calls possession of pictures of teenagers 'kiddy porn'. I'm not suggesting it should be legal to create, distribute, or even own child pornography. I just think we need to focus more on putting child molester in prison and less on chasing old guys downloading pictures.

I'm not sure what your point is. How long do you think a child porn web site would stay up? How long do you think a credit card processing company would continue to work with them? How many pedophiles do you think would give their credit card to such an enterprise? How do you make money?! I do? How do I know it? Do we get an itemized list of what the child porn found on someone's computer or in their possession contains? No. And in this case, from what little we do not it seems fairly clear that all or most of the child porn images were of teenagers. And yet you find this to be irrelevant for some reason? What is it I'm defending, Stockwell?

Did you have a point? 20% of Quebec is made of of Anglophones and the province and greater Quebec society treats them like unwanted, uninvited guests.

Pretty easy to leave them aside since there WERE no Chinese or Ukrainian immigrants here before it was Canada. The first census mention of Chinese is in 1881, when there were about 4300. The first census count of Ukrainians doesn't appear until 1901 (5682) Define British culture of 1867? To what end?

Sure, and then you go on to say I'm right. Which is WHAT I JUST SAID. I didn't say there was. Nevertheless, senators generally do vote how their party wants them to. In fact, what I said was that the only real brake on his power is what his party is willing to go along with. But he can use the override clause on most of the Charter if he so desires. I didn't say he had ABSOLUTE power, just that he can do just about anything he wants to. Certainly all the proposals I made above could be carried out by a prime minister if he wished to.

Not amazing at all. There's no industry to find. Common sense ought to tell you as much. An industry gets established because of the profits in it. There's no profit to be had in spending a century in prison. As I said earlier in the thread, you'd be safer running cocaine into Florida. I'm sorry that you're completely ignorant of the law and too lazy to actually look at it. But that's really not germane to the reality of the situation. Criminal Code of Canada Definition of "Child Pornography" According to Section 163.1 of the Criminal Code, "Child Pornography" means: a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, whether or not it was made by electronic or mechanical means that shows a person who is, or is depicted, as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in, or is depicted as engaged in, explicit sexual activity, or the sexual depiction of the sexual organs of a person under the age of eighteen years; or any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years. The above specifically includes any 'mechanical means' such as computer animation or drawing, and explicitly points out the 'person' depicted does not actually even have to be under 18. Further, the defense of artistic merit has been removed. BTW, we have little description of the pornography found with Lehay, but we do have this from the forensic psychiatrist who testified as a clue. Bradford was unshaken on a number of critical issues while on the stand: Lahey is not a pedophile, he is not a risk to the community, and he doesn’t need treatment. Bradford said the ex-bishop of Antigonish, N.S., did exhibit an interest in male youths aged about 14 to 18, as well as in men. And from the Edmonton Sun, a statement that of lehay's huge collection of gay porn (some 150,000 pictures and videos), about 1% was considered 'child pornography'.

That you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Sexual abuse by Protestant Clergy Difficult to Track

You clearly have no idea how our country functions.

The French were tolerated, yes, if you call that accommodation then I'll go along with it. Nevertheless, the population of Canada in 1911 was about seven million people. Four million of those people were British, two million French. Of the 1 million others, half were German (though interestingly, we hear very little about the contribution of Germans to Canadian history, as opposed to say Ukrainians or Chinese). English Canada made very little cultural or political accommodation even to the French, never mind the Germans or anyone else. As for the French, they pretty much did their own thing. Even by 1941 90% of Canada's population was either British or French. When your numbers are that high you just don't 'accommodate' third parties. There was no multiculturalism. You learned to speak English, and the ways of British society or you were ignored entirely by the government, the media, and couldn't fill out forms or even vote. The overwhelmingly dominant culture, and the only one the mainstream paid the slightest attention to, was British.

The prime minister who has a majority does indeed control how parliament works, as we've seen from all the complaints from the opposition about the Tories running roughshod over them. The Senate is made up of trained seals. And the law is whatever the PM decides he wants it to be. The only brake on his power, really, is how willing his party is to go along with him. He can rewrite laws or override the constitutions if he desires.

The two western provinces don't have large minorities of French speakers living there. Nor is there a deliberate societal move to marginalize them as there is in Quebec.

Or misunderstanding its history.

This was a British colony with a British culture largely made up of British people. The general local culture in Toronto and Kingston was not much different than in London or Leeds, regardless of the fact that, as in those cities at the time, not everyone was a homegrown citizen.

Yeah, he actually can.

You haven't shown that people downloading pictures support anything but their own fantasies, and you haven't shown that there is any industry. Pardon me for desiring facts before putting people in prison.

A PM with a majority in both houses, like Harper, can do just about anything he wants.

The real difference is that while their parents might be known as The Greatest Generation, boomers are known as The Greediest Generation. They insisted on having everything without paying for it, including generous government pensions they didn't pay the taxes to support. Thus the Boomers had a good economy which boomed because of huge government spending and borrowing, arranged for pensions which they never really paid for, and left all the debt to their children. And now, from what I've read and heard, Boomers, for the most part, intend to enjoy their 'twilight' years as best they can, partying, traveling, and enjoying themselves without any thought to leaving anything to their kids (except the bill). In fact, a lot of them intend to spend all their money and then move in with their kids. It'll be a good day for the West when the last boomer is in the ground.

Are we really? For most of our history we were actually a colony of Britain. Therefore, most of the people who came here weren't immigrants at all. Ukrainians began to arrive in some numbers around the turn of the century (the 20th) and tended to settle in together in the prairies. I don't want to put down their contribution to the growth of the country but their numbers were comparatively small and their influence on the culture, organization and government of Canada was minimal. Other nationalities didn't really begin to arrive until the 20th century. Much has been said about Chinese immigration as well, but their numbers were never that large. Really, until the second world war, this was not a country of immigrants, by any means. It was a British colony.