Scotty

The Tories have 143 out of 308 seats. Or 143 of 261 seats if you exclude the separatist areas. That's a majority by my math.

I suppose I meant his seat numbers in the Commons. Excluding the separatist MPs Tories represent the majority of ridings by a good number. And if you really want to get into representation, if you pull Toronto out of the equation, just how much support do the Liberals have across the country?

He's easy to mock, but he does bring up a constant electoral irritant with ethnics/immigrants. The parties should not allow newcomers - and by that I mean newcomers to the party - to suddenly flood nomination meetings with new members in order to hijack a nomination. This is something the parties are kind of afraid to confront because most of the people who do this are immigrants, and they're afraid of being seen as anti-immigrant, or trying to keep immigrants out. But it's a gross injustice, and it pisses off the people who have been working steadily in a riding association for years to suddenly have some guy in a funny hat come in, plunk down his ten bucks, and then bring in hundreds more people with funny hats to vote him in as the candidate.

The conservatives have not proposed 'getting tough on crime' in the American way. And I bet if the American Right saw the kinds of sentences served in Canada their eyes would bug out of their heads in horror. And I wish people would stop deciding the right and wrong of every policy based on what they think the Americans are doing!

He certainly represents the majority of English Canada...

Finding someone who is both competent and a charismatic leader is like winning the lottery. Most of the ones I've known are military officers, and we don't generally bring such people into politics. I would have liked to have seen Lew Mackenzie become a party leader, Libs or Tories.

I've never managed to work up much enthusiasm for Harper, but his government has been reasonably competent without resorting to the massive corruption of its Liberal and Tory predecessors. It would be nice if the guy had an iota of charisma, and had the ability to communicate things to people so he didn't have to be so afraid of contrary messages getting out, but what can ya do?

It's interesting that none of those cites contained any actual statements by any actual economists. Look, I'm not a huge supporter of corporate tax cuts, but given that we get most of the money back either in taxes on shareholders or in the form of more jobs/investment - which we also tax, it's hardly a big deal. Btw, if you want a more direct cite I came across one today. At least it quotes genuine economists. Globe and mail

Really? When was the last time you spoke to a manager in the public service in Ottawa? Or an executive? Or a deputy minister? I won't argue that those who call in or go to a government office which serves the public should be able to obtain service in either official language where numbers warrant. But I see no reason why the entire central management structure must be fluently bilingual when 99% of their work is internal. Whatever minute use their French would be in terms of the occasional public communication is outweighed by the massive inefficiency of selecting the entire management cadre from the 2% or so of the population which is fluently bilingual. Doing that means hiring and promoting too many second raters - and third raters for that matter.

My understanding of economics is admittedly imperfect, however, it seems to me that the theory, which so far as I'm aware is supported by virtually all economists not affiliated with an ideological left group, is that lower corporate taxes means more jobs. I'm not entirely sure how much we actually lose on this, since they either use the money to expand production in some way, or they pass it on to their owners, ie, shareholders, as profits. If they do the latter, then we can tax it off the stockholders. In addition, I don't think they actually believe in any of it. Ignatieff has long agitated for more corporate tax cuts faster. His about-face smacks of crass political opportunism, a hope of grabbing votes from the NDP. I don't think they believe in any of the others, either. They've been promising various child care/day care initiatives and money for something like twenty years now and never done much about it. Nor is it clear we can afford it. The tuition plan is only partly new money because they would cancel other plans, like those that help students pay for their textbooks, and the family care plan is a ripoff of a better one the NDP have proposed. The whole Liberal platform looks like something put together not by a committee of liberals, but a committee of spin doctors and advertising consultants going over polling results. Which means, like the infamous 'red book', much of it won't ever be carried out anyway. At least the Tories, NDP and BQ believe in something. It's not clear the Liberals believe in anything but their own superior morality and determination to get back into power. And let's not forget the little nuggets which are planted in their platform which promise trouble for the military on the one hand, and oil production on the other. With Liberals, I've come to learn that it isn't so much the policies they trumpet at election time that need to concern the voter, but the ones they don't want to talk about.

It wouldn't surprise me. I understand the actual protestor was executed.

Absolutely. Not to mention the dozer has a great big blade blocking his view of everything low to the ground while the tank driver had a direct view, even with the turrets closed, of everything right before him. It looks mightily like - despite what I think is a typo on your part, given the context - you feel that the dozer should have run over her even if he knew she was there. I do hope that isn't really what you're trying to say, because that's an indefensible position from any kind of moral or ethical standpoint. It's not like they couldn't have knocked the building down the next day or the next week.

Why don't you people representing the party of mafia thugs and thieves come up with something worth refuting?

No, I'd say it's more like some sniveling about the Conservatives having had parking tickets, and maybe a run-in with jaywalking, by partisans of mafia dons, bank robbers and pimps.

That would require a level of compromise and risk taking no one in the last parliament was at all interested in.

An independent Quebec would be like the kid who whines and bitches at his parents until they get the highest level of cablevision. Then when he's finally out on his own, he's up on the roof trying to make the antenna bring in the porn stations. All those wonderful social programs they can't possibly do without now would be history in the event they ever got drunk enough to vote "yes" in a referendum.

The language duality thing made a kind of sense when there was only two real languages. Now that so many millions speak other languages it makes less sense each year. There is nothing particularly unique about Quebec's culture, unless you want to suggest Newfoundland's culture is also unique, as is PEIs, as is Alberta's as is BC's.... One could argue more logically about unique native languages and cultures. Like there isn't an underlying layer of bigotry present any time Francophones talk about Anglophones, a sense of smug superiority that Anglos lack the cultural sophistication of Francophones and waste time in silly pursuit of wealth rather than the more noble pursuit of leisure common to the French.

Since I'm paying quite a bit of taxes I want my public servants to be selected on the basis of competence, not linguistic ability, unless it can be demonstrated that the linguistic ability is actually necessary to the duties they are to perform. That, of course, is not how it's done now. Now they're selected primarily for linguistic ability, regardless of knowledge, education or competence, which is one of the reasons there is so much inefficiency and stupidity in the public service.

If they're not represented because they're too lazy to go to the polls that's tough for them. I have no interest whatever in going out of our way to help lazy, stupid, thoughtless people have a greater say in how the money in this country is spent, especially given few of them pay any taxes.

No doubt that will come in the next big, indignant "quebec is being ripped off" protest from Charest and Duceppe. It never fails to amaze how people can buy the political propaganda coming from Quebec's nationalist industry. Ontario pays out billions every year to 'have-not' provinces like Quebec. Which is absurd. It's not like Quebec doesn't have the people or resources to pay its own bills, if it just wasn't so incompetently run by socialists who don't understand fiscal policy. I would really love to see Quebec separate, just to have you all look around your very first budget and wonder how the hell you're going to pay for all the stuff you have without doubling your already high taxes. The realization that Greece has a healthier fiscal state than you guys without money pouring in from Alberta and Ontario would be a treasure to see.

Cutting employment taxes would have been better. That would have been better than cutting corporate taxes, too. We're ALL in favour of lower taxes. But not if they bring deficits, and not if it means we can't afford necessary services.

That may well be but there's no way the parties are going to do anything to diminish their own power.

The system doesn't work, and I blame the Liberals. They presided over its slow demise with fat bellies, fat budgets, and almost unlimited power at their disposal due to big majorities. And they did nothing. If Harper ever gets his majority I expect him to do something dramatic to improve health care. If he doesn't, then I'll lay the blame on him too. But I consider that, to some degree, their hands are pretty much tied right now.

Well, the Liberals are. We haven't seen anything much of that from Harper thus far.

The oldest of the boomers are only about 65. Lots of them are only 55. You're dreaming if you think they're all going to be dead in 20 years