Scotty

We have been increasing funding to health care pretty steadily for years now with no improvement. We cannot continue to increase health care funding the extent we have been. The provinces are already paying more than half their budgets into it. What do we do when it's 90%? We need to get control of costs AND improve service at the same time.

Because what we're doing is not working, and we need to try something new. Some of the Europeans appear to provide better, faster health care than we do, have universal coverage, and yet still have private health insurance and private providers. I say we find out which of them is the most efficient, throw out the Canada Health Act, and adopt their methods wholesale. And if that includes private health care payments then I'm okay with that.

None of the opposition parties would allow anything like that. They'd vote the government out if they tried.

That is a good example given most mechanics are thieves who will rob you blind.

What would you have them do in a minority government?

There are other ways to asses things. Like, could the dozen fruitloops in the video hold a big convention with keynote speakers flying in from across America and massive press attention? On Tax Day supposedly there were more than 750 protests around the US by as many as five hundred thousand tea partiers. How many little groups of socialists were out that day?

A pointless waste of time. Why force kids in BC and NF to learn French all through school, when 99% of them will lose it completely within a few years of graduation? If you don't have need of a language, you lose it. Simple as that. Francophones learn and keep English because of constant exposure to English (read American) media and the larger English culture around them. Anglos outside Quebec and Ottawa simply have little or no contact or exposure to French.

Yeah, okay, sure. Okay, we need a new Surpreme Court Judge from BC. You're right, no problem! We have three semi-bilingual judges to choose from! That's plenty! I can't imagine what I was thinking. Ohmygod! I'm clueless? You're so clever! What an imaginative insult! And this isn't even your first language!

You don't go to your trials at the Supreme Court. They're very tedious affairs of technical legal arguments about the case.

I'm guessing that you know pretty much _nothing_ about Canadian political history.

Well, not BEFORE an election anyway. I could easily see him doing it AFTER the election, though.

Given the number of bilingual anglophone judges outside Quebec it was pretty damned close to the same thing. A shameless, stupid pandering to the French vote by the Liberals and NDP which would have resulted in intellectually impoverishing an already weak supreme court.

Rise up isn't from Springsteen! It's from Parachute Club! A Canadian band! Why does Michael Ignatieff hate Canada!? Why does he prefer American music!? Is Michael Ignatieff intending to destroy the Canadian recording industry and flood the market with American music!?

I was responding to the statement, not so much to you. I don't think of you as hypercritical in the same way someone like Bud or Naomi are, for example. But I find the volume and level of criticism of Israel to make no logical sense if its on the basis of actual human rights violations. That WWWT guy just strikes me as funny, somehow, and I'd just come from reading his comments.

If we're talking about a guy who does nothing but burgle homes and businesses I say banish him.

The crime rate in Singapore is one of the lowest in the world.[1] Wiki

It's also that, irrespective of legalities, a lot of Canadians think the opposition were acting disrespectfully towards the prerogatives of the government of the day and playing cheap political games with those mechanisms. I don't remember the Martin minority government very much, but I don't believe the opposition ever used committees in the same way they did against Harper. We didn't see them demanding a parade of ministerial and parliamentary aids to come and testify under oath before them during fishing expeditions. We didn't see demands for truckloads of papers on every possible issue the opposition thought it might be able to make some cheap political points on. We didn't see the opposition passing bills the government opposed, such as the one demanding all supreme court judges be french. Now you'll say it's LEGAL for them to do all that, and you're quite right. But a lot of people have very little sympathy for that sort of behavior from an opposition, and consequently have some sympathy for the government trying to stymie them. I'm not saying the government has the right to refuse the information, but I understand them delaying it.

I'd like to see him put the 2% back. It would do a hell of a job to help with the deficit. But one thing politicians of all parties agree on. Once you make a big decision you can NEVER EVER admit you were wrong, and go back on what you did. Because it was Harper who cut the GST, hell would have to freeze over before he put it back.

I didn't say 'most critics', I said that most of those who are 'hypercritical' of Israel.... buddy!

It's very bloody feasible in the US. While house prices compared to family incomes are setting records in Canada, they're plunging in the US. In Canada, the average house price is between 4.1-4.5 years of family income. It was at 2 years in the US and has now fallen to, I believe, 18 months and is set to fall further as the housing crisis deepens this year. 10 US Housing Market At Risk of Major Collapse Right now, you can buy a bare bones townhouse in Fort Lauderdale for $50,000-60,000. You can buy a four bedroom house with two car garage in LA for $100,000. A condo in a luxury tower across the street from the beach in Miami for $130k. That's today, but if you read that story, there are currently 65,000 foreclosed houses in Miami being held by the banks because they're afraid to put them on the market for fear prices will collapse. There are another 25,000 mortgages in Miami which are 90+ days late in payment.

My assessment is as useless as yours... buddy. There is no logical reason for hyper criticism of Israel given it's like the 89th worst violator of human rights in the world. Stupidity or bigotry, or in the case of the entirety of the leadership of the Islamic Conference, a sinister desire to point its illiterate mass of unhappy citizenry at some other enemy.

How are we supposed to "change our negative views of Muslims and respect Islam" when the Muslim world demonstrates on a daily basis how many violent minded nut-jobs they have, and how barbarous and backward their social beliefs are?

My assessment is that most of those who are hyper critical of Israel can actually be fairly reliably placed into one of those two categories.

Breaking into someone's home and stealing their stuff is not a "mistake", especially when you do it, twenty seven times, get arrested, go to jail, get out early, and do it another twenty four times before being arrested again. That's not a mistake, that's your chosen career.

Is anyone else getting more than a little tired of Ignatieff's ridiculous efforts at associating himself in some way with the people fighting and dying for freedom in the middle east? We have a free democracy here, and Ignatieff is a born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth Harvard academic. So watching him shouting "Rise up! Rise up!'" and his continual portrayal of the Conservative government as the "regime" which is the enemy of democracy is insulting to my intelligence. It's insulting to the people who are actually bravely risking their lives to fight against real regimes. Whatever one thinks about Harper's parliamentary power games neither the man nor his government are any threat to democracy or freedom. Shouting out that we need to vote in Liberals to protect us is ludicrous, and shows just how empty of ideas - not to mention ethics the current Liberal party is. The other day, in his desperately anguished voice, he complained about how Harper himself had personally sent stormtroopers into that little makeshift polling station to attack democracy yet again - ignoring the fact his own party had closed down similar university polling stations in the previous election. “I’m looking at a Conservative party that tried systematically to try to stop young Canadians from voting" He is? Where is this fabled systematic effort at stopping young Canadians from voting? One tory worker for the local MP is a systematic effort by the party? "This is part of a pattern and Canadians need to know it's worrying. I just, I can't believe it!" Does he sound ready to burst into tears there? Is he already packed and ready to be smuggled out through the underground when the Harper regime comes for him? What does one wear to such an occasion, when one is of Ignateiff's class? Are the servants permitted to come too? Granted, I didn't thin much of Ignatieff before, but I'm rapidly building up a sizable level of contempt for the sleazy tactics and blatant, in-your-face dishonest scaremongering of the man.