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And here I thought that support of the abolition of monarchies made you a republican. For example, the Bloc Quebecois is Republican. Australia has had many republican Prime Ministers. Republicans in Saudi Arabia and Thailand are often imprisoned for their views. Also, given this absurd categorization, where would someone like Eric Duhaime fit? How about someone who wants to abolish the dairy cartel and pursue genuine free trade with other democracies?

What about the traffic light coalition in Germany? That includes 3 distinct parties. Or are you telling me that the Free Democrats in Germany are the same as the Green Party?

If the conservatives did this, I might vote for them. For me, electoral deform and democracy are the most important issues because they affect all the other issues. For example, if we had more competent people in power at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, maybe we would of had better results.

I was commenting only on your statement that Patrick Brown can't speak French. So, arguments about who is the best candidate or who people should vote for are not relevant. I have no idea what you mean by this. Also, I don't support any of the major political parties. Charest, Brown, Poilievre, Trudeau, Singh, etc., I don't support any of them. We need electoral reform, so that we can have better choices in all future elections.

But he can speak french, badly, but he can still speak french. Your standards seem very odd to me. Did you watch the same debate as me? Out of curiosity, do you consider Manon Massé of Québec Solidaire as being able to speak English? Because, in my opinion, she can speak English, as shown by the 2018 debates: There are deaf people in this country that communicate with sign language and have difficult with English and French. There are indigenous people in this country that do not speak either official language (example). Knowing only English and French isn't enough to speak to every adult in Canada. Personally, I would have no problem voting for someone who spoke neither official language, provided that they had good policies. Of course, languages should always be considered an asset. Someone who can speak English, French, Mandarin, Arabic, and Cree should be considered more linguistically qualified to be prime minister than Justin Trudeau.

I apologize for my previous comments. I was so surprised by some of August1991's comments that I wasn't thinking clearly. August1991's views don't reflect at all the general opinions of Quebeckers and francophones. Now that I think about it, essentially all of the Quebeckers, franco-Ontarians, or francophone immigrants from other countries that I have met in person do not take such an extreme view on language proficiency. In addition, various Quebec commentators in the news would also make a distinction between Patrick Brown and the three candidates with very weak french ability.

To be fair, I recall that there was lots of disagreement with the English ability of Stephane Dion, although I had no problem with his level of English and voted for him. There are also a fair amount of Trump-supporters who might be less accepting of hispanics who do not speak perfect English. So, certainly there is some linguistic intolerance in the English-speaking world.

Are we allowed to post in french in these forums? J'ai oublié les règles. I haven't posted in these forums in a long time, but the above post is interesting to me. The French of Leslyn, Baber, and Aitchinson was terrible; they could only read pre-prepared notes and did not respond directly to the questions, fair enough. But, is it fair to put Patrick Brown in the same category as the other three? He could speak French, responded to the questions and the other candidates, and communicated his message. Admittedly, his French was not perfect, and he made mistakes, such as the use of "à le" instead of "au". But, what he was trying to say could be understood, and the point of language is communication. Patrick Brown did not make many complex arguments, but that was more because he is a dull politician that doesn't have much to say in either official language, rather than due to his French ability. Maybe I'm slightly biased because my French is at a similar level as Patrick Brown, or slightly worse. But, aren't your standards a bit unreasonable if you are putting Patrick Brown in the same category as the other three candidates? Recently, I have been thinking about what level of linguistic ability is the threshold to be considered bilingual or multilingual or not, and I wonder if Canadian standards are out of sync with the rest of the world. For example, I have recently gamed occasionally with people in other countries (Europe, South Korea, etc.) and sometimes talk about language. What I notice is that there are many people in Europe, Asia, etc. who will say that they speak 5 languages, for example, but their competence in 3 of them would actually be worse than the level of French of Patrick Brown. I also wonder if there are differences in standards of linguistic acceptance between English Canada and French Canada. For example, I would consider a candidate with an equivalent level of English as Patrick Brown's French as being at an acceptable level. Maybe English Canada is just more accepting of immigrants compared to Quebec, so there is a greater level of acceptance of different linguistic competencies due to exposure to immigrants. Of course, individuals within societies will vary in their linguistic expectations.

The treatment of indigenous children in these so-called schools was horrendous and appalling. I don't know why so many people find this surprising. The awful treatment of indigenous people has been known for a long time. Our first prime minister was arguably a white supremacist who went on and on about the aryan race, similar to the nazis. He directed the country to engage in countless episodes of violence against indigenous peoples. Yet we celebrate him by putting him on our money and erecting statues. Other people on our money include Laurier, who didn't want women or indigenous people to vote, and Mackenzie King, who turned away Jewish people prior to the holocaust and got his "PhD" on the subject of advocating against immigration from East Asia. Our national anthem was written by a guy that performed in minstrel shows wearing blackface. Canada is a country founded upon the rejection of enlightenment values. This is why we are not part of the U.S. English Canada was founded by people that wanted to preserve the backwardness of the institution of the monarchy. French Canada was founded by religious fundamentalists who rejected joining the U.S. because values like freedom of speech or separation of religion and state would go against their desire for Quebec to be a Catholic semi-theocracy (which it was until the quiet revolution of the 1960s). British North America continued to have slavery decades after it was abolished in the Northern U.S. Our anthem and our charter emphasize that this country recognizes the supremacy of "god", which is precisely the justification used to oppress the indigenous people in these schools along with their parents. From the perspective of some (but not all) of the advocates of these religious school systems, they were serving "god" and "saving" these indigenous children from their "savagery" by brainwashing them into their religion (if they didn't die in these schools). Religion and "god" has been used and continues to be used to justify terrible aristocracies around the world.

No, you are confusing capitalism with free-market capitalism or laisser-faire capitalism. Free-market capitalism is a subset of capitalism, but is not the only form of capitalism. Capitalism is about using private competition to allocate capital within society. You can have more redistributive forms of capitalism such as in Norway. No, communism and nazism are subsets of socialism, at least under the traditional definition of socialism.

Then how do you explain national socialists such as the nazis, along with other fascists? They were socialists because they believed that the means of production should be controlled directly or indirectly by the state. I don't think your definition of socialism is the most correct nor the most useful definition.

It would be better to abolish things now, before they get worse. And for all we know, the queen might remain alive for another 100 years. Do we really want to wait that long?

Not yet.

I agree. Lack of separation of media and state has very bad implications for democracy. If the state controlled media has a strong financial incentive to ensure that certain parties win elections and that other parties lose elections then they have a conflict of interest when it comes to covering elections. That said, we can advocate both for the abolition of the monarchy as well as support separation of media and state.

Politicians in Australia have. They have elected republican prime ministers under both major parties.

Have a national referendum. After the referendum passes, which territorial or provincial government would dare go against the will of the people to support an unelected monarchy? We should open up the constitution, our constitution is terrible. We don't even have proper constitutional protections for freedom of speech. This COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted how little rights the Canadian people actually have. Because the political establishment is against them. Replace the political establishment with governments or parties that better support freedom and democracy. Vote them out.

I don't remember any of this. I'm not that old. None of the politicians have ever tried to abolish the monarchy, so references to the past seem of little value here. Have a national referendum on abolishing the monarchy. With a majority vote of yes, most of these barriers to abolition would crumble.

Then how do you explain the fact that many other countries have gotten rid of their monarchies, including France, the United States, and India? Australia has even had referendums on abolishing the monarchy. Not with COVID-19.

Or she doesn't use the power that she has. Do you think it would be a good idea to wait until we have a monarch that abuses power before trying to change things? It would be far better to get rid of the monarchy before problems arise, especially under the queen's children or grandchildren. Prince Harry is a dangerous authoritarian who even wants video games such as Fortnite banned. He also thinks that COVID-19 is punishment from nature for climate change. So instead of getting a real job like everyone else, we need her to be a ceremonial figure? Wouldn't it be better to have another citizen producing goods, services, and tax revenue like the rest of us? By choosing to continue undemocratic institutions such as the monarchy, we weaken our ability and effectiveness at criticizing undemocratic institutions in other countries. Currently, there is a Thai movement/protest for freedom and democracy, which the Thai monarchy is trying to crush. Stalin and Hitler were also symbols of the state. Other problems with the monarchy include: 1. It violates the principle of equality under the law. 2. It violates separation of religion and state as the British monarch is inherently the head of the Anglican Church. 3. It helps the narratives of the woke people to paint society as a white-supremacist patriarchal dystopia. This furthers their ability to push cancel culture and take over institutions.

Meanwhile, the military swears allegiance to a foreign Queen and her successors instead of to Canada or to Canadians...

Because the queen is unelected, just like Xi Jinping. I support democracy.

Yes, down with the queen!

I love not being able to edit previous posts. This is such a greater feature of these forums!

I having a thread title with opposite meaning as your poll title was confusing. I accidentally voted yes.

Ultimately, there are going to be some trade-offs between creating incentives for productive behaviour (such as incentives to work, incentives for capital investment, incentives to create new technologies, and incentives to increase human capital) and reducing income inequality through transfers. The incentives for productive behaviour are important since they allow for a society to produce and consume more goods and services, but some redistribution of income can be important since the value of an additional dollar to a poor person can be much more than the value of an additional dollar to a rich person. The approach of utilitarianism as advocated by the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill might be one way to deal with these trade-offs in order to maximize the well-being of society. Regarding homeless people, one approach that could be taken would be to have a capitalist society, but you tax society somewhat in order to provide a universal basic income. A universal basic income has a number of attractive features, such as avoiding bureaucratic costs and the need for means-testing, being simpler, and avoiding strong disincentives to work that can occur with other welfare programs (for example, in Canada, some low or middle income people can face an 80% effective tax rate on the additional dollar of labour income earned). Many economists have advocated for universal basic income such as Milton Friedman and Greg Mankiw. It is not necessary to overthrow capitalism and embrace mass state planning in order to deal with homeless people, as some advocates of the Great Reset or the Green New Deal might advocate. Similarly, to deal with other relevant issues, it is not necessary to overthrow capitalism. A capitalist system with some government intervention in the economy might be better since the system would still take advantage of competition over the allocation of capital. For example, to deal with climate change, one simply needs to impose a pigouvian tax on emissions of greenhouse gases; an approach that has long been advocated by various economists. But it appears that in public discourse, the only options being present to the public are to either do nothing or that they must embrace mass central planning of the economy and the government must pick and choose winners and losers by embracing crony capitalism (the government might prefer the term 'strategic partnerships') in order to deal with the issue.