mcqueen625

It seems to me that most of the anti-American sentiment in Canada is coming from the left-leaning Liberal Party Members of Parliament including Paul Martin and his predecessor Jean Chretien, as well as most members of the NDP. If it were not for the United States and Canada's trade with that country over the years, Canada would be nothing but a third world country. Let's also not forget the money that our own government has slashed from our military and made us more reliant on the United States for protection. Our troops were an embarrassment to this country when they showed up in Afghanistan on a NATO/U.N. sponsored mission dressed in olive-green instead of dessert wear in order to blend in with their surroundings. Instead of our politicians and appointed loud-mouths shooting off their faces and spewing their personal hatred of our neighbours and families to the south they should instead do something useful like fostering better relations with them. Canada is far from perfect and getting less so as time goes on. Government is interfering in all facets of Canadian's lives and creating more bureaucracy to promote that interference. If we follow the NDP agenda, that bureaucracy and interference in Canadian's will continue to grow until all disposable income will go to taxes so government can make all of our choices for us. Thankfully our new government under Stephen Harper has made the first of what I hope will be many cuts to useless bureaucracies, like the useless Unity Commission. That Commission in my opinion, along with many others should have never been created in the first place. We need some common sense when decisions are being regarding the funding or the creation of bureaucracies. Common sense dictates that bureaucracy should only exist where absolutely necessary, because it is our tax-money that is expected to pay for it..

I wouldn't wipe my ass with the Maple Leaf. The people of Canada had no choice in choosing this was another case where politicians foisted thi=eir choices on us. Canada is the only former British colony that has not incorporated the Union Jack as part of the flag. That I find shameful since our brave Canadian military fought two World Wars and teh Korean conflict under that banner. We have mouthy politicians shooting off their mouths about the United States and their deficiencies when we have many flaws ourselves including the highest taxes in this Hemisphere. I find absolutely nothing about Canada to be be either proud about or patriotic, which is why I can't wait for Quebec to say goodbye and with them will go Canada's worst Prime Ministers.

The common sense revolution was led by Mike Harris it was his common sense revolution that slashed health care, welfare and education not Bob Rae. Actually it was the CSR that brought some common sense to budgeting as it was the Liberals who slashed the transfer payments, in case you forgot. Bob Rae had the same problem and had allready cut nursing staff and hospital beds, and set up a committee to look into additional hospital cuts. Provinces can't continue to run the same staffing etc. if the feds yank away their payments. THe problem with the NDP is that they do not seem to believe in allowing the PEOPLE to decide for ourselves where to spend our money. Under the NDP, taxes would increase to pay for all of the social programs the NDP has dreamed up, while I and most other Canadian's believe that the size of government should be drastically reduced, and the savings from those cuts should be returned to the people in the form of tax decreases.

Finally someone gets charged. NDP Pat Martin got it right, it is gratifying to see criminal charges laid. Who's next? It is in fact good to see someone charged, but charged is all he has been, we'll see if he is convicted, and if convicted we'll see if the punishment fits with what an ordinary Canadian can expect if they commit the same type crime. I doubt if the same sentencing guidelines apply to politicians or beaueaucrats as it applies to the rest of us. Call me cynical but until I see one of these thieves actually behind bars I will remain sceptical.

I guess Harper took a page from the handbook of George W. Bush - When things get too hot to handle, go for the photo-op. You know he almost had me until he claimed that part of the mission was to enforce women's rights. He might as well have promised the Afghan people affordable daycare, same-sex marriage and publicly funded healthcare. It was all just blowing smoke. Get a life! This has nothing to do with Bush but everything to do with supporting our troops, troops I might add that the Liberal government under Chretien sent there under the NATO banner and the corrupt United Nations. How can these scumbags now align themselves with the NDP and now ask for a debate in the House of Commons. What a bunch of hypocrits!

Who looks after your kids then. The parents themselves should be raising their own children. No wonder children today are growing up with no values or morals, and our politicians are foisting their brand of social engineering on the people of this country in many ways, the least of which is the refinition of marriage. I guess having Canadian values means having no values at all. That part about Canadian's having no values at all comes from an article I read on the Canadian Free Press.

Personally, I don't view his situation as shirking responsibility so much as we was taking a stand against government coercion. Becaus eif he hadn't signed up, he probably would have bneen drafted anyway, which nullifies the whole "responsibility" angle: how can individuals be responsible for choices they don't make? Again: please explainhow this guy has not been a useful ctizen? What information are you privy to that allows you to draw such a conclusion? The information is that he is and was a cowardly deserter. The point that is impossible to get around is that he joined voluntarily and ran away like the coward he is when the rubber was about to hit the road. Where would our military be today if all of those who joined to get a free education suddenly decided that they were not going to serve just because their unit was being deployed to a war zone. The were well aware when they joined exactly what the military life entailed and they can't suddenly decide they want all of the free benefits but none of the risks, because life is just not like that in either civilian or the military. That i s just as asinine as when I hear morons say that Canadian troops are peacekeepers, when peacekeeping is just a minicule part of what they do, the same as all troops around the world regardless of what country they come from. The point is that soldiers are trained to fight a war pure and simple, and that involves training in how to kill opposing forces. Anyone who naively thinks that our troops are solely peacekeepers are fooling themselves.

Never mind national daycare at the expense of the people of Canada. If people want to have to have children, let one of those parent's stay home and bring up their own children instead of some stranger. No wonder our children today have no sense of values, or morals, their parent's are too busy making money to bother raising their children themselves. We in Canada pay far too much of our income out in taxes that are wasted on frivilous programs. We need lower taxes, and the ability to choose for ourselves what or how our money is to be spent. Does a $2 Billion failed gun registry ring any bells?

Shapiro and Ethics are a bit of an oxymoron. Shapiro is nothing except of Liberal Party hack who got himself appointed to a 5 year term as a high profile civil servant. Had he been appointed by an all-party committee instead of Paul Martin, and had he investigated the exact same complait regarding Belinda Stronach then he would have some credibility, but since he chose not to properly investigate any complaints regarding Liberal dirty deeds, he really has no credibility to investigate anything. It is time for him to go!

And Belinda didn't do exactly the same thing, crossing the floor for prestege, power, and a Cabinet Post? If it is wrong for Emerson, it was equally as wrong for Belinda, and Martin's lap-dog Shirpiro should have investigated her actions.

What are you talking about? Using the name Shapiro and ethics in the same sentence is an oxymoron. Where was this clown when Belinda Stronach did exactly the same thing? Oh, I get it, if the Liberals do it, it's somehow okay, because this clown was appointed by Martin to answer only to Martin, and whenever Martin and the Liberal's did something wrong he would turn a blind eye and give the standard response, that he found no wrong doing. Give me a break! Harper should just fire his ass and hire someone who has no political allegiance, and who also reports to the House as opposed to just the PM. Only hen can we truly call this person an Ethics Commissioner.

Do you think provinces like New Brunswick could make it if they only had the 15% HST for themselves and no other transfer payments? Not very likely, and the same would apply to the rest of Atlantic Canada, and Quebec.

Let them get real jobs! Maybe Bernard Lord can entice a call centre to set up shop and they can spend the day doing something useful, like selling insurance to credit card holders, or hawking other wares. Who cares, because the registry was a poor idea in the first place so these people should never have been in those jobs. A call centre of similar size closed over a weekend in Oromocto, NB employing about the same amount of employees, and the Province was able to entice another call centre to simply move in. The gun registry is nothing but another failed project started by the Liberal's for all the wrong reasons. It was a registry that ended up targetting otherwise honest law-abiding citizens who used those guns for for hunting. It targeted the wrong segment of society because criminals will never voluntarily walk in and register weapons they in many cases are prohibited from owning by law in the fisrt place. It's right up there with sponsorship and HRDC boondoggles.

I have to disagree about Miramichi as a location for the gun registry as a reason why the Liberal's wanted to start and keep the gun registry, because at one point they were going to privatize it and move it to Quebec, but since they closed CFB Chatham they felt obligated to replace those civilian jobs with the fregistry. I do agree that Chretien/ Martin and company lied to Canada about their motivation for the registry in the first place because it has not taken the weapons out of the hands of one criminal, and why is that? It is simply because criminals do not register weapons they are not supposed to possess in the first place, and secondly I feel that their was an even deeper reason why Chretien/Martin/Cotler wanted these guns registered, and that reason I suspect is eventual confiscation without compensation, just as happened in Australia. The problem in Australia now is that armed home invasions have skyrocketed, because the only people now who have guns are police, military and the criminal elements. Allen Rock made it quite plain that his eventual goal was to confiscate all civilian owned weapons, because he felt that people do not and should not possess such dangerous instruments. The next problem is what do we do with all of the knives, hatchets, rocks and other potential weapons like fists that are often used to commit murder. Where does it end for these control freaks?

And Canadian's aren't offended by radical Islamist's beheading Christians, and burning their churches? I'm not sure that the Christian congregations in Nigeria had anything to do with these cartoons but radical Islamist's used the cartoons as an excuse to murder and burn. If that is what Allah and Mohammed stand for than I want nothing to do with that religion or the people who practice this type of protesting. When we talk about intolerance, it seems to me that Islam hates Jews, they hate Christians, they hate Buddists, in fact they hate any religion that is not Islam. Now we have those nutcases in Iran who have just proclaimed that they want to see the anilation of Isreal. We also have the stupid people of Palestine electing to office a terrorist organization who's whole mission in life is to murder Jews, because for some warped sense they feel that they have been put on earth to kill people of other faiths. They talk about one religion as if their's is the only religion that is right. sorry but my religion, Roman Catholic teaches peace to ALL peoples, it does not have any buts or excepts when talkiing about other religions. Radical Muslims for some reason feel it is their sworn duty to spread their religion and culture around the world whether we want it or not, because their God is the only true God. If we could get past the hating, I'm sure that Jews, Muslims, Christians, and peoples of other faiths are really worshipping the same God, we are just calling that God by different names. Rather than supporting these radical Muslims who strap bombs to themselves and walk into a crowded place and blowing themselves up in an effort to kill as many innocent bystanders as they can, we should be condeming their actions, and the whole civilized world should be shunning these people. These radicals are not rational civilized people, they are simply terrorist's and they should be treated as such. Imagine Kadhr and the rest of his family moving to Canada, going back to the Middle East for the sole purpose of killing Westerner's, and then returning to Canada and praising those radicals who flew planes into the towers and the Pentagon to kill as many as possible. These are not people who should be allowed to remain in Canada. They should be deported uncerimoniously place on a plane with one-way ticket's back to their place of birth, never to allowed inside this country again.

Absolutely...there seems to be this idea in Canada that far left thinking is a godsend, while far right thinking is the devil incarnate, political ideology taken too far right OR LEFT is inherantly not a good thing. Ever hear of the saying "everything in moderation", well it definitely applies to politics, and lets just say the NDP aren't too moderate! I live in the Windsor area where two NDP MP's were elected federally...boggles my mind how people holding such far left wing ideologies get voted in. The only answer i can honestly come up with is that the people are not informed as to the ramifications of such a parties ideology, or what would happen if god forbid they formed government (as in Manitoba...has to suck, I feel for ya!) One possibly good thing I've heard about from Manitoba recently is the socialized auto insurance..... I would be interested to hear some different perspectives and opinions. Thank you Liberals and Conservatives for Free Trade, it has allowed the corporate sector to outsource jobs to third world countries and send the finished products back to Canada for sale in our retail outlets. Thnak God the NDP did not form the government because in all likelihood our taxes would be even higher than they already are to pay for all of the social programs the NDP want to start. I have no problem paying for a "Social Safety Net" per se, but I do not include in that safety net such things as universal daycare. If families want to have children, one or the other of the parents should be home to look after that child for the first few years of it's life, instead of farming it out to strangers to bring up their children. No wonder kids today have no sense of morals or values, they had no parent's instilling them, they were too busy having a career.

The point is that had Paul Martin been returned to office he had satted that he wanted to remove the notwithstanding clause from the Constitution thereby leaving it up to Liberal appointed judges to decide forever what is and what isn't acceptable to Canadians. Gays and Lesbians are already challenging the exclusion on the grounds of religion with the challenge of the lesbians who wanted to forve the Knights of Columbus to rent their hall for a lesbian civil union celebration. The fact is that the Knights of Columbus are a Catholic institution, who's member's are practicing Catholics. The reality is that without the blessing of the church, any union of two people is nothing but a civil union, regardless of what you call it. Only a small number of United Church Parishes perform gay or lesbian weddings, and the same goes for Anglican. Most other religions in the world do not recognize such unions for anything other than what they are, civil unions, not marriages.

This is just sour grapes coming from both the BC Liberal caucus and the NDP. The reality is that the Liberal Party didn't offer to pay the Conservative riding association for the cost's associated with getting the prostitute Belinda elected to office as a Conservative. Some may be offended by the use of the trrm prostitute, but that is exactly what she did, she sold herself for a Cabinet post and the vague promise of power, which is the only reason she is even involved in politics. Now she is sitting in the Opposition benches with far less influence than she had, and we'll see how long she stays put if her bid to become leader of the Liberal Party fails. She tried to buy the leadership of the Conservative Party with Daddy's money and failed, so I suspect it will again be Daddy's money that attempts to get the spoiled brat the Liberal leadership. If that too fails, maybe she'll try to get Jack Layton's job next, because certainly she won't be welcome back in the Conservative fold. Her and Martin have one glaring thing in common they both gained success on the coat-tails of their father's. Had it not been for Belinda Stronach, Layton and the NDP propping up the Liberal government under Paul Martin, they would have failed much sooner. The truth be known at least the people of Emmerson's riding at least have a Cabinet Minister on the government side of the House. My riding in New Brunswick has sent back to Ottawa, a Liberal Member of Parliament. He couldn't get anything done for this riding as a Liberal, and now he has absolutely no influence in Ottawa. Canada needed a change, and thankfully that change came it is wasn't the NDP. We think we are over-taxed now, God help us if we ever elect an NDP government to power, because the taxes will go through the roof.

I am center-right. I simply have no patience for simplistic arguments that do not take into account the complexities of the world. Think about it: you say tax cuts are never a bad thing. Then why don't we simply eliminate all taxes and shut down the gov't? A few people on this forum would agree that we should do that - I don't believe you are one of them. That means you want the govt to tax and spend money so the only difference between you and Jack Layton is the amount of tax and spending. I have no problem in providing a social safety-net to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, but if you read what the NDP is all about, they want the government to look after Canadian's from birth to death, as if Canadian's do not know what we ourselves want. I am definitely not in favour of universal day-care. If couples want to have children, let them stay home and look after those children instead of farming them out to strangers to bring up. What the NDP is proposing is a hold out from the communist era where government was involved in people's lives from birth to death. Myself I do not want some bureaucrat deciding for me how I am to live my life.

I thought that was a liberal campaign ad....imagine my surprise when they kept running after the election. They would have fit right in with Paul Martin's promises he made during the campaign. Promises I might add that he had no intention of fulfilling. They were simply meant to draw votes just like Chretien's RED BOOK, full of promises that never got delivered, and we still hvae the Sea King's falling out of the sky, risking the lives of our brave servicemen & women. I'm sorry to say but getting aboard one of those death-traps would be one order I would disobey. Thing about a real scary situation, electing Jack Layton as Prime Minister. All of the promises he made he had every intention of delivering on. We think Canadian's are over-taxed now, LOOK OUT, because if anything that tax bite would increase astronomically in order to pay for all the socialist policies Layton wants the taxpayers to pay for. Universal day-care? My thought is that when my wife and I decided to have children, we looked after them by my wife staying at home since I was the one making the larger income at the time. We simply got by on less so that my children would be brought up by us as parent's not farming them off to a stranger to rear. Why should I be asked now to pay for someone else's day-care so mommy & daddy can carry on with their careers. Let them do what my wife and I did, and bring up their own children. No wonder children today have no morals and values, when mommy & daddy don't care enough to stay home and bring up their own children. They are too busy colloecting material things and teaching their children that they have no time for them.

I disagree. So do I. Let's try and keep our terms proper here, okay? A paedophile is an adult with a clinically diagnosed psychiatric condition who is aroused by pre-pubescent children. There is nothing whatever abnormal about a 17 year old lusting after a 14 year old. I don't even necessarily find EGALE's statement that absolute age limits are wrong - to be wrong. I would not, for example, prosecute an 18 year old for having sex with a 17 year old, or a 15 year old for having sex with a 13 year old. However, that doesn't happen now, and would not have happened under the proposed change. What the law asked for, which EGALE opposed, was to raise the age of consent for adults to have sex with juveniles from 14 to 16 - while still keeping in place the 3 year limit for legal sex. In other words, it still would have been legal for a 17 year old to have sex with his 14 year old girlfriend. What would have been banned is 29 year olds having sex with 14 year olds. And no one who opposed this - including EGALE, can claim they oppose grown men having sex with 14 year old children. They are explicitly endorsing this behaviour. I can guarantee you one thing. If I ever found out that someone was having sex with my 14 or 15 year old grandchildren, they had better hope that they get arrested before I get to them, beause they will not be alive to attend any court hearing!

I agree that Jack Layton needs to go, but your remarks are way off base when talking about affordable housing units for a large percentage of people in this country. Maybe you do own your own home but those that own their own homes in this country are certainly not in the majority. Most working people in Canada rent, and with the current trend of employers to hire more part-time or Term employees that trend is not likely to change anytime soon. The reality is that a very large number of people in Canada are not able to afford housing, clothing, and food without having to resort to food banks or soup kitchen's but obviously you could care less about these people since you are do not worry about where your next meal is coming from. Just remember one thing, we can all be jolted out of our comfortable lifestyle by something as simple as the business one works for suddenly closes their doors, and the employees suddenly find themselves at the local food bank because you have no food to put on your table. Don't think it can't happen to you, because it has happened to people likely far more comfortable than you think you are. I sit on the Board of my province's food bank association, and we are hearing stories all the time of people who once donated to the food banks are suddenly finding themselves as clients requiring assistance. This supposed healthy global economy has created many casualities right here in good old Canada. I owned my own home that is until a series of circumstances intervened that were beyond my control, and I lost my house. I had a heart attack and could no longer work, and although my insurance company paid me long-term disability for 2 years, they finally deemed me able to work even though Canada Pension had already deemed me totally disabled. The end result was that the insurance company cut me off they said because their definition of what constitutes a total disability differs from that of Canada Pension. My mortgage was not insured because when I bought the property I had Diabetes which deemed me uninsurable. Don't think for a minute that life cannot intervene and spoil your well laid plans for how the universe is to unfold. You may someday find yourself needing one of those affordable housing units yourself.

I must say that I agree with that statement. Our government has no business owning a supposed news network. All tax-dollars should be cut immediately, and these leeches should be forced to fund themselves through shareholder's dollars or close. Sink or swim people!

The trade panel did the calculations and ruled that there was no net subsidy. You are just repeating the baseless allegations of the US lobby. So when do you think the US will open its border to unrestricted immigration from Mexico?Culture is not a commodity to be traded like lumber - virtually every country in the world feels the same way. There is no way media developed for a target audience of 30 million people can compete on a level playing field with media developed for a target audience of 300 million people. That said, Canadian media laws are fair to foreign producers since no one is prevented from selling their products in Canada. The only thing that the regulations do is ensure that Canadian products have a chance. Canadian media laws do far more than to just give Canadian productions a chance, they are in fact shoved down our throats using Canadian content rules, and much of it is not fit for general audiences.. Take for instance the Movie Network or Movie Central vs. HBO in the U.S. The former is loaded with crap which is either sub-titled or dubbed because much of it is produced in a language that less than 30% of Canadian speak. The cable industry has the technology to allow subscribers to pick individual channels while rejecting those that they either cannot understand or do not want, but the CRTC does not allow for that choice. They know for instance that if all Canadian's are given that choice that most of the productions produced in Quebec in the French language would go bankrupt overnight due to lack of subscribers to pay for it. The same fate would await many of the specialty channels like the Movie Network, HGTV, and many other wanabes. Many of our productions are simply cheap imitations of their American counterparts, and the cheap shows through blatantly in the lack of talent and quality. Canadian Idol is an example of inferior productions, when the host himself got his job with absolutely no talent, and the judges are WHO???

Then stop buying it if you do not like it. Easy. Looks like you ARE paying for what you don't want. Cancell the service is quite easy.Find a new service that gives you what you want. Stop complaining and just go to a different company. You have the choice. And we all know the courts voted in favour of Canada in each of these disputes regarding lumber with the US. The problem is that in Canada it makes little difference which company you subscribe to the because the CRTC's Canadian content rules apply. You CANNOT pick which stations you want and which stations you don't want, you simply get to pick packages which includes even those channels that you don't want and you have to pay for them even though you don't watch them or in many cases understand them. Canada is portrayed as a country of choices, but when it comes to radio or television there is only one choice, take it or leave it period!