Melanie_

Tonight I'm sipping on a very nice Merlot made in my basement from an inexpensive kit. It's just as good as any $12 - $15 bottle I would buy at my local wine store, and it probably cost me less than $2 to make. I can't help you with the dairy or cell phone bill, though!

About the Government of Canada Try this link. You will have to follow further links from this page, but you should find the information you are looking for somewhere here. Good luck with the paper!

Discussed in this thread although I don't know if you will find much in the way of answers here.....

What difference does it make? Regardless of what any of them thought of it personally, they were all bound to uphold the rights of the Canadian people. Whether or not a politician supports a particular stance isn't the best yardstick by which to measure its validity.

I agree with you about the costliness of recalls, both economically and politically. I'd like more information from info@atlantica about what they actually see as a procedure for recall - what would prevent it from being one byelection after another, crippling the HoC? However, as to Emerson - he campaigned as a Liberal, and people who voted for him presumably did so because they supported the Liberal agenda. If he was a fiscal conservative, and agreed with the Conservative platform strongly enough to jump to them two weeks after the election, he campaigned in bad faith. When he crossed the floor, he betrayed the people who cast ballots for him, and he also betrayed the people who cast ballots for his Conservative rival. It is patronizing to say that they lost on election night but won upon the swearing in - our system is built on the value of each person's right to vote, and their votes were marginalized. While I'm not prepared to support a recall in every situation, this one seems to warrant some form of re-empowerment of the constituents.

But what if they did their research, and made a carefully chosen vote - let's say for a Liberal. Then two weeks later, their MP crosses the floor, and they find out that their research was meaningless - the vote they cast for a Liberal was really a vote for a Conservative in disguise. Should there be a recall available in such a case?

Don't make the assumption that I haven't read it. I have spent a good deal of my life reading it, and have found it to be contradictory and uninformative. I'll agree with you when you say it is simple history - it is a simple history of a people trying to make sense of their world with limited knowledge and a lot of superstition. The only relevance it has in today's world is to detail the mythology of a long ago time.

What incredible rubbish! You are blaming the Jews for trying to continue to do what god told them to do, rather than follow some hick who told them they no longer had to? I fail to see how that made anything clearer. And the sabbath is the perfect example of confusion and change - Constantine changed the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday in the fourth century AD simply to make Christianity more palatable to the pagans. This was done purely for political gain, rather than for anything based in the religion, yet it is still upheld today as being "god's word." Your comments on hell prove my point. Why not be clear about it, rather than let everyone try to interpret as best they can? If it is debatable, god is failing to provide us with a fair basis on which to make choices. You might say it brings no glory to god to have hell as a place of torture, but many others who purport to be Christians would disagree. Who is right? How do you know?

Me too! We are in agreement.

Let me tell you that your attitude is the best…I really admire your way of thinking and your justice… You are completely free and has the absolute right to doubt and investigate everything until you reach truth Thanks again for this attitude But do you recognize, Adel, that reaching the truth might be in conflict with what you believe?

Actually, I don't really want him to do anything, except perhaps have a game of Yahtzee with Zeus, Odin and Osiris. But back to your argument... No, I don't agree that punishment is the only recourse when someone has done something "wrong". Punishment doesn't teach anyone anything about appropriate behaviour, it just creates fear. So if he can't approve of sin, why create it? And don't tell me it was to give us free will - I'm sure he could have found some other way to allow free will without creating the need to punish someone for eternity based on the actions of 70 or so years. And do you realize the sheer silliness of your statement, "he sent prophet after prophet to the Jews....then he sent Jesus to make things clear once and for all"? According to Christianity, he changed all the rules when he sent Jesus, so exactly how did that clear things up? It just created more confusion, led to more division, and caused some of the worst examples of the horrors people can commit on other people, all in his name.

Adel - If the only reason people don't lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder is because they are afraid of what will happen to them in the afterlife, that is the biggest example of behaving out of self interest yet. Do some reading on Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development - behaving in a "moral" way solely to avoid punishment is at the bottom of the scale. W.C. Crain. (1985). Theories of Development. Prentice-Hall. pp. 118-136.

Did this need a new thread? I'm still waiting for you to respond to the questions I posed to you in one of the other similar threads you started. Let me redirect you: "Is it up to us to believe in god" thread

It seems like a pretty mean spirited deity who would create people in order to have a relationship with them, and give them a choice - choose me and do what I want or I'll punish you for eternity. What kind of choice is that? He then sets it up so that everyone disagrees about what it is he actually wants, so no one knows with any degree of certainty that what they are doing is even going to lead them to that relationship he claims to want. The illogic of it all is stunning. You're right, this is only if he exists. I don't believe he does, but if I'm wrong, I don't think I'd want to choose him anyway. Anyone who would punish someone for eternity for choices made in a short human lifespan, with inaccurate and conflicting information, isn't someone I'm interested in knowing.

Ahh, guilt. The basis of your religion. I don't especially care if he likes my actions, since I think he is just a figment of your imagination. But if he exists, I don't think he really needs validation or gratitude from me. He's a big boy, he'll get over it if I don't say thank you.

Again, which specific holy books are you talking about/quoting from? How convenient. So why are you asking us to think in the first place? So are you saying that good people are never killed? I suspect many good people, whose families needed them badly, have still been slaughtered around the world. Of course, you've stipulated "for these reasons or others", which is an easy way out of any argument. OK, so lets get this straight. Your basic premise is that God is infinitely wise, and nothing happens that God doesn't want to happen. God, in his infinite wisdom, creates cancer. He arbitrarily decides who gets cancer, and then to cure some and not others, based on whether or not someone has asked him to; the ultimate power trip. But wait, others ask to be cured and are not, and others don't ask, and are cured. It sounds like your God is all powerful yet only uses that power when it suits him, for reasons unknown, and we are all at his mercy. Any free choice we make is subject to his will, and we will be judged and punished if we don't do what he wants. I don't like your God very much at all.

Was it simply a lack of space that prevented your from accepting them? Forget about the laws for a moment, do you think it was right to refuse his son? Accepting his son would have meant skipping over the 150 other children ahead of him on the waiting list - and I didn't have a space open to give him in any case. I know you aren't a big fan of laws, but I'll outline a few of the regulations that come into play when we are talking about child care spaces. First, the actual amount of physical space determines the number of children that can be there - our regulations state that there needs to be 3.3 square metres per child. This accounts for the floor space the child takes up (fairly small) and the floor space required for toys, equipment and adults to care for the child. So if you have 10 children, you need 33 square metres to accomodate them. You can't just add more children without adding more physical space. Another regulation is that you need one adult on the floor at all times for every eight children. If a staff person needs to so much as go to the bathroom, someone needs to cover their ratio. Again, adding extra children means you need to add extra adults, and adding one extra child isn't going to work. Having said that, it isn't just the laws that come into play, but the well being of the children. The child care community is acutely aware of what will enhance or harm children's development, and the regulations simply reinforce what research tells us - children need space, and they need sensitive caregivers who treat them as individuals. We can't just pack them in and warehouse them, we need to give high quality care.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! And as the Irish Rovers used to say, "May ye be a half hour in heaven before the devil knows you're dead!" (Does anyone else remember watching the Irish Rovers on CBC every Sunday night?)

I absolutely agree parents should pay for the cost of care, with a sliding scale for subsidy based on low income. That was never really the issue, even under the Liberal plan - no one was offering free child care, just accessible child care that had safeguards and standards.

Another piece of the puzzle, though, aside from spaces, is who is going to work in them. Training initiatives have to be in place as well, or you end up like Quebec, where they focused on rapid expansion of spaces but hired anyone with a pulse to take care of the children. Chaos resulted, and continues to be a big part of why there are so many problems with the Quebec system. Not everyone has to be trained, but a proportion of trained staff definitely results in higher quality care.

I was the director of an 80 space child care centre for a couple of years. I had weeping mothers on the phone regularly begging me for a spot. Some examples: Their private sitter was raising their fees by $8/day starting in two weeks. They were starting to feel really uneasy about the care their child was getting; even though there was no specific issue, they were anxious to move their child from that caregiver. They had just moved to the province and were ready to start their new jobs, and couldn't find any place for their child. No private sitter was willing to accomodate their child with autism. Grandma was going into the hospital and wouldn't be able to provide care anymore, even when she was back home again. Finding a spot was definitely an issue in each of these cases. I knew parents who were spending their lunch hour every day driving from work to the sitter to kindergarten then back to work, then back to school at 3:30 to pick their child up again and take her back to the sitter, then go back to work for another hour. I'll never forget one dad, a recent immigrant, who didn't understand why I could only take a certain number of children, telling me how quiet his son was, how small he was, he wouldn't be any trouble, could we just find a small spot in the back for him to sit. I don't think I've made much of a secret of my support for a public, licensed and regulated system. The infrastructure is already there, especially here in Manitoba. What we need are more spaces - not just in Winnipeg, but in Neepawa, Steinbach, Dauphin, Gillam, Carman, Flin Flon...... private businesses are unlikey to start worksite centres in smaller areas; this was a major flaw in Harper's plan. Expanding the current system the province has in place would open spaces based on the needs of the community, rather than the needs of a private business to put their money where they are most likely to make a profit. Thankfully Harper has recognized this and is going back to the original Liberal plan of giving the money to the provinces to administer.

The Riddle of Epicuris: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? You are not making any sense, Adel. You say he is the only one who can allow or disallow anything to happen, but still maintain that he doesn't prevent free choice. This needs a much better explanation than what you have given. Also you talk about prayer, as if it makes a difference to pray about anything. You have just said that he will do what he chooses - is he really swayed by people asking him to do things? If he has such complete wisdom, prayer is meaningless because he already knows what he will do regardless of what anyone asks. And I find it offensive to think that, if he had such wisdom and power to prevent suffering, he would only act if asked to do so. Perhaps you should clarify which holy books you keep referring to?

Looks like Stephen Harper has realized that the best way to create spaces is to build on the already existing infrastructure the provinces have in place, rather than setting up his own system. Some might call this a flip flop, but I for one find it encouraging to know that Harper is willing to change when he realizes that his ideas aren't going to work. Canada.com

Since I rarely can follow your logic, I guess we're even.

JBG, as a 15 year old caught up in politics, I bet idealism was a big part of the attraction. The contrast between what the Dems said they stood for and what they actually did in this situation smacks of hypocricy, on a matter that is dear to your heart, and would be enough to turn that idealism into cynicism very quickly. I'm not familiar with the situation other than what you have outlined in this thread, but I see why you were turned off from the party 35 years ago. But I wonder, have they done nothing since then that would possibly redeem them in your eyes?