BS: Canada Election

Subject: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 09:05 PM

I move that Stephen Harper has his arse kicked! Any seconder?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 09:08 PM

I second the motion.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 09:10 PM

Thanks Bruce! All in favour?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 09:14 PM

Aye!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Charmion
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 08:14 AM

And away we go!

Here in Ottawa, there are two kinds of people: those fixated on politics above all other considerations, and those too darned busy with jobs and family responsibilities to think of politics as anything but a distracting nuisance.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 08:24 AM

Where's me gum rubbers with the steel toes?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,Stew
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 09:50 AM

Great choice eh! A blue haze or a pink veil. Don't vote, it only encourages them snakes.
Stew

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 09:57 AM

I think I'll vote for Claude DeBellefeuille, Députée de Beauharnois-Salaberry. She's with the Bloc Québécois, but when I wrote to our representatives asking what the government was doing about Libya--a few weeks back--the only party that replied to me was the Bloc. And it was hard for them, because mostly the party's supporters are French speaking. I wrote in English and then with the help of an on-line translator site, tried putting my words into French--and lord knows what I ended up saying. They also struggled with the English in which they answered me. BUT, they tried, despite my having told Claude a few times in writing that her party's language policies really peed me off--in polite terms of course. I find them to be straight-forward and honest.

She has and continues to be a great representative for the people of the Beauharnois-Salaberry electoral district, English speakers included. I am sick and tired being ignored by our MPs and getting vapid responses to the half dozen questions I pose each year. May change my decision, but likely not.

BM

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 01:20 PM

Good for you, BM!! And good to know.

I have long wandered how it is that all our politicians seem to leave what brains they have in Nepean - neglecting to take them into Ottawa.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 02:17 PM

Vote, even if you have to hold your nose on the way to the polls. — Pierre Trudeau.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 02:20 PM

You make a good point 999. I've said it many times before... the Quebeqois have balls. They stand up for themselves and stick together for Quebec in the face of idiocy from Ottawa fuelled by the divide and conquer tactics by those idiots for reasons that would be libel for me to post. Wish we had more of that in every other province. I suppose we don't because we have lost our Canuckness and succumbed to the political correctness that has spiralled out of control.

Mum said today she won't vote and asked me to proxy. She can't bear to see what her generation endured and worked for be taken away by crooks who, for the tip of the iceberg, use her money to build schools in Afghanistan but are going to close the high school she attended (it's going to be refurbished and then sold for graft after a new one is built by a private company for kickbacks and a ten percent profit and then operated for a fee for many years... oops!)

Yes, I know I talking federal/provincial/municipal differences but in the end, they all have to be crooks to shake down my mother... and your mother and you and your children. It's fuckin sick.

If I win the Lotto, I am buyin me a spot in Quebec so I have the option to move there if they ever separate.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 02:28 PM

Ahhh, Pierre... we need you. That guy had balls. He put the FIRA God into those that would sell Canada down the river.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 03:12 PM

"Ahhh, Pierre... we need you. That guy had balls."
He also had the balls to stand up to the big oil companies. Bastards put the gas up here 21/2 cents a liter last night.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 03:21 PM

Sandy, you have NO compassion. Esso, Exxon, BP: They're just tryin' to make a buck for their share holders. OK, so you're gettin' fucked at the pump and they got no vaseline--

Hey! WHY no vaseline? It's a petroleum product after all.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 03:32 PM

Our premier put the gas tax up 3 pence in the budget without warning. He put smokes up $1.40 a pack... PLUS SALES TAX... wtf? He raised the price fishing and hunting licenses but didn't say how much. He wants to sell NB Liquor and it makes money... hmmm... why would he want to do that?... offshore account? Like fuckin Sobeys need to make more money by running the liquor stores while the provincial government can't pay it's bills? Like the bill for the utilities review board salaries that were increased over 30% recently for very highly paid people whi do very little ain't payin kickbacks?

Bunch a greedy crook bastards. Starting with Stevie #1 and trickling down our collective legs.

Vote for who? Hmmm... I wonder who will fuck Canadians up the ass most gently.

AAAGGGHHHHHH!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 04:09 PM

Thanks for that quote Ed.
"Vote, even if you have to hold your nose on the way to the polls." — Pierre Trudeau.

and vote no matter what.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 04:53 PM

I always vote, just for the fun of it. But I don't expect it to change anything, because the people in my riding will always elect a Conservative, even if all the conservatives can find to put on the ballot is a dog or a chimp. (Apologies to Chongo!) I think I last voted for the Conservatives when Mulroney won the first time, and I've never voted for them since. I wouldn't vote for them now if they got down on their knees and begged me to. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 05:29 PM

I always vote but in my riding it only means putting it on the record that not everyone supports Harper's neo-cons.

It's so confusing that he's so popular here: my neighbours seem nice, considerate and reasonably aware. It never ceases to amaze me how different decisions can result from the same set of given information.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 05:40 PM

If God wanted us to vote he would have given us candidates.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 06:01 PM

"The next time you see Jesus Christ, ask Him what happened to the just society He promised 2,000 years ago".
In reply to a high school student's question about what happened to Trudeau's promises of a "Just Society", in Regina, Saskatchewan (September 1972)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 07:31 PM

Good one bobad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 10:51 PM

Hey Bruce, you ought to run for the BQ yourself, maybe across the border in Hawkesbury , Upper Canada... you'd at least get on national news and could promote more relevant things like your music...
who knows ? there's a lot of Franco-Ontarians in that part of the Stormont/Dundas/Glengary riding...which could be annexed come L'Independence... okay salut mon vieux...

and wake me when it's over

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 10:58 PM

And what is that great song you wrote about the Ottawa River separating two great Provinces?
Your the man Ron.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 12:01 AM

Actually, Jesus never promised a just society. He rather bemoaned the lack of same in his own time, and recommended that people try to change that by becoming more loving in their own behaviour.

STill, it was a clever quip on Trudeau's part. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 06:55 AM

Stevie 1 goes to tea with the GG today to dissolve parliament. First time a Canuck government has ever been found in contempt of parliament. Fourth election in seven years. Par for the course. Soooo, most MPs get to go home and enjoy lots of functions, throw parties and so on. Stevie 1 gets to travel the country, first class hotels.... aggghhhhh

Any guesses on a date?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 07:59 AM

It's about time.

There really isn't a party that truly represents my interests, but the furthest from my interests is the Regressive Conservative party. I rather like Jack Layton, though I don't think enough Canadians will come to their senses in time to let him lead. Nonetheless, I will Support the NDP. I don't trust that liberal guy, strangely, for some of the reasons the Tories go on and on about, that he seems to be as much a displaced American than a prodigal son of Canada, not that I needed the Tories to point that out to me. On the whole I distrust all conservatives, distrust most liberals particularly the leadership, and generally dig what the NDP say.

I hope and pray that more people vote, but the disaffected aren't likely to vote in an election they think won't change anything, not realizing that if they choose not to decide they have still made a choice.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:14 AM

I'd vote for the Hashish Party... they're a compressed and more potent offshoot of the Marijuana Party... not to be confused with the Greens..

where's the Rhino Party when we need them most ? They once advocated joining Cuba and Quebec and calling it Cubec..

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:31 AM

""I don't trust that liberal guy, strangely, for some of the reasons the Tories go on and on about, that he seems to be as much a displaced American than a prodigal son of Canada""

It seems like the many years of expensive "USA style" pre election TV "attack ads" worked in Canada.

:)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:31 AM

Mooh, for a long time I've felt the same way about NDP and acted accordingly but lately they seem to be more in big-l Liberal territory (which isn't entirely bad, mind you). Meanwhile the Liberal Party of Candada has taken over what used to be federal Progressive Conservative territory, before that partied died its humiliating death. I agree with your renaming to Regressive Cons. (my pun intended), and I mourn the the pendulum swinging so far to the right. To balance it, lately I often develop overwhelming urges to vote Green Party.

Bottom line for me is that no election will represent the country effectively under first-past-the-post any more, not with the population in most of the ridings being so large and diverse. In ridings with small pops often the geography is large therefore difficult to represent the many with less access to technology--I'm thinking of the middle and far north and also of first nations.

The confrontational nature of opposition politics perhaps worked passably well in the country's earlier days. But with media and technology being what it is these now and for as long as we have affordable electricity, I think that governance would be far higher quality if our system required consensus and co-operation to function. It's too easy to make snide 5 second sound bites that offer nothing in terms of furthering the most good for the most people but offer peculiar amusement and entertainment, and as long as the system rewards that behaviour, it's what we'll get.

Now that we're so deep into SSB (snide sound bite) politics, it's all but impossible to have a public dialogue about options for a more representative system.

[Great big sigh.]

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:49 AM

Interesting perspective

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:54 AM

Good observations Crowhugger. The closest we can come to a semblance of consensus governance under the present system would be a coalition government which could come about if the Reform/Conservatives fail to gain a majority. The Reform/Cons will be doing their best to fan the flames of Francophobia in the ROC using the threat of separatism if the Bloc should have any policy making power, which is to the detriment of the ROC as they could do worse than benefit from some of the progressive features of Quebec's social policy.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 10:02 AM

Another perspective

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 12:46 PM

"Feel deep inside yourself, you must, Luke. A tingling do you feel? That is the Farce, Luke! Work with it you will. Vote you shall. Use the Farce wisely! Election time it is!" - Yoda

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 01:26 PM

Ed T...I wouldn't know, I came to that conclusion before the guy even became liberal leader, but when Iggy is on record saying so many pro-American things, I wonder if Trudeau is rolling in his grave.

Crowhugger...Agreed, the NDP have (though sluggishly) moved too far to the right for my tastes. There is no party that represents my interests, the NDP come closest and I trust Layton so that's enough for me, for now. I'm pretty socialist by nature.

It's not just that Harpy may be contemptuous, and I do believe he is, but that those who get sucked along in his wake may be worse, like Baird and Flaherty. That Baird sure has the prissy self-righteous whine down to a fine art; Flaherty looks as condescending as any politician I've seen; and Harper is as dismissive as ever, all of which paints them as caricatures rather than men of character.

All that aside, are there no leaders like Broadbent and Douglas any more?

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 01:28 PM

There's one, but he's down in the States. Dennis Kucinich. (and he's not a "leader", technically speaking)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 01:29 PM

Ed... first link "The article you are looking for is available to GlobePlus members"

I heard it both ways today... Stevie 1's an asshole. Mike's an asshole (and, of course, Jack who?). I agree. Well, in a way.

But I heard one take from a lady about 80 years old at the grocery store. Paraphrasing... "I hate that Harper but he's going to get a majority because people don't trust that lying son-of-a-gun and you mark my word he's a Johnny Come Home For Dinner businessman who owes a lot down there (US). How dare him criticize the PM for sending those planes to Libya when he had no choice because of the way we cowtow to the Americans these days when we all know he would have sent those planes faster than Harper. They're all liars and they don't care how they spend our money... MY money... YOUR money. $4.49 a pound for smelts... for SMELTS! An election is not what we need right now and that Ignatieff caused it. SAID he was going to cause it no matter what." That's the short version. Glad I was at the express checkout. I thought she was gonna blow a gasket.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 02:27 PM

re: @another perspective"
This article misses the crux of the issue, which is, who pays? The people I know who tend to the political left seek just as much smaller government as is supposedly sought by many on the right. I say 'supposedly' because federal Conservative governments have increased spending, deficit and debt far more than Liberal gov'ts.

The difference between left and right in this issue lies with who shall bear the weight of spending, deficit and debt reductions. Much of federal budget balancing has been done by downloading responsibility for programs to provinces & territories, which in turn downloadeded to municipalities, latter which uses one of the least progressive taxation methods: property tax. Each level bragged that they were balancing their budgets with money leftover to pay down accumulated debt. Which most will agree has to be done--debts must be paid to avoid crippling interest & principal payments--but done at whose expense?

It completely escapes me how a decent society can vote to place that load squarely upon society's weakest members while happily maintaining spending in favour of profitable corporations.

I don't mean to suggest this expression of the political landscape includes every complexity of the issue, far from it. Those complexities must be addressed, but without children going to school hungry in this very rich country, with first nations having potable drinking water and effective youth suicide prevention programs, with those on social supports receiving enough to eat nutritiously and pay their heating and housing bills, etc. etc. Which is certainly not now the case.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 02:31 PM

Sorry Gnu, here it is:

Globe editorial
Let's not make Ignatieff a personal issue
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Let's begin this election by making a pledge: That Michael Ignatieff should not be an election issue. Whatever the merits of his policies may be, he is, as a writer for the Financial Times has put it, "by any measure an extraordinary Canadian."

Personal attacks on Mr. Ignatieff have been the preferred tactic of his political opponents from the moment he entered political life after a distinguished career as a human-rights theorist, writer and academic. These attacks have benefited from an unfortunate national prejudice that views success abroad with suspicion or, in its extreme form, contempt.

More related to this story
•Harper and Ignatieff: Two leaders, two visions of Canada
•Harper government falls in historic Commons showdown
•Poll shows increasing voter skepticism about Harper government
Many people lament the poisonous atmosphere in Ottawa, and, fairly or unfairly, the ostensibly poor quality of those attracted into political service, especially career politicians. Mr. Ignatieff is the antithesis of this type.

He is indeed an extraordinary Canadian. He was listed as one of the world's 100 leading public intellectuals by Foreign Policy for his thinking on the "tension between security and human rights, the fight against modern terrorism and the philosophy of freedom." (That quote is taken from the citation of one of his 11 honorary degrees.) His books have received many awards, including the Governor-General's Award for Literature and the George Orwell Prize, and one was short-listed for the Booker Prize. The American philosopher Francis Fukuyama called Mr. Ignatieff's Lionel Gelber Prize-winning book, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, "a marvellous work that shows the diversity, complexity, agonies and horrors of nationalism with greater depth and insight than most, if not all, academic treatises." He has written for The New Yorker, hosted programs for the BBC, and has held teaching positions at Cambridge, the University of London and Harvard.

No one would argue that Mr. Ignatieff's achievements entitle him to ride a howdah to 24 Sussex Drive, whereby he would descend to take up his seat as prime minister. But at the same time, they should not be thrown in his face in the form of corrosive personal attacks.

The Conservatives have already tried to make Mr. Ignatieff's career – read, his accomplishments – an issue. They have unleashed attack ads with the slogan "Ignatieff: he didn't come back for you." It is an ugly and impoverished strategy. There are many good reasons not to vote Liberal; the leader's character is not one of them. For once, let's debate ideas and not deride success.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 03:00 PM

Mooh,

I never heard of Ignatieff before he was considered a potential liberal leader.

So, precisely what are the "pro-American" things that you say Iggy said about the US of A that has you concerned (as you noted)?

I recall he said that he admired and respect American institutions, as he lived there for five years. Is it that far off to respect the accomoplishments of the US of A in many fronts, especially since they are our neighbour, have been our military ally, our major trade partner, and have similar British roots and democracy? While I don't discount the differences between Canada and the USA, are there not good things to say about the US of A?

I suspect Trudeau may have been uncomfortable with George W Bush. However, I feel he could have had a good relationship with Obama, and possibly enjoyyed a good intellectual discussion with Ignatieff or Layton (as he did with Tommy Douglas). I do not see that there would be much common ground between Harper and Trudeau.

Here are a couple of Ignatieff quotes that come to mind:

""We have got to plant our standard firmly on the centre-left of Canadian politics.""

""None of us, none of us are going to run against each other. All of us are running against Stephen Harper's vision of Canada.""

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 03:27 PM

Thanks Ed. Fact is, "some" Canucks see him in the opposite and distrust him. His brief stints on the CBC and other docu's paint him as a saint. But, there is that element of distrust... a carbon tax? What the hell is that? Another tax... piss off.

How do you sell a carbon tax?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 03:38 PM

To sell a carbon tax is political suicide. To sell a carbon management plan could succeed. Even if, in the fine print, they are identical.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 03:49 PM

Gnu, I agree discussiong a Carbon tax during an election campaign is political suicide (the former Liberal leader found out). Is a carbon tax part of the current Liberal platform. If so, I haven't seen it.

However, you are actually paying a carbon tax (maybe not actually called that, but, it is the same thing) now for your electricity, heating oil and each time you fill up your car. I believe you folks in NB just added a few cents to yours a week or so ago. The NDP government in NS added one when they increased the HST after being elected. Few politicians mention increasing ytaxes until after an election. I suspect they are all the same on thet one, except the politically innocents.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:31 PM

Harper has been shown to have no respect for Parliament. Sadly over the years Parliament has become only a forum to count noses to maintain power. Harper insists that the noses of his MP's are brown from being firmly planted in his arse. Bill Casey was kicked out of caucus for having the audacity to represent his electorate. Harper shut down Parliament to maintain his hold on power. A study of German history will show Hitler using a similar trick when he had a minority. Of course Hitler had nothing but contempt for the opposition and used propaganda to demean anyone who stood in his way. The scary part is that a lot of the German people of the day believed his bullshit! I am not calling Harper a Nazi but some tactics like his attack ads sure as hell don't make him democratic or patriotic in my estimation. I do fear that enough people will believe his bullshit to elect him with a majority. That could be the end of what we hold dear as Canadians like universal health care. He is simply not worth the risk!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:40 PM

Healt case seems to be one aspect that most Canadians hold dear. I am curious as to what others would be and if it has changed over the past ten years?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:41 PM

I don't mean that Iggy isn't well educated, compassionate, or anything else but he is seen as a businessman from the US (yeah, I konw) and, as such, is suspect to a large portion of the voters which is compounded by the fact that he is extremely intelligent which is lost on the average voter when he cannot articulate his proposals in a manner that the average voter can understand.

I tend to think that I am at least "average" and when I watched him try to explain his proposed cabon tax on CBC my impression was that he was either too intelligent to explain it to me in laymans terms or he was stunned as me arse. Either way, that equals stunned as me arse IMO. I understand the carbon tax... what I don't understand is why he could not explain it on CBC. Political suicide indeed. Minded me a Garge... the left hand fools me twice... er, ahhhh

Anyway, it's gonna be a crap shoot... I think it's gonna boil down to how pissed off Canucks are and they have a lot of things to be pissed off about.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:18 PM

Gnu,
I have seen "Iggy" on TV a few times, answering random questions off the cuff from regular citizens during his political junkits and he did quite well.

I do not see that people would see him as a bussnessman (I don't recall he was employed in business. But, I can see people seeing him as an aloof intellectual, (somewhat like Trudeau, who was not lioked by some).

He likely spent as much time in UK as in the USA, as a university professor and reporter. The Attack ads have branded the USA portion, I suspect to tap into anti-USA sentiment in some areas. Michael Ignatieff


I challenge anyone to explain the benefits of a carbon tax in a positive way to the average guy, let alone a profit neutral one that was being toyed with in 2006, mostly to meet Canada's international Kyoto commitmments, which was a major puzzle at the time.

BYW, many people were toying with some form of a carbon tax in the period, even Bill Clinton. Carbon tax If you look at it in todays terms, it seems fairly odd and complex.

Ignatieff calls for 'carbon tax' to aid climate

You probably recall Trudeau's problem with energy, the National Energy Program, that was so umpopular in Alberta and led to national division. Mulroony campaigned to end the program. When he delayed this, it contributed to the formation of the Reform party, which led to The alliance and current Conservative party.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if "Iggy" can connect puts his good side forward, or flops on his face. I suspect he will be the person with the big target on his back, and many more personal attacks on the horizon (versus a focus on the issues and vision).

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 06:25 PM

Good points Ed.

I do recall "Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark." As for Mulroney, that's another barrel of mackeral bait that smells too bad to open.

Anyway, I should not comment because I really have not kept up with the scene over the past few years. It's just that I see so many injutices and corruption and plain bullshit on the go that I want to rant and rave and scream and shout.... like the little old lady at Sobeys.

Sigh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 08:02 PM

To answer Ed's question about what else Canadians hold dear:

I think average folks believe in equalization payments until some jackass starts calling the recipients freeloaders. It reminds me of public opinion about welfare--no one wants their neighbours starving or stealing their stuff, but then Harris (former ON premier) demonized welfare recipients and suddenly it became okay for welfare to be cut by 20% when it was already below the poverty line.

The reason I think most folks agree with e.p.'s is that they realize earning a sufficient living in Atlantic Canada and the north and some parts of the west is difficult at best for most people, which affects taxable income, and the smaller amount of business in those places means that tax base is pretty darn small as well.

Equalization payments are part and parcel of the more group-oriented approach that used to be the celebrated norm in this country. In the last decade or more that philosophy has been under attack by enthusiastic promoters of 'me first' social attitudes. Perhaps an early spark of that change was back in the 'let the bastards freeze in the dark' era, or perhaps it was more recent. In Ontario I'm acutely aware of "selfishness is beautiful" beginning with the Harris election campaign. People here on the whole accept that "my freedom ends where your freedom begins." It used to be that could happily be read as "my freedom from paying more tax ends where your freedom not to starve begins" and people felt good about that. I'm not so sure any more that is the majority belief.

I'll be very interested to read what other Canadians feel we hold dear...I'd really have to think about it to come up with any more (besides hockey :-)). However the above plus health care represents a huge chunk of Canadian-ness in my view because it is about taking care of the group, occasionally at a cost to individual elbow room, something that would (almost?) never be tolerated south of the border.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:39 PM

I just remembered another characteristic of Canada that many Canadians hold dear, which is our routine use of hyphens in self identity. You know, the cultural mosaic as compared to the melting pot to the south. Speaking for myself I very much like how it effectively says that all people after the first nations are from, or are descended from, somewhere-not-Canada.

Like many Canadians I'm descended from far too many somewheres for hyphens to be practical but the newer arrivals can wear as much or as little of their motherland as makes them comfortable and I like that. In the big cities it's normal to see signage in any number of languages, which I like, and it's also normal to hear those languages spoken on the street. There is still an expectation that newcomers will learn English and/or French but I think there is also awareness that they will want to maintain their parents' tongue as well and pass it on to their children and maybe grandchildren. Contrast with decades ago when there was embarrassment in publicly speaking the old language (so I've been told).

Others disagree but I find the common occurrence of hyphens to be a very positive expression of diversity, tolerance and eventually acceptance of that diversity. I know that not all see it or use it that way; some use it to exclude and I don't like that so much.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 10:21 PM

The 'let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark' was national disgrace. In no way was that sentiment harbored by people like me: ordinary folk. I was living in the province from which it originated. When the east was hit by the terrible ice storm back in the '90s (?), I can attest that many people, many towns, many cities and many governments dug deep to get generators, blankets, food and other modern-day necessities to fellow(ette) Canucks living in Ontario and Quebec. They didn't want thanks or praise. They wanted to help, and help they did.

Ed T, that was a beautiful post. As for the challenge, I'd simply say 'ya gotta choice. Die screaming or pay the tax', because making polluting expensive will, in the long run, end polluting.' I think Canadians would understand that. We've tightened the national belt before and we can do it again. Our moms didn't raise no quitters.

Of course. I dream lots.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 10:51 PM

Guest, 999 I too think Canadians would understand that. But we aren't politicians appealing to the lowest uncommon denominator.

Yes, people everywhere pitch in to things like ice storms (that big one was '98 I think), floods or whatever. Everyday people get that we all need a hand sometimes--why do politicians always seem to screw up the message about what's important?

Dream, baby, dream!!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 11:08 PM

The reason yer politicians screw up the message is simple. They are lookin' to divide and conquer. The same is true whever you have them political parties. Divide and conquer is the name of the game.

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 07:48 AM

Ed...Ignatief referring to himself as an American, whatever the reasons, sounds pro-American to me. My concerns about Ignatief started when he supported the US invasion of Iraq, and was, in my view, slow to modify his opinion on its justification, and he took years to change his mind. That appears to me like he was a Bush toady, and apologist, though it may have been simple political posturing, neither of which endears him to me as a leader today. He has continued in this vein, walking out on a vote regarding conscientious objectors, and supporting the continuation of Canada's role in Afganistan, neither of which were unanimously supported by the party.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 10:45 AM

Mooh, I do not know the context in which you claim "Ignatief referring to himself as an American". Can you provide the direct source, (I have only seen it used in Conservative attack ads). I recall saying myself that compared to many world peoples, Canadians are much like Americans. I suspect people could take that out of context, if there was a reason to do so.

Here is some historic perspective, that I am aware of:
After refusing to participate in the second USA invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Liberal government announced on October 7, 2001, that Canada would contribute forces to the international force being formed to conduct a campaign against terrorism. Ignatief'did not enter Canadian politics until the 2006 election, four years after Canada's involvement.

"After debate the members of the United Nations through the General Assembly and the Security Council agreed that the United States and the other nations involved were entitled to take action under the United Nations Charter, Chapter 7, Article 51. Action taken was directed against the Taliban, an invading army of students and the de facto government of a part of Afghanistan, and the international terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda that had declared war on the USA and had been nurtured by the Taliban in a symbiotic relationship since 1996.

Before this action the Taliban had been in breach of a number of United Nations Security Council resolutions and United Nations sanctions were in place against them. The government of Afghanistan, recognised by the United Nations and all but three nations, had long sought United Nations assistance to repel the Taliban invaders and the action taken was to provide military assistance to this government while the United Nations Security Council took action to form a new fully representative, multi-ethnic and broad-based Afghan government."

Following a report conducted by former Liberal, John Manly, in March 2008, the Harper Conservative government's motion to extend the military mission into 2011 was approved in a parliamentary vote with the support of the Liberal party. Canada announced that it will withdraw the bulk of its fighting troops from Afghanistan in 2011. In November 2008, Ignatieff was formally declared the interm federal liberal party leader.

The basis of Ignatief's position:
In Ignatief's 2000 book Virtual War he argued for the decisive use of military force against states which massacre its own citizens. This was after he witnessed, first hand, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Serbia that was halted when NATO warplanes bombed Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian troops without a United Nations Security Council resolution authorization.

in 2001, Ignatieff was made a member of the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty which published "The Responsibility to Protect". It argued that the international community has a moral imperative to intervene militarily to resolve
humanitarian crises in failed and failing states such as the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. It also argued that if the United Nations Security Council fails to act, then regional coalitions like NATO, ad hoc coalitions or individual states ought to in its absence. "The Responsibility to Protect", was endorsed by the United Nations and is central to Canada's International Policy Statement put forward by the Liberal government in 2005.

After seeing first hand the killing of the Kurds in Iraq, he initially indicated his personal support for the second Iraq invasion (USA), as many did at the time. He later indicated that the invasion was unwise. BTW, he had no political role at that time.

As to calling Ignatieff "a Bush Toady", (though you have a right to your opinion) it seems, to me, as historically illogical and unfair, as some of the political attack ads are. It seems just as reasonable to align his viewpoints with the Obama administration, (but, I suspect that has less negative impact).

As to his views on conscientious objectors (though I do not know what they are), I suspect if Canadian troops were seeking to avoid service through other countries, one may have a different viewpoint?

I don't know if Ignatieff would be a good Prime Minister, or even has a shot at it. But, I see no good reason to misrepresent him or his views (which seem to be humanitarian in nature)as the cause of everything bad in Canada since 2001.




UN and Afganistan

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 12:40 PM

I'm one of those voters who usually looks at elections as choosing the least of evils.

For the future of the country, Harpo worries me more than Ig because he opted for attack ads that state or imply that Ig's worldly experience is somehow a bad thing. This is definitely about divide and conquer in more ways than one: Yes it's about trying to make voters feel like Ig is not to be trusted, in essence drawing a line between voters and Ig. Even worse, it's about making us feel that foreign=untrustable. That is shameful behaviour in this day and age and especially in this country which is founded on diversity of both ethnicity and religion.

That said, it remains to be seen which candidates will offer the least negative and the most positive over all, and then whether he wins his riding. After election day we'll eventually find out whether the chosen ones will stick to what they said they stood for. When I first started voting one could be reasonably sure that most candidates would do 180 degree on campaign promises but these days some of 'em actually say what they mean. Makes it somthing of a crap shoot.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 01:09 PM

Good perspectives, Crowhugger.

Though some fall for 'em, IMO, attack ads, that focuses on slick personal innuendo rather than actual perspectives on issues, are an insult to the voters intelligence. And, they have been going on for a few years, even when there was no election call. Does anyone expect that approach to promote cooperation? Eliz. May deserves praise for her anti-attack ad messages.

More gets done through cooperation,versus a conquer, divide and dominiate approach. IMO, some of Canada's best social programs were initiated when Trudeau and Douglas cooperated to make a minority government work.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 01:43 PM

Ed...I've been searching for the references, which I thought I had in a folder (on my laptop) but damned if I can find them. However, one source, if I remember correctly, was c-span.org. I don't know how one can take "It's your country [America] just as much as it is mine." out of context. I don't think it's a misrepresentation of him to suggest that this is indicative of an unworthiness as a Canadian leader. Sure, it's just my opinion.

Thanks for the historical perspective on his war stance, I will read up on it further. I'll try not to judge him too harshly on rushing to support the invasion on Iraq, no matter how wrong it was (imho). It's indicative of a kind of judgement I find worrisome in a leader, that is, supporting something I saw as a red herring from the start.

Not sure where this is coming from, "I don't know if Ignatieff would be a good Prime Minister, or even has a shot at it. But, I see no good reason to misrepresent him or his views (which seem to be humanitarian in nature)as the cause of everything bad in Canada since 2001" (Ed T). No one (including me) said or implied this. I'd choose him over Harper if there weren't other choices.

I love elections, almost as much as I love hockey.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 02:12 PM

"Not sure where this is coming from,"

Mostly in reference to the unfair attack ads, that have been going since Iggy was elected as Liberal leader,and those who have been swayed by them (you seem to have indicated you are not).

Does anyone believe the election campaign only began last week? :)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 02:38 PM

Mooh,

On your other point, a search of the internet shows over and over a quote, (mostly from political sources): "You have to decide what kind of America you want. It's your country just as much as it is mine." (CSPAN, 2004)

A question. Why would only a short quote be taken out of a longer interview rather than showing the complete interview or at least the part related to the quote? I am suspicious.

Anyway, I believe in giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, looking at a broader slice of a life and perspectives rather than puting everything on something such as that.

I would not be surprised if the attack ad folks will be asking to see Iggy's Canadian birth certificate, to match the USA conservative right attack approaches (it seems to have worked with some down there).

I recall during the election campaign that political operatives challenged Stéphane Dion's Canadian patriotism, because his mother was born in France (giving him dual citizenship, as many loyal Canadians have).

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 02:52 PM

You do know, don't you, that all that kind of crap is designed to distract the voting public from the government's record and to keep the important issues off the table. From some of the posts here it seems to be accomplishing that.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 03:06 PM

''As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand," said the 19th-century humorist Josh Billings. At least, a lot of quotation collectors hope he did say it.""

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 04:55 PM

bobad... spot on.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 08:26 PM

Given the fact that I don't watch TV, negative attack ads have no effect on me...and I don't get bugged by them either.

Be that as it may, I wouldn't vote for Harper's party under any conditions.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 08:01 AM

The first real goal in the campaign was scored by the Bloc when Duceppe waved that paper with Harper's signature on it wanting to set up a coalition making Harper PM.
We find a Prime Minister defeated for the first time in the history of the Commonwealth for Contempt of Parliament caught in a bare faced lie. This says so much about the morals of our leaders!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 01:49 PM

"Given the fact that I don't watch TV, negative attack ads have no effect on me...and I don't get bugged by them either.

Be that as it may, I wouldn't vote for Harper's party under any conditions."


Ditto.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:14 PM

That's what everyone said publicly about Mike Harris--won't vote for him, didn't vote for him. But the destructive idiot won a sweeping majority. Twice!

Which leads me to wonder who the heck IS voting for Harpo's party? (I mention the party to be clear for US readers who may not remember that we don't directly elect our PM; a party leader becomes PM by default when that party wins a majority of seats in the House of Commons.)

The streeters I've heard on radio or seen on TV so far indicate that the Canadian public has almost entirely missed the issue of contempt of parliament. How is that possible? Or do they really believe it's not as important as "the economy"?

These people are my neighbours and they seem so normal.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:25 PM

One tory candidate

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:43 PM

I too have wondered about an electorate that would vote for Mike Harris! He and Harper are cut from the same cloth and that gives me concern. Britain elected Thatcher and the USA Reagan and Bush W ( at least democratically the second time) so it does raise concern with me.
Hopefully we can learn from history and not repeat the same mistakes!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:46 PM

Ethics?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:56 PM

Crowhugger... hahahahaa.

I think a lot of people paid little attention after they knew we were headed for an election anyway after the Liberals, Bloc and NDP said they were going to bring down the government on the budget. The motion of no confidence for contempt just three days later ensured an election, nixed any implemetaion under the budget (yeah, but we all know they start(ed?) spending anyway), avoided the main estimates being... nevermind all that... they wanted to "score the first goal" as Sandy said. Too bad so many people seemed to have missed the point that a offense punishable under law by fine and or jail time was committed.

I think thay all just wanted extended vacations and getting to travel and live it up.

999... you should contact your MP and offer to play some gigs at her parties/rallies.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 03:04 PM

In the local paper, they ask a daily question. The current one asked
the outcome of the election. The "Conservative majority" option was
the most popular answer, despite a previous question asking who they
would vote for (Liberals were most popular).
I don't always trust pre-election polls. In the by-election, the CHP lead a poll over the Tories by twenty points, and they only got one or two percent of the actual votes. I liked their policy on hunting and
fishing. Jim Hnatiuk has a hunting and fishing supplies company, therefore he has a policy that includes protecting hunting and fishing rights.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 03:06 PM

I suspect there is some of that Gnu. But, I also suspect there is citizen fatigue when it comes to ethics, politicans and the political system. People have come to expect "dirty dealing" as the norm with politics, and are not as concerned when it comes to light.

I remember a few years ago a local provincial polition was caught and fined for cheating on his travel claims. He remained just as popular after in the local commuinty, and was voted in a mayor many times after. One citizen on TV said, "we know that all politicians are dishonest, so we want one of the most dishonest representing us, so our area will get more benefits from the system"

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 09:08 PM

Ed, no doubt you speaketh of Billy Joe (no relation) who is still mayor of Port Hawkesbury.
Billy Joe

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 09:29 PM

Who you are all voting for aside,
I am disgusted with all parties in Parliament sittings. I find it shameful how "OUR" representatives toss shit back and forth. The mudslinging is a waste of valuable time and just seems to get worst. And in my opinion all parties are at fault.
ad

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 09:45 PM

Adrien, there is irony in the fact that those empowered to improve the system are the perpetrators.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ollaimh
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:07 PM

i find it unbelievable that people swaallow the idea of conservatives calling ignatieff too american. or too educated for that matter.

ignatieff has uk citizenship and us green card i believe. he also has international acedemic credentials, at harvard oxford etc--the very best, and people buy that thats a negative. what palnet am i living on? he's not a businessman. he did university teaching, hosted on bbc, made documentaries and wrote for a living. he was head of harvards human rights centre--an internationally respected leader in human rights. how are these negatives?

not to mention harpers toadying to the american conservatives--who launched his carreer by funding the "national citizens coalition".

and the harper government had increased spending by thirty per cent and dropped taxes--that's why we are in deficit not the recession. this irresponsible spending and tax cutting atarted right from the beginning in the first two years when the ecenony was still good. his finance minister o'flarrety has never even come close with any economic forecast. they have all been political documents bot budgets. unfortunately our media have resigned from the watchdog job they used to do. no governent would be free from constant criticism with that record in the past, now they have few critiques for the incompetence and smear and spin of the harper government.harper is taking us down the mulroney road of deficit afgter drficit of record proportions. mulroney almost doubled out national debt in nine years--harper could do it in five to seven if not reigned in. unreported by our corporate dominated media.

by the way ignattief has ruled out a carbon tax.

i just hopw we cam stop the cons from getting a majority! and i am sick of the demonization of the bloc, conservatives all over the english speaking world do this. they think that some people can't be allowed to vote or some parties shouldn't be allowed or recognized--too bad they don't believe in democracy. bloc mps are the same as any and fsilure to respect them is demonizing francophones--one more ignorant conservative bigotry.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:21 PM

Frankly, the Conservatives can kiss my ass. I have NO respect for the Conservatives because of their smear tactics. As for the newspapers, reporting has meant nothing for decades. When advertisers control editorials, when television spins opinion, it's time to say to hell with them and let them know why you don't read their crap or watch their programs. imo

If Claude needs an English singer to help win her re-election, I'd be only too happy to do that. Diss the block? Fuck you, Harper. You spend more time on your hair than you do on your policies. Get stuffed. And I mean that in the nicest possible way!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:44 PM

ollaimh,
By your last paragraph you are saying that you support separatism. Am I correct?
All parties believe in Democracy. But all believe in keeping Canada together except the Bloc. Gilles Duceppe I really like as a politician but i will never vote for him because i believe in Canada. Does that make me against Democracy?
Bruce, you say your going to vote Bloc because Louise is a straight forward and honest representative. I couldn't agree with you more. Except for one thing. Louise represents a party that is based on separation. If that is O.K. with you than so be it.
Language Policy really pisses me off to, but voting for the Bloc is more than
language. It is about tearing our country apart.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 11:57 PM

I want to also say that Louise is a great great lady who represents her area very well. In fact she comes to our coffee house evenings as much as her time permits. I would be first in line to vote for her except she represents dividing Canada. Now maybe that is O.K because more and more the idea of Canada being as one is being questioned. But in my life time which may be 20 years at tops. I will fight the cock suckers.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:14 AM

Fight 'em with what? Vote for whom? I have written to her and told her I hate the Bloc's language policies, and if separation should occur, I'll die with a gun in my hand, and you can count on that. You are not the only one here who loves this country. Tell me a party that's worth voting for instead! Three sentences, and if they make sense, you'll have two votes: one I don't give to the Bloc and another I give to someone else. Which party will you sing for, Ad?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:22 AM

I remain puzzled by the Bloc/PQ claim that Canada can be divided but Quebec can not. Like sucking and blowing at the same time. I remember years ago a TV interview with a federal civil servant who worked every day in Ottawa but lived in Hull (or whatever it's called now). When asked if he was concerned about his job he felt that Canada would still employ him even if he would be living in a foreign country.
I don't believe that Quebec has any real desire to go on its own but feels that the squeaky wheel will be greased first, and they are making the best of the situation. I believe that the greater danger lies with those who would sell out the whole country for the economic benefit of the rich. If Harper believes otherwise he has not shown it. If it looks like shit and smells like shit it probably is shit and I have no desire to taste it for confirmation!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:23 AM

I'm from the old school. I don't publicly tell who I vote for. I wait for who will bring the bottle of rum or the box of chocolates and the ride to the poling station. That is not true of course, but that was what my Dad did. And when my Mum found out she was furious.
Bruce , in all honesty, I won't tell you.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:34 AM

I don't really want to know, Adrien. The Bloc will take it here anyway, regardless who either of us vote for.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 01:47 AM

If I lived in la belle province I wouldn't vote for the Bloc on the same grounds as Adrien. But I'd sure love to see a mainstream national party adopt some of their social programs. Language excepted of course, I'm talking more about child and health care etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 04:56 AM

Harper's Plan for a family tax cut... (from the Conservative website)

To ensure that the federal income tax system respects and supports the choices that families make, a re-elected Conservative Government will end the unfairness against single-income families with children, and two-income families with children where one spouse earns more than the other. This will also ease the burden on double-income families, by allowing them to keep more of what they earn and to benefit from having a second income.

A Stephen Harper Government will, as soon as the budget is balanced, establish the Family Tax Cut — income sharing for couples with dependent children under 18 years of age. This will give spouses the choice to share up to $50,000 of their household income for federal income-tax purposes.

By extending the principle of income sharing to families with children — a benefit our Government granted pensioners in 2007 — we will lower taxes on Canadian families. The result will be significant tax relief for nearly 1.8 million Canadian families — each of them saving, on average, $1,300 per year.

This measure is projected to cost $ 2.5 billion per year.
********************************************************************

"as soon as the budget is balanced"

Yeah, right.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 08:36 AM

Interesting informal unscientific person on the street poll on CTV this morning. Most of the respondents shown in the news story couldn't identify the 4 party leader pictures they were shown. Most interviewees confessed to not following politics. Okay, I get that, but not even recognizing the PM, never mind the others, isn't good for the country.

I wish voting was a duty.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 08:37 AM

Well, I used to wish voting was a duty, but should the ignorant vote?

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 08:47 AM

Good point Mooh.
This is an old story but when folks in countries get killed for wanting to vote than I think anyone here in Canada should be fined if they don't vote. Just as it is mandatory to wear a seat belt, why not apply it to voting.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 09:11 AM

As to identifying Canadian political leaders: a few years back, when my son was in high school,the Prime Minister was Paul Martin, with harper as opposition leader. The teacher asked a student who the Prime Minister was. The student look puzzled and said Steve Martin.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: 3refs
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 09:53 AM

"Well, I used to wish voting was a duty, but should the ignorant vote?"
They're learning not to. In 1988 75% of them turned out, and now it's down to 58%.
The B.Q. would win by the biggest landslide in Canadian history if they only said "We are here to protect the traditions and culture of Quebec and also the traditions and cultures of the rest of the Provinces and Territories. We are all unique in our own ways and our ways need to be protected at the national level".

From coast to coast to coast to the line on the map!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 09:56 AM

Harper takes no prisoners

By Andrew Cohen, Citizen Special March 29, 2011 6:28 AM

There is a story of a meeting between Stephen Harper and a visiting head of government. During the conversation, which took place in the Prime Minister's Office, the two leaders eventually discussed the parliamentary opposition in their respective countries.

What struck the visitor was Harper's antipathy toward the opposition, particularly the Liberals. "I don't like my opponents," the visitor allowed afterwards, "but I don't hate them. He hates his opposition!"

Hatred is a strong word. Whenever we spat "I hate you!" in the schoolyard, teachers told us to watch our tongues; you disliked the bully who washed your face with snow, but, really, you didn't hate him.

You have to wonder about how little personal regard Stephen Harper has for his opponents and how it affects how he runs a government and fights an election. More than any other politician in this country, this is a man with animus.

It takes a healthy disdain toward the Leader of the Opposition for the Conservatives to run months of expensive attack ads against him. This kind of character assassination worked so well on Stéphane Dion that they have used it on Michael Ignatieff, with some success.

While attack advertising in Canada isn't as bad as the "Swift Boat" campaign against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 American presidential race, give it time. Suggesting that Ignatieff's father, George, was privileged when he and his family arrived here in 1928 is meant to cast Ignatieff as a patrician and make Harper the populist in the eyes of Canada's accountants of envy.

(Interestingly, George Ignatieff says in his memoir that his family lived on just $100 a month. His mother found a bedbug-ridden apartment in Montreal and walked five miles a day to find fresh produce. At 15, George left home one summer to clear brush in British Columbia.)

Was that Stephen Harper's experience growing up as the son of an accountant in hardscrabble, suburban Toronto?

Let's accept that the Conservatives aren't the only ones to use attack ads. Let's accept, too, that politics is a blood sport and all parties play tough and say silly things. Nice guys need not apply.

More than any other party, Stephen Harper's Conservatives have embraced adversarial politics. The modus operandi is to make no concessions, take no prisoners and use the truth economically.

It really doesn't matter what the falsehood, as long as you say it loudly and frequently. If you want to raise money saying that the Liberals will "gut our military" and "raise" taxes, you do, knowing that Paul Martin's Liberals began rebuilding the military (after both the Conservatives and Liberals neglected it in the 1980s and 1990s) and Ignatieff has repeatedly ruled out higher taxes.

Or you dismiss the vote of contempt of Parliament as political "manoeuvring." Or you expel a member of your caucus, perhaps destroying her political career, and never explain why. Or you prorogue Parliament to silence your critics, twice.

All this suggests a strange, pathological antipathy. It has been said that the prime minister wants to "destroy" the Liberal party as he establishes a new Conservative ascendancy. If so, his is a new ambition in our politics: denying the opposition institutional legitimacy.

No wonder the prime minister has been raising fears of an opposition "coalition" early in the campaign. In a speech on Sunday, for example, he mentioned the "coalition" in Parliament which defeated his government on a vote of nonconfidence some 20 times. It is the new bogeyman.

There was a time, in the Cold War, that the dreaded "c word" was communism; it is now, to Harper, "the reckless, unprincipled coalition." Today's Red Menace is the danger that the Liberals will unseat the Conservatives, which he says would destroy Canada's recovery and threaten its stability. Après moi, le deluge!

That this kind of talk is cheap, empty and hypocritical doesn't seem to matter. That we have had coalition government before, that states such as Germany, Finland and Britain have it now, that Harper himself considered a coalition in 2004, despite his denials -none of that matters today.

Harper has so skilfully framed this issue that he made Ignatieff declare he wouldn't consider a coalition were he to place second. Ignatieff was so cowed that he could barely speak (though his written Shermanesque renunciation still might leave room for some other informal arrangement.)

But that kind of subtle conversation finds no oxygen in our political hothouse. In the absence of defining issues, fearmongering over a coalition is seen as the way to win a majority. If the Conservatives didn't think it's a winner, they wouldn't raise it.

This is the politics of smash, slash and smear. It seems to be working in 2011.

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University. E-mail: [e-mail]
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 10:01 AM

'"Well, I used to wish voting was a duty, but should the ignorant vote?"
They're learning not to. In 1988 75% of them turned out, and now it's down to 58%.
The B.Q. would win by the biggest landslide in Canadian history if they only said "We are here to protect the traditions and culture of Quebec and also the traditions and cultures of the rest of the Provinces and Territories. We are all unique in our own ways and our ways need to be protected at the national level".

From coast to coast to coast to the line on the map!'




Do you have any objection to me sending that to the Bloc, 3refs?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 10:11 AM

Questions:
If the minority government fell because of a lack of confidence vote, secrecy and contempt for the other parties and parlimentary process, does it seem likely that respect would increase under a majority government?

Who called the last election and why (remember the fixed date concept)?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 11:28 AM

"Who called the last election and why (remember the fixed date concept)? Who called the last election and why (remember the fixed date concept)?"

Indeed. Harper enacted a law and then ignored it, for political tactics.

BTW, I still get a laugh when I think of Stockwell Day's referendum farce and how 22 Minutes made him a laughing stock over it.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 02:43 PM

When I think of Stockwell Day, I have visions of him on the seadoo. He is also quoted as saying that the rate of unreported crime had risen, just l;ast August (check out the MontyPython style video) :))


Unreported crime stats rise:)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 03:46 PM

Stockwell Day never was the sharpest knife in the drawer -- he won't be missed.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 03:55 PM

"sharpest knife in the drawer"

Well, after watching that video, he couldn't even challenge a plastic spoon. That was, at best, appalling. He should be immediately removed. Stunned as me arse that lad.

Seriously, that makes me very angry.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: 3refs
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 04:09 PM

Stockwell Duh!!!
I just did that vote test on the CBC website. I think it's rigged!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 06:07 PM

Most politicians grind my gears?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 07:45 PM

I don't understand Ed?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 01:34 AM

Stockwell Day is in the vernacular stunned as me arse. While he was a cabinet minister, he said that rapists and child molesters should be allowed--nay, PUT--into the general population so that they could be taken care of by their peers. I wrote to the Red Deer Advocate and said words to the effect that as Minister of Justice he was suggesting that our legal system was ineffectual because if I really wanted to have bank robbers, drug dealers and killers (I worked in a maximum security institution during my first year of teaching) effect the punishment our courts didn't provide for those who disobeyed the rules, then we sure as hell wouldn't need a dip-shit like him to over-ride the law. We could get ropes and do it ourselves and save the cost of trials.

Later, I sent a fax and said he was fucking up (not in those exact words) the education system as it related to special needs children. I got back an answer to the effect that teachers were over paid as it was. He was then the Minister of Education.

Death, where is thy sting.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 11:57 AM

F-35 purchases amid cost fears


f35-costs

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 12:03 PM

I feel she would contribute to the debate. What's your opinion?

May

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 01:36 PM

From Ed's link... "As well, Canada was plunged into an election last weekend, and if the main opposition Liberals obtain power, they have vowed to cancel the Conservative promise to commit billions of dollars to buy 65 F-35s, and revert back to a competition to select the best plane to replace Canada's CF-18s. If that competition results in another jet being selected, it would further reduce the JSF's international order list."

That ain,t gonna happen.

Re May, why not?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 01:44 PM

No real opposition to the Conservatives here in Alberta. Ho hum.

National figures show the Conservatives in the lead; that will be the same on election day, so Harper and another minority government.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 02:42 PM

Yes, May should be allowed to debate on TV. Her party is running a candidate in every riding and has something like 10% of the vote. It's a national party. Stark contrast to The Bloc.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 02:54 PM

65 F-35's at about 75 million each claims Peter Mac Kay       (defense/offense minister).
Experts in the USA now say that the cheapest model of those sold to their own air force will be about 111 million each, and that is only the sticker price and does not include maintenance. By law American companies can not sell arms below the domestic cost so someone is lying through their teeth on this! Peter is no doubt willing to put that in writing, on a napkin I suppose. We have little or no use for this plane and should not even be considering its purchase at any price! Much better to buy some decent search and rescue planes and choppers. A stealth fighter is not worth a pinch of shit to us! No contract has been signed or no tender issued for this high speed piece of junk yet, so Peter and Steevie "STUFF IT WHERE THE SUN WON'T SHINE!"

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 02:59 PM

Why don't they want May in the debate?
Because she wants to discuss issues that shallow leaders would sooner leave buried under a pile of their own bullshit!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 03:21 PM

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/mean+gene+still+little+prominent/4526193/story.html

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 04:18 PM

Came accross this while looking for something else:


Garth Turner 2009

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 08:06 PM

Garth Turner is a man I would believe! Harper and his appointed gestapo are a disgrace to democracy! God help us if these bastards ever get a majority!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 08:13 PM

"God help us if these bastards ever get a majority!"

X2

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 10:22 PM

If they do, kiss your medicare and your pensions goodbye.... and keep yer lips puckered because that's only the beginning.

Oh, and clench yer butt cheeks reeeeeal tight and hang on.

I hope I can emmigrate to Quebec if things get too bad in Canada.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 10:33 PM

Good one Gnu.
ad.
Living in a Province not my home.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 11:25 PM

Our parliamentary system has a huge flaw in that someone can gain a majority of seats without anything close to a majority of votes. Cretien did it several times. Some countries require a run off with the lower vote getters dropping off of the ballot and nobody elected without a majority of votes cast. The expense would be probably no more that what one of those F*****'n stealth fighters Harper wants would cost!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:02 AM

Gap narrows

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:04 AM

Ed... "Oops! We can't find the page you're looking for."

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:09 AM

Sorry GNU. Here it is:

Globe/CTV/Nanos Poll
Liberals narrow gap to 6 points in campaign's 'first possible shift'
Bill Curry
Ottawa— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2011 7:24AM EDT
112 comments Email Print/License Decrease text size
Increase text size 1. What a difference a day makes. The Conservative lead over the Liberals literally shrunk overnight from 10 points to just over six, according to a Nanos Research poll of voting intentions for the Globe and Mail and CTV.

According to a rolling three-day survey than includes calls up until 9 p.m. Wednesday,

Support for Stephen Harper's Tories is up slightly from the survey ending the day before, going from 38.4 per cent to 39.1 per cent of committed voters.

The big change however is support shifting from the NDP to the Liberals. Support for Michael Ignatieff's team jumped from 28.7 per cent to 32.7 per cent, while NDP support dropped to 15.9 per cent from 19.6 per cent.

"The nightly tracking has identified the first possible shift of the campaign," pollster Nik Nanos said.

Support for the Bloc Quebecois is essentially unchanged at 8.7 per cent. And all of the attention over the decision not to allow Elizabeth May into the debate doesn't seem to be helping her party – Green support is at 3.7 per cent, down slightly from 4.1 per cent the day before.

So far, 21.7 per cent of Canadians surveyed said they were undecided.

Wednesday was a better day on the campaign for Mr. Ignatieff than it was for NDP Leader Jack Layton, given that an NDP candidate defected to the Liberals.

Also, the Liberal Leader's proposal to help students with the cost of tuition is being widely discussed online (more on that below).

The survey of 1,200 people covers March 28-30, including 400 surveys each day. Every day during the campaign, Nanos will survey 400 people and report on the average of the most recent three days. The margin of error for the national numbers is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Mr. Nanos said with nightly polling, it is important to watch for trends over time to assess the significance of changes in the numbers.

"Most of the Liberal gains were in the Prairies, co-incidental with the tour of Michael Ignatieff and his announcement of his election platform," Mr. Nanos said, noting that Canadians are increasingly saying that issues are an important factor in deciding who to support.

"This suggests that voters are becoming increasingly focused on the platforms and ideas proposed by the federal parties," he said.

2. Twitter picks policy winners and losers. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's call for a "Canadian Learning Passport" is getting a lot of buzz online.

For anyone looking for specifics as to why the Liberals just got a bump in the Nanos survey, the world of Twitter may provide a clue.

Thanks to Vancouver-based web developer Trevor May, there's now a way to track the reaction to various campaign promises on the social-media service.

Of eight campaign promises announced so far by the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats, the tuition support policy is the most talked about pledge on Twitter. The Conservative proposal for income splitting is the second most discussed.

Mr. May's regularly updated list is available on his website, PoliWwitter.ca, created two years ago to track federal politicians on the social networking site.

Originally Mr. May said he created the site as a helpful way for people to track political tweets from time to time without having to swamp their own personal twitter feeds with politicians.

His site has attracted the attention of Library and Archives Canada. Mr. May said the national archivists have contacting him, wanting his help to archive all of the political tweets during the campaign.

Mr. May, as well as Ottawa digital public affairs strategist Mark Blevis, are also among those at the forefront of efforts to use Twitter as a form of polling to assess public reaction to the federal election campaign.

Through his programming, Mr. May is trying to sort tweets in terms of whether they are positive or negative toward a specific policy. That part still needs more refining, he said.

Nonetheless, grouping Twitter reaction to find opinion trends is developing into a new use for the social media site, he said.

"That's definitely one of its strengths, and something that's maybe not been exploited to its full potential yet," he said. "It really helps to have an election to focus that attention. The volume [of political discussion] just increased exponentially as soon as the election came. There's a lot more useful data to work with."

3. When does Parliament come back? All the talk about hypothetical scenarios for the opening days of Canada's 41st Parliament raised the question as to when this showdown will play out, should the election produce another minority government.

According to the proclamation Parliament issued last week, it will meet again on May 30. The government could change that date. However, there's a limit to how far Parliament's return can be delayed.

When Parliament is dissolved, the government can still spend money using so-called Special Warrants. But once the writs – written orders setting elections in each riding – are returned to the Chief Electoral Officer, Special Warrants can only be used for another 60 days.

Given that it takes about two weeks for writs to be returned after election day, that means Parliament must return and vote new spending by about mid-July.

That would entail involve approving routine supply bills and could involve a new budget as well. Before MPs can vote for spending however, they must first elect a new Speaker and approve a Speech from the Throne. The Throne Speech and government spending are all matters of confidence, meaning the whole matter of who is Prime Minister should be sorted out before Parliament's summer recess –if it isn't clear on Election Day.


Another:

corporate tax cuts and new fighter jets

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:36 AM

Ignatieff


Attack ads


From Quebec

Because of the problem I have had with Globe links, here is a full version:

Henry Mintzberg
Conserving Canada or a Conservative Canada?
HENRY MINTZBERG
Special to Globe and Mail

I cherish this country for what it is, not for what its Prime Minister wants it to be. The past two elections suggest that most Canadians share this sentiment, even if a minority managed to elect the government both times.

What if this minority gets a majority this time? Not much to worry about, say some of the pundits: A swing to the far right can't happen here. Well, it happened in Britain under Margaret Thatcher and in America under George W. Bush. The voters eventually smartened up, but do we have to go through that kind of turmoil here, too?

Clearly a Western plot! I write books about strategy. I define the word as a pattern of actions out of the past more than a plan of intentions into the future. In other words, strategy is revealed by what is done, not by what is claimed will be done. If you need an example, pick an election and compare the promises with the actions that followed. How about the actions that followed our last election?

We have had wave after wave of attack ads, carrying the gutter politics of the Bush-Cheney-Rove gang into Canada. At the Copenhagen conference on global warming, Canada became the laughingstock of the world. Our government has questioned personal choices about abortion but not about guns. The oil companies received huge tax cuts, and there were moves to bring in a Fox News North (to replace the CBC?). The Prime Minister has exhibited contempt for parliamentary procedure while his appointments have been embroiled in one scandal after another. This is a pattern in actions if I ever saw one, and it points to exactly the strategy a Conservative majority would pursue.

Now we are in the thick of an election campaign, with all the usual slurs and promises. "We interrupt this shouting match to bring you today's bribe (with your money) – tax splitting, university fees, anything." The man who should be bringing some dignity to all this is the worst of them. "Coalition, coalition, coalition," he cries, like some name-calling kindergarten kid.

What's wrong with a coalition anyway? It's working in Britain and has worked for years in Germany and many other countries. Indeed, we got medicare in this country because a small group around Tommy Douglas worked with the minority Liberal government at the time. (Will we lose medicare as we know it, too?)

Why this swing to the far right, in Canada of all places? Have we not been the ones most aware of the machinations of the American ideologues? Now we are their clone, while Britain, France and Germany are governed by moderate conservatives, and the U.S. by a liberal.

Two explanations are evident. One is Liberal ineptness, first the outright corruption of the sponsorship scandal and now yet another "leader" incapable of connecting with the public. And the other is the nature of our political process. If a party can concentrate its support at one place in the political spectrum while its opponents divide votes over the rest, into power it can go: Minority rules on the right.

Perhaps 30 per cent of Canadians are hard-core conservatives, with some others prepared to swing that way when sufficiently fed up with the other parties. (Early polls showing stronger support for the Conservatives may be failing to indicate that many voters are undecided between the other parties.) In the past two elections, this was enough to leave about two-thirds of the electorate out in the cold.

To explain how we can change this – that is, reframe the political process in this country – let me offer a primer about the obvious in Canadian politics.

Increase text size We do not elect a president in Canada. Everyone knows that except our Prime Minister. What many people forget is that we do not elect a prime minister, either. In fact, we do not even elect a political party. We elect members of Parliament in our individual ridings. Of course, they usually run under the banner of a particular party, but we know that, in Parliament, they can take a walk and sit elsewhere.

Contrary to Stephen Harper's claims, the winner of the election is not the party that gets the most seats or the most votes, but whichever party or coalition or set of individuals can get the support of the sitting members. Usually these members defer to the party with the most seats, and that party to its leader, who becomes prime minister. But recall recent events in Australia and British Columbia, and an earlier one in Margaret Thatcher's Britain, when the members of the party in power turfed out their leader – their country's prime minister.

Of course, this isn't about to happen in Ottawa. Right now, the one thing George W. Harper has going for him is John Kerry Ignatieff. But need this be yet another contest between two so-called leaders? Have we not had more than enough of this? How about a little grown-up politics for a change, a popular movement to get a government of people and ideas instead of a leader with a dogma?

Imagine treating this election as a plebiscite: a vote for conserving Canada or else for a Conservative Canada. Those who support the latter know where to put their X. So those who support the former had better get their X's together before May 2.

How can they do that? By voting "strategically" – that is, concentrating their voting power riding by riding. On, say, April 18, they consult the polls in their own riding (if they exist, otherwise the results of the last election), and swing their votes to the Liberal, NDP, Green etc. who has been garnering the most support and is, therefore, most likely to pass the Conservative at the post.

Think of it: people power in Canada, putting country ahead of party, beliefs ahead of personalities. Our own little Tahrir Square, right across this vast land. We are at a turning point in this election, facing a choice between two fundamentally different views of this country. Will the majority decide?

Henry Mintzberg is Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 10:29 AM

1997 speech by Stephen Harper

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 10:44 AM

Kind of long, but an interesting conclusion:


Our Benign Dictatorship

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 02:22 PM

1997 speech, last sentence, Harper... "As long as there are exams, there will always be prayer in schools."

Odd thing to say? We never said prayers in school when I was a lad. Was he home fooled?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 02:28 PM

I found this statement odd:

""... the Liberal party gets the votes of most Catholics in the country, including many practising Catholics.""

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 03:04 PM

Yes Ed... I never used to read many of such speeches. Kind of disturbing reading them.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 03:35 PM

I find reading speeches given by politicians, before the handlers get ahold of them and tell them what to say,a more informative perspective of the person. The internet makes it harder for them to bury 'em, and makes it easier for the average person to access 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 03:40 PM

Great posts Ed !

Subject: Limited party leader debate.
From: Crowhugger
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 07:54 PM

Ahh, how sweet it would be if Harper could be excluded from the leaders' debate...

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:00 PM

"" how sweet it would be if Harper could be excluded from the leaders' debate...""

But, then we would not have the opportunity to hear bed time stories about the nasty coalition (that was not to be).

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:25 PM

The Greens had 6% of the vote. I think Elizabeth May and the Greens
show promise for a party that's young. They have support across the
country, not limited to a specific riding. If we had the option of choosing two candidates, I would choose a Green party candidate and
someone rather than the tories. I like both the Liberal guy and the CHP guy in my riding. I'm torn between those two of who my second choice would be.

One letter to the editor in the paper today stated that the NDP, Bloc
and Greens were useless parties and that we need a Conservative majority. The author said she didn't deserve to be there. I disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:40 PM

May stands up for the environment, and thats admirable. I believe she worked for Environment Canada, and was associated with the Sierra Club at one point. She never seems lost for words.

But, I am not really sure of the Green's position on other issues.
I will have to check that out, as we wont learn of it in the debate.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:54 PM

I came accross this advice.

Elizabeth May article

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 05:58 AM

April Fool's Day. GUESS who is in Moncton today.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 06:52 AM

Joey Smallwood!!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 07:51 AM

If he was, he'd kick Stevie 1's ass.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 03:11 PM

Avoid poll fatigue

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 03:17 PM

Green?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 04:06 PM

It's interesting that Quebec now has Nfld power boxed in. It gets at a bargain price and sells it to the USA at a huge profit. They tried to buy NB Power to block this NS-Nfld transmission route. Can one conclude that the James Bay project, and other similar initatives to export power in Canada, received no federal cash?


NS-Nfld hydro plan

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 04:17 PM

Ed... BIG deal here in NB. BIG! Our premier signed the deal but it was scuttled. He lost the election last fall. Quebec has been screwing NF for about 50 years and they tried to do it again, with the help of the Liberal Party of NB. NB'ers stood firm with our NF, NS and PEI brothers and nixed the deal at the polls.

It's NOT "Quebec" that is at fault. It's the greedy rich bastards that control Quebec and all of Canada. As long as the people stand up to them... as long as they can... we have a chance.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 04:54 PM

Gnu,

Thanks for the neighbourly move NB'ers. I suspect giving big Que power over your power generation and transmission would have been regretted.

It is interesting that Canada's tax dollars financed the Trans Canada pipeline from West to Quebec (and Southern Ontario) to give the West a market, and Ont and Quebec residents access to cheaper (and cleaner) natural gas. Similar benefits were not extended to the East coast.

Now, Quebec (Charest and Duceppe) cry "dont give 'em Canada tax dollars to compete with (our monoply) selling power to the USA", when the Atlantic provinces try and get access to cheaper (and cleaner) power and create a new business.

Emera (AKA, NS Power) already has significant investments in power generation and transmission Maine.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 05:09 PM

Yes Ed. We just gotta be careful now with the private transmission lines. Irving was sniffing around and talking about $1B to $2B in same. I dunno where that is but you can bet your bottom dollar that if they can get a chokehold they will choke our chickens.

Of course, there is always the Kent County solution to that problem. You fuck us, we fuck you.

Lepreau 2 is kinda on hold... the $1.5M "study" on the French building a MOX light water at LePreau was "shelved" by the new premier here when he took office. Let's hope the French stay home and IF a new reactor gets built, it's a CANDU. Personally, in light of the Japan tragedy, I would rather just halt everything until we get Newfy Power. Of course, at this point, ya can't stop the LePreau refurbishment from coming online in late 2012. I just hope the move the spent fuel ops to near the Quebec border. >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 05:56 PM

Sorry for the thread drift. But, in defense of that, it's a microcosm of what is going on in many fronts on the national scale. If more Canucks would stand up and say "NO!" perhaps we could stop the slide into the abyss that the greedy bastards are trying to shove Canucks into for their own gain.

The remarks made by Harper today in Moncton... read up... seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 07:11 PM

Aren't we always being told that the world's electric energy requirements could never be met by wind and solar generators alone?

The British Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD) claims otherwise: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/31/all-of-humanity-could-shift-to-solar-wind-energy-in-less-than-25-years-policy-study-group-claims/

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 10:38 PM

Tidal power should not be forgotten and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are sitting on a largely untouched goldmine. Hydrogen fuel will become the petrol of the future and tidal driven electrolysis its refinery. Fuel cell technology is already practical except the big oil companies have no interest in hydrogen as long as they can gouge folks at the gas pumps. Screwed again by the global economy!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 01 Apr 11 - 11:21 PM

Unfortunately election issues seem to be quite narrowly scripted, preventing what I would call the real issues to come to the fore.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 09:55 AM

Tidal power is a definite source, and the complexities of developing sturdy, environmentally friendly, and fficient equipment is evolving in the big-tide areas of the Bay of Fundy.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:02 AM

Liberals doing better?




Hard hitting perspective



Could the Bloc, block Muskrat Falls?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:13 AM

Cliff hanger?


Ontario-BC hold the key?

team-harper-plays-it-safe-but-is-it-stumbling?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:22 AM

Harper risks Quebec in high-stakes regional gamble
LES PERREAUX AND STEVEN CHASE

Stephen Harper is embarking on a make-or-break political gamble in this election, risking crucial Quebec seats to woo Newfoundland while promising billions a day later to cushion the blow.

It's not every election campaign in which a federal leader picks a side in a longstanding disagreement between two provinces. What's even more rare is that the Conservative Leader favoured Newfoundland, where his party has no seats, over Quebec, where it has 11.

Within 24 hours, Quebec complained about federal favouritism for a Newfoundland hydro project, laid out a list of demands and heard a promise from the Conservatives for $2.2-billion to settle a bill for tax harmonization.

The same Conservatives who didn't deliver the long-awaited payment in last week's federal budget were suddenly desperate to make good after a rocky first campaign week in Quebec.

"We want to work together; we don't want to fight," Mr. Harper's Quebec lieutenant, Christian Paradis, pleaded as he made the rounds of Quebec media on Friday to announce the promised cash.

One peace offering may not do much to help the Conservative campaign recover in Quebec. Negotiations for the settlement stretched on for 14 months, and Finance Minister Raymond Bachand said he was fed up waiting.

Quebeckers are unlikely to see any special favour in the harmonization payment, given that similar settlements were reached quickly with Ontario and British Columbia while Quebec has waited 20 years.

The promised tax settlement comes post-dated to Sept. 15, and with one other string attached: The re-election of the Conservative government on May 2.

But the promise may get one irritant out of the way as the Conservatives try to compete in more than a dozen seats in play in the province – more than enough to turn a slim minority into a narrow majority.

Most of Quebec isn't exactly a battleground. More than half the province's 75 seats in francophone, nationalist areas seem to be painted in semi-permanent Bloc blue. Another dozen are staunchly federalist and Liberal Red.

For a while, it looked like Mr. Harper had given up on improving on the 10-seat result of 2008, plus the extra seat the party picked up in a by-election. Mr. Harper railed for days against the menace of a supposed coalition with separatists, seeming once again to forget that Quebec nationalists have long been willing to support the Tories.

By Friday, a promise to help Newfoundland had Mr. Harper facing a united front of Liberal Premier Jean Charest and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, backed by the entire National Assembly.

Mr. Charest, who traditionally sends a letter to all federal parties outlining demands from Quebec for federal elections, made a rare personal foray into the campaign.

He accused Conservatives of threatening to wreck an electricity market that works well for Quebec's powerhouse Crown utility, Hydro-Québec.

The Conservatives promised to guarantee a loan to finance $4.2 -billion of the $6.2-billion project to run an underwater power line from Newfoundland to New England.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale was thrilled, predicting the Conservatives would win back some seats in the province, where four would be an historic high.

Mr. Charest called the promise "stunning."

"They are changing the price of electricity. They're changing the price paid by consumers. It's unacceptable. We have a market that works well. The federal government has never intervened, we can't tolerate them intervening now," Mr. Charest told reporters at Quebec's National Assembly.

"Now, it's an election promise, people will take it into account with everything else, and we'll see what happens with the election."

On the campaign trail in Quebec City, where Conservatives are fighting the Bloc for seats, Mr. Duceppe threw his support behind the Liberal Premier. All Quebec parties, federalist and sovereigntist, from the left and the right, spoke out against federal aid for the project.

"When all those people agree, and Mr. Charest puts it forward, we speak in the name of the National Assembly," Mr. Duceppe said. "Whether Mr. Charest is federalist or not, he's the Premier of Quebec and I'm not ashamed to take up his cause when there is consensus."

It was moments after Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Charest spoke on Friday morning that Mr. Paradis extended the olive branch to meet one of Mr. Charest's demands.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:34 AM

Safe, or stumbling?

Odd poll results


The per-vote subsidy: Political welfare or the great leveller?
CAMPBELL CLARK , GLORIA GALLOWAY AND STEVEN CHASE
OTTAWA, SUDBURY AND DIEPPE, N.B.— From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Apr. 01, 2011

Stephen Harper's campaign pledge to cut the per-vote subsidies that political parties receive has opened a clear debate with his opponents: Are the funds welfare for politicians or a way to counter the pernicious influence of money in politics?

The parties are clearly aligning with their self-interests. The Conservatives' wide lead in private donations means their opponents need the public funding to compete.

On Friday, Mr. Harper promised to revive past attempts to cut off the per-vote subsidy collected by parties if his government is re-elected on May 2, arguing that the money is the reason Canadians have gone to the polls so often in recent years.

"It is partly in my view this per-vote subsidy – this enormous cheque that keeps piling into political parties every month, whether they raise any money or not – that means we're constantly having campaigns," the Conservative Leader said at an event near Moncton.

"The war chests are always full for another campaign. You lose one; immediately in come the cheques and you are ready for another one even if you didn't raise a dime."

Mr. Harper regularly castigates the Liberals, Bloc Québécois, and NDP for attempting to unseat him with a coalition when he tried to cut off the subsidies shortly after the 2008 election. And while the opposition triggered the current campaign with a non-confidence vote, Mr. Harper had a role in causing two previous elections, voting with the Bloc and NDP to defeat Paul Martin's Liberal government in 2005, and calling a vote in 2008.

Mr. Harper's opponents said the subsidy – each party gets $2 per year for every vote they received in the previous election – is a democratic way to put the parties on similar footing. NDP Leader Jack Layton said the Tory plan would put politics back in the hands of the rich.

"The question really is: Do we want to go back to the days where money, and those who can finance campaigns, determine the nature of our democracy?" Mr. Layton told reporters at a campaign stop in Sudbury, Ont.

The per-vote subsidy was introduced in 2004, when the Liberals, reeling from the sponsorship scandal, eliminated most corporate and union donations. Mr. Harper tightened the system further, reducing the maximum donation to $1,100.

The Liberals, who long relied on big corporate donations, now consistently trail the Conservatives' fundraising machine, which has used mail and Internet campaigns to canvass individuals. The Tories raised $17-million in donations in 2009, compared to $9-million for the Liberals and $4-million for the NDP; the Bloc Québécois relies heavily on the subsidy, and raised only $621,000 in donations.

But the per-vote subsidies are only one of several that parties receive – and Mr. Harper has not targeted the others. Candidates and parties receive rebates on a large part of their election spending. And tax credits on donations – 75 per cent of the first $400 donated, 50 per cent of the portion between $400 and $750, and 33 per cent of the on the rest – cost the Treasury $20-million in 2009.

Some, like McMaster University political scientist Henry Jacek, say that the problem with parties supporting their activities with donations alone is that it relies on the wealthy, who tend to give financial support to political parties, not the poor. The subsidies, he said, "level the playing field."

It's clear from various jurisdictions that political donors tend to have disposable income. But it's no longer clear to what extent that's true in Canada because the Canada Revenue Agency has stopped publishing tables indicating the income levels of those who claim donation tax credits, said University of Calgary political finance expert Lisa Young. But common sense indicates that those who will get a big chunk of the money back at tax time, and miss it less in the meantime, will be more likely to donate, she said

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:54 AM

Gary Lunn vs Eliz May

Business perspective

Below is kind of long, but I post it because of difficulities getting online access.)

How can Conservative senators look at themselves in the mirror?
Gerald Caplan Globe and Mail

Stephen Harper ended Parliament in typical style. He had the trained seals he's appointed to the unelected Senate (a body he doesn't believe in) sabotage the clear will of the democratically elected House of Commons with consequences that will cost the lives of "thousands, maybe millions, of poor people" in Africa and elsewhere.

How are Harper and Ignatieff doing after a week on the hustings? The words are those of an outraged James Orbinski, a renowned doctor and Canadian expert in international health. The issue is Bill C-393, passed by a large majority in the House to provide inexpensive Canadian-made generic drugs for people in poor countries dying of easily treatable diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The role of the Conservative majority in the Senate was to deliberately stall passage of the bill ensuring it died once the election was called. The instructions came from the Supreme Puppetmaster, Stephen Harper, speaking through one of his most reliable dummies, Industry Minister Tony Clement. The message from Mr. Clement cemented the reputation he warmly earned during the long-form census fiasco. As Dr. Orbinski noted, Mr. Clement's case to the Senate's Conservative majority for not supporting C-393 was based on "distortions, deceptions, lies and scare-mongering." Par for the course, in other words.

Let me readily acknowledge that for my entire life I've believed the Senate, a wholly undemocratic 19th century institution, should be abolished and I have never understood how anyone could accept an appointment to it. But I've always seen how appealing it is. After all, you're suddenly handed on a platter one of the great gigs this country offers – a fancy title, instant status, a minimum $123,000 a year plus expense accounts, air travel, pension and optional attendance. Or a high-profile forum if you choose to use it, as a few admirable senators do.

But to whom are senators responsible, if anyone? How do they decide what positions to support or oppose? They're appointed by the Prime Minister personally and usually carry his party affiliation but they supposedly serve the country, or so it's claimed. Do they show their eternal gratitude to this one man, which would make them simple hacks, or have they a higher duty to the public good? This is a genuine choice, and Bill C-393 gave us the pathetic answer when a majority of senators chose to slavishly follow the party line. All were Conservatives, no fewer than 35 of them appointed by Stephen Harper in violation of every word he ever uttered about the illegitimacy of an appointed Senate. But that was before he became PM.

There's hypocrisy upon hypocrisy piling up here. Last November, for the first time in 70 years, this same Conservative-dominated Senate, without a hearing or debate, killed a climate-change bill that had been passed by a majority of elected MPs in the House of Commons. It was a bill Stephen Harper hated – he's still mostly a global warming denier – and it was at his command that his senators transgressed against democracy, accountability, common sense and the future of our children all at the same time. Marjory LeBreton, Mr. Harper's Senate Leader, airily dismissed the legislation as "a coalition bill," some kind of conspiracy, apparently, of Liberals, socialists and separatists.

Killing C-393 last week was a second example of the extraordinary harm a majority of Conservative senators have been ready aye ready to inflict at the behest of their master. (Some Conservatives stayed away from the chamber, apparently to avoid voting with the majority but not prepared to vote against them, and one, Nancy Ruth, honourably spoke in favor of the bill.) Have no doubt the majority knew exactly what they were doing and what the stakes were.

Canada's Access to Medicines Regime was introduced nearly seven year ago as a proud effort to help people dying of preventable diseases in poor countries. It is Canada's shame that ever since, under pressure from the giant pharmaceutical companies, a succession of Liberal and Conservative governments have sabotaged this project. In the entire period, only two shipments of drugs have been dispatched to Rwanda. Bill C-393 was the latest futile attempt to make CAMR work. Now it too has been sabotaged.

Bill C-393 would have fixed the regime by cutting the red tape that has undermined its very purpose – enabling Canadian generic drug manufacturers to provide inexpensive drugs to poor countries, where brand-name drugs are often unaffordable. In the House, besides all members of Ms. LeBreton's bogeyman coalition, 26 Conservative MPs also supported the bill. It was endorsed enthusiastically by an overwhelming majority of medical and legal experts, humanitarian activists, faith leaders, AIDS and international development organizations across the country and health activists in developing countries.

Dozens of prominent Canadians immersed in international health issues urged passage, as did more than 70,000 other Canadians who took the time to sign a petition or to email and call their MPs and senators. The national advocacy committee of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign – 10,000 Canadian grannies, committed to working with their African counterparts, who had made this bill their crusade – lobbied vigorously on its behalf; some were in the Senate audience last week, heart-broken when the Conservatives assured its death. None of this mattered to the majority of Conservative senators. Ms. LeBreton, Mr. Harper's Senate Leader, airily dismissed the legislation as a "coalition bill", some kind of conspiracy, apparently, of Liberals, socialists and separatists.

A more perfect definition of Mr. Harper's contempt for Parliament, democracy, the world and evidence-based policies would be hard to find.

The Conservatives who have again sentenced so many Africans to a miserable death should hang their heads in disgrace. They make a mockery of being called "Honourable." There is no honour here. Yet I don't for a moment expect them to feel the slightest embarrassment, shame or, indeed, dishonour. Conservatives don't do remorse (except for wrongs committed by earlier governments against potential ethnic supporters). But they need to know how many of their fellow Canadians are deeply ashamed of them, and while this is one of the many vital issues that won't be part of the election campaign, they should understand how many voters will remember their role not only on voting day but long after.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 11:09 AM

I feel a growing sense of urgency that Harper must be stopped at all cost! On his tour he is roping himself off from media reporters and allowing them only four questions per session. One desire of a dictator is to control the press. Hopefully the press will have the balls to stand up to his bully tactics!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 12:40 PM

The press hasn't had balls for years, Sandy. The reporters kowtow to editors who in turn do the same to the owners. A worthwhile read is

NEWSPAPER OWNERSHIP IN CANADA:
AN OVERVIEW OF THE DAVEY COMMITTEE AND
KENT COMMISSION STUDIES

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 12:42 PM

Have you read about the billions of $$$ he is promising to everyone for an asskiss? Over $6B just to Q and NF alone! And Charest (not the only one) is pissed about the $4B for NF hydroelectric... and he's got a point, even though I like, but am VERY leary of, the deal.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 12:45 PM

I can't see Charest surviving politically in the next election.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 01:00 PM

A good example of lack of press neutrality is Mike Duffy. He was obviously biased towards the Cons when a reporter/interviewer and was richly (read with tax payers dollars) rewarded with a senate seat.

From Wiki

"In 2008, a panel of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that Duffy had violated broadcasting codes and ethics during the 2008 federal election. The panel concluded that Duffy's decision to air 'false starts' of an interview with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion "was not fair, balanced, or even handed" and that during the same broadcast, Duffy "significantly misrepresented the view of one of the three members of his Panel...Liberal MP Geoff Regan"

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 01:08 PM

In reality the promise to Newfoundland is not for any money but only a federal loan guarantee so that they can get a lower interest rate. Quebec's problem is that they have held Newfoundland's hydro power hostage because it must be shipped through Quebec for export. Quebec buys Newfoundland power dirt cheap and re-sells it to the Yanks at a huge profit. The proposed grid from Labrador to Newfoundland to Nova Scotia and on to New Brunswick creates an alternate route to the USA. That is why Quebec Hydro tried to buy out NB Power, to block that route. I'm not defending Harper but Quebec's position on this really sucks!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 01:22 PM

Sandy,

Quebec would LOVE to have Labrador.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 09:35 AM

Sunday stuff:

ignatieff


Mercer

Song content

Trust issues

five-question-policy

woman-crashes-conservative-press-conference


Three seas

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 10:33 AM

Sandy... a loan guarantee. Thanks. Gotta stop reading blogs.

999... you mean New Quebec? When I worked in Wabush, if you wanted to buy a fishing license in Quebec and your address was in Wabush, Labrador it cost $50 - if you said Wabush, New Quebec it cost $10.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 04:49 PM

mix of social spending, tax credits without raising taxes

harper-rejects-criticism-that-tory-campaign-has-fallen-flat


the gap

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 11:31 PM

Quebec has always wanted to claim Labrador but they have no case. In fact Lower Canada (Quebec) was much, much smaller at the time of Confederation than it is now. Also the old French territory of Acadia included everything south of the St. Lawrence River so Nova Scotia could claim a large part of Quebec using the same criteria. Acadia also pre-dates Quebec as a French colony so Quebec has no claim just because the king of France laid claim to Labrador. It never was part of Quebec and Quebec was only a part of New France. There were also, at least seasonal fishing settlements in Newfoundland before Champlain's settlements. There were also Norse Viking settlements over six centuries earlier. Ain't history strange? Perhaps Skarpi could run to lead us all!. I'll vote for that!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 04:37 PM

Well, Skarpi is looking to move away from his homeland but I dunno if he would wanna take on the job. Good pay but the people ya gotta work with are assholes.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 07:08 PM

Another poll

fraud?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 07:14 PM

Ed.... Oops! We can't find the page you're looking for. Both links.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 07:39 PM

On CPAC , I saw Ignatieff's question time in Halifax, then Harper's
rally in Guelph, then Ignatieff in Nfld. I liked what I heard from
Iggy. To me, Harper sounded like a kook, except his bit on protecting
hunter/farmer rights by ditching the long-gun registry.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ollaimh
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:55 AM

you've been drinking too much beer , beer. i nowhere said i suport separtism. that's the kind of bigoted thinking that has gotten harper so far. that some democratically elected members of parliament are not legitimate and some are. that's pure right wing bigotry, they are all democraticallt elected and demonizing any for wat are essentially ethnic differences is both divisive and un ethical.

the bloc mps are the same as any others, those who dem0nize them are enemies of democracy. they say they can chose who others should elect. this is common on the right. the us over threw democratically elected people , or tried to all over the world, if they were not us suporters. democracy is an all or nothing thing. if you don't respect some elected members or governments and consodr them to be less legitimate then you are not democratic you are some form of anti democratic fascist, neo con or other totalitarian.

in fact harper tried to form a coalition with the bloc to unseat martin, duceppe showed the letter, and he was propped up by the bloc on many many votes. its the height of hypocracy to attack them as not legimitate. either you believe in democracy or you don;t, there are no harf measures

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 07:37 AM

Sorry Gnu, Here is an update of the Poll story from yesterday:

The Globe and Mail

The Liberals appear to have enjoyed a platform bump, as a daily tracking polls shows them nibbling into the Conservatives' commanding lead.

Tuesday morning's edition of the three-day rolling Nanos Research tracking poll conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV shows the Liberals up about 2 percentage points to 30.2 per cent, now less that 10 points behind the Conservatives at 39.8 per cent. The NDP is at 16.5 per cent.

Outside the West, the Conservatives and Liberals are now statistically tied, with Michael Ignatieff's team winning back ground in the province with the most seats – Ontario.

Part of the Liberal bump likely came from Sunday's release of the party's platform, as Monday's survey interviews show the second day of responses since the release. The question is whether time bears out that gain.

"It could be a bump or a blip," pollster Nik Nanos said.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives held a 14-point lead in the previous tracking poll, which tallies running results of the previous three days. Still, with the Tories still holding a significant advantage across the country, the shift in numbers shows different regional races.

The Conservatives hold a commanding lead in the West – 54.1 per cent of the vote in the Prairie provinces and 48.4 per cent in British Columbia – but big leads west of Ontario don't necessarily translate into a lot more seats for a party that already dominates in the region.

"When we get outside the West, it's actually quite competitive between the Conservatives and the Liberals," Mr. Nanos said.

In Ontario, the daily tracking poll shows what's in effect a statistical tie, with the Liberals at 41.1 per cent, and the Conservatives at 39.6. The NDP is at 14.7 per cent in the province.

Mr. Nanos said there may be a link between the Mr. Harper's recent days of campaigning to abolish the long-gun registry to win votes in rural Ontario. His previous rise in Ontario came from gains in suburban and urban ridings, and that may be slipping a little because of the campaign against the registry, Mr. Nanos suggested.

In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois continue to hold a strong lead, with 35.8-per-cent support, and the Conservatives leading a three-way struggle for second place. They have 22-per-cent support, the Liberals 17.6, and the NDP 16.9.

The three-day tracking poll uses a rolling sample of 400 people a day, for a combined survey of 1,200 Canadians. This sample was conducted April 2 to April 4.

Each day, samples from four days ago are dropped from the results, and the latest day's are added, to get a three-day rolling result.

Nanos Research says the sample is accurate to within 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Regional results have higher margins of error because of the smaller sample size – Ontario samples have a 5.6 percentage-point margin of error and Quebec samples have a 6.6-percentage point margin.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 10:48 AM

Thanks Ed.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:22 PM

Ottawa's fighter-jet estimate 'all hogwash,' U.S. watchdog warns
CAMPBELL CLARK
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 10:14AM EDT
1110 comments Email Print/License Decrease text size
Increase text size The plan to buy F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will cost billions more than the $29-billion estimated by Canada's budget watchdog, a U.S. defence spending analyst says.

"It's going to be significantly more. It's not going to be $1-billion more, it's going to be significantly more," said Winslow Wheeler, a defence-spending watchdog with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

Does Canada need next-generation stealth fighter jets? The $29-billion estimate from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page put a startling price tag on the cost of a fleet of 65 stealth jets, though the government insists they will cost about half that amount.

But Mr. Wheeler, a former staffer with the U.S. Government Accounting Office and with both Republican and Democratic senators, said even Mr. Page's estimate – though reasonable now – doesn't take into account key elements that will make the costs rise: problems with the complex planes that will be inevitably be discovered during testing and the slashing of the number of planes to be produced by the United States and its allies.

The Liberals say they'll put the deal on hold, and hold a competition to determine what planes Canada needs. But the Conservatives, and the Defence Department, insist the F-35 is the only "fifth-generation" fighter, complete with stealth technology and next-generation communications available. It will be needed, the government argues, to defend against Russian interlopers and to take on missions like the one the current CF-18 fleet is now doing over Libya.

Ottawa says the planes will cost about $9-billion to buy, and another $6-billion for service over the first 20 years of their life span. That $9-billion cost estimate to buy the fleet includes a package of equipment and modifications to get the planes flying, but pegs the price of each plane at $75-million.

But Mr. Wheeler argues that price tag, once cited as the "non-recurring fly-away" in the United States, has been abandoned by the planes' proponents. It usually doesn't include engines and avionics to get the planes flying, and it includes adjustments to 2002 dollars, plus an ample expectation that the cost of each plane will get markedly cheaper as the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, learns how to build them more efficiently.

"To get to that number, they use several crude, disingenuous tricks. And they sprinkle a little fairy dust, in terms of 'learning curve' and other magical potions, to pretend it's got some science behind it," he said. "It's all hogwash."

"Ultimately," Mr. Wheeler predicted, "the cost of this airplane is going to be about $200-million per airplane."

In the United States, where the per-unit costs of the F-35 has been cited as $115-million, some defence estimates put it as high as $155-million per plane. But even that doesn't take into account problems that will see it rise even further.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says Canada is buying the cheapest, "A" version of the plane – but Mr. Wheeler argues that will only save at most 10 per cent. And the cost of supporting the airplane will be more than buying them, and will also rise.

The biggest problems with the cost estimates is that they don't include allowances for problems looming on the horizon.

The F-35 has only gone through about 10 per cent of developmental tests, so it's still unclear what problems will have to be fixed even though several have been found so far. And the plane is so complex the costs are likely to baloon. For example, the plane's older brother, the F-22, is experiencing pricy problems with its stealth coatings.

"The [F-35] is only about 10 per cent through its developmental flight tests. Those are the easy tests. Those are the laboratory tests. Those tests will be finished in 2016," Mr. Wheeler said. "That's when the operational tests are [to be done]."

And the number of F-35s that will eventually be built will be far less than current official projections, he argued, further increasing the cost per plane.

Several countries, like Denmark and Norway, are still debating whether to buy the planes. Britain is cutting its planned buy, and Turkey has put its plan to purchase 100 F-35s on hold because of a dispute sparked because the U.S. refuses to allow the sale of the software "source code" that allows buyers to modify the systems.

Washington has cut its own plans to buy 2,700 planes to 2,500, and can be expected to reduce it further, Mr. Wheeler said.. The U.S. Defense Department has put the development of one variant of the planes, the "B" version, on probation and a deficit commission suggested dramatically reducing the purchase of other variants.

No one can know the costs of an airplane that's still not developed, but Mr. Wheeler argued the best way to buy a fighter is "a competitive fly-off" of real airplanes. "And make a decision based on real evidence rather than paper studies," he said.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:29 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:33 PM

Gnu
Here is the other story I posted yesterday, that couldnt be assessed:

The Bruce Carson affair: Notes on a scandal that won't stick
JOHN IBBITSON
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail
Whatever else he might be, Bruce Carson is no Jaime Watt, which is why Stephen Harper's reaction to his former aide's alleged transgressions is so different from Mike Harris's.

The Conservative Leader declared Monday he was as shocked as everyone else to learn that Mr. Carson – who is being investigated for possibly trying to steer contracts to his fiancée – had previously been convicted of multiple counts of fraud.

Journalists long in the tooth will recall a similar affair 16 years ago.

Jaime Watt was the communications guru behind the election campaign that vaulted the Ontario Conservatives from third place to first in the landmark 1995 provincial election. He would have had a senior position in the Harris government, had the Toronto Star not revealed that the young whiz kid had once been convicted of fraud over a failed business.

Mr. Watt quit before anyone had a chance to fire him. He went on to chair Navigator, the high-powered strategic communications firm that has rescued more than a few tarnished images. (Mr. Carson could use their services.)

The Conservatives continued to employ Mr. Watt on a contract basis, and when Howard Hampton criticized the government for employing a "convicted felon," Mr. Harris took the NDP leader to the woodshed.

Mr. Harper could have been equally loyal to his former aide. Instead, he disowned him.

The Conservative Leader is not known for loyalty above all. Ask Helena Guergis, the former cabinet minister he fired for, as it turned out, doing nothing wrong at all.

But mostly Mr. Carson has been disowned because, after his years in government, he didn't advise others on how best, say, to land a government contract. Instead, he might have tried to land those contracts on behalf of his girlfriend. Mr. Watt would be the first person to tell him that was a very bad idea.

The interesting thing about all of this is that the Nanos Research daily poll shows that all the controversy and alarums of the past month – from contempt-of-Parliament motions to the Carson affair and beyond – have done nothing to budge support for the Conservatives.

Instead, jobs and the economy track ever higher as the issue that matters most of voters.

Go figure.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:42 PM

Lawrence Martin, Tuesday's Globe and Mail

The Tories are desperate to deep-six the detainees file

On the face it, things couldn't have gone better for the Liberal Party. The Conservatives entered the election campaign on a wave of bad news: top party officials charged with willfully exceeding spending limits, contempt of Parliament rulings by the House Speaker, the Bev Oda odours, the Bruce Carson affair.

Then, Stephen Harper put in an opening campaign week that even his customary supporters rated as dismal. He got tied up in hypocritical knots over his coalition allegations. He backed away from facing Michael Ignatieff in a one-on-one debate. He played to his control-freak image by cordoning off reporters. He said he didn't want an election but then, in yet another contradiction, turned around and awarded Quebec its HST compensation, a prize that could have avoided this trip to the polls. By contrast, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff turned in what was, by broad consensus, an impressive performance in his first campaign tests.

Despite it all, the Conservatives either rose or held steady in the polls. Nothing, it appears, can stop their run to a big victory. In this campaign, they face only a couple of more big hurdles. One is the televised debates, in which Mr. Harper need only maintain his cool. The other is the scheduled release of potentially explosive documents related to the Afghan detainees affair.

The issue, we recall, turns on whether Canadian officials knowingly handed over prisoners for torture by Afghan authorities, a potential violation of the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Harper's government steadfastly refused to provide documents on the matter, but were ordered to do so a year ago by Speaker Peter Milliken. A special committee was then appointed to make sure any released materials wouldn't compromise national security.

Bryon Wilfert, a Liberal member of the committee, said Monday that a swath of documents are to be made public by mid-campaign. But he suspects Team Harper might pull a fast one, such as a court appeal to delay a process that has already been long delayed.

In fact, the Conservatives have just done this very thing in a bid to thwart another avenue of disclosure. The Military Police Complaints Commission has been preparing a report on the detainees controversy. But last week, as reported by The Canadian Press, the government quietly went to the Federal Court to try and impose limits on what the military watchdog can say.

The Conservatives have a habit of running from accountability by running to the courts. On this file, they surely want to do a lot of sprinting. The detainees story offers an extraordinary portrait of the governing morality.

It led to former defence minister Gordon O'Connor's demotion after he had to apologize for misleading the House. It led to Mr. Harper and ministers, as well as Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk, having to issue embarrassing corrections of previous claims. It led to the Prime Minister's dumping of Peter Tinsley, the head of the Military Police Complaints Commission, who was hot on the trail of the file. And it led to other outrages, such as the government denial of documents to the commission on the basis of national security – even though commission members had national security clearance.

There was more. The detainees imbroglio saw the government attempt to discredit a respected diplomat, Richard Colvin, for having the courage to come forward and challenge its story. It prompted Mr. Harper to try and deny Parliament its historic right of access to documents. It was a catalyst in the Prime Minister's decision to prorogue Parliament 15 months ago, which touched off a national protest. It led to the Speaker's historic ruling condemning Mr. Harper's government.

For a record of Conservative woe, it's hard to find anything that can compare. The last thing Mr. Harper's operatives need – even if the documents contain no startling new revelations – is for all the evidence of obstructionism, secrecy and dereliction to come flooding back.

They have done everything possible in the past to deep-six this file. They will do anything now.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 09:01 PM

Was Elliott involved in the security clearance for Carson?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ollaimh
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 12:57 PM

again i repeat that the liberals are opposed to a carbon tax, and if people are confusung cap and trade for a carbon tax, the last bush adminstrationn had a more severe cap and trade proposal.

calling iggy too americqan is totally idiotic. harper has been funded from the beginning by american comtrolled oil interests and has followed the bush american line slavishly. ignatieff did show too much support for the war on terror but so did harper--harper wanted to send canadian troops into iraq. ignatirff didn't.

but again the underlying idea of the right remains that some people--gthose they disagree with--shouldn't be represented in parliament. its demonizing the french in this country and thinly vieled racism.not unlke the trudeau giving the finger to the west. it never happened--a total media spin that was thinly veiled racism. actually trudeau gave the fine
ger to some thigs in salmon arm who threw garbage on his young children, i lived in the area at the time and the local newspapers reported it truthfully as a shame on salmon arm, but the national media madxe it the finger for the west. this continuing demonizing of french canadians does more to promot separation that any other factor. people who read the french media, as i do, get a totally different picture, but a picture with a lot more intelligent critique and a lot of laughter at the spin that passes for politics and news in english canada. they also actually report the budget as it is--the largest two deficits in canadian history,   the tories are going doen the mulroney road and we will have the same debt wall i 2015--the estimated surpluss date--and the liberals will be requred to clean it up.

the tories have increased spending by thirty per cent and reduced tax income by close to that amount--thats the reason for the deficit ant not the recession. if we had stayed the course we would have had a few billion dollar deficits not fifty billion dillar deficits, and the english media report this looming disaster as good fiscal management. we have reached a time when the news people are spin doctors and not reporters.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 01:58 PM

Albertans watch from the sidelines.

The province is solidly conservative, the other parties make token comments but agree that they have no chance.

A tiny handful of "others" represent a few inner city Edmonton ridings and a maverick riding or two, but their influence is essentially nil, either provincially (67 to 17 all others) or nationally (conservative but for one lonely NDP from dark and drear inner Edmonton).

On election night, we will watch the results only to see if Harper can garner an unassailable majority.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 03:09 PM

Well, my gut feeling is that the Liberals will win big. I have absolutely NO basis for that feeling. Anything can happen, of course. I guess I am biased by what I hear about town... Harper can't get shit done and he's spending money like a drunken sailor on things that are not tangible to the average peeps... peeps can't afford him. Simple stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 03:55 PM

Ontario perspective

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/going+reward+contempt+Parliament/4565800/story.html

Political senators


Corporate tax cuts don't spur growth, analysis reveals as election pledges fly
KAREN HOWLETT
Globe and Mail
Canadian companies have added tens of billions of dollars to their stockpiles of cash at a time when tax cuts are supposed to be encouraging them to plow more money into their businesses.

Corporate tax cuts are becoming a major issue in the federal election campaign. The Conservatives, arguing that they are the best custodians of an economy that remains fragile after the recession, say tax cuts are crucial to stimulate job creation and make Canada more competitive on the global stage.

But an analysis of Statistics Canada figures by The Globe and Mail reveals that the rate of investment in machinery and equipment has declined in lockstep with falling corporate tax rates over the past decade. At the same time, the analysis shows, businesses have added $83-billion to their cash reserves since the onset of the recession in 2008.

The issue has emerged as highly divisive, with the Liberals questioning the effectiveness of the no-strings-attached tax cuts as a job creation tool. They are pledging to roll corporate taxes back to 2010 levels to free up billions of dollars for spending on family-focused social programs, including day care and tuition.

Jim Flaherty, the Harper government's Finance Minister, acknowledged in a telephone interview that corporate tax cuts are a tough sell when companies are still hoarding cash. But over the long term, he said, his "comfort zone" comes from the fact that business leaders and economists have widely endorsed tax cuts as a job creation tool.

"Most importantly," he said, "it's a confidence builder in Canada, and it's a way of branding Canada."

Opposing corporate tax cuts is a relatively new position for the Liberals, who dropped the rate while in office in 2000. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's policy also leaves his party at odds with their provincial cousins in Ontario.

But in an interview on Tuesday, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said he supports Mr. Ignatieff's policy even though he himself is under siege by opposition members for presiding over corporate tax cuts.

"The feds could have actually taken their foot off the gas pedal in terms of corporate tax cuts because of what we've done," Mr. Duncan said.

Both the Tories and the Liberals are wading into a debate that has sharply divided economists. Business groups and conservative think tanks advocate lower taxes as a way to create jobs. Labour economists counter that lower taxes benefit only corporations and do little for the broader economy.

But the reality is there are no easy answers when it comes to measuring the impact tax rates have on job creation. Economic growth in Canada can be attributed to a lot more than just corporate tax rates. Such things as commodity prices and the value of the Canadian dollar also play a role.

The issue boils down to this: At a time when Ottawa and many provinces are awash in deficit, should governments invest scarce resources in making life more affordable for families by enhancing social programs or in giving corporations additional tax cuts?

Successive federal governments have chosen the latter path in recent years in a bid to make Canada more competitive and attractive to international investors. In 2000, the combined federal-provincial tax rate was just over 42 per cent, ranking Canada near the top among industrialized nations. The combined rate has since fallen to 28 per cent, placing the country in the middle of the pack, and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's goal is to reduce it to 25 per cent by fiscal 2013.

Businesses were widely expected to use the extra money from successive rounds of tax cuts to build factories and offices and buy new machinery and equipment. At one time, they did just that. From 1960 until the early 1990s, corporations invested almost every penny of their after-tax cash flow back into the business.

But the tax cuts appear to have reversed decades of tradition. Investment in equipment and machinery has fallen to 5.5 per cent in 2010 as a share of Canada's total economic output from 6.8 per cent in 2005 and 7.7 per cent in 2000, The Globe analysis shows.

The McGuinty government doled out $4-billion in tax breaks over three years to businesses in its 2009 budget as part of a package of reforms to help kick start an economy hit hard by the global economic recession.

Ontario represents just under 40 per cent of the national economy, so its cuts went a long way toward lowering the overall Canadian rate, Mr. Duncan said.

New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath says the Ontario government should make things more affordable for families instead of handing tax breaks to corporations. "The focus … should be on making life easier for families, not harder," she said.


Jeffrey Simpson
Where in the world is Canada's foreign policy debate?
Jeffrey Simpson | From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Predictably, the world has disappeared from the federal election campaign, despite the fact that Canadian military forces are involved in two confused and failing overseas missions.

In Afghanistan, we are years removed from the illusion of the famous Canadian general who said we were there to shoot some "scumbags," meaning the Taliban. After years of fighting and dying in Kandahar, Canadians have withdrawn to safer places, having left the province neither peaceful nor politically settled.

In Libya, we and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization rushed to prevent what was feared to be a looming slaughter of the innocents, only to be revealed as innocents ourselves. We do not understand our erstwhile friends in Libya. We do not know what precisely we seek by way of a new government. We have involved ourselves in a civil war whose dimensions we do not know, with weaponry that is useful but not sufficient to be decisive. We have no discernible exit strategy. Once again, we have entered a Muslim country without appreciating its complexities.

As Bismarck once said, try never to enter a war with an explanation that isn't the same at the end as at the beginning. In both Afghanistan and Libya, what we are ostensibly fighting for now is a long way from the initial explanations for combat.

In Afghanistan, we have gone from shooting "scumbags" and keeping the Taliban out of government to trying to create the military conditions that will allow some part of the Taliban into a government whose daily corruption and generalized incompetence have turned important elements of the population against it. The Afghan mission is not going well after all these years, witness to which are recent reports from the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Crisis Group, analysis by sharp observers Ahmed Rashid and Christopher de Bellaigue in The New York Review of Books, and a stream of news reporting.

In part, there is no debate about foreign affairs because Canadians are much less interested in the world than we believe ourselves to be. Remember that foreign policy was also absent from the last campaign's debates, unmentioned by both the parties and the news media.

Another reason for the lack of debate is that no differences exist between the Conservatives and the Liberals on these two wars. The Liberals were first to demand a "no fly" zone over Libya with Canadian participation. They signed on early to continuing the Afghan mission with Canadian soldiers in a training capacity, leader Michael Ignatieff having been a long-time believer in the Afghan mission. Only the New Democrats have asked questions and staked out different positions, but even his party spends almost all of its time talking about domestic issues, because they are the ones that interest voters.

The worst Canadian foreign-policy setback in decades – a humiliating failure to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council – has scarcely been mentioned. That embarrassing flop was entirely the consequence of the Harper government's maladroit foreign policy across the range of issues of interest to UN members – that is, the world. Yet Canadians seemed to shrug off the defeat at the time, cocooned in an outdated self-image of moral superiority, and have all but forgotten the failure.

The government is freezing foreign aid. It is slowing down the increase in the defence budget. It is about to make major naval purchases. It proposes to buy a new fighter jet, the F-35, whose expense has already been shown to be higher than the government suggests by the Government Accountability Office of the U.S. government and the Parliamentary Budget Office.

There are negotiations for a new perimeter agreement with the United States. We supposedly have a pro-Latin American engagement policy, but an internal document from Foreign Affairs reveals it to be hollow in substance, while we impose visas on people from every country in Latin America, including our supposed friends in Mexico.

We have the industrialized world's worst record in combatting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, an international issue if ever there was one that is changing Canada's geography before our eyes.

There is plenty to talk about in a country hugely dependent on foreign trade and international stability, but apparently not during election campaigns.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 04:55 PM

Harper's lies about the purchase price of the F-35's are starting to fly back in his face. What in Hell do we need stealth jets for anyway? They are an attack, not defense weapon. Just pissing billions down the drain without any idea of the bottom line price. The goons that he has in his entourage who are kicking folks out of his gatherings speak well to his bully mentality!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 08:21 PM

Tory majority looks 'elusive': EKOS

http://ipolitics.ca/2011/04/06/draft-conservatives-bleed-support-in-ontario/

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 02:18 PM

If all these assholes are so keen on environmental issues why are there millions of signs and posters littering our roadways?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 03:06 PM

truth-in-politics-

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 03:19 PM

Has anyone asked any of the parties about radiation levels getting to Canada from Japan? It now seems to be the best-kept secret in government, and I wonder why!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 03:36 PM

Good article Ed.

Here is a few short copied and pasted notes from Wikipedia on "Honest Bob"

"Robert Lorne Stanfield, PC, QC (April 11, 1914 – December 16, 2003) was the 17th Premier of Nova Scotia and leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He is sometimes referred to as "the greatest prime minister Canada never had", and earned the nickname "Honest Bob". As one of Canada's most distinguished and respected statesmen, he was one of several people granted the style "Right Honourable" who were not so entitled by virtue of an office held.

In the federal election of 1974, Stanfield ran on a policy of wage and price controls to help inhibit the rapid inflation of the era. Trudeau mocked the idea, saying that one couldn't say, "Zap! You're frozen!" to the economy. Trudeau later wrote in his memoirs that Stanfield's platform allowed him to be sniped at from all directions. The Progressive Conservatives did well in the Atlantic provinces, and in the West, but Liberal support in Ontario and Quebec ensured a majority Liberal government, mostly at the expense of Lewis's NDP rather than Stanfield's Tories. Trudeau would implement the controls in 1975, drawing widespread criticism for the abrupt reversal."

ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 03:49 PM

I just e-mailed the folks at Public Safety

"I wish to know where I might see daily postings regarding radiation levels reaching Canada from Japan."

As usual, the automated response was that they'd do their best to reply within 48 hours--but they might take longer. When I hear back I'll post it to this thread.

[e-mail]

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 07:59 PM

999,
I suspect these are the folks with the information:

The Radiation Protection Bureau's

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 08:03 PM

Ed T: thank you very much. I had no idea where to look.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 08:12 PM

My post re Stanfield went gone? It was good. Oh well... Bob was a good and great man... but Trudeau had the charm... and so went history.

Re Ed's last link... THE LYIN BASTARDS!!!! >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 08:16 PM

999
I suspect Federal Heal are ythe folks in the know

Canadian Radiological Monitoring Network

The Radiation Protection Bureau's

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 08:25 PM

radioisotope iodine-131 is the one to look for. My understanding that there is no other source of this in the atmosphere, other than the stuff released by the Japanese plants.


Coast radiation levels miniscule

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 12:12 PM

Rae bristles at personal attacks against Ignatieff's wife
Globe and Mail JANE TABER


It's getting nasty out there – and Bob Rae doesn't like it.

The Toronto Centre Liberal MP and foreign-affairs critic condemned an attack on Zsuszanna Zsohar's citizenship Thursday, calling it "deeply offensive."

Ms. Zsohar is the Hungarian-born wife of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff; she is a landed immigrant and has applied for Canadian citizenship. Since she has not received it, she will not be able to vote for her husband in the May 2 election.

Ignatieff sings O Canada And this became a story on the campaign trail Thursday, ramped up by a tweet from National Citizen's Coalition president and CEO Peter Coleman – "Ignatieff's wife is not even a Cdn citizen? Yikes!!! optics of that are sure not very good," he wrote.

Sun Media first reported the story, writing that it "had learned" that Ms. Zsohar is not yet a citizen. The story said that it was confirmed by the Liberal Party.

Ms. Zsohar would not comment on the issue.

But Mr. Rae did: "This is one issue that takes us down a road where I don't think we want to go," he said. "The notion of any question of optics around Zsuszanna … is absurd and deeply offensive."

Mr. Rae said, too, that Canada welcomes "immigrants to this country. … We live in an open country."

Ms. Zsohar is travelling with her husband throughout the campaign. He has referred to her as his "quality control,", asking her for advice, for example, about what he should purchase during a stop at a local co-op/hardware store in Compton, Que. this week. He bought a power screwdriver, work gloves and a vest.

Mr. Rae, meanwhile, is a long-time friend of the Liberal Leader. The two ran against each other for the leadership in 2006, which caused a rift that has since healed.

In fact, the two men embraced at a rally in Montreal Wednesday night. In the last caucus meeting before the election, Mr. Rae told his colleagues to remain united behind Mr. Ignatieff.

The questioning of Ms. Zsohar's citizenship plays into the attack ads by the Conservatives on Mr. Ignatieff's patriotism – that he is "just visiting" after being out of the country for 30 years.

Mr. Rae said he finds the reference in those ads "the most unworthy part of the Conservative attack on Michael."

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 12:19 PM

Ignatieff is getting a lot more attention and 'better coverage'

Poll

Harper's former adviser Carson had ties to money launderer
GREG McARTHUR and CAMPBELL CLARK
From Friday's Globe and Mail

A former adviser to the Prime Minister, now under scrutiny by the RCMP, bought a downtown Ottawa condominium with a former prostitute who was convicted of numerous offences in the United States, including money laundering, public records show.

Bruce Carson began his relationship with Barbara Lynn Khan in 2006, around the time he began advising Stephen Harper in his capacity as Prime Minister, according to a source who knows Ms. Khan.

The aide, the escort and the Tories Mr. Carson was a senior adviser to Mr. Harper, working on sensitive issues ranging from Afghanistan to the federal budget to climate change.

But in recent weeks questions have multiplied about how a man with five criminal convictions, who once went bankrupt and suffered years of debt problems, could have been welcomed into the centre of government power.

Now, after Mr. Harper called in the RCMP to investigate allegations of improper lobbying by Mr. Carson, The Globe has learned that he was in a relationship with a former U.S. felon while serving in the Prime Minister's Office.

It was Mr. Carson's relationship with another sex worker that first landed him under the glare of the RCMP. More than two weeks ago, the PMO contacted the Mounties after they discovered the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network was investigating alleged lobbying Mr. Carson performed on behalf of a company with ties to Michelle McPherson, a former prostitute who also owns a house with the 66-year-old policy adviser.

It's not clear whether officials were made aware of Mr. Carson's relationship with Ms. Khan when he was approved to work in Mr. Harper's office in 2006, or any time during his tenure.

Several sources who have been interviewed for security clearances, both for themselves and others, noted this week that CSIS agents had pressed about such issues, and asked if there was anything in the subject's past that might make them vulnerable to blackmail. Neither Mr. Carson nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.

Reached Thursday night, Ms. Khan said her relationship with Mr. Carson was long over, but she did not specify when it ended. Ms. Khan and Mr. Carson purchased their condominium in November, 2009, some eight months after he left the Prime Minister's Office to head up the Canada School of Energy and the Environment.

Ms. Khan said that the condominium at 500 Laurier Avenue West – a building where at least three members of Parliament stay when the House of Commons is sitting – isn't exactly what it looks like "on paper."

She added, before hanging up: "I don't think I should talk about Bruce, I'm sorry."

The 43-year-old Ms. Khan, who was born Barbara Lynn Welter, was raised north of Toronto in the town of Holland Landing. She attended high school in the nearby town of Bradford and worked as a clerk in a convenience store.

But by the late 1990s, Ms. Khan and her husband, Saleemudeen Khan, had settled in Salisbury, N.C., population 27,000. From there, the couple, as well as others, launched a wide-scale prostitution service, soliciting men in pornographic magazines and dispatching sex workers across the state, according to a 2004 indictment.

To paying customers in cities such as Charlotte and Raleigh, Ms. Khan was known as "Essa," one of seven people that operated the service, which charged as much as $3,000 per night. The prostitution ring, which went by names such as Intimate Encounters and Sugar Shack, provided prostitutes to men in houses and hotel rooms until it was brought down by a local sheriff's office and federal authorities in the early 2000s.

Ms. Khan was convicted in 2003 of maintaining a bawdy house, as well as aiding and abetting prostitution. A year later, she was convicted of the more serious federal offence of money laundering. After being sentenced to 12 months and given credit for the time she had already served in jail, she was deported back to her native Canada around 2005. Her husband, Mr. Khan, was extradited from Gatineau, Que. to face charges in the United States. In a 2004 judgment concerning Mr. Khan's bail, Judge Jean-Pierre Plouffe described the tactics of the prostitution ring: "fear and intimidation were used with customers who failed to pay or were deemed to have been too rough with the prostitutes. In that regard, the group would commit home invasions and steal goods therein."

It's not clear how Ms. Khan met Mr. Carson. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one person close to Ms. Khan said she struck up her relationship with Mr. Carson in 2006. The source close to Ms. Khan said there was some discussion about a possible wedding in Mexico with Mr. Carson. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Mr. Carson's other call-girl associate, Ms. McPherson, also mentioned that she planned on marrying Mr. Carson.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: 3refs
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 04:22 PM

Whether
Conservative, Liberal
or
NDP, I think
you'll get
a kick out of
this!


A little boy goes to his dad and asks, 'What is Politics?'

Dad says, 'Well son, let me try to explain it this way:

I am the head of the family, so call me The Prime Minister.

Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we call her the Government.

We are here to take careof your needs, so we will call you the People.

The nanny, we will consider her the Working Class.

And your baby brother, we will call him the Future.

Now think about that and see if it makes sense.'

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said.

Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him.

He finds that the baby has severely soiled his nappy.

So the little boy goes to his parent's room and finds his mother asleep.

Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny..

He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning, the little boy say's to his father, 'Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now. '

The father says, 'Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.'

The little boy replies, 'The Prime Minister is screwing the Working Class while the Government is sound asleep. The People are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit.'

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 05:47 PM

Musicians get involved

jet-costs-

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 05:54 PM

what-changed-in-the-last-17-days

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 06:09 PM

Project a surplus my ass... up my ass. I am already feelin somethin up my ass. And I don't need any surplus.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 07:18 PM

Don't let this election stuff mess up your mind, because it won't do you one bit of good. Don't let it put you at loggerheads with other people either. Remember: they rule by dividing and conquering the general public, and we pay their salaries after they've done it.

Why? Well, because no one else will do it, I suppose. ;-) And somebody has to.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 07:38 PM

Honest politician?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 08:49 PM

Viva l'bloc

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 09:12 PM

Excuse my French. But, could it not be Le Bloc (for les hommes) or La Bloc, for La femme? Why L'Bloc??

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 03:51 AM

Me I dunno... I don't speak Spanish.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 07:45 AM

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1237470.html

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 07:51 AM

href="http://thechronicleherald.ca/Editorials/1237562.html">Muskrat Falls

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 09:35 AM

Part one:
What are Canadians really afraid of when it comes to crime?
Ian Brown Globe and Mail
Should you ever decide to ask your fellow Canadians why they support getting tough on crime even though crime has been falling for 10 years, you will have the following conversation over and over again (all replies guaranteed verbatim):

Nerdy Interlocutor: Why do you want the government to get tough on crime when the crime rate's already down?

NI: Actually, they're not.

TOCC: But the rapes, they're all unreported!

NI: Actually, unreported sexual assaults – at least according to the General Social Survey on Victimization, which is how Statistics Canada measures crimes that aren't reported to the police – haven't risen in 10 years.

TOCC: But the really violent criminals, they get out after two or three years.

NI: That actually hardly ever happens. Canada has severe sentences, compared to much of the rest of the world. Has for a long time.

TOCC: Okay, but the judges let them out because they know there isn't any room in the jails.

NI: Not the really violent guys, they don't.
TOCC: Okay, maybe it's not so much in Canada. But people see these violent scenes, people getting beheaded with machetes in other countries. Maybe they think the country should stay the way it is.

Lots of people labour under these assumptions, with good reason – just not the reasons you may think. Now, a chance has come to sort things out: As of yesterday, crime is an election issue.

Unholstering his arsenal of campaign points on Friday in Toronto, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised Canadians that, in return for the small favour of a majority government, he'll gather up the last 11 crime bills the Conservatives tried to introduce, bundle them and put them through Parliament as an omnibus bill. He would take on organized crime, end house arrest, eliminate pardons and more, all in his majority's first 100 days.

Before that happens, a brief look at some of the moves the Harper government has already made might be in order. It was a crime bill, after all – Bill S-10, one of roughly 60 pieces of crime legislation it has introduced in its time in office – that caused Mr. Harper's government to be found in contempt of Parliament. Another law-and-order bill, the Truth in Sentencing Act, passed last year, is lengthening sentences and filling jails so fast that it alone will double the cost of the federal and provincial penal system in five years, to nearly $10-billion.

While we're at it, we might want to ask ourselves why we seem to feel such a burning itch to be tougher on crime. The crime rate has been dropping for a decade, even though 44 per cent of Canadians think crime rates have risen. The volume of crime reported to police is down 17 per cent over the past 10 years. The crime-severity index, which measures the seriousness of reported crime, is 22 per cent lower than it was in 1999. Violent crime is off 12 per cent since 2000.

But the Conservatives want to put more people in jail, and 62 per cent of Canadians believe longer sentences are the best way to reduce crime. In fact, as we'll see, lengthening sentences has no effect on crime rates. Yet many of us seem to want to be hard and unforgiving anyway. Why?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 09:36 AM

Crime, Part two:
To hear Mr. Harper tell it, when he insists the Conservatives have made Canada safe by putting "real criminals behind bars," you'd think we were all cowering in the corner. But in fact very few people are afraid they personally will be victims of crime.

Statistics Canada's 2009 criminal-victimization survey (of nearly 2,000 Canadians aged 15 and over) found that 93 per cent of us feel "somewhat" or "very" safe from crime, a number that hasn't changed in five years.

Ninety per cent of us feel fine walking alone in the dark. Eighty-three per cent aren't afraid to be at home alone at night. A quarter of the people surveyed actually reported being the victim of a crime in the previous 12 months (theft, most commonly), yet most of them still weren't afraid of criminals.

But that's a dreary survey. To see what I mean in the flesh – and blood – let me take you to booming Abbotsford, B.C., an hour's drive west of Vancouver in the spread-eagled Fraser Valley.

For two years running, in 2008 and 2009, this once-tiny farming town had the highest murder rate of any community in Canada over 100,000 people – 5.22 murders per 100,000 residents. A deeply religious town (more than 80 churches), Abbotsford is also in the riding of former Reform Party MP Randy White, one of the original sheriffs on the law-and-order landscape.

But Abbotsford straddles a long stretch of undefended border, and it's a Tunnel of Love for drug smuggling and gang activity. Pot, meth and E go south; coke, guns and freshly laundered cash come back. Some of Canada's most insouciant crime clans and gangs have operated here. Residents like to boast that back in the day, one in five houses in many parts of Abbotsford was a grow-op – a number the police don't deny. Eight of the nine murders that occurred in 2009 were gang-related. Somebody should write a TV series about the place.

Yet if you imagine Abbotsford as a hideous bullet-pocked hole, you are very wrong: It's a pleasant, friendly, utterly middle-class, suburban city. The parking lots are stuffed with brand new fully loaded $60,000 trucks. Herds of good-looking families roam the sidewalks. The city library is luxurious, bustling – only a brochure pinned to the message board advertising a "support group for people grieving the loss of those who died by homicide" hints at the city's shadow.

No one I meet professes to be alarmed by the city's criminals. In the food court of the local mall, an 89-year-old woman makes a few dubious remarks about seeing East Indians (heavily represented in this part of B.C.) in crime stories, but she says she's never concerned for her own safety. "I just kept my head down and my nose clean."

"I don't think anyone worries about it until it happens to you," her companion, a man in his 70s, adds. He has a Cockney accent like a small tray. "But nowadays with cellphones, you can get ahold of the cops pretty quick."

Then I run into Bill and Pam, a couple who own and operate five long-haul semis. They earn upwards of half-a-million dollars a year for their trouble. Bill is in his 60s, and full of news: Three of his pals have just been sentenced to 60 years in the U.S. for smuggling cannabis. (So it's not surprising that the couple asked me not to print their last name.)

He's been offered the chance to do so many times, and has been tempted. But he likes his freedom too much. "It's so easy to do, so easy to get away with. You can make $75,000 a trip. Seven hockey bags will bring you 50 grand." He guesses the cops catch 10 per cent of what crosses.

Bill's buddy Ted was nabbed with 1,300 kilos under the floor of a truck full of cattle, a messy spot the border guards normally don't care to search. Some smugglers stuff it in PVC pipe, cover it with wood chips, haul it under the city garbage – common knowledge in Abbotsford. But even though meth labs have blown up across the street from where he and Pam were standing, Bill has never "particularly worried" he might be a crime victim.

"Most of the murders are targeted," Pam explains. Her fingers are thick with nice gold rings.

But as personally unthreatened by crime as they say they are, everyone I meet wants the government to be tough on crime. Darshan Singh Dheliwal and his pals consider Stephen Harper "a child" and "not progressive" enough to vote for, but they still think Canada "has to be more like America. Not less than 10 years jail."

Bill isn't a Harper devotee – he's voting Conservative this year for the first time – but he still says things like "if you get 15 years, you should serve 15 years." It's the easiness and showiness of the drug money and the way it beggars traditional notions of work and reward that upset him.

"I just hate seeing all these kids, rolling in and playing Joe Cool because that's the only way you can make it. You can't make it here" – he nods at the mall's fast-food stands – "at $8 an hour. Abbotsford's like New York City now – a city I love, but everybody's trying to sell you something."

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 09:38 AM

Crime, Part three

What's the antidote? Something disciplined and reliable, like a good hard spanking.

If you think this is just socially conservative Abbotsford speaking, go west, to Vancouver South, one of the closely fought middle-class, immigrant-stuffed, formerly Liberal ridings all the candidates have been trying to win over with tough talk. Conservative challenger Wai Young has talked about the "drip, drip, drip" of petty, often-unreported crime. Provincial MLA Kash Heed says crime issues get a lot of attention in the riding.

Yet there's extraordinarily little crime to be found – mostly break-ins (down 7 per cent last year in Vancouver) and stolen cars (down 20 percent). In the pharmacy down the street from the Chong Lee Market, Dan Huzyk, 64, laughs and tells me he can remember only two crimes in the nearly 40 years he has lived here – a break-in, and a "child rapist" caught by his neighbours 20 years ago. He's voting for the Tories anyway. Annie, the market's 40-year-old Korean manager, can't remember any crimes either. But she's familiar with the local community-policing office, just in case.

Constable Wef Fung, a patrol officer in Chinatown here, has his own theories about immigrants' appetites for law-and-order talk. "I think as a people, Asians are particularly prone to protecting our bottom line," he says. "Back in China, the police can sometimes seem corrupt. But because they have different rules, they can do a lot more than we can. So immigrants come here and they're used to cops and officials doing stuff for them."

So Mr. Harper may be filling that bill. In any event, it's becoming clear that what makes people susceptible to tough talk is more complicated than fear. It's also more evasive than facts.

One of the things you see a lot these days when professional criminologists talk about the Harper government is the Twitch – a combination eye-widening/brow-rub that expresses Total Professional Exasperation. At the moment the Twitch is being performed by Rosemary Gartner, an American-born University of Toronto criminologist who happens to be one of the world's leading experts on interpreting crime statistics, a notoriously swampy subject.

Dr. Gartner explains how, back in 1993, a parliamentary committee (dominated by Mulroney Conservatives, no less) counseled restraint in building jails and handing out sentences. "And that was when crime was going up," Dr. Gartner says. "Here we are today, with crime going down, and the Harper people are increasing incarceration." Eye-widen, brow-rub, head-shake, twitch.

Mr. Harper and his parliamentary colleagues can throw as many people as they want into jail, and keep them there for as long as they like. None of it will affect crime rates.

Yes, this is true: Crime rates are not affected by how many people go to jail.

Until recently, the rate at which Canada incarcerated prisoners had been restrained and steady since the 1890s – for more than a century, in other words – at between 80 and 110 adults per 100,000 people. The United States started out where we did, but since the 1980s has almost quadrupled its incarceration rate, to 760 prisoners per 100,000 people, the highest in the world (China runs a distant second).

If it were true that jailing more criminals made society safer from crime, the U.S. should have seen greater rates of decline in its crime than we have. But the fluctuation in the U.S. homicide rate mirrors ours, exactly. Both homicide rates (the American one being consistently about four times ours) peaked in 1975 and both have declined ever since.

So incarceration doesn't improve crime rates. Neither do the longer sentences Mr. Harper promises to push through, though there is some evidence they make inmates more likely to re-offend. Neither do mandatory-minimum sentences, also in the works, which can interfere with rehabilitation.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 09:39 AM

Crime, part four (sorry, but this cannot be linked):

So why has crime dropped? Excellent question. Theories abound. Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, credits the aging baby boom. "There were twice as many young men in the population in the 1970s as there are now." Young men commit most crimes.

James Hackler of the University of Victoria thinks "the strongest answer to crime rates is equality of income": Countries such as Scandinavia and Japan, where the ratio between CEO pay and worker pay is smaller than it is here, have lower crime rates.

Another theory points to the birth-control pill and even legalized abortion: Fewer unwanted children equals fewer social misfits.

The phrase you hear most from criminologists is "there are no quick answers." Grisly, high-profile crimes and grossly lenient sentencing get attention, but statistically they're rare: Sentences for major assault, drug trafficking and attempted murder have stayed the same or risen in the past 10 years.

"Everybody wants to be safe," University of Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob observes. "And I think you can't challenge that desire. And it's very comforting to think that Parliament can sit there with a dial and turn it down and automatically lower the crime rate."

But Parliament can't, and has long known it. "Go back 50 years," Dr. Doob says, "there's report after report saying, 'Let's use prison with restraint.'" Again and again – at least 16 times between 1956 and 2003 – knowledgeable and brain-studded parliamentary committees have concluded that where sentences and jail time are concerned, "preference should be given to the least restrictive alternative" (1982) because (1993) "costly repressive measures … fail to deter crime."

"Being in prison doesn't make you a good citizen," Graham Stewart, the retired director of the John Howard Society, a prisoner-rights organization, explains. "It just makes you a good prisoner."

Ed McIsaac, the national director of policy at John Howard, estimates that axing APR alone will add 400 "bed years" to Canada's prisoner load – which at the average daily cost of $322.51 per federal inmate, is $47-million a year. That's about the same amount Mr. Jones stole from his victims over the course of 25 years.

The irony is that these experts' elite outrage may help fuel the public's embrace of the crime bills. The federal Ministry of Justice has dismissed statistics as "an excuse not to get tough on criminals." Ian Brodie, Stephen Harper's former chief of staff, said at a McGill University forum in 2009 that "every time we proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, sociologists, criminologists, defence lawyers and Liberals attacked us for proposing measures that the evidence apparently showed did not work. Politically it helped us tremendously to be attacked by this coalition of university types."

That's the thing: Tough-on-crime sentiment may be difficult to justify logically, but it is easy to feel. The question is, why has it become seductive to more and more of us?

One reason, of course, is that crime victimizes people, and happens more or less uncontrollably, and always has, and so it scares us – if not personally, then existentially. Crime never, ever disappears. It is our shadow as a society, a source of shame: What if we're responsible for its existence? No one would argue that we shouldn't try to control it, and reduce it whenever and wherever we can, if we can.

But as the evidence shows, crime is also a force unto itself, vast and multi-tentacled, often counter-intuitive. The things that actually reduce crime – sophisticated parole programs, rehabilitation systems, anti-poverty intiatives, education, mental-health centres, retraining (all of which the Tories have supported) – cost money and time, and are not quick or politically easy fixes.

Crime is so vast, worrying and intractable that when someone like Mr. Harper starts to crusade against it, it almost feels brave to join his cause – no matter how cynically or sincerely it's touted.

Whatever the reason, though, our rejection of social civility as a cure is bound to have a profound effect on how we see ourselves as Canadians.

Tom Flanagan, the former Conservative campaign manager who is now a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, once said that the difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives believe people can't change, that human nature isn't malleable.

For many years, Canada's approach to criminality was, in that sense, liberal – we relied less on prison and more on rehabilitation, on changing people. Now we seem to be headed the other way.

"If you think that people don't change," says Mr. Stewart, of the John Howard Society, "if you punish people for what they are, as opposed to what they do – then all this restraint in punishment [that we've practised before now] makes no sense."

If people are unlikely to change, the bad ones can be locked up. That way the bad people will be in one place, and the good people will be in another place, and we'll never have to be confused as to who is whom.

We think we want to be tough on crime because we're afraid of criminals, but it turns out we're not. We're afraid of ourselves, and who we might turn out to be.

Thankfully, the election – now that Mr. Harper has made crime an issue – gives us a chance to choose.

So the Harper government's stance defies not just evidence but half a century of Canadian intellectual tradition. To many criminologists, that feels like heresy. "Nobody that I know who has any expertise about these things believes in what the Tories are doing," Simon Fraser's Prof. Boyd says.

Still, its iconoclasm helps explain why Mr. Harper and his colleagues find their anti-crime thrust exciting, new and serious – a genuine reformation of the criminal-justice system's priorities. They have also sold it brilliantly. One of the ways they've done so is, as Harold Albrecht, the Conservative MP for Kitchener-Conestoga, says, "by standing up for victims." That's a lot more effective, politically, than standing up for a criminal's future.

Just before the election call, egged on by the victims of Montreal fraudster Earl Jones, Mr. Harper's government eliminated automatic parole review (APR). That will keep Mr. Jones in the slammer a little longer. But it will, much more seriously, affect many young, first-time, non-violent offenders (drug charges, break-ins) who will now serve longer sentences and run greater risks of reoffending when they get out (which APR was meant to prevent).
Single

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 11:48 AM

Why are all the candidates so quiet about Libya? Anyone know?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 12:55 PM

Collusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 01:44 PM

Ed T, what do you think should be the issues being discussed in this campaign? I'm seeing you've done a lot of reading and provided a lot of others' points of view for our benefit. But that is their agenda. I want to know what's important to you.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 03:33 PM

I don't know Crowhugger? I lean more to the center, maybe even slightly to the left versus to the right.

I suspect trust and accountability is the bigest issue with me. I am very concerned about eroding ethics among those who govern. I am especially concerned that many do not see the dangers present.

I am proud of the compassionate and peace loving society we have built. I am concerned that we are being taken on a path where we will loose that society and not even realize it, until it is too late.

I am concerned that corporate interests are becoming a greater priority over the interests of our society and citizens.


Here are things that are important to me:


1,That we remain a peaceful country internally and on the world stage.

peaceful-country

2,That our citizens quality of life (for example, health, education) is more, or equally, important to corporate interests.

3, That we put environmental interests in the forfront and live in a sustainable manner, with our environment.

4, That our democracy is not held hostage by lobbyists, or special interests, especially the corporate type.

5, That we remain a compassionate, tolerant and caring society for minorities, those in the majority and for those less fortunate.

6, Thet we have an open trustworthy and transparent democratic government, accountable, effective and respectful to the people and minority parties and viewpoints.

7, That we continue to have a vibrant arts and cultural communmity

8, That the riches of our countries resources are shared by many, not just a few.

I like Canada, and have no interest in adopting a USA style of government (no disrespect intended to my USA neighbours). I certainly would not classify myself as a right wing Libertarian in any way.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 03:40 PM

Ed for PM!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 04:01 PM

There is an active Mudcat thread on Bullies. One question raised was what do they become when they grow up? Atilla The Hun was one, Edward da Turd was one, Caligula was one, Hitler was one, and Stalin was one On the other hand some became Prime Minister of Canada!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 04:32 PM

I NEVER EVER tell ANYONE, even me mum, who I am gonna vote for.

Fuck Harper.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Crowhugger
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 11:46 PM

Thanks Ed. You've outlined what makes this this country a great place. I too worry that people won't see what's circling the bowl until it's out of sight forever. Wish I knew how to get through to people who don't have the best critical thinking skills.

Sandy, that about sums it up nicely.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 03:41 PM

Harper days vs Pierre Trudeau's days


More for the entitled


Poll

voter-suppression?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 03:48 PM

"Harper days vs Pierre Trudeau's days"

Oops! We can't find the page you're looking for.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 06:30 PM

Sorry, don't know what happened there, Gnu. Here it is

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

Pierre Trudeau makes return to campaign trail, via warning from PM Harper
By: Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press

ACTON VALE, Que. - Pierre Trudeau has made a sudden reappearance in a Canadian federal election — a decade after his death.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is warning that if his rivals get elected, the country will return to the days of economic darkness when it was led by his late Liberal predecessor.

The early 1970s — a time when a minority Liberal government relied on support from the NDP — inflicted long-term damage on the Canadian economy, Harper said Sunday. It led to two decades of runaway spending, higher taxes, double-digit unemployment and interest rates, he added.

"All they did was spend money," the prime minister said from a farm in Acton Vale, Que.

"We were a generation fixing those problems. When I look at the Liberal platform today ... I'm saying that's the alternative. That is the route the country will go down unless it stays on the path we're on, with a strong, stable majority Conservative government."

Harper may have been pleased to talk about his opponents' platforms, but he was a little more vague when asked a key question about his own plan: Where would he find the $4 billion in annual budget cuts he's promising?

Harper says it should be easy to find those so-called inefficiencies to help slay the deficit — but is offering few clues about where he'll cut.

His opponents, however, warn that cuts announced in the Tory platform could mean serious damage to social programs, like health care.

The NDP is promising to balance the books within four years in its platform, which was released Sunday. The party is making the cornerstone pledge while at the same time committing itself to billions of dollars in new social spending.

The NDP is also ripping a page out of Harper's 2006 campaign playbook and promising five key priorities to be accomplished in the first 100 days of taking office.

The Tories used a similar strategy — relying on a set of focused, easy-to-understand policies — to defeat Paul Martin's Liberals.

The NDP platform — the last one released by a major party — is a mix of previous New Democrat commitments from earlier campaigns and initiatives the party has already put before the House of Commons in proposed legislation.

The five key priorities include hiring more doctors right away, strengthening public pensions, cutting small business taxes, capping credit-card rates at prime plus five per cent, and bringing in new accountability legislation. Specifically, the NDP says it wants to limit the power of the prime minister to prorogue Parliament.

It pledges to balance the federal books by 2014-15 and, while there is significant spending right away, senior campaign officials say it would not add to the deficit.

The centrepiece of the NDP's fiscal plan is to restore the corporate tax rate to 19 per cent and to crack down on foreign tax havens. The NDP are also pledging to cut small business taxes by $1 billion.

There's a promise to compensate Quebec for harmonizing its sales tax and another promise to pull out of the Afghan training mission.

NDP Leader Jack Layton says neither of the two bigger parties — the Conservatives or Liberals — can be trusted to look out for families.

"It's two sides of the same coin. But they're still taking your money and they're not making sure that your family gets what it needs when it's facing real challenges," Layton said. "And that's why we've put together these commitments."

The key planks of the Liberal platform revolve around education — including more money for students to attend university and for parents to afford day care.

The Liberal plan would be funded partly with a hike in corporate tax rates to last year's rates. Some analysts warn, however, that there's a fiscal hole of several billion dollars in their plan.

The Tories are accused of hiding an even bigger hole in their platform — by treating $4 billion in spending cuts like they've already happened and by announcing an increase in health spending without accounting for it.

The Tory platform promises to erase the deficit a year earlier than planned, while providing considerable tax breaks to couples with children through a mechanism that would allow them to pool parts of their incomes. That promise, however, would only kick in if and when the federal budget is balanced, in several years.

When asked for his thoughts on Trudeau, personally, Harper was reluctant to mention him by name.

"I think it's probably a bit unfair to bash somebody in the grave," Harper said.

"He's not here to defend himself. But as you know, Mr. Trudeau did have a different philosophy of government — a high-spending philosophy, centralizing philosophy — and that's not the philosophy of this government."

Mulrooney

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 06:46 PM

western (Alberta) view

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ollaimh
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 09:57 PM

i once again point out the tory lie that trudeau caused our economic problems. he naver ran a deficit over 32 billion and only three over ten billion. he ran seven surpluses, and several one to five billion deficits. mulroney came to ;power and never ran a deficit less than 39 billion. he doubled our national debt in nine years. out deficiting trudeau by two to one, and trudeau had seventeen years. our english media never corect the tory lies on this point. now harper is going down the same route with the two largest deficits in canadian history and planning four or five more. but the myth that trudeau damaged our economy lives on because our media doesn't report the plain economic truth. this is partly incompetence and ignorance but partly their corporate bias.

our finance minister jim flarety has never had an economic forecast any were near accurate after twelve consecutive accurate liberal economic forecasts. the tories do all politics all the time so their economic forecasts are political documents not professional fiscal statements.

but its all trudeaus fault!

its really a shame that the tories have lied lied lied about trudeau and his financial record and about the finger! but thats the old nazi tactic--the big lie! hitler said if you lie, lie big then people will be less likely to question it.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 10:27 PM

Myths

Myth 2


Interesting perspective

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 11 Apr 11 - 07:33 AM

In Quebec the NDP is No.2

The Globe and Mail

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Apr 11 - 02:16 PM

Little Stevie's Canada, by Howard Gladstone, with Tony Quarrington.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 11 Apr 11 - 02:36 PM

Hehehehee. The lads slid around the law and Yoko on that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 10:46 AM

Another scandal brewing about Harper's gang of misfits lying to Parliament about the costs of hosting the G-8. That expense was already astronomical so God only knows what the truth revealed in the Auditor General's report will be. Trouble is she must release it first to Parliament which won't sit again until after the election. That leaves Harper hoping that the snake will stay sleeping under the rock but the big debate is tonight and no doubt his opponents will try and turn it over!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 01:56 PM

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BULLSHIT?

ALL MY DOWDY FIREDS ARE COMIN OVER TONIGHT!

Apologies to Hank Jr.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 02:14 PM

I wish I was somehow in charge of all of the schools in this country because I would make it madatory for them to record it and make every student above the age of 12 watch it.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 04:09 PM

You Canadians are lucky, eh? You've got Naomi Klein. (Brilliant).

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 08:28 PM

""ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BULLSHIT?""

It is soooo boring.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 13 Apr 11 - 04:47 AM

"FIREDS" ??? Gee whiz.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 14 Apr 11 - 08:56 AM

Missed that... The French-language leaders' debate has been moved from Thursday to Wednesday in an apparent move to allow Montreal Canadiens fans to watch their team open the NHL playoffs against the Boston Bruins.

The broadcasting consortium that is televising the federal election debates, which includes CTV, announced the date change late Sunday afternoon, hours after Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe suggested most Quebecers would choose to watch the game.

I checked You Tube and it's not on there... yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 04:01 PM

Engines not included

?

Mulroney

Strategy?


http://www.timescolonist.com/news/decision-canada/Harper+global+religious+freedom+plan/4630455/story.html

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 04:05 PM

Obama worst U.S. president ever?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 04:38 PM

Anti-abortion. Don't need to even read the rest. He's a monster. A dinosaur that will ravage Canada and drive it backwards.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 12:33 PM

Given the spirit of the election, I thought I'd share the best pick-up line to use on women. It's related to politics.
Best pick-up line ever

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 01:34 PM

Well, gentlemen, a few days back I met my MP--Mme Claude DeBellefeuille--at a cafe in Ormstown. Lovely gal and a great MP. She has a wonderful sense of humour, and given the state of politics in Canada, that in itself is a victory.

I expect that the Conservatives will drop in seats as will the Bloc. The ND will gain at the expense of both the aforementioned, and the limp-dick Liberals will stay as is. We got SSDD coming once again. IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 01:45 PM

I'm afeared you may be right 999. The only possible positive that may come about would be if the NDPers and Libs together end up with more seats that the Cons -- they can then form a coalition government without the big fear factor of the Bloc having any influence even though having the Bloc in a coalition would, IMO, be of benefit to progressive Canadians.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 26 Apr 11 - 02:23 PM

mlb... great YT vid.

Either way, bobad, anything is better than Stevie 1 and his crowd of backward corporate reprobates.

I voted yesterday and some people in the lineup were talking politics. I was taken aback. Imagine, at a poll!

Hehehe... minds me of one time I took Mum to vote at an advance poll. It was at The Hillside Baptist Church and they had a bible and wanted people to swear on the bible that they wouldn't be able to vote on election day. She said, politely, "It is illegal to have a bible at a poll. I shall be calling my MP and Elections Canada as soon as I get home." whereupon she picked up her ballot and voted.
Our poll is located elsewhere now.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 08:58 AM

Hahahahahaha!!!!
Time to make our choice. After viewing this everyone will be able to make a very easy decision. Have a great laugh.

http://youtu.be/FKjB8OEiu0k

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 09:13 AM

And that's the news to the hour. Updates at eleven.

Good one, Ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 04:45 PM

A good one Beer

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,Curtis
Date: 27 Apr 11 - 05:52 PM

Stephen Harper actually stole part of one of his speeches from a sith lord...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbZjGGWk528

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 02:58 PM

Great vids!

Hmmm... is that sith thing a lysdexic ypto?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 28 Apr 11 - 09:20 PM

Mercer's report.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,Curtis
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 01:08 PM

Rick Mercer is great, eh? And the sith are the villains from Star Wars.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 04:04 PM

Is Canada a Rougue (s) nation?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 05:45 PM

Peter Russell, constitutional expert, talks about the Harper Government's contempt for parliamentary democracy and what is at stake in the Canadian Election 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEsXSb_JJSU&feature=player_embedded

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 06:04 PM

Duceppe

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 06:11 PM

The best thing about our stinkin' elections (other than that they are a better remedy for insomnia than Anne Murray) is that they only last 6 fucking weeks instead of more like a goddamn year and a half (the approximate length of the presidential elections in the USA).

Thank God for that, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Apr 11 - 07:57 PM

A friend of mine said today that being a Loyal liberal is like being a loyal fan of the Toronto Maple leafs, who always look for signs that either is going to surge up to their former glory days.:)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 12:19 AM

It's just a habit, like any other habit. Habits are hard to break.

The majority of people in this riding are habitual Conservative voters, and I think they would elect a dog, a horse, or a pig if the Conservatives ran one...and the other parties ran normal human beings. It makes me wonder why I'm living here. ;-) Just the luck of the draw, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 11:43 AM

http://www.thestar.com/opinion

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 11:44 AM

Toronto star
Oops

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 01:45 PM

That was me re Jack... dunno how I tossed my cookie.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 06:31 PM

So what's the deal with this Jack Layton massage parlour would-be scandal? The Libs and Cons must have been keeping this one in reserve for years, just in case the great unwashed ever got so fed up with the both of them that they looked willing to give the NDP a half a chance at power. I hope this desperate ploy blows up in their free-enterprising faces and wins Layton the votes needed to put him over the top. I mean, even if the guy WAS there for a handjob, which he apparently wasn't, what the hell. Who cares? Compared with Contempt Of Parliament, getting a massage, happy ending or not, is SO no big deal.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 06:50 PM

Yeah, talk about a pathetic last ditch strategy to influence an election! How sad that the political party system draws this kind of competitive ugliness out of people.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 07:13 PM

Could the Sun media war room = CPC war election room?

Who benefits from the bogus Sun media Ignatieff Iraq picture and
Now the bogus Layton Sex-massage parlour rumour? Ummmm?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 30 Apr 11 - 10:43 PM

If this is the only ghost in the closet that can be found on Jack then he is a bigger man than most if not all of us. If it is true (and who cares.)I hope he got laid as well.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 May 11 - 10:23 AM

I know a great joke about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 01 May 11 - 10:49 AM

The desperation of a Smear Jack gambit makes you wonder if the whole "NDP surge" phenomenon isn't a hoax perpetrated by media puppets to scare us into voting Conservative and/or to split the BQ vote so that Conservatives can walk up the middle in Quebec.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 11 - 10:49 AM

Assorted last day stuff:

abacus poll

Nanos poll

drinking buddies


One perspective

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 01 May 11 - 11:34 AM

Who leaked the Jack Layton story?

While many in the media and from the left have hurled wild accusations against the Conservatives, who really leaked the Jack Layton bawdy house story?

Here's what Jonathan Kay, reporter from the National Post had to say on Twitter:

    For those who care, someone tried to shop me the Layton-massage story 2 yrs ago (without docs). It was a Liberal fixer

    To repeat: I have no idea who leaked the Layton/massage story this time around. But, if had to *guess*, I'd say the most desperate party

    Michael Ignatieff was *not* Lib leader when Layton story was shopped to me by Libs. They shopped it to me on Oct 12, 2008.

Apparently the Liberals tried to leak it last election to save Stephane Dion. This doesn't prove anything, but shows people need to be more careful throwing wild accusations around, especially those with the media. Could easily have been Liberals.

UPDATE: The plot thickens.

    Interestingly, the October 10 2008 Liberal Access-to-Information request includes alleged massage visits in 2003

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 11 - 12:33 PM

Just one more sleep.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 11 - 01:00 PM

Get Out And Vote

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 11 - 05:03 PM

gap-narrows

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 11 - 05:30 PM

"It's not impossible the NDP could come out tied in this election."

Hehehehee. How positively inane a statement.

Unless polls are taken in each riding and the results given for each riding, thereby actually indicating some semblence of reality, the polls are shite.

In any case, we will find out soon who we are are getting fucked over by for the next while.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 11 - 06:18 PM

The Old School Tie"

Oh the bright young man in the tight-buttoned suit
the light beams out from capped smiles to the shines
on their lick-spittle books
Oh these sharp young sparks with their fresh rosettes
Yeh, the artful ways that they promise the earth
to all suffragettes -
What they won't promise we don't know yet.
They say they're build - and shaping society
but we know they're just saving for their own
Safe home in politics
Anything goes: look at them run.

Come from every side, noses Pinocchio clean;
Lock in synchromesh, oil the wheels and the gears
of the party machine.
And the final goal is a cabinet seat...
in the trappings of power, the presumption to speak
for the man in the street.
Once they move in, they're in for good;
Yeh, once they get that bed made it's a
safe home in politics.
Jobs for the boys: look at them run.

There's just one thing none of us should forget:
a political man is just in it for the power
and the smell of sucess.
Sure, some start out as idealists -
pretty soon they all cop for ideal careers and
a safe home in politics,
a cusky job in politics;
look at them run.

The politicians fight it out on the couning tower
but they all agree not to rock the boat.
A safe home in politics
It's built on your vote

(Hammill Peter - The Old School Tie)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 02 May 11 - 08:49 AM

OUR FINAL WORDS AND A FEW MORE NUMBERS - May 1, 2011

EKOS SEAT PROJECTION

"Prediction is very hard, especially about the future." - Yogi Berra

These seat projections are based on EKOS' opinion polling. The projections are based on national, regional, and, in some cases, sub-regional polling projected onto the results of the last election. They do not pretend to predict individual ridings.

[OTTAWA – May 1, 2011] As we conclude Campaign 41 and await the public judgement, a few final comments are in order. Despite a bewildering array of contradictory evidence from the earlier polls it now appears that what was previously thought unimaginable has now become a point of consensus. The final estimates of party support including today's final sample are 33.9 points for the Conservatives, 31.2 for the NDP, 21.0 for the Liberals, 6.4 for the Bloc, and 6.0 for the Green Party.

When we adjust this based on an index which predicts the most likely to vote we arrive at 34.0 points for the Conservatives, 31.6 for the NDP, 20.8 for the Liberals, 6.4 for the Bloc, and 5.9 for the Green Party.

As shocking as those numbers would have seemed just a few weeks ago, they are now more or less stable and undoubtedly accurate. The only real question remaining, and frankly this is more a matter of anecdotal curiosity at this stage, is how these translate into the new seat distribution in Canada's next parliament. Recognising the vagaries of sampling error, vote splitting and other factors, we are going to provide an estimate at the national level which is couched around a somewhat arbitrary band of uncertainty.

After the ballots are counted tomorrow, we expect to see the following:
1) CPC: 130 to 146 seats
2) NDP: 103 to 123 seats
3) LPC: 36 to 46 seats
4) BQ: 10 to 20 seats
5) GP: 1 seat

For those who would prefer a point estimate, just take the midpoint of the zones (e.g. 138 seats in the case of the Conservative Party).

Along with other Canadians, we will await the conclusion of what has been the most exciting electoral race in recent history. If the results resemble our forecast, we are in for another tumultuous period as the powers that be and public opinion try and decide what governing relationships this will actually mean.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 02 May 11 - 09:29 AM

Wow!! This is interesting and wild.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 02 May 11 - 07:26 PM

Yes it is Beer. Gonna be very interesting over the next hours.

Those polls and predictions are ominous... I hope they are terribly wrong.

Fact is, like I said early on in this and other threads, peeps just think Iggy is a Yank business man that "came home" to fill his pockets and help his Yank relatives and buddies fill thier pockets.
I talked again today to a few elderly peeps that think this way. They are voting... though it doesn't matter shit here on accounta the riding's liberal will be elected. Dunno if that mentality will manifest itself in other ridings.

All I care is that Harper doesn't get a majority because I want medicare and someone with a heart to run this country.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 02 May 11 - 08:16 PM

Here is something we can have fun with later this evening or just to have a closer look tomorrow.
Ad.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/map/fullscreen.html#/

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 02 May 11 - 10:08 PM

Looks like the nightmare scenario's coming down.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ragdall
Date: 02 May 11 - 10:57 PM

Looks as if I'm not the only Canadian who was ticked about the Liberals forcing us to pay for another election?

It would be really great if representatives would concentrate on doing the work of the country, regardless of party, rather than using every opportunity to gain advantage in party politics.

rags

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 May 11 - 12:36 AM

I'm not a bit worried about "paying for another election". That's chickenfeed. I'm worried about paying the bills that will follow this election in the next few years.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 May 11 - 01:23 AM

We have the deeply sad situation in Canada that approximately 40% of the population can elect a majority government that would not be elected or supported by the other 60% of the population. That situation is undemocratic, unjust, and morally insupportable. It is created by the political party system itself, and that is the essential problem.

Political parties are self-aggrandizing competitive entities which seek power for its own sake, and they seek it selfishly and ruthlessly. They are, by definition, opposed to all other political parties, and seek to build themselve by destroying the other parties.

There is only one major party in this country that represents the "conservative" sector of the public, the 40% that I alluded to, and they have formed a majority in parliament. That is unjust.

There are 3 parties who represent about 54% of the public (Liberals, NDP, Green)...people would would definitely not vote Conservative, and the fact that there are 3 of them...each devoted to its own survival...means that 40% of the people in this country get a government which represents their approximate views after an election...and the other 60% do not.

Un-fucking-believable. And it has been happening ever since Reform and the PC's merged into a single party. Before that, they had no hope of winning an election, because THEIR constituency was split between 2 parties. The centre-left is now split between 3 parties, and the right walks away with a majority because of that, and ONLY because of that. It's what would happen in a USA election if the Democrats split into 2 or more parties. The Republicans would win a massive majority ever time.

If all political parties were abolished...if we were voting for independent, non-partisan individuals to form a parliament instead of voting for party blocs to jockey against one another in parliament, THEN we would have a working democracy in this country, one which would represent a majority of the people.

As it is, we have a travesty...a system which pretends to be representative, but which cannot be, given the present state of party politics in this country.

Political parties themselves are the disease. The only cure, as far as I can see, is to abolish them and vote for free individuals instead of political party members.

It's not going to happen. And I know it. Thus I am writing this merely to voice my own frustrations and my despair about the ruling system, rather like a caged dog who barks desperately at the world beyond his bars. And I know that too. There is nothing the dog can do. There is nothing most citizens can do. We are prisoners of an unworkable political system that does not represent us. Voting for political parties will only perpetuate the gross political injustice that has long infected and crippled this society and deprived us of any real possibility of truly representative government.

This is also true in other western democracies. Political parties are the death of real democracy, IMO, because they are inherently divisive and corrupt. They are organized gangs, out for their own gain. Like absolute monarchies, their day of tyrrany over the general public must end eventually...but I'm sorry to say it won't end during my lifetime. That's for sure. You know why? Because the political parties RUN this system, and they will not orchestrate their own demise...no more than a monarch would.

Only a complete social revolution of some kind (either peaceful or violent) can bring down a systemic tyranny like that. The ballot box can't do it, because the parties themselves control what happens AT the ballot box, and they will not legislate any change which surrenders their control.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 03 May 11 - 05:25 AM

By golly, the critter went an done it!

I had a feeling... Iggy... and the "forced" election... that's all people cared about.

Just shocking that the Bloc only took 4 ridings... shocking.

I'll bet NF is stunned. I wonder if they will get their power money backing now.

It's gonna be interesting to say the least.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 03 May 11 - 07:33 AM

Will be tough times ahead for Newfoundland I's think Gnu.

I'm also stunned by the results here in my riding. The Bloc has been in power by a very wonderful person since 2004. I truly expected that Claude DeBellefeuille would fly through once more. I guess my vote for the first time since 2004 helped make a difference.

NDP.23,978
BLOC.18,182
CON.7,049
LIB.4,559

Check the map above and see all the Orange in Quebec.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 03 May 11 - 08:44 AM

Yes, Beer... looks like the late smear tactic against the NDP backfired and the voters decided to let Jack off.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 03 May 11 - 08:58 AM

don't forget, we survived Brian Mulroney but the Progressive Conservative Party didn't

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 03 May 11 - 10:36 AM

This is one of those good-news/bad-news scenarios. The bad news is that things will have to get a lot worse before they get better. The good news is that things just got a lot worse.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:58 AM

I don't know Gnu. There are many people Gentlemen (Club)in Quebec and outside who have had direct experiences in a massage bed?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 May 11 - 01:25 PM

As I said in a pre-election post, Albertans could sit back and watch, the only question was whether Harper would get an unassailable majority.
He did.

Ignats essentially took the Liberals out of the game- no way he could garner the support needed. He has decided to go back to teaching; his sole asset is a mellifluous voice, I pity students who take his courses hoping to get information.

The NDP has a strong leader, I hope he will use his opposition position wisely.

The Bloc is dying; Quebecers see little future in that direction. The NDP took a large slice of the vote because the Conservatives, and to a lesser extent, the Liberals, are perceived as tools of the English-speaking establishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 May 11 - 01:30 PM

Harper has been lying to and putting the screws to Nfld since day one. At least now they know where they stand.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 03 May 11 - 01:40 PM

In the Red?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 May 11 - 01:56 PM

I don't see how they are any worse off. They would have been facing Federal cuts in any event.   If a Conservative had been elected in the province, then Harper would have just had a scapegoat to deliver the bad news which was what John Crosby, in spite of all the good he did for the Province ended up being. The fiscal problems with Medicare are a light at the end of the tunnel. A light at the front of a massive, speeding train. Harper will suffer and lose when the bills come through and Newfoundlanders will be seen as opposing him from day one. It is quite possible that Newfoundlanders will take the Liberal Party in a whole new direction, away from being dominated by intellectuals and toward populism.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 03 May 11 - 04:10 PM

""The Bloc is dying; Quebecers see little future in that direction.""

If it were only that simple.

If Harper was wise, and can put the high of the "big win" aside, he would see this as an opportunity, a rare chance to reach out to the elected NDP (and the Quebec people who chose them in numbers) to bring Quebec back into Canada for the long term. But, often party politics and egos come before the interests of the nation. During the election he seemed to belittle Laytons statements that he wished to being Quebec into the constitution.


I suspect we have not seen the end of a desire to separate in Quebec by some, and at times many.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 May 11 - 04:17 PM

"If Harper was wise"

Ah!

If Harper was wise, he would have got a majority the last time.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 May 11 - 04:27 PM

The people of Quebec--in larger numbers--have turned their backs on the Bloc, and rightfully so. We Speak Quebec has a hollow ring, even in this province. Duceppe has provided NO leadership, and a separate Quebec is not in the cards anytime soon. That is clear by a drop in seats from 56 to 4.

Poor people in Canada are about to take a hit like never before. The result I think will be violent. I hoped it would never come to that in my country--but after this election, there isn`t much left to revere about Canada. Big business has won. imo

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 03 May 11 - 04:39 PM

999... "Big business has won. imo"

Indeed. BUT, next election in four years... well, five on accounta Harper will break his own law... the NDP could actually take it. If they do, they might get us out of Afghanistan a few years after that.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 03 May 11 - 05:16 PM

I cant really understand where the Libs and NDPs were in voting in a manner that caused an election. The polls put Harper in the lead for some time, and he stayed there through the election. I suspect, knowing that, he was quite happy to have the election, not be seen to force it hmself and take a shot at a majority, which was in the cards as a possibility from day one of the election call.

Anyway as to Quebec. If the election were in reverse, and the west had few if any members in government, as Quebec has, how represented would they feel? I suspect Alberta can remember the isolation they felt in the Trudeau years? There was even a separation movement in that general area during the period. I sduspect the governing folks should not forget, and be sensative to, that feeling in a society.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 03 May 11 - 05:38 PM

Now the jokes start.


SO - You think the NDP is surging ahead in the election campaign?????

Do not get too excited.

It is only premature eJackuLayton.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 May 11 - 07:28 PM

The Trudeau years were not anathema to all Albertans. Many of us who worked during that time in scientific endeavors remember them as happy, productive years.
The riding now held by Stephen Harper was represented by a Liberal.

Employment was high, and Alberta concerns capable of research- the major oil companies, who cooperated in exploration in new areas with PetroCanada- may have had mixed feelings, but benefitted from having their research dollars matched, and a chance to share in Arctic Islands, Arctic offshore and provincial offshore exploration that they felt they could not afford on their own. Oil sands research, research for construction of ice islands for Beaufort offshore drilling, detailed study of Canadian stratigraphy and paleontology with reference to resource exploration and other projects went forward during the Trudeau-Liberal years. Some of the work done during those years is now coming to fruition. Canada is now the main source of petroleum imported by the U. S., and Alberta benefits from exploration and engineering that began in those days.

Some small concerns, interested only in the quick buck and unable to mount useful research or pay for expensive exploration, complained bitterly because they were unable to profit from opportunities afforded by government support. Unfortunately it is the voice of these interests that is remembered.

When the support stopped, research conducted by the major companies left for the U. S. and UK. The federal and provincial labs that were left lost the cooperative efforts of the professionals in industry who either left or became redundant.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 03 May 11 - 08:33 PM

Q... and now, we... *I*... fear that will all be sold to The States, along with Medicare and other programs. Maybe it won't happen but Harper has "said it" in the past and Mulroney did it.

Funny, or not so, I said "The States"... I should have said China. Aren't they buying Alberta?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 03 May 11 - 08:46 PM

Over 80 percent of the 60+ percent of the Quebec folks who voted did not vote for the Stephen Harpers government. Something to consider.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST
Date: 03 May 11 - 10:48 PM

Democracy certainly has failed us! 40% wanted Harper, 60% did not but he will now rule "his way"! Cretien used to brag about his four majorities as well, but the percentages were not with him either. Nobody in power ever wants to change a system that may limit their control. Some voted for Harper believing crap about him being able to fix the economy. The day after his election the stock market fell like a rock on a day that it showed a gain south of the border. Go figure!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:36 PM

The above GUEST was me. My cookie was stolen and I suspect CSIS.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 May 11 - 12:08 AM

Chretien couldn't lose when the conservatives were split into 2 parties (Reform and PC). Harper can't lose when the centre-left is split into 3 parties (Liberal and NDP and Green)....not unless he screws up so totally that his own base abandons him en masse.

They both pretended to have a "mandate" when the peculiar nature of multiparty politics was working in their favour. They both lied about that. Neither one of them had the solid mandate they claimed to have.

No party that wins in this ridiculous first-past-the-post system has any motivation to change the way the system works, because it works to their advantage whenever they're winning. And only the winners have the power to change it!

That is a Catch-22. And it's a curse.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 May 11 - 09:41 AM

Share the pain!

In our last election we lost both houses in the Legislature and the Governor's office big time to conservative candidates.

Interesting that the NDP is now the second largest party in Canada.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Charmion
Date: 04 May 11 - 12:27 PM

Uhhh, not exactly, Charley; the NDP has the second-largest caucus in Parliament, which is not at all the same thing.

The Liberal Party of Canada is a massive old warhorse of an organization with tens of thousands of card-carrying members, many of them signed up for ten bucks a head as the riding associations cranked up for a party convention. Its tentacles reach into every city, town, village and wide spot on the highway from coast to coast to coast.

The NDP, on the other hand, is just emerging from 50 years of dependence on organized labour for both funding and popular support, which meant that it moved away from its rural origins in the Commonwealth Cooperative Federation to become an urban movement anchored in southern Ontario. It has very little grassroots support in Quebec, the North or in rural ridings anywhere in Canada.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 May 11 - 01:41 PM

People tend to swing to the NDP in large numbers when they are absolutely fed up with both the Liberals and Conservatives. It's partly a protest vote. That happened in Ontario, for instance, when Bob Rae got elected premier. That does not translate into a large sustainable and longterm base of support for the NDP.

Give the Conservatives and/or the Liberals enough rope (time in power) and they will eventually hang themselves. If they succeed in hanging themselves simultaneously, the NDP can benefit greatly and come running up the middle between them.

But it tends to be a short term situation. If the NDP gets into office, the public's anger will soon shift toward them, and their base will shrink back down to a relatively small core of faithful NDP supporters. And then the Liberals or Conservatives will return to their usual primacy.

What really needs to be done is to merge the NDP and the Liberals into a single party. Sadly, though, I can't see it happening. They're both too stuck on their established identities to have the humility to do that. They both fear the loss of their historical identity in the process. Together, they could easily defeat the Conservatives. Apart, they are in a tragically weak position to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 04 May 11 - 02:21 PM

Bob Rae... Bob Rae... where have I heard that name before... OH, YEAH... the Liberals chose Iggy over him... twits.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 04 May 11 - 03:50 PM

I wonder if Harpy will chuck Jack out of Stornoway and sell it? After all, he said it should go. Of course, he did live there even after he said he wouldn't. Lying seems to come easy to him... along with breaking the law, even his own law.

Sour grapes? Yes. Very sour. Maybe I am just scared.

Then again, he could become the greatest PM ever.

I'll be over in the corner, watching, hoping and shaking in my boots.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 May 11 - 04:07 PM

Albertans are very happy with the election results.
Good from an industry perspective because it means stability over the next four-five years.
Good for the oil patch, whose growth will continue and pipelines will go through as planned.
Opposition to tanker accessibility on the west coast is defeated. "And good riddance to that," says The Calgary Herald.

The towers will continue to rise in downtown Calgary, as the city starts on its second million.

The value of my house, in an easily accessible location, will continue to rise.

Happy Times in Alberta continue!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 04 May 11 - 04:14 PM

For Q

When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

Cree Prophecy

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 May 11 - 05:20 PM

Ah, yes, but while the money lasts, you can eat steak every day. That's what they're counting on in Alberta.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 04 May 11 - 05:37 PM

But, the west is gonna party untll the cows come home... and there's a shitload of cows in Alberta... Oylmel is selling hot dogs here like hot dogs. Imagine that. They can sell hot dogs here from 3000 miles away cheaper than NBers can from 3 miles away. THAT is BIG business.

And it sucks the big one. Large corporations putting... ahhhh fuck it. Sell it all to the big companies. Sell it to the Yanks, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Germans... fuck Canada... every man and woman for themselves. I am so sick of it. Since Pierre stood up for this country and was shat upon by the the concerted fronts of big business and the their press lackies who duped the Canuck public it's gone down the tubes. I have relatives and friends I can stay with in La Belle if it gets any worse and the Quebecers say the ultimate "fuck you assholes".

I know I will regret that gobble but turkeys tend to gobble when excited and pissed off.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 May 11 - 05:45 PM

Another example of how the First Past the Post electoral system distorts results, and is li8able to give a country a government most people voted against - the Canadian Conservatives got only 39.6% of the popular votes, but an overwhelming parliamentary majority.

I only hope our referendum in the UK gets rid of that system here.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 May 11 - 06:18 PM

Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba were above 50% for the Conservatives, the 44% Conservative in the elephant Ontario helped, and the Prairie provinces went to bed happy.
Some sort of proportional representation would give cityfolks too damn much; even now they have too much influence.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 04 May 11 - 07:27 PM

Cityfolk... I agree in a way. Just hope Stevieboy don't mess with health care, seniors, poor, and so on.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 04 May 11 - 07:56 PM

""Albertans are very happy with the election results""

Hardly surprising. Time will tell if absolute power corrupts or not?
I sincerely hope not.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 04 May 11 - 08:47 PM

Analysis
Canada's new electoral divide: It's about the money
PATRICK BRETHOUR
VANCOUVER— From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
The newly drawn electoral map is split, but the cleavage is not left versus right, nor is it Quebec versus the rest of Canada.

The true divide, the new reality of Canadian politics, is between the economic heartlands that the Conservatives now dominate throughout the country and the economic hinterlands won by the NDP.

Liberal-NDP vote splits help propel Conservatives to majority The energy powerhouses of Alberta and the B.C. Interior are Conservative, while B.C.'s struggling north coast is solidly NDP. The suburbs and thriving technology centres of Ontario are deep blue territory, but the north of the province is orange. Quebec's rural areas are largely held by New Democrats, but the entrepreneurial hub of the Beauce remains a Tory bastion.

With Canada still shaking off the effects of the recession, the Conservatives were clearly looking to herd economically worried voters into their column at the start of the campaign. The party was aiming not just at the haves, looking to safeguard their affluence, but at the just-hads, aching to reclaim their recently lost prosperity.

That message resonated strongly in Southern Ontario, where the manufacturing industries are still reeling and voters are no mood to take risks. "In Southwestern Ontario, they are not screwing around with the economy," said Greg Lyle, managing director at Innovative Research Group. (Although the NDP also benefited in a more limited way from those same worries, maintaining its traditional strength in Windsor and Hamilton.)

Then came the unexpected surge of the NDP, and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's eleventh-hour appeal to Liberal voters with economically conservative leanings, often called blue Liberals. "Let me speak very clearly to traditional Liberal voters: I know many of you do not want NDP policies. That you do not want NDP tax hikes," Mr. Harper said on Sunday.

The message: Only we can protect your prosperity.

The result is that the Conservatives were able to achieve in 2011 what eluded them in 2008, a coalition of economically conservative-minded voters who cast their ballots based on pocketbook issues rather than concerns over cultural issues, including the Tories' supposed leanings toward social conservatism.

Those blue Liberals were the missing element in the Conservative coalition. In the 1990s, they were the foundation of the successive Liberal sweeps of Ontario. So long as they remained with the Liberals, Mr. Harper would be shut out of the urban heart of most big Canadian cities.

But the rise of the NDP, which siphoned off progressive-minded Liberals, clearly spooked a sizable number of blue Liberals, causing them to bolt to Mr. Harper in the last weekend of campaigning, said Nik Nanos, president and chief executive officer of Nanos Research.

It was clear at the start of the campaign that there were a large number of Liberals who would be prone to bolting: Nearly a quarter of committed Liberals (largely older men) ranked Mr. Harper, rather than Michael Ignatieff, as the most competent federal leader. Mr. Nanos said that figure is a clear proxy for the extent of the blue Liberal vote.

At the end of the campaign, as the Liberal vote dropped precipitously, so did the ranks of blue Liberals within their long-time party – just 16 per cent of Ignatieff supporters ranked Mr. Harper as the most competent leader. However, that figure also indicates that the Tories have yet to win over all of the Liberals' economically conservative supporters.

The task of luring blue Liberals is not yet complete, and the Conservatives' ability to woo voters on economic matters was far more limited in Quebec than in other parts of the country – NDP momentum simply overwhelmed the appeal of the Tory economic message. But the reduced Conservative foothold in Quebec is in that part of the province that is strongly for free trade, and that produced libertarian cabinet minister Maxime Bernier.

Unfinished it may be, but the new Conservative coalition now dominates more than just the natural-resources powerhouses of the West – it also has strengthened its lead in the areas containing the brainy industries of Ontario, in the prosperous, immigrant-heavy suburban communities and even, most startlingly, in the wealthy ridings in the heart of Toronto.

Those voters have delivered Mr. Harper his majority government. Keeping it, and keeping them, will depend on the Conservatives proving that their only agenda is prosperity.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 04 May 11 - 09:04 PM

"I got into politics seven years ago to try to do something useful," he says. "I hope to do something useful next. … "What is it that I might do, I don't know. And I don't need to know today."

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 04 May 11 - 09:08 PM

The quote was from Ken Dryden, reflecting on his defeat.

He also said
""It's humbling when people say they won't vote for you...They are not responding for a reason that is a very good reason so far as they are concerned...So I'm missing something and I need to understand it better....There are things that are going to require a lot of thinking by a lot of people.""


On Tuesday, he woke early in defeat. He grabbed one of his red campaign signs, pasted a message on it, then drove to the corner of Bathurst St. and Wilson Ave., where he held the sign and waved at passing cars. The message was two words long: "Thank you."

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Mooh
Date: 04 May 11 - 10:22 PM

The only time I met Ken Dryden he was a genuine class act, personable and kind. The man knows which side of his bread is buttered.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: GUEST
Date: 05 May 11 - 09:02 AM

Only 5.8 million, 17% of Canada's 34 million population, voted for the religious right wing party. Their votes will cause unimaginable damage to this country in the next five years. By then, half of those who voted for the party will want to shoot themselves in their heads with their unregistered firearms.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 May 11 - 09:32 AM

I see the Green party got one tenth of the vote that the Conservatives did, 576,221 as against 5,832,401 - which meant that the Greens got one seat, and the Conservatives 167.

That's "democracy" Canadian (and British) style...

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Charmion
Date: 05 May 11 - 11:19 AM

I always wanted to vote for Ken Dryden, but he's a Liberal and he never ran in my riding. I would have voted for him if he was running for the Greens or the Rhinoceros Party or the Marxist-Leninists.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Beer
Date: 05 May 11 - 11:37 AM

Hay GUEST? What is the name of the religious party. This dumb ass would like to know.
Ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 May 11 - 11:59 AM

A few years ago I was in the security line up in the Ottawa Airport. Jack Layton was in front of me and Ken Drydon behind.

Layton a shorter guy, was smiling widely and dressed to kill. I suspect to get maximum public recognition. He was randomly picked to go through the enhanced security check in front of us, and seemed pleased to get the attention.

On the other hand, Dryden, a tall big fellow, dressed like any guy on the street, seemed to be trying to escape attention and blend in (which is difficult for a guy his size). I asked him, "are you Ken Drydon?". He replied in a very low voice yes, as if to escape any recognition from the airport crowd. I found it a real contrast. I asked him a few questions, and fropm the brief encounter, he seemed like a really nice guy (regardless of the banner he worked under, on the ice or off).

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 05 May 11 - 04:10 PM

Dryden. I'd vote for the best goalie to ever lace up. If he hadn'a broke his back he'd still be stoppin pucks. The guy was amazing.

Good laywer and honest politician too, so I hear.

I never forgot... my best bud Milfred admitted he was better than even Cheevers one early morn at school when NObody else was around. I asked him if he would say that when the other kids arrived... "fuck you." Dunno if he was just fuckin with me or not.

Yes, that's an odd story to tell. Kinda like what might happen if Harper dismantles Medicare, senior care, CPP... it's like that there shootin yerself in the head when yer vote MAYBE shoots yerself in the ass. We'll see... won't we?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 May 11 - 04:32 PM

The speculation begins

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 05 May 11 - 07:28 PM

I have a suspicion feeling that there is going to be "a big political smell" coming around sometime in the next four years?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ollaimh
Date: 05 May 11 - 09:32 PM

now we are in for it. the tories have brought down the two biggest deficits in canadian history and they propose to stay in deficit untill 2014, and that;s a flaretty predictopn. he has never issued a budget statement that was anywhere near to accurate. so we will be back to mulroney territory with a total debt so large the wortld will start pressuring us to do a greece or portugual and cut virtually all scoial services. and that's exactly what the right wingers want. they know thau can't get elected by openly proposing those cuts but they can force it with debt.

canadian gave the tories credit for good financial management when all they did was inherit a decade of surpluses and a sound regulated banking system. the tories opposed the liberal bank regulations when they were inoposition. however people have short memories and the liberals did it to thenselves with the sponsorship scandal.

i didn't believe the liberals could fall below fifty seats--roughly. they may be done. i used the think the only purpose the ndp served was to get tories into government both federally and provincially, bnow maybe its time for the liberals to go. unite the left.

harper has been themost dishonest politician in modern canadian history and has been a fiscal disaster and no seems to care. image is apparantly all that matters.

i didn't like uggy as liberal leader and his getting apointed rather than having a convention was awfull but i din't expect the libs to fall below seventy seats and never below fifty. maybe now the backroom boys will wake up and stop trying to manipilate hand picked leaders, dion is looking pretty good right now, at least he had a clear plarform. iggy wanted to get elected without standing for much of anything. so now the flaretty nightmare of spending like drunkards and refusing to tax

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: ollaimh
Date: 06 May 11 - 01:27 PM

beer, the dumb ass religious party id the regressive conservatives. they have sold a deceptive message of economic pragmatism but have not been fiscally responsible--they fooled people like the neo cons have in the usa, and yes they are controlled at the highest levels by right wing neo con evangical christians, and most importantly american oil industry money--who are mostly neo con right wing christians.

there is a book about harps giving passes to parliament to several totally uneducated and unqualified lobbists except for their evangical rant.

most important id harper has been a lifetime professional flack for the us oil money. he has never held a real job, just been a political lobyist and politician. he has no personal achievements in the real world. this used tomatter. but in the world of spin and smear our media and most of the public accept that a man's world class adedemic amnd writinf achievements should be held against him while harpers lack of exclence in any field except being tom flannagans bum boy, is without criticism.

to q who aparently thinks the west is being ripped off by the east, that's neo con nonsense. the west is rich. they would never be established without the estern governmant producing the wheat hybrid(number one northern fife--and all the triticales) and the railroad at great deficit.in return evil ottawa gave them control of their natural resources--such eveil rip offs!!!

albertans have tjrown away that heritage. but if they want to remain "stupid to the last drop" there's nothing we can do about it. they are twisted out there they baulked at tthe governmant of canada owing one of the syncrude plants, while now they are negotiating to sell one to the governmant of china. the political spin is orwellian out in alberta. and yeah i lived there doing drilling and blasting when i was young. back then i couldn't believe the right wing ignorant nonsense i heard every day. people really thought that the east was stealing their oil and that the "oil industry strike" was about ottawa. it was about stopping alberta from ever cgarging world level royalities. norway--with a resource about a third the size collected about 90 billion royalities in the decade from 1990 to 2000, alberta with three times the oil resource collected 30 billion from 1980 to 2010. les than a sixth of the wolrd price. they are giving away their scarce resource to the american oil companies. the swet crude is almost gone. then they will have almost nothing in the heritage fund. we remain the only industrial nation without a national energy policy--and the idea is still a dirty word out there.

harper is the creature of us oil companies. that's where the money to fund his early career and the national citizens coalition came from, anf the money to start the reform party and many neo con lobby groups.

after the oil is gone alberta will have one of the most polluted land scapes in the world and they will have to come to us eastern bastards to clean it up for them. read the book "stupid to the last drop" about our oil policy. it wan the national business book award.

the american oil industry is keeping canada a colony and harper is the roi negre for foreign intereests. these interestds includ the cia. preston manning was employed by a cia funded think tank before he went into politics==he even admitted this in an interview on cbc but out tame media ignored it.

when i lived in alberta it was the only place(outside of toronto folk musicians) where i was regularily called a frog--its an ignorant and bigotted place and now they have brought this ignorance and bigotry to the national stage, making us a permant colony of the american oil industry.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 May 11 - 01:33 PM

"harper has been themost dishonest politician in modern canadian history"

He's got a long way to go before he catches up with Lyin Brian but he's tryin.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 May 11 - 04:24 PM

Oh, yeah, easterners always got their tin cup stuck in the west's face.
in 2011-12, Ontaiario will get $2.2 billion of Ab, BC and Sk dollars in equalization payments, NS and NB between them get $2.6 billion, and PQ $7.8 billion of the west's hard won cash.
(Should have encouraged PQ to secede when they had the push a few years back)

The old No. 1 wheat hasn't meant much for years, since Canada became a middling (to minor) producer and Russian, Japanese and other modifications have diluted it.

Wheat Production
China- 115 million tons
India- 81
Russia- 62
USA- 60
Canada- 27
EU- 138

The useful railroad, Canadian Pacific, is public, headquartered in Calgary, and about half of its stock owned in USA and abroad

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 May 11 - 04:53 PM

The engineers, wood, fish and coal from my back yard built the St. Lawrence Seayway and the railway. You Western bastards would still be livin in thatch roof huts and eatin fuckin turnip and beet stew with a few Prarie Chickens and Dogs fer breakfast, dinner an supper if it wasn't fer the likes of us.

Heheheheheee. You know what I'm talkin about. NNWW. (Inside joke folks.)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: bobad
Date: 06 May 11 - 05:17 PM

Yeah!....what gnu says, you friggin' bunch of goat ropers.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 May 11 - 06:02 PM

Gnu, you forgot our staple- gophers bourguignon

(We et most of the prairie chickens years ago)

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 06 May 11 - 06:23 PM

"easterners always got their tin cup stuck in the west's face".

When the prairies had "very few pennies to rub together", eastern Canada, and, mostly Ontario factory workers, filled the prairies tin cups to fund the transportation links and pipelines, so that the western provinces could ship their agricultural , oil and gas and other stuff out. Government (on the eastern dime) even paid a heafty transportation subsidy to get their stuff, like wheat, to eastern markets.

Funny how memories are so short, when folks get new found change to jingle in rtheir pockets.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 May 11 - 06:31 PM

"mostly Ontario factory workers"

Eddy! I am talking well before that. The Uppity Canucks got their way paved on YOUR wood, wind and water.

I was making a joke in my last post, as was Q in his earlier post, but there is a ring of truth in there.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 May 11 - 06:54 PM

In any case, I dislike where this thread may be going if it takes off from being humourous or about what is going on in the Uppitiest of Canada at present.

Perhaps a new thread about The Harper Years might be in order. Or not... it might be toooo much of a downer. Hmmmm... just calling it that is a downer as it reflects negatively on our new leader and we shouldn't prejudge. He might be a warm and fuzzy kitten or a furball hacked all over us. Who's to know? Perhaps a Canuck Politics & Pissmoaning thread?

I propose this thead die.

Yays? One. Carried. gnightgnu.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 May 11 - 06:56 PM

We had all better watch out- Justin won in his riding.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 06 May 11 - 07:00 PM

In 1870 Rupert's Land was purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company by the Dominion of Canada. This included most of the praries as well as Northwest Territories. Canada at the time consisted of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. This was partly done to prevent the Yanks from buying it like they did Alaska.
Therefore us Eastern Bastards bought it and we damn well still own it! :-}

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 May 11 - 07:19 PM

This JustIN... ya got THAT right Clary (a Maritime thing). It seems like history is repissing itself. Harper fucks over everybody and Trudeau saves everybody. Gee, I wonder if I could get a job on the writing staff? Probably not on accounta they got it all written up long ago.

Hey, Brian... you wanna go to Florida and play some golf? Sure Jean, we'll take one of my jets, as long as I can come play at your course when the grass is green, eh la?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: gnu
Date: 06 May 11 - 07:24 PM

Sandy... was Ungava in the same kettle?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 06 May 11 - 07:55 PM

No, Ungava is just a part of Labrador that Quebec got from Newfoundland in 1927.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Ed T
Date: 06 May 11 - 09:34 PM

""In Canada there has been some rivalry between Arctic Quebec and the Canadian Maritimes over who has the world's highest ocean tides. The Canadian Hydrographic Service has declared a tie between the famous tides of the Bay of Fundy and those of Ungava Bay on the northern coast of Quebec. It has long been recognised that the tides at Burntcoat Head (Nova Scotia) on the shore of Minas Basin, Bay of Fundy can in extreme reach a range of 17 metres. After 200 days of measurements at Leaf Basin in the southwest corner of Ungava Bay it is estimated that in the extreme the tides there could have a range of 16.8 metres. It is of course possible that points near Burntcoat Head or Leaf Basin, as yet unmeasured by tide gauges, could have slightly higher tides so lacking further data a dead heat has been declared.""

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: BluesmanJames
Date: 07 May 11 - 09:04 AM

I am wondering just wondering. I have never been to Alberta (Ian Tyson is still there I am told) but Toronto,Ottawa, Kingston Ontario, Montreal and Quebec City I have been to and the people I have met do not strike me as Radical Conservatives. I beleive (and time will tell) if this turns out like Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan where the public is going through "real buyers remorse" regarding the election. Harper is much more radical than he appears and I do not believe the good people of Canada are with him on many of his ideas. Once he is unmasked, lets see what happens.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 07:55 PM

In Alberta, little if any political discussion.

In Calgary, some unhappiness among travel specialists and businessmen that Emirates was not allowed landing rights in western cities such as Calgary, and the resultant denial of Canadian landing rights in Qatar.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada Election
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 08:28 PM

May not be pertinent in this thread, but diamond production long ago passed the $1.5 million level per day. I cannot find the figures after 2008.
Two prospects, the Ekati (BHP Billiton of Australia and two prospectors) and Diavik, (Britain's Rio Tinto and Canadian Aber) are the biggest producers, with Jericho (Canadian) and Snap Lake-4 (De Beers) catching up. I haven't found figures for them or for the Victor in Ontario, but I haven't looked at company reports.

Canada is the number 3 producer, and is moving higher rapidly.
Ar least 100 million acres are under claim.

The mining is open pit except for Snap Lake, which is an underground mine.

Action in Nunavut and Northwest Territories sees more of the tax revenue going directly to the Federal government, unlike the Oil Sands, where the tax revenue goes to the provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, etc.).
The Victor diamond prospect in Ontario, owned by De Beers, will pay taxes to Ontario. It is open pit.