alctel

Ok, lets agree to disagree and leave it that

Did you actually read any of the points people have being made about why so many elections are being called, because of confidence motions? Or why Harper and his cabinet have done a terrible job? Or are you too busy making up words like 'fiberals' Politics isn't like a sports game, you can't just cheer on the red team because thats who you support, you have to hold people accountable

They do use it to their advantage? Thats why they bought the 'COILITION GOVERNEMTS ARE UNANTURAL AND A POWER GRAB' line last year and repeated it, despite colilition governments being extremely common in parlimentary systems. No one calls him out on his lies, at all, otherwise they will lose all access to the government. If you want me to reference your examples, the red star is hardly a msm outlet, and the Globe and Mail and CTV are both owned by CTVglobemedia which bankrolls right-wing candidates and has ties to the Fraser Institute which is what I was saying before. The CBC isn't particularly leftist either. Read what I said again - he didn't cause the global recession, but he sure as hell made it a lot worse for Canada. Also I am not a liberal and won't be voting for them, please stop presuming that I am! I especially don't like Iggy Well please start picking my arguments apart then if they are so full of holes, especially about how Harpers cabinet mismanaged the recession economy and then lied about it repeatedly Also explain what you mean by 'typical lefty' 'typical lib' etc, since you use that almost every sentence

You really can't be argueing that a PM and cabinent that refuses to talk to the press and does all its dealing in secret is a GOOD thing? Really? And as for bias, Canada has one of the most right wing media in the Western World and it ranks extremely low on the free press ranking - 90% of print media and almost all radio and TV stations are owned by one of two familys. Harper gets away with SO MUCH and hardly any of it is reported on, instead non-stories like the wafer thing gets brought up (which was a load of crap by the way, he was put in a terrible position and I would have done the same thing in his place). The CBC is pretty much the saving grace at the moment, but its had to fire a bunch of journalists due to having its budget cut recently so the news quality is going to go downhill. The difference is that the BQ, Greens, NDP and even the liberals are a lot closer to each other than the Conservatives, and especially Harper (who was a Reform party member and pretty much the furthest right PM Canada's ever had) He wasn't responsible for it, I never said that. That was stupid free-market advocates in the US and greedy banks slashing the regulations regarding loans that were in place since the 30's depression (to stop things like this happening again). He DID make it far worse by cutting GST RIGHT before the recession draining all the emergency funds, and then completely screwing up the stimulus package which meant we are only just limping out of it, despite not having any of our banks collapse. Not to mention the finance minister lying about where the money went, certain places not getting stimulus funds because 'harper doesn't like them' (actual quote about why Toronto got virtually nothing), etc etc Well the conservatives took large amounts of money ear-marked for green energy projects and northern first nation communities and just gave it to their oil sand buddies in Alberta. As well as calling a 300million election weeks after promising not to do so. Does that count as stealing? This was an old Republican joke from America, nice to see it got this side of the border eventually. If she really would have wanted to join the conservative party she would have given the homeless man $5 to do her chores, and kept the 45 bucks for herself, spent it all on jewellery and then complained how lazy the homeless man was.

He is basing these new laws on the American system, he also really wants to privatise the prisons. Harper is only taking an interest in Arctic Sovereignty now the ice is melting opening up the North West passage, and he's not doing anything to improve the lives of First Nations people up there - he is just building a couple of shiny new (expensive) boats. Harper keeps tacking on confidence motions to all the bills he passes. The other parties pass it (no matter how much they dislike it) or an election is called. Then Harper fills the airwaves with stuff about how the other parties are 'making a power grab' Well thats what the stimulus plan was supposed to do, most of it hasn't got out to people yet due to Harpers cabinet being awful he didn't say that, he said that the majority of Canadians didn't vote for him, which is true. Only about 35% did. How has he done a great job? As I said up there he and his cabinet failed to acknowledge there was a serious problem until October, then completely failed to respond to the recession, his finance minster was caught flat out lying about how bad the deficit was, created the largest federal deficit in Canadian history after running on a campaign of no deficits (this is after obliterating the surplus and contingency funds with an ill-advised and cynical GST cut), cut the Charter Challenge fund severely, like Mulroney before him and was caught giving money earmarked for research and green energy stimulus to bail out the Oil Sands companies when they started making a loss. And this is all with the giant head start Canada had on most countries because our banks didn't collapse that's thanks to all the regulation we have (that Harper opposed in 1998) And that's just financial stuff without even going into how he relaxed environmental planning laws (so that companies now have the power to decide THEMSELVES if they break planning laws), outright LIED about the attempted coalition government last year (he relied on people not knowing how Parliamentary governments work) and sending a memo to senators to intentionally make the senate dysfunctional. i.e. "forget" to show up to meetings, schedule meetings during inopportune times, "lose" communications, etc. The worst part is that he prohibits MPs from speaking to constituents and the press in their own words (all communications must be vetted by the PMO), refuses to appear on Canadian news channels citing concerns about "bias" and "unfair coverage" despite evidence to the contrary, yet appears on the Fox News Channel regularly so its actually really hard to find solid infomation about stuff his governments doing, its all shrouded in secrecy!

We came out of it better despite Harper, not because of him. Like I said, if he'd managed to shoot down the regulations that we have on our banks then we'd been in deep deep trouble. No, what happened is that they got rid of all the banking regulations that stopped predatory loans, allowing the banks to go hog wild and give terrible advice and terrible mortgages to people. These were designed with deceptively low rates at first, that then got jacked up 4 to 5 times the original interest rate. People couldn't pay them and defaulted, so banks packaged up all these 'high risk' loans and sold them to other banks, who packaged them up with other similar toxic assists and sold them back, effectively creating money out of thin air. When enough people lost their house the entire thing came crashing down and the 'invisible money' vanished (or more exactly, it never existed). It was entirely the fact that the 'free market' was allowed to run rampant that caused the collapse in the first place. Canada avoided the giant banking collapse that followed because our banks are heavily regulated by the government, and weren't allowed to give out such predatory loans. The US is nowhere near socialist, AT ALL, they have a terrible terrible privatised health and prison system (which noone else in the developed world has) and the fact that all the right wing talking heads are spouting that is pretty sad, since they have no idea what the word means obviously. That link just says that they are trying to force the bill through. I'll dig up some reports from around the world that show mandatory minimum sentences are terrible ideas. (for example the proposed legislation means that if you are caught with a certain about of marijuana (I think a 1/4?) its automatic jail time. Do you really think thats a good idea?) Thanks for the discussion by the way!

His 'tough on crime' policy is a travesty - they tried that stuff in the US and look what happened - crime rate through the roof, massive expenses on prison and 1 in 10 males have done time at some point! Mandatory minimum sentences DO NOT WORK and in fact make things a lot worse in most cases - there is a mountain of data from other countries that support this. edit: not to say that Iggy doesn't suck - he does but he is better (barely) than Harper edit2: I LOVE talking about politics by the way, and no offence is meant to anyone

Harper keeps releasing confidence motions when parliment votes on bills. The other parties either have to pass the bill (which most of the time they, along with 60% of the country dislike) or by law an election is called. I think Harpers government has completely smashed the record, they are supposed to be used in dire emergencies only but he is calling them on EVERYTHING... I HATE HATE Harper and the mess he has got Canada into, but he is damn good at getting his own way considering that he only gets 35% of the vote, he is an excellent politician, even if he is a terrible leader. Actually it pretty much his fault that it was so bad. Canada had a 'recession fund' of reserve money stashed away so if the worst came to the worst we could spend our way out of it. Harper decides to cut the GST by 2%, which drains all the money we had saved and then 6 months later the recession happened. He then tries to pass a TERRIBLE stimulus plan that does almost nothing and his finance minister is caught lying about how much debt Canada is actually in. If he'd actually done nothing it would be an improvement. The only reason that it wasn't even worse is that our banks were fine, due to extremely strong regulation which was put in place in the 40's and 50's. Harper and his conservative colleagues tried to get rid of these regulations a few years back (believing in the power of the free market), but luckily failed, otherwise our banks would be collapsing all over the place just like the US. And don't even get me started on how he waived environmental laws and protections so the oil sands can carry on poisoning SK, manitoba and Northern Ontario

The Bush white house asked the EPA some years back to do a report on whether CO2 was a pollutant (this is years after most of the other western governments had done their own studies and found that it was). The EPA did a extensive study, found that it was a majorr factor in climate change and emailed the full report to the white house, who refused to open it because it disagreed with what they wanted to hear. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/25epa.html is the full story. Yes CO2 is a natural gas, but we are pumping a TON of it into the atmosphere and overloading the natural carbon sinks that the planet has.

The EPA classified Carbon Dioxide as pollution http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/40422 It would have been done years ago but as stated in an above story the Bush administration refused to open the email with the findings, heh. Here is more info about the acid rain caused by the oil sands - http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix...738&k=66051 Its really really polluting but its so hard to get hard data about since the conservatives refuse to commission a study so its left to provincial governments to do their own ones, and they don't have the resources. Also I really am not a fan of cap-and-trade either, its a neo-liberal compromise designed to get businesses to go along with reducing their emissions based along the lines of 'the free-market is always right!!' which is a concept I find ridiculous. Its a bit of a crappy compromise that noone likes except big companies who get to make more money off of it

Oh it'll be here in 10 years still, just most of the salmon will have died off and there is a good chance that the eco-system in large areas of the ocean will have collapsed. It is actually possible to do something about it - luckily the planet is pretty awesome at sorting itself out and given half a chance will regenerate itself pretty handily as long as its not too badly damaged (i.e the existing carbon sinks are damaged beyond repair or outpaced by positive feedback loops) Oh and regarding past ecological problems, remember the Ozone Layer disappearing? Due to the ban on CFCs and other emission regulations the depletion rate slowed down significantly, and is in fact expected to start regenerating itself sometime in the next 20 years. So we can make a difference! I don't quite get what you mean here - I try to do what I can (I don't own a car, cycle everywhere, grow as much of my own food as I can etc) but I know for various reasons a lot of people don't have those options at all. For the record, I think Nuclear Power is awesome and I have no idea why the left in Canada is so against it (I blame the Simpsons, lol). I dunno what you mean by cornering me either? Since you mentioned Acid rain, it was a MAJOR problem back in the day and the situation vastly improved - however recently due to the Oil Sands it has started again, and blowing West into SK, Manitoba and even Northern Ontario, where it is killing all the fish. http://www.ec.gc.ca/acidrain/acidfact.html It is a major problem because it is also poisoning the water supplies of remote communities in those areas as well as killing the fish

Actually, you have been doing all the name-calling so far, calling me smug and all kinds of other things! And have you actually read anything we have posted, or do you keep conjuring up strawmen? The Tar Sands are awful by the way - they are polluting the crap out of Alberta, Manitoba and SK, while the federal government has waived industrial standards and changed the environmental policy surrounding it. In a time when most countries are starting to move away from oil, it doesn't really make much sense to try to hang on to them, especially since the price of oil dropped so low (Alberta is about to start running a deficit again). Canada has huuuuuuge amounts of sun, land, wind and coastline, if it wanted to it could lead the way in alternative energy and research instead of relying on digging stuff out of the ground and selling it.

Outside of North America its pretty well accepted that Climate Change is happening, its man-made, and its bad. The fact its still an arguement here is mainly due to 8 years of oil executives in the White House, leading to things like this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/25epa.html (The white house refused to open an email that a report attached the EPA sent them on greenhouse gases, so they could continue to deny its a problem). Here is a quick quote: not that Canada has been much better over the last couple of years thanks to Harper and his crew

Hey Blarg, the open water theory is just one of several possible positive feedback loops, a more serious one is all the methane that is locked up in permafrost escaping when it melts. The danger is that if we wait a lot longer before doing anything at all, then it may be too late. I can understand people being sceptical, but if you look at the data its pretty clear that something very bad is happening. For example, if you look at the global temperature trend over the last 100 years like you said, you can indeed see it is increasing rapidly. To everyone that says its just a hoax - who exactly would benefit from it? Governments get pilloried every time they bring it up because it means lifestyle changes and trying to change people habits, which they HATE. Businesses will lose a lot of money since they will be forced to be more efficient and generally its going to be inconvenient for everyone. On the other hand, clearing up the pollution we are making will stop things like the water in SK and Manitoba being decimated by run-offs from the oil fields and poisoning fish and people as well as hopefully stopping climate change. As for the media comments, I have lived all over the world and Canada has one of the most right-wing media that I've seen(and that includes the US) but then again I guess that's what happens when 2 media conglomerates between them own 95% of all print media and all of the TV stations in the country (CBC excepted).

Cool fish!