Enjoy your weekend.

 
"Make it two. My neighbors elected a socialist MP." (Getty Images)

 

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

I just hope he doesn't have the hangover I have this morning!

[Rob]

Speaking of Socialist MP..........Did you hear the latest from Commrade JACK LAYTON?
He wants to get Mr. Harper to give Quebec more seats! I am not kidding. In fact he lies and says that he talked about it with Mr. Harper an election night. One word-Liar.
Look at what actually was said, Layton never mentioned more seats on election night and Mr. Harper never insinuated that Quebec would get more seats.
What a total douche-bag Jack Layton is.
A pandering, un-democratic Socialist. He is a disgrace.
It never falls to amaze me the total lack of principles and decency that is Jack Layton.
He would do anything, say anything, he cares not for freedom or democray or his fellow Canadian.
Fortunately Ontario, Alberta and BC will get more seats and Quebec will get no new seats.
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How could you vote for such a person David Olive?
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On the CBC site one NDP supporter wrote the following,
"this is ridiculous. I voted NDP because I liked my local candidate, I didn't vote NDP because I thought the Bloc Quebecois needed a colour change. How in the name of things wonderful does the NDP go from championing proportional representation to suggesting Quebec get more seats... when they're already over-represented?!?."

[Darwin O'Connor]

I disagree with the NDP on this issue. However it pales in comparison to some of the anti-democratic actions of the Conservates (who previous porposed that BC and Alberta get more seats, but not Ontario).

[Rob]

When did the Conservatives propose seats for BC and Alberta but not Ontario, Darwin? I have not seen this. Can you provide proof of this?

[Rob]

Jack Layton is a man of very low character and no real principles.
He cares more for votes than he does for his country (perhaps he feels Quebec is his country now)
Jack is saying Quebec should get more seats. Obviously, Quebec is over represented now in comparison to their percentage of population.
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Let's look at Jack's statement:

1) Jack Layton lied. Jack never actually asked Harper for more seats and Harper never said that Quebec would get more. That's Jack.

2) Layton wanting to give Quebec more seats is not democratic. Quebec should have fewer seats not more seats. During the election Layton talked about democracy and we should be more democratic. Layton said we should bring in proportional representation during the election! Now he wants Quebec to get more seats than their population dictates. That's Jack.

3) Layton is fueling Quebec nationalism. He is promising somethng he cannot deliver (more seats) and also claiming Harper is thinking about adding these seats. When Harper does not give Quebec more seats, some Quebecers will blame "Canada" as a whole. (Mr. Harper never said he would give Quebec more seats). This will certainly lead to more people wanting Quebec out of Canada. Shameful, even by Jack's standards.

[Darwin O'Connor]

I was mistaken. It wasn't no seats for Ontario, but proportionately less then BC and Alberta: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2007/11/21/van-loan.html

Apprently Harper is willing to manipulate seats. We'll see what happens.

[Rob]

Details eh, Darwin......."I was mistaken".....If I had a dollar for everything you Socialists said about Mr. Harper and then it turned out to be un-true or "I was mistaken" was the response, I would be rich. A pack of lies is what you folks speak and write. You know what? The Canadian people saw this and voted for a majority.
Layton is the one with the "hidden agena".
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To compare what Taliban, un-democratic Jack Layton is saying to what the Conservatives are saying is like comparing Stalin to Voltaire.
The Conservatives will do the following:
Ontario is going to get 18 seats; perhaps the province should get more but this is a step in the right direction, BC will get 7 seats and Alberta will get 5 seats. Quebec, rightfully, will get no new seats.
What Layton is saying on this issue is dispicable. He is harming Confederation by pandering and fueling Quebec nationalism; he is also lying about what Mr. Harper said on the issue.
But look at Layton's record, he is a dispicable person.

[dolive]

Hi Rob: I'm afraid I have to read you the Riot Act. You've made wonderful contributions to this blog. Suddenly, today, you're equating a public figure with the Taliban, who've killed more than 130 of our fellow Canadians. You've described all your fellow Contributors as socialists and as liars. (Not that there's anything wrong with socialists, but neither of us have any idea if even one of us would answer to that description.) And in responding to a fellow Contributor's honorable conduct in correcting himself, for all our benefit (with an accompanying link, no less, so that we all can benefit from the context), you then dumped some more on that Contributor.
This is my site. I require respectful regard among Contributors. Respectful disagreement - and the correction of errors, including mine - breathes life into this site. But scraping muck out of the gutter to fling at Contributors and myself debases the site to a low place so common in cyberspace, which this site strives to rise above.
So Rob, this is your first and last notice. Any further comments from you or other Contributors even hinting of this tone will be be promptly removed and thereafter screened out entirely. .

[dolive]

On misguided appeals to soft Quebec nationalists, the strongest ground for faulting Layton here is not seat distribution, which in Canada (unlike the U.S.) is done by Parliament and not the party in power, is that Layton flirted with opposing the Clarity Act until his caucus knocked some sense into him.
As for the most craven appeal to soft Quebec nationalists post-Mulroney, that was Stephen Harper declaring, apropos of nothing, that Quebec is a "nation." The PQ and BQ have been having a field day with this ever since. No one asked Harper to do this, not in Quebec or the ROC. He did it in hopes of securing more CPC seats in the upcoming 2008 election. Instead, because the francophone media over-reacted to Harper's minor cuts in arts funding (across the country not just Quebec), the Tories' lost seats in Quebec in the next two elections. This has much to do with Harper's abrupt end to efforts at wooing Quebec voters until the heat of the latest contest - pledging to keep selling asbestos to developing world markets, where they don't know how to properly handle this dangerous substance, no less - but by then it was too late. Between elections, 2008-2011, Harper reverted to that early Reform days resentment bordering on loathing of Central Canada and Quebec's "special treatment" in particular, at the perceived expense of the West. (Whatever that is: Manitobans and Vancouverites have about as much in common as lifelong Torontonians like me with natives of Cape Breton.) .

[Darwin O'Connor]

I don't mind Rob. If you censor him, how will we know how foolish he is.

[RTob]

I do appologize.
I am sorry if I went into personal attacks against other posters and you Mr. Olive.
I enjoy your blog a lot. I enjoy the banter and I know I am in the minority in my political stand on this blog.
I feel in the field of ideas the left-wing/Socialist ideas cannot stand up to honest scrutiny. There's a whole generation of people under a certain age that do not realize how lucky we are to live in a capitalist society. They don't remember wage & price controls, the Soviet block systems, etc. If they did they would be scared as heck of Jack Layton. The way Jack Layton is dealing with Quebec is fostering Quebec nationalism and his hypocricisy (wanting proportional rep. during the election but now wanting to give Quebec seats-unfairly) is quite blatant but typical of him.
Mr. Harper is far from perfect but the attacks against him and mis-information is rampant. The "hidden agenda" being the paramount item and constant item.
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None of that matters however if I am not respectful in my writing and tone to posters. We are all Canadians here and all our opinions matter. Darwin does have some good posts and ideas; Darwin corrected himself and I should not have done anything more than to thank him!
Again I am sorry to you and Darwin. Please accept my apologies.

[Darwin O'Connor]

Thank you for your apology.

I don't remember wage & price controls, but I doubt it was that bad if the two most well known things about it was Trudeau broke his promise not to implement them (à la Income Trusts) and Trudeau's quip, "Zap! Your frozen!"

I do know some about the Soviet block systems. What was implemented may have been called socialist and communist but without democracy it was the antithesis of socialism. I have a half written blog post covering the early history of Russian Communism and the dangers of Democratic Centrism.

I don't know why Rob doesn't see the dangers of Harper with his numerous anti-democratic actions, like lying about how our democracy works, supporting the mass arrest of protestors and suspending democracy for three months.

[Rob]

Cheers Darwin........Winnipeg Jets come home today!........
Can't wait to watch the Flames play the Jets.

[dolive]

Darwin, how can you say you don't remember wage and price controls when you recall exactly what Trudeau mockingly said in the 1974 election - only a year before he brought in the "6&5" he ridiculed Stanfield for? You do know your history, and it scares me a bit (!)
Thanks Rob for your sincere and comprehensive apology.
I think we all have fingers crossed for the Jets. The Peg's population has doubled since the Jets defected, and currency differentials aren't the curse they were then. Of course I won't be satisfied until QC gets its franchise back - it's population also has doubled since the advent of the Avalanche. Weird, but I also want an NFL franchise for Toronto. I'm convinced the Argos and NFL can co-exist in Toronto. Wish I knew what keeps us away from Toronto FC. By now, the GTA is about one-third folks whose homeland hosts "the beautiful sport." I guess if fans can watch first-class football any day in any GTA sports bar, they won't settle for a nascent N.A. league.
For the life of me, I just can't abide talk of Soviet or Mao-era communism in the same sentence as democratic socialism as practiced in Canada and Europe. They're wildly different, in philosophy, practice and track record. Norway is socialist, and boasts the world's highest standard of living (about $72,000, to America's $45,000.) German socialism is enriched preschool, a jobless rate lower than ours, itself lower than the U.S., and the fourth-most powerful economy in the world, after the U.S., China and Japan.
Besides, the northern half of North America is socialist. In the U.S., 60% of healthcare expenditures are made by government. In terms of the number of people receiving healthcare from the state, government in the U.S. is actually the biggest healthcare provider in the world. (Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, SCHIP and Cobra - SCHIP is for your kids if your family isn't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, and Cobra has the state paying your health insurance premiums while you're unemployed, if your health benefits were tied to your job.)
How else but socialist can we describe a U.S. that heavily subsidizes farmers and oil companies, in which even mighty GE exploited the U.S. Tax Code so artfully it managed to pay not a dime in profits last year on its U.S. profits? If it's not socialism, a polite term, it's corporate welfare - the term I prefer. I'm all for subsidizing Bombardier so we can have one of the world's few concentrations of aviation and avionics expertise in Montreal, and subsidies for U.S.-owned Pratt & Whitney's operations in Montreal, too. But to then have to listen to the head of Pratt & Whitney Canada lecture us from a podium at the Canadian Club on how we need to cut back on our overly generous assistance to people in need, well that turns my stomach. And that's the defining hypocrisy of North American social policy. (I'm including businesses as social actors, which they are, though their worldview is to see themselves as a world apart from the rest of us.)
You know the line from Norman Augustine, former head of U.S. defense contractor Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin): "Why does Cario have more flies than D.C. has lobbyists? Cairo got first choice."
I've always found that particularly poignant given that MM and its successor Lockheed have been, like all defense contractors, among the biggest employers of lobbyists. This either is cognitive dissonance or the corporate supplicants are well aware of the irony, and I credit them with the intelligence of knowing it's the latter.
Darwin, I was as infuriated at the PM shutting down the people's house as anyone, but I'm angrier at the GG who let him do it. Other than that, I've been a big fan of Ms. Jean and miss her.

[ChrisG]

Not to be pedantic here, but when we talk about Trudeau-era wage-and-price controls, there were two distinct events. The first was in 1975 when his government established a Wage and Price Control Board, chaired by Beryl Plumptre. This was when Trudeau uttered his famous quip. That board oversaw the entire economy.

The second round was when public sector wages were limited to 6% and 5% increases over two years, when contracts came up for renewal, and this policy kicked in around 1982, if memory serves. Wage increases at that time were in the 10%+ p.a. range.

As for the whole socialist/capitalist definitional fight, the reality is (as David pointed out) that we have a mixed economy and political system. Which philosophy is in ascendancy depends largely on your perspective and worldview.

[Rob]

No scary hidden agenda from Mr. Harper in the throne speech, just the policies he said he would bring in. You know the policies that gave him a majority mandate from the people of Canada.
The best PM in my lifetime. Thank heavens we've got 4 and a half more years of stability and good governance ahead of us.