Conservative win in Canada

Yeah well, I'm terribly disappointed you moved to the states.

And is consistently ranked a better place to live than the USA.

Yeah, smuggling is morally much superior to stealing. I'm not defending Svend - I just want you to admit that Conservatives are no more moral than any other party.

Yeah? Interest more than doubled our debt in 8 years?
I see no reason to believe Stephen Harper will be any better than Mulroney.

Blatant lie - he cut from many programs, including Health Care.

Bob Rae is hardly representative of social democracy.

I can't argue with this lying homophobic asshole any longer. Have fun in the States, you fucking douche.

 

What a moron.

 

Ha! By who? The UN? A bunch of socialists? Naturally they would call those sorts of places best to live in.

And when did Stockwell Day smuggle? I remember it was that LIBERAL Martin who was bringing drugs into the country... how many kilos of cocaine?

Absolutely. And yes to the second part.

But Duceppe pointed out the EI stuff...

He's the representative of the goddamn left wing. There's no amount of money too big for these folks.

What gives you the right to call me a homophobe?

 

What if they are best?

What is so bad about socialists? They are the reason you don't work 80 hours a week making a dollar day in the western world.

 

nah, they're the reason why Europe's economies are stalling.

 

What are you talking about?

Some of the most competitive economies in the world are socialist.

 

I predict:

15-16 months, enough to take us out of next winter. The "Third Republic-esque" string of elections is certainly unpleasant (and will be very unpopular) but there's precious few alternatives. Every month Harper's in office will be a month too many; I cannot think of one policy area in which the views of his party aren't dead wrong. Childcare, federal-provincial constitutional and fiscal balance, all social issues, tax-cutting, public medicine, employment insurance, transfer payments, generic social spending levels, the pace and priorities of defence spending, foreign policy? Not a jot of common ground between Harperism and the Liberals, to say nothing of the NDP.

What he can do, realistically, and what I expect:

1. Attempt to build up his stature and Prime Minsteriness by "foreign policy successes" which is to say the Bush administration will throw out red carpets, speeches and photo-ops. Given the pathological provincialism of our media this will be covered extensively and will work, in spite of some Mulroney-Reagan-style backlash.

The downside is, while talk is cheap, fair trade isn't, and won't likely materialize just to keep a semi-useless poodle-governement in Ottawa. Similarly, it's questionable whether the US will alter it's wholehearted intransigence towards Kyoto for even the most fictive of "Canadian compromise" operas bouffes.

2. Cut the GST. This will pass. However, god help Harper when he makes the budget, because it's hard to imagine how it will avoid a (deadly) deficit without the kind of cuts they can't afford to make politically. They will probably try to economize with their cheaper child care "option," with EI cuts and cuts to transfer payments, but how that will pay for tax cut for the wealthy, "a solution" to the "fiscal imbalance" and his open-ended promise to spend-wait times into oblivion, I don't know. Anyone explain that to me? Again, the best I could figure is they have a diamond mine in Baffin Island found by intrepid young Tory dogsled teams.

3. "Get tough on crime," which is to say attempt to make the justice system flashier and impressive to frightened seniors by making it less rational, nuanced and effective. Mandatory, longer sentences, sloganistic solutions to complex socio-political problems.

They will also attempt to implement the proven and successful American solutions to "the war on drugs" and "the war on terror." How much leeway they get from the other parties is questionable.

4. Health Care. They know time is on their side if there isn't a Liberal majority soon, because without a politically gutsy infusion of funding the system will become unpopular and thus dispensible. I suspect they will take advantage of their abilities to engineer crises and introduce two-tiered health care, albiet in a fashion tamed by the other parties. Hopefully subsequent governments can clean up the mess that gets left.

5. "Fiscal imbalance." I don't use the quotes to disparage the economic contributions of the "have" provinces, I just think it has become a dangerous term - Canada will either have an unequal contribution from the provinces, or the less prosperous provinces will tank completely and their provincial administrations will be unable to provide medical care, social programming, education, etc.

The core idea of the Fiscal Imbalance push is that it's wrong for the Federal government to pile up surpluses while Ontario and others struggle had to make ends meet. I agree. The problem is, the surpluses, such as they are, get spent and are going to need to be spent, and very very soon, on medicare. And then ever more money will have to be found. The Liberals or Liberals + NDP need a majority to put the "fiscal imbalance" money - and other Federal money - into health care, not goddamned tax cutting, which will both take away the sting of the overt injustice of federal-provincial finance, and ease the problems faced by Ontario.

The problem is, the Conservatives don't believe in single-payer health care anyway, and the fiscal imbalance is just an opportunity for them to reduce the federal government's budget and give it to the province to spend on unequal tax cuts, Ralph-Bucks, Quebec flags, beer and popcorn, whatever.

 

BTW - I can FINALLY post here!!!

Yippee!!!1one!eleven!

 

I have a problem with you calling me moron because I find things out for myself rather than just playing it safe and calling people morons if they don't agree with my own conditioned ideas of reality. You are, in effect, in a prison of your own making my friend. And until you can see the bars, you cannot escape.

 

*shivers*

feel the burrrrrrrrrrrn.

 

He does. He is definately feeling that burn.