So the poll is showing rennlisters as almost 3-1 tories over liberals. I'd like to hear from the tory camp, thoughts and responses to the discussion.

 

...T'was up North fishing for a week ..... ya FIBeral ....

Still off this week as well ....

 

Hate to disagree with you but to think that climate change is man made is incorrect. Man affects it by maybe 3 to 4% .... the rest is what this planet does constantly. Politics has poluted this issue thanks to Gore & Suzuki. Do a search on the earths rotation & wobble, the sunspot activity, the Milankovitch cycles etc., to see what is actually affecting us.

Politicians have an agenda which includes a new way to tax us for our own good. Like the prices today??? ... wait till the tax comes in. Look at BC & Europe to see what the backlash is. These countries are in a revolt situation ... and nothing has been done to the environment other than make the tax cofferes fuller and people worring how they will heat thier homes and when they can eat!!! BTW ... Dion was environment minister for 6 years IIRC and he did nothing ... and ... the "green house gas" emmisions increased by 25%!!! So much for being the "green" party.

Look at what Bob Ray did to Ontario when he was in power .... don't want to see that happen again!!! Ignatiaf spent most of his life in the US teaching at a University ... has been out of touch with what goes on in Canada. He and TO Mayor Miller are products of the same educational institutes ... and boy is Miller wrong!!!

 

Okay - let's split this out - issue by issue.

Global warming - there's a very simple, safe stance to take here, that avoids this whole "we don't think it's man made" position. Even if GW is NOT man made - how is LESS pollution a bad thing? How is oil consumption conservation a bad thing? How is cleaner air and more cycling and less nuclear waste a bad thing? How is less acid rain a bad thing? How are more trees a bad thing? So, it's clearly best to do all those things no matter what. And if GW IS man-caused, then we've both saved the planet and saved the planet. How's that bad?

Politicians who get it, fully understand that appropriate taxation that allows a certain level of social program service is a very good way to run a country - read my first post. Low taxes, low levels of service and weak government oversight make it VERY, VERY comfortable for about 3% of the population. 97% then struggle. If you're in that 3% and don't give a **** about the 97% - then yes - vote for "lower taxes".

BTW - rejection of government oversight occured today in the US. How's your portfolio?

As for what happened in Ontario - uhm - I know some grieving familes in Walkerton who would have something stronger to say about Harris government cutbacks than any civil servant that got an extra day on the links thanks to Bob Rae.

Futhter - what social freedoms were eroded under Bob Rae? How was Ontario's soverignty threatened or undermined in any way? How'd the enviroment do? How was child care impacted? You've got to figure out what REALLY matters to you - then vote the party that maps to those values.

As I said - there will always been some hardcore types who just have to have it thier way. You need to decide if that is your way too.

RK

 

Alright, let me offer a few counters here:

You're absolutely right, that it's a good thing to reduce pollution, oil consumption, etc. however the question here might be one of urgency, and at what expense. If, as some say, a very small fraction of global warming is due to humans and by and large the phenomenon is unpreventable, then the urgency to burn less oil and pollute less disappears, at least insofar as we sacrifice other things like health care, education or arts to pay for new energies.

There's no doubt you're right, but you'll never sell a candidate on higher taxes. Your average voter wants something for nothing - better services and less taxes. Thing is, there's a massive middle ground there, where we get good value for our tax dollars, but it would require a lot more efficiency on the part of the gov't, something not likely to happen.

This one's pretty straightforward. Never in history has the painful lesson of too little restriction in a capitalistic society been as well demonstrated as in the past 2 weeks. Anyone who still believes that the gov't has no role in capitalism is an ostrich. I'm not saying gov'ts should have strict control over markets, but again, there's a huge middle ground here.

I'm too young to properly remember the Bob Rae days but I have to ask, how was our provincial economy in those days?

 

Ummm ... climate change issue bypasses all the polution issues ... look what Dwight Duncan did when enviro minister ... stopped the correction of air polution and acid rain BECAUSE it did nothing to combat "greenhouse gases" ... WTF!!!!!!! The enviro issues are all placed on the back burner because it does not conform to the "crisis of the day". Now ... ask those who do not have access to transit how they are going to get to work? It's fine to be green ... but going too far is not the answer. Nuclear energy is the best answer so far ... just ask the guy that founded greenpeace.

 

Rennlist sucks ... it just dies on me ... lost a long post. Hopefully this one gets through ...

 

I learned long ago to respect everyone's opinion, so let's see what you all think of mine. I will vote for Harper and the Conservative for a number of reasons, not the least being he is an economist and actually knows macro economics and he isn't a lawyer or a member of the acadamia playing with theories.
Out here in the west, Dion has really hurt any chance of electing Liberals due to his green "shaft" and I suspect they will be looking for a new leader after the election. He is probably a nice guy away from the political arena but out here a Liberal government means I usually end up paying more taxes with no accountability to where the money goes. To be fair, I have never seen any accountability from any government, but I still hate paying more in taxes.
While I am on the topic, why do we need to have such a long election campaign? Is it to fool more people with insane promises while bribing the taxpayers with their own money? It should be a week, two weeks tops. Working 12 hours a day has helped me to tune out the campaining and enjoy my family and business.
Anyway, I hope for a Tory majority so that we can move forward and enjoy life.

Bob
(born in Ontario, but now a proud westerner)

 

No disrespect for your opinions whatsoever. That doesn't preclude debating them, however.

While it's true that Harper studied economics at university, that was decades ago, and he never actually worked in anything to do with economics - he's a career politician.

I couldn't agree more, however, about Dion alienating himself with the carbon tax - while I think there may be some merit in there, it's a dumb election platform. You'll never get elected campaigning on any kind of tax, no matter what.

But on the subject of taxes, Harper hasn't done squat to reduce my taxes over the last few years. The GST cut was the biggest load of BS I've ever seen. You know what it amounted to for me? Having to pay someone to reconfigure all of our approx. 150 customer payment schedules (about 20 hours of data entry) to account for 1% lower GST - not once, but twice. So any savings I may have had personally from the lower rate were more than eaten up by the extra cost of adjusting my company for it. And I suspect we're hardly the only business that had that problem.

I would also agree that the election campaign is needlessly long and expensive. Election reform is something I really believe strongly in, but again, here we have Harper causing problems, not making solutions. What happened to a fixed 5-year term, not calling elections whenever the polls are the best? That's just not democratic. As much as any respect I ever had for Chretien was completely obliterated with the sponsorship scandal, he was at least taking steps in the direction of campaign reform.

What I think they should do is a 2 week campaign, with the following restrictions:
-no campaign donations from anyone, period, individual or corporate
-no election signs or TV/radio/newspaper ads
-twice weekly televised debates, to include live audience q&a and a gutsy moderator who forces the candidates to stay on topic or get cut off, only one mic live at a time.
-free travel on Greyhound, Via, Air Canada for the leader and 10 other people, media pay their own way
-absolutely no slander, mud slinging, etc. Candidates may only discuss each other insofar as explaining differences of policy.

My biggest problem with Harper is his attitude towards the arts and arts funding. To claim that "ordinary Canadians" don't care about the arts is just insulting. The 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs drew around 2.5 million viewers per game, our about 8% of our population. Does that mean "ordinary Canadians" don't care about hockey?

 

Christian,

I'll limit my comments in support for Conservatives as follows:
Liberals solve things by increasing government intervention.
Conservatives usually support smaller government and give me money back to let me do what i want with it. (And yes the 2% GST cut doesn't amount to anything when you stop and look at it...but it was brilliant electioneering).

The older i get, the less i want a bunch of people 500kms away micromanaging my life. All i want from a national government is: military defence, education and health care.

With regards to the art issue, i know it's going to be a sore point especially since you're a musician, but why does the government need to fun artists? Radio stations have lots of indy hr stuff where you can try to get your stuff demoed. And if they're not, then someone's missing out on a big business opportunity. i find it hard to believe that music will just dissapear without these grants. There's lots of great canadian artists out there who get played in the US and all over the place. The NHL certainly don't need funding for anything...they're rolling in dough. I like the CBC for their news coverage, but most of the stuff i watch on there is american (simpsons, movies etc).

who knows...maybe i'm not artistic or i don't understand the issue? what some of the guys who rally race do in a car might as well be called art. can they get a grant for that?

 

Show me where taxes have been cut (that I actually notice) since Harper's been elected. GST cut doesn't count because it amounts to a pile of crap.

When I (and Harper) refer to arts funding, it's not for indy-rock hour on 102.1 or Johnny Hippie with his acoustic guitar, I'm talking bigger dollar stuff, like the TSO. Why do gov'ts have to fund it? Because they always have, since the beginning of the arts (I'm talking ancient Greece here). The arts have never been a commercially viable enterprise, which is precisely why they're artistic - in fact, while I (and most other artists) hate trying to define exactly what "art" is, most everyone agrees that one of the main points to define something as art is that it's non-commercial (though there are examples that contradict this). The arts were initially funded by governments in ancient times, then as kingdoms became the norm, they were funded by the courts. Eventually wealthy patrons stepped in, but that was in the days before other things to spend money on, like cars, vacations, etc. which more or less took that funding away. So if gov'ts don't fund the arts, nobody does.

I read a great quote the other day - great societies are known for their music, painting, sculpture and dance, not for their tax breaks or economic policies.

My point with hockey was that nobody would ever propose that "ordinary Canadians" don't care about hockey, yet less than 10% of us actually watched the playoffs in 2007 (couldn't find 08 #s). So if the threshold for "ordinary Canadians" caring about something is around 8%, I think it shows a complete lack of knowledge of what "ordinary Canadians" care about. I think Harper is completely out of touch with ordinary Canadians.

 

Christien,

You mentioned free travel on Air Canada, what about Westjet? They have far superior service and are actually quite entertaining to fly with. By the way, nothing is free and I believe any costs incurred during an election should be covered by the party and it's supporters.

For me personally, it's all about accountability and opportunity cost, though I really doubt I will see it in my lifetime. There is a tonne of wasteful spending by all governments that rob's money from people and programs that are in true need of support and everything the Liberals, NDP and Greens announce, take money from other programs or tax us more. What's worse, and it started with Chretien as Trudeau's finance minister in 1971, is deficit financing. Has anyone added up the cost of the interest and administering the borrowing of these funds for the last 37 years? There are probably better uses that money could have gone to.

That's all I want to rant about but I would like to ask you a question, does anyone know of a set of Super Cup exhaust for a '96 993? I have decided to put them on my car.

Thanks.

Bob

 

Sure,westjet, doesn't matter. The whole thing's a pipe dream anyway.

Re deficits: which pm in the last 3 decades consistently balaned the books?

 

Exactly!

And if you don't believe the arts impact your daily lives, then look around. Everything you wear, every building you enter, every car you drive has been influenced by the arts. Without non-commercial art that doesn't need to answer to a shareholder, the envelope of creativity would never be pushed beyond it's limits. Commercial art is inspired by non commercial endeavors; it is its lifeblood.

 

He said he was reducing the art's grants ... not eliminating it.

Some of the so called art out there is a scam ... look at the stupid one stripe painting that the Gov., paid millions for in Ottawa .... someone needs to get their head shook for that one. Art's are also funded by the Province as well the the Municipalities ...

As for tax reduction ... I finally get more back in the last few years than in the past!