Canadian Politics

Oh right, the "common-sense" revolution in which he fired thousands and thousands of people and then somehow ended up with an even larger deficit.

I actually think I hate him more than Harper. Mac Kay is still the worst though, his attitude, the fact that he's a fellow Nova Scotian, his word being pointless (most politicians at least try and cover up the fact that they are being dirtbags), that smile of his.... He pisses me off more than any other Canadian I know of; a few violent criminals notwithstanding.

Wasn't Mac Kay the one that sold out the Progressive Conservatives to Harper?

What has Flaherty done?

edited 5th Apr '12 12:10:48 AM by Serocco

That's MacKay all right. Flaherty was the finance minister for the worst Conservative provincial governments Ontario had seen in generations. He ran up a record deficit and then hid it until the day his government lost an election. I rant about him earlier in this thread.

Between Flaherty, Harper and MacKay, who's the worst one?

What's a worse way to die: suffocation, immolation, or being shot in the gut with a .50?

Immolation. Definitely.

http://www.vancouversun.com/Conservatives+lied+about/6420641/story.html

So the conservatives flat-out lied. Conservatives hiding the true price of something? Shocking, I know.

Congratulations Canada, we've got three more years of this BS.

In that article: implication that the Tories even care.

Its pretty much standard for large scale procurements. Of course the defense cuts are just going to make things worse; big procurements mean that maintenance, which is already hugely behind thanks to the Afghan mission, is going to get shoved back. The Tories are mismanaging the Forces worse than the Liberals did in the early 90s. Hell at this point the NDP might campaign on modest defense funding boosts, along with the more expected (and direly needed) boost for Veteran's Affairs.

The NDP already put out promises for improvements for veteran affairs, mostly funded by pulling out of non-UN military operations. They were going to put more money into the navy which has been at the heart of every single humanitarian mission our military has conducted in the past decade (including, for instance, our aid to the US during Katrina).

The Tories were never good the for the military. I mean, the Trudeau and other buddies from that liberal era were the ones that made all our military purchases previous to our F-18 time period.

When I first heard of Peter MacKay, it was around the time of the sponsorship scandal when the news was talking about Belinda Stronach switching parties; given that both the Liberals and Conservatives had their own questionable practices, I wasn't sure who what to think of Peter. I then remember being reminded of said party-switching during introductory political science, but I still wasn't sure who to believe. My opinion of the guy gradually shifted more negatively reading some posts in this thread, but that video linked to is the straw that broke the camel's back; I'm now fully convinced that Peter MacKay is bad news.

edited 7th Apr '12 9:22:09 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

Bad news? He doesn't do anything. None of the conservative ministers do anything. The idiot who helped fire our Nuclear Safety Commission head said of the entire crisis that it was "sexy" and could score some political points. Radioactive heavy water is leaking from the Chalk River Nuclear Power plant and the only thing this conservative government could think was how to blame it on Liberals and win some votes.

The problem is that the Tory government's only good policies are the Liberal ones they never changed. Like, for instance, the innovation portion of the budget tabled by Flaherty. It was much touted by him. It was praised by industry and entrepreneurs alike for being good. Problem for the Tories? It was drafted by the Liberals.

Environment policy? Same deal.

And for policies that the Liberals pushed but were never sure about, like the F-35, the Tories treated it blindly as gold. Hey, if it fails, just blame the Liberals. Now they straight up lied to us about the cost, when DND clearly knew it would cost 25 billion. If the Speaker of the House found that Harper breached privilege will that lead to a third Contempt of Parliament conviction? And then what then? We have a truly illegal government in power in more ways than one?

On the plus side, the penny's going to be discontinued. :3

Isn't Harper also planning to restrict immigration?

Hmmm... I think that will hurt Canada more in the long-term.

As the EU states suddenly confront their huge unemployment figures (around 10% average among the 27 states) this leads to a sudden glut of young unemployed people without a job.

However, these young people are well-educated, technically skilled, and are proficient in either French or English.

Therefore, they emigrate to a nation-state which is rather similar to their own, i.e. Canada (or Australia).

So, Canada is actually getting a lot of young, highly-trained European workers due to its reasonably well-done immigration policy, especially those from France, Spain, Portugal and Britain.

Effectively, Canada's immigration policy is good for Canadian business!

And considering that without immigration we have a negative population growth rate... yeah that's bad move. We aren't in a Japan style demographic disaster but its still bad news.

Well at least we get to keep some of our youth!

@ Rational. And considering these are young people, who come from similar countries to Canada (esp. since Canada has European-style public services) you're going to get a lessened youth decline rate.

@ Best Of. No, no! They should go! That way, I can compete for the jobs her—

Okay, I've decided on my career path. GO TO CANADA.

I have a cousin in Montreal!

...

Wait, do you have to speak French in Montreal, or can you get by on English?

In Montreal? You could probably get by with English in some areas. Don't count on getting any government positions in that province though. And learning French (Quebec French mind you, totally different beast than the rest of the world. And that's not even getting into the linguist abomination they speak in New Brunswick) would probably still a good idea.

Okay, I have a B-grade in GCSE French (that is, France French). That means I can speak at the level of a five-year old French baby.

That good enough?

You definitely speak better French than I do, assuming British French classes are remotely good. The public education system for the language sucks, or at least it did where I went to school. I did French from Grades 3-10, one year longer than most of my peers, and I still can only carry on the most basic of conversations and read simple phrases. The course content moved too slowly and was just too simplistic; it was there for constitutional reasons not to give anyone functional command over the language.

edited 8th Apr '12 9:03:51 AM by Rationalinsanity

Here once you hit grade 1 you're not allowed to speak English in French classes, so I can speak all right. I'm very obviously not a native speaker, especially if in talking to younger people since they don't exactly teach slang in school, but I've visited Quebec city without any problems.

It all depends where you live, I guess.

Montreal is nearly half English speakers, though, so you should be fine. My jazz teacher grew up there and never learned more than a couple phrases in French.

Only French immersion works here, outside of that the public education of French is terrible. Maybe it'll improve in the future but there's no drive to do anything about that.

As for immigration, Harper is doing several things:

• Banned family immigration until 2014 to cater to the xenophobes (people don't mind the Irish bringing their family but if Chinese/Indian do it, they're apparently trying to soak our welfare)
• Actual immigration numbers have not changed significantly under the Tories, the problem is WHO they are letting in, which is getting more politicised as they axe bureaucrats who don't tow the party line (meaning we're getting less skilled, dumber people, so long as they lean more conservatively)

As for refugees...

• Effectively made it impossible for Mexcians and Roma to try to claim refugee status in Canada
• Put in "blocker" bureaucrats into the system who have a literal 100% rejection rate on claims no matter the circumstance

On the plus side, Harper does not appear to be attacking the recent three fold increase in Irish immigration, unfortunately all of it has been under our migrant visa worker program. That program is known to be widely abused by employers to abuse workers and cut wages (as in threaten them with illegal harm if they try to ask for the wage they should get/promised).

edited 8th Apr '12 10:28:19 AM by breadloaf

Question is... why single out Mexicans and Roma in particular? I didn't think that A) those two groups were threatening in some way and B) that Canada was a major destination for them anyway. What was that reasoning behind that move?

You're asking me to figure out the moves of the most incompetent, petty and illegal government in Canada's history?

I honestly have no idea beyond flat racism. This is a government that tried to block the return of Canadians from Africa for no reason despite them having valid passports. I can only say that the difference between them and other Canadians in trouble was the colour of their skin. It's the same government that completely and utterly ignored the death of Canadians in the Manila hostage crisis and went so far as to call them Chinese (despite them living in Canada since elementary school).

I can only imagine that they saw a lot of refugee claims coming from Mexico and European Roma and just said "Let's block that, they aren't white".