Canadian Politics

That still means they're pretty bad. The only reason they're not really tackling social issues is because half of them don't care about social issues? I mean, damn.

What social issues?

What social issues is there to tackle? Business is the only thing that matters and it's where I mostly disagree with the Tories.

For instance, they want to lower corporate income tax as a means to increase investment despite statistical evidence from Statistics Canada showing that at most, the only correlation between falling corporate tax rates is in fact a decrease in non-residential business investment rates. But they'll continue to push a policy that has no empirical evidence for working.

And the most ironic part that most Tory supporters say they voted Tory instead Liberal was corruption. I think so far, every week, the Harper Tories have basically embezzled or wasted enough funds to exceed the decade+ of Chretien.

Republicans do the same in America. They know it won't work, but they still go for it because it helps them in the short-term.

"What social issues?"

Well there's that whole thing with the massive poverty and suffering in native reserves, like Attawapiskat, for one.

Besides, I'm sure Harper will get to making more social problems soon.

That's an economic issue, not a social one. A social issue would be like polygamy being legalised.

Attawapiskat is the natural result of decades of mismanagement by government. We aren't willing to actually give natives autonomy, we just give them fake autonomy so that we can blame them for any problems on native reserves. I mean hell, look how much flak that band council is getting and they had 10k/year per capita to work with to provide everything from education to healthcare to basic infrastructure. A normal Canadian citizen gets double that spending on them.

edited 21st Dec '11 10:30:27 PM by breadloaf

Well that's bullshit.

Doesn't anybody care about that? Or is it just that the Tories have control and don't give a damn?

I can't blame this one on Tories. Nobody gives a shit.

The way Canada deals with native problems is that we wait until a native reserve is totally hosed in every way possible, then throw them 100 million dollars to be used over x years. Then come back and notice the problems are all still there and go "Aha! Native people are genetically/ethnically/racially inferior and this has proven that".

We've been doing that for well over a century now.

Immigrants don't care because if they work hard, they can succeed, so they figure natives just suck. Canadians born in Canada don't care because they have their own issues to resolve and don't want a single cent going to some other problem (there's certainly enough poverty going around in non-native communities).

Sounds like the US. :/

If there was anything that ever bothered the hell out of me, it was the whole situation with Native Americans. You'd think we'd have learned by now, but nooo. Of course, the Natives also do some stupid things, like suing people for land lost more than a century ago and expecting to win, which doesn't help the matter.

Such a royal fuck-up...

They sometimes win in Canada. Ever since the Supreme Court made a ruling that said no matter how old a treaty is, you still have to honour it, the natives have been winning more cases. Then the Tories reduced the number of judges who hear such land-claim cases so that the backlog goes for half a decade and rising (thereby simply never settling the land claims).

I don't think it's stupid at all. You sign a treaty, it is law. The constitution is old, shall we ignore it as well? I don't think the oldness argument works at all.

It's more that I feel that with the native american communities what we want is several things

• If we're going to give them autonomy let's actually give them that. They get territory status, with their own government and taxation powers on their land and their gov owns the land. No more land stealing or forced evictions.
• They are part of the equalisation formula, thereby ensuring all Canadians actually have equal per capita tax spending on them
• I don't like the "status Indian" method of dealing with things, and I don't like people talking about scrapping it without replacing it. So, ideally, I would simply like the status Indian to be eliminated and then they still get benefits until we resolve their de facto second class citizenship status

Well, the point is, the people living on that land now didn't have any say in the matter, and shouldn't be forced off because their ancestors were jackasses. Population relocation is bad even if you're doing it in an attempt to "right wrongs."

Otherwise, most of those things sound like good ideas.

I've actually heard this argument IRL. :/ Not outright, of course, but sort of implied.

Historically, which party is the most threatening to the natives?

Probably the Tories.

Yeah, probably the Tories.

Paul Martin (Liberal) actually tried to do something with the Kelowna Accord, and it looked promising with a range of poverty combating policies, education and some self-government (ie. stopping the blame game). It got canned the instant the Tories came to power with I suppose the silent insinuation that any native problems were of their own doing. The only thing the Tories continued from Paul Martin was to keep the promise to apologise for the residential schools.

edited 22nd Dec '11 9:49:13 AM by breadloaf

The abuse of the aboriginals is pretty disgusting, and the conservative reaction has been nothing short of slimy.

Anyone heard of the minister of indian affairs? What's that bastard got to say about this?

edited 22nd Dec '11 3:23:59 PM by stripesthezebra

He put the place under 3rd party management and wants the band council to pay for the consultant and then blamed all the problems on them. If you mean in general, then the minister has said absolutely nothing and is doing basically nothing except cutting what programs did exist under the Liberals to meet the budget cuts the Tories set out to make.

edited 22nd Dec '11 4:07:19 PM by breadloaf

@Breadloaf

Yeah, well, I guess that matches the accusations of racism against him.

Seriously, I can't believe these people have the gaul to preach about freedom and then do this to their own population.

Americans often joke that Canada is a safer haven than America, thanks to the Republicans. However, would you say that Canadian Tories are just as bad?

Nope.

@Serocco

Well, if they aren't, they're sure as shit trying to be, especially these Harperites.

Tories aren't as bad but that says almost nothing. They suck a lot and hurt business, as well as damage international relations, so they're basically the Canadian Republicans, except half of them are monarchists.

Liberals were fiscally conservative government but these tories are fiscally idiotic. They just end up copying liberals when all their economic policies fail.

Jim Flaherty, the current federal minister of finance, was also the finance minister for Ontario when the Conservatives controlled that provincial government. When the Liberals won the provincial elections in 2003, they found that the "fiscally responsible" party had left the province with a debt of billions.

It'll be nice to see what Flaherty leaves us with when the Conservatives lose the next election and discredit the party's reputation as fiscally responsible for a generation. Shame that this wil involve us winding up with a credit rating comparable to that of Greece.

@Taoist: It can't be that bad surely?

The Conservative party is made up of idiots, if it's possible to screw something up that badly, they'll do it.

edited 27th Dec '11 5:34:39 AM by stripesthezebra