Chretien thinks Canadians are credulous cretins

The BBQ Pit
21

I’m sorry for calling you a bozo, katmandu. I was a little exasperated after hearing that Paul Martin’s G-20 conference organizers had an entire 306-person banquet’s worth of food thrown out because they decided to hold the banquet elsewhere. So you can see I may have been a little bit on edge. If you like, we can go through your concerns and, although it seems obviously a fruitless endeavour, try to convince you to vote NDP rather than the Canadian Alliance or whoever you may be voting for.

Although I disapprove of the policies in the mini-budget per se, that’s not what the OP was about. It was about Jean Chretien trying to make us believe that the Liberals have somehow become the Great Social-Democratic Hope[sup]TM[/sup] against the Canadian Alliance immediately after Paul Martin brought down a budget that could have been written by the Canadian Alliance. That’s what the OP was on.

Here are some of the reasons why I am frustrated with the current tax regime and our government’s financial policies:

Not all university educations provide the same hope of revenue, nor does this have anything to do with unclarity on one’s future (although I’m not sure when this became a crime.) A university degree is not a guaranteed job immediately upon graduation, and it does not improve society in any way to force students to destroy their credit ratings in order to become educated.

You are quite fortunate. I don’t see what this has to do with anything.

Except to people who need services but can’t pay fees. What are you supposed to do, pick someone’s pocket who’s on a stretcher, or turn an ambulatory patient with a second-degree burn because she forgot to stop at a bank? Or do you wait until the patient’s problem has been resolved to charge them, bringing you back to the original problem?

I am unfamiliar with people who go to the emergency room with trifling medical complaints as you describe. It is my experience that most emergency rooms are staffed with triage nurses who are capable of giving medical directions and turning away cases better handled by other facilities.

Definitely emergency room services should not be the first line of health preservation. (Being the son of a doctor, I have a little bit of perspective on this.) The solution is to improve health care services, not degrade them. When health care isn’t backed up by pharmacare, home care, and most importantly a generalized improvement in living standards, medical cases tend to become acute with distressing frequency.

How would society be substantially improved by casting people on UI and welfare into the cold? Let’s see: child poverty rates would go up. Disease rates would go up. Crime rates and substance abuse rates would go up. Suicide rates would go up. As has been happening as social assistance programs have been cut to the bone from Mulroney through Chretien.

So: society would decay, and you would save some money on your taxes.

22

matt_mcl, didn’t you say “…an ad hominem attack generally indicates an unwillingness to deal with content”? [sub] in this thread.[/sub]

I thought the comments above were rational and well-reasoned. They’re hardly rebutted by calling him “Bozo”.

23

So for heaven’s sake, support the party that doesn’t approve of sending money to big corporations and pork barrel projects. This, interestingly, seems to be the party that doesn’t take corporate donations: the NDP.

24

Simultaneous post.

You addressed the issues. Sorry.

25

No harm done.

btw, I really am sorry for snapping at you, kat. I’m still getting the hang of this election thing. I plead youth, philosophical fervour, and BBQ pit as having overridden my political sensibilities.

26

Yes the pit. Like some Siren, it lures one into the rocks.:wink:

27

Corporate welfare is one of Michael Moore’s (he’s a personal hero of mine) big pet peeves, and something I certainly don’t understand. Here in America, corporate welfare takes 3 times the budget of welfare for the citizens. McDonald’s gets $100 million to advertize Chicken McNuggets in Singapore, Pillsbury gets millions to advertise the doughboy in third-world countries… why? Can’t they spend their own goddamn money!?

28

Corporate welfare is a big issue here in Canada too. Man, you should have seen the stink raised when the government tried to subsidise some of the NHL teams. They eventually had to withdraw it due to huge public protest. Matt’s party (NDP) seems to have similar view’s to Moore and Nader when it comes to big business. Nader is a big hero of mine because of the PIRG’s which are everywhere in Canada.

I’ve always been a Green and NDP supporter, voted for Howard Hampton when I lived in Ontario. I am now in Alexa McDonough’s home riding of Halifax and am thinking of voting for her. I will have to read more about the NDP’s platform.

I certainly sympathise with Kat’s point of view though. People who have worked hard to achieve success should not be treated as if they have done something wrong on the contrary, they have done something very right. We need our social services, but we also need to enjoy the fruits of our labours. EI seems like a real moneymaking scam.

BTW Matt, I thought the GST favoured the poor because of the refunds. Am I wrong?

29

Pweet: No. That’s because the poor and lower-middle-class spend a much greater proportion of their income on GST-taxable goods and services than the rich do. Therefore, sales taxes take disproportionately more money from the poor than they do from the rich.

30

My experience with the Ontario NDP has, sadly, soured me on the party’s honesty in this matter. Believe me, the pork barreling rolled along at breakneck speed; I mean, I don’t believe for an instant the NDP would cut the HRDC wastage, do you? Yeah, I know the provincial party’s different from the federal party, but the level of incompetence displayed was… stunning. They seemed just as dishonest to me as the Liberals do, and that’s saying a lot.

I’m not a member of any party and could be convinced to vote for any of them with the right argument. The NDP supports some things I agree with and a lot of the things I don’t, but unfortunately no party is very good at getting across an honest account of exactly how they’d proceed as a government.

Sadly, no party is clearly outlining a plan for stamping out separatism, which is the one thing I’d really like to see and would win my vote. In fact, I get the sense the CA is planning to sell out to the separatists faster than a five-dollar crack sale.

31

Rick, according to poll results in Quebec, although a lot of people are still separatist, the vast majority of the population - between 70 and 80 percent - have ceased to care one way or another and definitely do not want another referendum anytime soon. To be blunt, Quebecers have more important things to care about.

32

The BQ campaign theme song won’t turn things around?

http://www.blocquebecois.org/web/electoral/Real/archivages/themebloc.ram

My sincerest sympathies to the people of Quebec who have to put up with this for another 4 weeks.

33

That’s not the best one, Lab - they had this incredibly earnest house-type dance number that went:

On clique
On clique
On clique pour le Québec
On clique pour le Bloc
Le Bloc Québecois!

It somehow managed to get the expression “transfer payments” in there.

34

Matt!

I didn’t know you were in da running. Rah-rah-rah! :slight_smile:

Ok, so I’m a socialist to the core…

Frankly, I look at these elections and worry… Can we deal with another Crétin [sic] term? Could we survive I-Must-Be-A-Porn-Star-Next-To-Win-The-Youth-Vote-Stocknotsowell-Day? Is Joe Clark even in the running, or when he goes door to door do people offer him a loonie and expect to be purchasing a chocolate bar?

sigh… I hate politics. I do get the impression we’ll have another Chrétien government - minority, though…

Matt - in our riding, there are no NDP candidates. I’m gonna vote for the Rhinoceros party.

We’ll be rootin’ for you here…

E.

35

I heard that on CBC’s The Smorning when they did a (hilarious) feature on campaign songs and campaign music, past and present. I was laughing quite hard through that dancy little number, and so didn’t catch all of it, but, well, I heard that “transfer payments” bit, which could have been disastrous for the upholstery considering the amount of coffee I contained. Not only was the line funny, but the concept of separatists going to bat for Government of Canada cheques was just too much.

They also discussed the CA’s unfortunate uses of Great Big Sea’s “Ordinary Day”, Parachute Club’s “Rise Up” (!), and Shania Twain’s “Man, I feel like a woman” (?!?!?) They also dredged up some real ripe cheddar from the 1988 campaign.

36

Apology accepted. Many Canadians seems to get a little hot under the collar about these issues. I would, however, like to address a number of issues you have raised.

My post was not really responding to your OP, but to the posts that followed. I agree with you that the Liberals are becoming more like the Alliance in their financial policies, and I believe that this is because the majority of Canadians have indicated that one of the primary concerns among voters is high taxes, which the Liberals and Alliance are trying to address by proposing increased fiscal restraint.

This is true, but, in the same vein, society is not improved by forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for students to attend to school to attain personal fulfillment rather than to acquire knowledge and skills which will assist them in becoming productive members of society. I am a great fan of gaining knowledge for knowledge’s sake alone, however, I also believe that if you choose to pursue this course, you should take personal responsibility for paying for your education. I personally know far too many students who obtained their first Arts degree because going to university was preferable to going out into the real world, and many of these students have since had their student loans forgiven or have defaulted. I believe that student loan forgiveness should, at least in part, be tied to academic performance, which would not dissuade those who are really serious about obtaining an education but which might cause those not serious to rethink their choice to attend university. University is not for everyone. I believe that trade schools are often a far more attractive alternative for some students, and I also believe that they should receive much more government funding than they do.

I am certainly not proposing that we cast people out into the cold. I am simply disagreeing with the premise that throwing more money at the problem will solve it. I believe that tax money would be better spent at addressing the abuses of the system that are currently occuring. This would serve to allocate more money to the truly unfortunate who really need it and alleviate the tax burden of those of us who are able to pay.

I also disagree with your allegation that disease rates, crime rates, child poverty, etc. have been increasing. In fact, crime rates have been steadily decreasing since 1995 despite cuts to social assistance.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/State/Justice/legal02.htm

Similarly, child poverty has remained static or decreased.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Families/famil41a.htm

If you truly believe that this country is going to hell in a handbasket because of cuts to social assistance, I believe you should provide some evidence to back it up.