No.
How about you think about it, do the math and get back to me tomorrow. You made the accusation that:
It’s up to you to prove that: not me.
The quote that I cited says that the changes in two-for-one legislation adds 4,000 people over 5 years.
You’re no longer worth attempting to carry on a reasonable discussion with. You are refusing to justify your stance; you make no arguments for it, and are demanding that we argue against reasons you’ve got buried in a jar in your back yard.
bashere may find this more interesting than doing the dishes; I do not find it more interesting than . . . well, almost anything.
Thank you, Frank. Your point is well made. While not directed at me, reviewing my responses, I am clearly being a jerk, and will bow out of this thread. Leaffan, vote as you will. Please understand that many people disagree, not out of ignorance, but due to different priorities.
Increasing the prison population by 4,000 over 5 years just by cancelling 2-for-1 rules would by itself increase the prison population as fast as population growth in percentage terms.
When one then accounts for the fact that the Tory platform calls for tougher approaches to crime and sentencing across a variety of areas, it’s kind of hard to come up with a logical reason why the prison population WOULDN’T go up, unless you can explain some hidden part of the Tory agenda that would reduce inmates in some other way…like, say, a saner approach to drugs, but the Tories don’t want that.
Off on a tangent here, but I and many in my riding are thoroughly disgusted with our local Conservative. I’ve posted previously about how he won’t attend local all-candidates forums. Seems it’s been ramped up a notch.
Local citizen Rod Leland tried to get Jim Hillyer, the CPC candidate in our riding, on camera to answer a few questions. Hillyer didn’t like this.
Um … aren’t the issues what a candidate should address? Let’s see … we have a candidate who won’t address the issues in an all-candidates forum, who won’t address the issues on the street; and who, if this is any indication, won’t address issues anywhere. Who knows what he might not do in Parliament? See what the CBC had to say about Hillyer.
Sorry, Jim. You’ve lost my vote. You’ll probably win anyway, since, as a Mormon, you have the local Mormon vote, and you’ll have the votes of the crusty farmers who’ve voted Conservative for fifty-plus years because their Daddy told them to. But when I need to write my MP, I expect you to listen to me, regardless of which church I attend (or not), or whether I’m urban or rural.
Jim Hillyer, you’re Pit-worthy.
Just an FYI. Layton has been limiting the amount of questions as well recently.
Here is the YouTube linkto the press conference where Stockwell Day announced the federal funding for new prisons. Now, if the new prisons were intended to replace the old ones, this would have been an ideal time to have said so. Instead, we got into this strange discussion of ‘unreported crime’ as a justification for building new, larger prisons.
Here is a link to the Statistics Canada release showing that crime, including violent crime is down from a peak 2003 and has been trending downward ever since.
And here is a link to an article from Human Resources Canada about population growth rate.
I can’t comment on any of bashere’s assertions concerning the government increasing the prison population over the last five years. I can only comment that as the youngest of the baby boomer generation are turning 65, seniors homes, palliative care and hospitals would seem to be a better investment than multi-million dollar prisons at this time.
Thanks for the clarification.
Sorry Rickjay.
Merciful mother of God.
The Toronto Star, for longer than my lifetime the Official Liberal Party Newspaper, has endorsed the NDP.
I am honestly shocked by this. The Star is the most blatantly politically biased major newspaper in Canada; their Liberal Party support is evident not just in editorials but in their choices of story, in the pictures they run, in the way every article is written, and many of their articles and columns approach Fox News levels of spin. It’s almost as if the paper was actually run by senior Liberals. The Star ALWAYS endorses the Liberals at the federal level; they even endorsed John Turner in 1984 when Turner was probably having trouble getting his family to vote for him.
For the Star to endorse the NDP is a devastating repudiation of the Liberal Party. It is equivalent to a top-five Liberal cabinet minister abandoning the party right now and endorsing another party.
And it’s a huge, huge coup for the NDP. The Star is THE vehicle for printed news in Toronto. This actually could swing a few ridings.
The Liberal rank and file needs to rise up and throw out everyone at the top of the party.
I take it that you don’t read the National Post? 
Sure I do.
They aren’t even close. The Post is heavily small-C conservative and they’re open and forthright about that fact, but maintains a level of basic honesty most of the time - not always, but usually - and they’re happy to rip the CPC on any number of issues. On the bias scale I’d put them way ahead of the Globe and Mail, but not nearly as far as the Toronto Star.
I was intrigued by the number of articles in the Globe and Mail that were critical of the Conservatives this election. What’s up? They’re not going to support the Torys? Then they came out with the editorial endorsing the Conservatives on Thursday. So despite all the questions that they themselves have raised, they can’t change their stripes. Oh, well…
I was quite heartened, by the way, to read this article in yesterday’s Star, about the race in Mississauga-Brampton South and how the Conservative and Liberal candidates have actually been respectful to one another. It’s good to see that some candidates get the notion that you should attack the idea and not the person.
I am politically left of centre, but I also remember the 1990s in Ontario. but even I am shocked by events of recent days.
The Toronto Star endorsing NDP is like the Pope endorsing Lutheranism*
*Not exactly I know, and please no one come along and give me a history of the Reformation etc and point how NDP was not a reaction to excesses of Liberalism and I am perfectly aware of the CCP and Tommy Douglas etc. Still shocking.
So, Prime Minister Jack Layton, eh? I’m going to need a minute here…
My understanding is that the prison population is expected to raise over the next five, not over the last five. At least that’s my reading of my National Post cite. Thank you, though; the rest of your quotes are in line with what I’ve read.
[QUOTE=Ibanez]
Just an FYI. Layton has been limiting the amount of questions as well recently.
[/QUOTE]
That’s vexatious. And surprising. Thank you for letting me know.
It strikes me as being a perfectly reasonable response to the demands of the media. There is a limit, after all, as to how much time a party leader can spend in any given day answering questions; he’s got stuff to do. With the NDP being a much more serious player now than they were four weeks ago, the number of questions will increase. So it seems to me you HAVE to limit the media’s questioning, don’t you? How could you not? There’s only 24 hours in a day.
-
It’s logistically impossible for Layton to answer every question the media would throw at him, and so it’s fairer to explain the limits ahead of time rather than just cut them off and run away when he has to get somewhere, and
-
Letting the media know ahead of time that the questions are limited might increase the quality of questions; if they know they’re limited, they might not waste his time with stupidities and redundant questions.
The Conservatives went WAY too far early on (they relented later) but in theory limiting questioning is perfectly reasonable and every important politician does it.
I live in John Baird’s riding, and all his signs have a little addendum flag at the top that says “voted best MP of all parties” or something like that…
Is there a story behind that? Best MP at what? Voted by who? I thought he was supposed to be a jerky jerk bully that everyone hated, but apparently not!
MacLean’s based on IPSOS/Ried’s asking MPs to vote on each other: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2010/02/c9104.html
Be bold.