I think most people don’t care.
Having or not having a Queen has no real effect on our daily lives. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Most people take an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude. If it were to suddenly be broken (such as if the Crown tried to assert its theoretical power in the absence of dire need) then there would be a quick outpouring of “fix it” sentiment, whereupon there would quickly cease being a Crown.
Last time i checked, the global demand for oil wasn’t going to be declining any time soon.
Because increased fuel taxes will trickle down through just about every good and service provided. Companies who are just eking out a small profit now might just say to hell with it when material and transportation costs rise even higher than they currently are. And what’s so absurd about propping up failing companies? Propping up failing companies that provide hundreds, possibly thousands of jobs isn’t such a bad thing. I’d rather provide tax breaks and incentives to keep companies, than tax them even more and decimate more communities.
Don’t suppose there’s any chance this election will change that?
Nope.
Dion’s a tremendously decent man, as principled a politician as you’ll ever find, and a courageous patriot.
Unfortunately for him, he’s just not an inspiring or charismatic figure. It takes a lot to be less charismatic than Stephen Harper, but he is. And like it or not, that counts in politics - not just in terms of selling yourself to the voters, but it’s a real and important ability if you want to be Prime Minister.
You know we already have that, of course. What you’re describing isn’t the “Green Shift” at all, which calls for no additional taxes on gasoline. Seriously, look it up. It’s on page 28 of the 48-page handbook.
I mean, maybe you have a good plan, but it’s not the Liberal plan.
“Global demand” includes you. You are on the same globe as the rest of us.
Again, you seem to be under the impression that all these fuel taxes are just vanishing into thin air. There are lots of countries like Japan that have very high fuel costs/taxes. Is Japan an economic backwater? It is true that in such countries, the price of fuel IS reflected in the price of goods and services, but that money goes back into the economy somehow, in the form of lower taxation on other things, better healthcare, education, or any number of things much more desirable than ensuring poor people can drive Hummers. Taxation doesn’t mean Canada as a whole ends up with more or less stuff, it just means the tax burden is distributed differently. The effect is different from the inflationary effect of a rise in REAL oil prices, as we are experiencing now. When the price of oil rises because there is literally less oil being chased around by more dollars.
Or you could just give the money to the workers directly. Why is it so important to you that Rick Wagoner keeps making his millions every year for running his company into the ground? In any case, you COULD use the revenue from the fuel tax to subsidize GM, if you wanted. I don’t agree with that but that’s a separate issue from taxation of fuel/carbon, which is why I said to leave it aside.
That would be why I’m voting Green. You could also look it up, if you want.
Speaking of which…Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been barred from the Leader’s Debate. Link
I’m disappointed since I’m considering voting Green and I’d like to see what they have to offer.
I don’t understand what you mean by this, in context of the other posts.
Because I’m cynical that yet another tax will actually do anything other than force up prices, and shut down more companies.
We will be. It’s called employment insurance and welfare.
I think there’s a few thousand people in Oshawa who would find it important.
You were saying something about global demand declining. Global demand includes you. If your demand decreases, global demand decreases.
It will force up the price of fuel to the end consumer, and possibly shut down companies that are less fuel efficient than their competitors. All good things which I am for.
All right, let me try and re frame this in the context of fuel and carbon taxes. This money to bail out GM and put people on welfare isn’t going to appear out of thin air. You and I are going to be on the hook for every last penny that this costs. Would it make more sense to collect this money on the basis of simply who has more and makes more money (the mechanism by which you and I are throwing half our paychecks to the dogs every year) or perhaps, by levying a tax that also discourages the consumption of fossil fuel and encourages more energy efficient economic development? It’s not an either/or proposition, but every dollar you collect in the second scheme is one less dollar that will need to come from the first.
Okay, Leaffan, let me see if I’ve got this straight - you live somewhere where you pay less in property taxes, lengthening your commute so you’re emitting more car exhaust into our air. You pay less tax and pollute more - in my books, that boils down to you’re taking more than you’re giving. A carbon tax would even things out so you’re putting as much into the pot as you’re taking out. I’d still prefer to lessen the amount of car farts we all have to breathe rather than just tax the buggers ruining our air, but it’s a start…
On a different note, have you considered replacing the wood stove (as a primary heat source, anyway) with a geo-thermal system? If you’re far enough out of town that you’re off the gas, water and sewer systems, it sounds like you’ve probably got the room to dig a trench below the frost line. My In-laws, who are if anything more conservative in their politics than you, put one in just over a year ago, and it brought their heating costs down (former electric furnace + woodstove users) to less than $15 a month. It will have paid itself off in savings in another 5 years, depending on the severity of the winters… Something to consider to reduce your costs and your footprint.
Well, this is the thing that puzzles me, and most other Anglos with Québecois roots. I can understand a Separatist voting for a separatist party, and I can understand a Federalist not voting for them. I personally cannot understand the number of people who are soft separatists - I have many friends in Montréal who talk about how they don’t actually want to separate, but they have no problem voting BQ, PQ or even ‘Yes’ (‘to send a message’ said Jasmine.) Unless they’ve changed the mandate of the party, the BQ wants to separate, too. End of story for me - you could run Jesus Christ himself in my riding, I wouldn’t vote for him.
With respect, HJ, do you consider yourself a separatist? Again, I’m not asking to antagonize, it is just that I disagree with your assessment of ‘asphyxiating federalism’. I yearn for the day that we can put the entire question to rest to the satisfaction of all sides of the debate, and I believe there is far more that unites us than divides us. I know, it’s that optimism thing that gets me in trouble all the time…
How would the UK respond to that? Would they just let it happen, cut of diplomatic ties, or perhaps even go to war over it?
But you don’t know the marginal benefit of what he’s using his car for. Presumably he drives to do a job; that job creates services and/or products, generating wealth, which produces tax revenues and benefits for other Canadians. You can’t simply look at one side of the equation. Gasoline isn’t being burned for shits and giggles; it’s being used to convey people and goods from one place to another. You could REALLY cut down on carbon emissions by banning the use of commercial trucks, but of course there’d be the problem of food shortages, starvation and mass internal refugee migration. There’s clearly a balance to be struck, and you can’t just assert Leaffan is above or below any balance on his own unless you can account for every possible variable he influences.
The “pot” you claim he’s taking out of is nonsense; you’re throwing a couple of unrelated variables together (property tax and carbon emissions?) without regard to a thousand others. What connection you could possibly draw between property tax and vehicle emissions I can’t begin to fathom; does that mean I somehow help the environment if I switch to driving a tank, but pay more property tax? How on earth does giving the city government more money equate to offsetting carbon emissions?
It’s also curious how the straightforward fact is being ignored that the Green Shift will not make any difference in global climate change. It’s tough to swallow, perhaps, but it’s the plain truth; the impact it’ll have on Canadian carbon emissions is hopelessly dwarfed by any reasonable projection of global carbon usage increase over any period of time you care to measure it. Indeed, if the result is to push manufacturing offshore it might INCREASE carbon emissions by sending production to countries with less rigourous environmental protection rules. It effectively does nothing more than subject Canadians to economic pressure and costs for absolutely no tangible benefit on the global climate change front. It might have a minor effect on urban smog in Toronto and whatever other Canadian cities have smog problems - I’d never noticed Montreal had smog, but I might not have caught it on the wrong day - but frankly you could come up with better and fairer ways of fixing that local problem, such as video tolling of the DVP and Gardiner Expressway.
I expect if the Queen were acting loopy enough for us to turf the monarchy, the UK would be too busy getting rid of her role in their own government to much care how the colonies were responding.
As to this, I’m not sure this has been adequately explained; the Queen doesn’t really have any direct constitutional power in Canada. Her position in Canada is NOT equivalent to her position in the United Kingdom, where she does in fact have some power but is de facto restricted from using it. There is no practical way for Her Majesty to force the Governor General to do anything. Technically she APPOINTS the Governor General, but only on the advice of the Prime Minister.
If for some bizarre reason she tried to interfere in Canada’s affairs, which of course she never would, it would not require any response by Canada at all, because nothing would happen. It would be as if Victoria Beckham was pronouncing orders for Canada’s government. If it was sufficiently insulting to merit getting rid of the monarch as head of state, the UK government would likely not really give a crap.
Well put Rick. And don’t forget Le Ministre my property taxes are lower because I don’t have the same services as city folk. (Well technically I am in Ottawa, but only because of a forced amalgamation.) Without the same level of police service, road maintenance, water treatment, sewer discharge, sidewalks, public transportation, fire department service, etc. I expect that property taxes would be lower. Heck, my family’s carbon footprint may well be lower too, due to the diminished services available. I don’t really know. But, again, as Rick pointed out, it is an apples and oranges thing.
Geo-thermal may well be the next major upgrade, Indeed it looks promising since it’s almost like free air conditioning in the summer too.
Well, first off, Leaffan would contribute the same amount to the economy whether he burned gas driving to work, walked, rode a bike, took a train, blah, blah, blah, so in choosing a mode of transportation that affects the environment adversely, he is ‘taking’ more than others who do the same work. And yes, property taxes are only one slice of his contributions to society, the rest being his income taxes, both federal and provincial, any GST he has paid, etc., etc. I can’t comment on those, because I’m not privy to that information. The only reason I know anything about his property taxes is because he himself mentioned it upthread - today at 12:55 he said that he paid 20% - 30% less in property taxes than city dwellers, and that he had to drive because of where he lived. That’s all I have to go on, and based on that, he is choosing to burn gasoline, saving money on his overall tax burden and then claiming elsewhere that he is overtaxed. I disagree.
You say
If Canada stands to lose so much by becoming a global leader in environmental science, why has the economy of Germany not tanked as they approach their Kyoto obligations? I don’t buy these ‘can’t win, won’t try’ arguments - that’s like someone going on statins instead of cutting the fat out their diet. Fossil fuels are like heroin, and it’s time we kicked the habit.
Not really. A certain number of people see the Queen as a symbol of colonialism, and it’s certainly understood that if Quebec ever becomes independent, it will be a republic, but there is no movement to abolish the Canadian monarchy. I personally don’t care about this issue at all.
But you certainly understand voting for a party even if you don’t agree with all their policies, right?
But the Bloc cannot do anything about it. They’re just a federal political party. (Gilles Duceppe himself has openly been courting federalists in the last few days.) I guess you consider the idea of Quebec being independent so offensive that you wouldn’t vote for anyone who thinks it’s a good idea, but to me the idea is not offensive (even if I may not entirely agree with it), so it won’t stop me voting for them, especially given that they can’t do anything about it.
Eh, I wouldn’t use the term “separatist” even if I were one. 
Actually I am not. I wouldn’t call myself a “federalist” or a “sovereigntist”, but if you keep asking I’ll probably end up saying I’m a federalist. I think it would be possible to have a Canada in which Quebec and the other provinces can coexist without problems, which I see as a Canada based more on the model of Switzerland, for example. But the problem is that Canadians (English Canadians at least) don’t seem to want that. This is the whole reason why the idea of independence became mainstream in the first place.
Ministre, the vast majority of Quebecers, including “soft nationalists” like me, are proud Canadians – in our way – and we don’t want to break up the country. But we vote for the PQ, for the Bloc and yes, even Yes in referenda because these parties will defend the interests of Quebec in Canada, and because, it seems to me, Canada and Quebec as two separate countries would be better than the Liberal vision of Canada. But it would be a heartbreaking event, and many of us do not want to take the plunge, which is why Quebec will never be independent.
The more the federal government grows and starts meddling with what isn’t its responsibility (culture, for example), the more Quebec is asphyxiated. I have nothing with the federal taking care of foreign relations (in most cases), the military, Canada Post, etc., but they should stay there.
Are you sure? The Queen is the head of state of Canada, couldn’t she take the place of the Governor General if she wanted to (and if we agreed, of course, this is all hypothetical)? She appoints the Governor General, but can she recall her? For example, if the Queen is in Canada, can she decide by herself that she will give royal assent to a few laws instead of letting the Governor General do it?