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What do you want out of your Government?

The structure of our Government is derived from the BNA act, which was written at a time when communications precluded a continental nation from being a viable proposition. Our neighbours to the south pioneered the "Federal" system, where different levels of government were responsible for different things appropriate to how close they were to the people. The Federal level of government was quite limited, until the time of the Civil war, America was properly reffered to as "These United States".

Our big problem is the Federal level of government is intruding deeply into Provincial responsibilities through the use of taxation and tax revenues. The BNA act reserves resources, education and health care exclusivley to the provinces, and if that had been adhered to, this entire thread would never have happened. If the Feds were to commit the same time and resources to their true responsibilities of national security and foreign relations as they do for health care, then we would be a lot better off. (IF they dropped doing health care and all the other pork barrels, we would be immensly better off).

Perhaps Premier Williams should concentrate his efforts on "disentanglement" of Federal and Provincial responsibilities. He has shown great energy in his dealings with the Martin government (although given Martin's level of activity, that isn't really saying much), and I would think he has the moral authoraty to launch such a project. (When you mention this to him, tell him I said "Hello"). Disentanglement would be a long term solution to the problems of "Have" and "Have not" provinces (now the voters know who to blame), and the stripping away of overregulation and excessive taxation through disentanglement would have very positive effects on our overall economic health.
 
Wow a thread where I can rant about what I want from the government. Is there even enough room on here to do all my rantings hehe. Well first off I think tha government gives out too many freebies. Why the heck should I have to pay for someone who doesnt want to work. We totally need to fix the welfare system, regarding who gets what and why they get it. I am tired of having to deal with the student loan people and all the paper work that is involved in that. I want more funding and more funding that I dont have to pay back or atleast a break on the monies that I am borrrowing. I want our military to be funded to the fullest extent. I want our government to stop letting in any joe blow from the street into canada just because he has a sob story, I'm tired of paying money so that an immigrant muslim family of people who feel 9/11 was a good thing can get health care in Canada(no, I have nothing against people from other countries, I have a problem with us allowing people into our country who may have terrorism ties). I want the government to become more accountable and stop spending our money on crap. I want them to stop dishing out these huge pensions to politicians when my father who served twenty years with the military is only getting a few dollars. I want the damn public service workers to actually have to work instead of going on strike everytime they want more money or more vacation. I want everyone in Canada to have food and shelter and not have to wait five years for life saving surgery. I want criminals to actually go to jail for their crimes, not a jail with a three hole golf course.Ok I think that may be about it. hehe >:D
 
camochick said:
I'm tired of paying money so that an immigrant muslim family of people who feel 9/11 was a good thing can get health care in Canada(no, I have nothing against people from other countries, I have a problem with us allowing people into our country who may have terrorism ties).

Welcome to the world of being PC.

Should anything happen in Canada, the only fault falls on the government for letting them into Canada in the first place.

The damage has been done, and sadly its just a matter of time. I wish I was wrong.

Australia realises that we have a real threat with islamic extremists right here in our own country. Our Prime Minister has openly admitted that its not 'if' but 'when' we will be attacked.

Defence, Police and security forces are trained for this, and you can't even find a bin for garbage in any train station in Sydney! Increased vigillance on national treasures, icons and public places. even adds for dobbing in a terrorist, 1-800 numbers, fridge magnets, etc. 'Be Alert Not Alarmed' is the governments motto for this advertising.

Scarey when you think of it.

Cheers,

Wes  
 
Defence, Police and security forces are trained for this, and you can't even find a bin for garbage in any train station in Sydney! Increased vigillance on national treasures, icons and public places. even adds for dobbing in a terrorist, 1-800 numbers, fridge magnets, etc. 'Be Alert Not Alarmed' is the governments motto for this advertising.

Interesting thoughts Wes. I didn't realize that the Aust. Gov't was so aware of the threat facing us all. I'm glad they are though! It might save a few lives when it comes time...

Sadly Canada cannot boast such watchfulness. We (the country) are still basking in the false glow of "peace, love and Harmony" and not willing to take a look at the world outside our own door.

It is too late for us to be turning this threat back at the border as they already live amoung us (remember the block parties being thrown in Scarborough during 911?!) but NOT TOO LATE for us to be vigilant and stop the threat when it starts...

Sadly the govt's attitude toward our national defense is readily apparent with each passing month. The election promises have come to naught (as we knew they would!) and the forces is really nothing more than a hood ornament for the govt's oversized vehicle of state.

I firmly believe that it will take a massive loss of Canadian life for us to wake up and be galvanized into the action that should have been taken long ago!

Slim :cdn: :salute:
 
In the more general sense of what I want from my government, here's Rich Lowrey:

www.townhall.com/columnists/richlowry/rl20040708

Wealth vs. Work
The president should welcome the â Å“Two Americasâ ? argument.

The cliché is that in choosing John Edwards as his running mate, John Kerry didn't just acquire a potential vice president, but a message: the rhetoric of "two Americas" that Edwards relentlessly repeated during the primaries. Less appreciated is that the choice of Edwards might finally give President Bush a message too.

Kerry has long lacked a campaign theme. By saying the other day that the Edwards "two Americas" line is what the campaign is "all about," Kerry has signaled that he is ready to adopt the Edwards message. As for Bush, he has matched Kerry almost vacuity for vacuity. Yes, he wants to persevere in Iraq and preserve his tax cuts. What else? A forward-looking second-term agenda with thematic coherence and political punch has been AWOL. The Bush campaign should take a page from Kerry â ” let John Edwards show the way.

The Edwards theme of "two Americas" â ” one characterized by "work," the other by "wealth" â ” amounts to a frontal attack on capital and efforts to foster its accumulation. Edwards has complained about Bush's income-tax cuts "on the rich," and scored him for wanting "to eliminate the capital-gains tax, dividends tax, the estate tax, all the taxation of wealth or passive income on wealth, and shift that tax burden to people who work for a living." Edwards, in other words, takes direct aim at Bush policies rewarding savings and investment.
The opposition Edwards tries to make between work and wealth doesn't make sense. Why do people work? For wealth. Rewarding wealth means rewarding the fruits of work. For instance, two-thirds of the beneficiaries of Bush's cut in the top marginal tax rate own some form of small business. In America, you work, make a business succeed, then get wealthy (and become the target of demagogic politicians â ” the American dream!).

Edwards is bucking an important demographic trend. The percentage of Americans owning stock increased from 19 percent to 52 percent from 1983 to 2001. When Edwards criticizes those hoping their savings and investments will produce "passive income," he is lashing out at most of America. His vision of Wall Street as the province of barons in top hats belongs in the 1930s.

He doesn't seem to understand that wealth, when it is saved and invested, is working. Does he really want Bill Gates to stop investing in Microsoft, which has created countless jobs and made countless investors rich? Or the next Bill Gates not to be able to raise the capital to give his venture a go, because that capital is likely to come from â ” gasp â ” the rich?

Bush can adopt an agenda for an "ownership society" that confronts this Kerry/Edwards angle of attack. Its most important element would be private Social Security accounts, allowing people to save and invest for their own retirement. Liberalized IRAs could also increase the number of savers and the amount they save, while private health and education accounts would allow people to save for their own health and educational needs. And Bush could steal a worthy Edwards proposal â ” tax credits to help poor people save.

The themes of all policies are ownership (you own your own wealth, which no one can take away), choice (you decide what to do with your money) and opportunity (you get a chance to enjoy the wonder of compound interest and, through stocks, to own a piece of the American economy â ” a chance, in short, to get rich). These themes are as winning and all-American as a John Edwards grin.

The election competition, then, would become roughly between punishing the rich and making more people rich. It's the latter goal that accords with traditional American striving. The problem with Edwards is that he is youthful, but dated in his views. He evokes aspiration, but is unsympathetic to one of the main means of promoting it. Through embracing him and his message, Kerry gets stylistic optimism at the price of substantive gloom. Wealth vs. work? Bring it on.

â ” Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

Annotations in bold by myself

 
Hey how about to stop being politically correct, and to curb immigration of questionable radical extremists or people from questionalble countries which promote hatred to the west. Let someone be suckered into taking them on board. Look at poor England and the nightmare they have now.

Who gives a shyte if we offend someone. Its about our own self preservation and keeping our way of life intact, not promoting Sharia law in our own country!

Regards,

Wes
 
Centralization of power means less individual freedom.  Decentralization of power generally results in more freedom for the individual.  The 'Town Meeting' system of government as practiced for many generations in New England is the ideal system for individual freedom and participation.  It actually grew out of their philosophy of church government ie that the church should be governed from the 'bottom up' as opposed from the 'top down' C of E style.  This was the central issue of the CW of the 1650's.

  Church governments and civil governments in New England towns where the Congregational Church was dominate were one in the same until after the Rev War.  However, the people involved were usually one in the same in some places well into the 20th Cent.  This would have been the traditions that old New England families such as the Bushes would have been nurtured in for generations. 
 
Well, I want a government with a half a brain, then I'll be more happy :). But the way I see it now, this government is'nt very effective, for example on same sex marriage, whether you agree with it or not the liberals are basically being bullies, and saying that anybody that disagrees with their position on same sex marriage is a bigot. Plus I find that they put to much faith into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They tend to adopt the courts definition of the charter, but it is'nt necessarily the peoples. For example I could very well see in the future, a judge making a decision saying that consenting adults may marry a brother and a sister etc. The reason why this is, is because once again it could be considered against the charter of rights, and that all the relationships are between consenting adults.

I think that in the end, this country would be better off going back to the original bill of rights adopted by Deifenbaker, and by reversing policies put in place by Trudeau. However the country must also adopt some of Tommy Douglas's policies to ensure that all people have the basic needs required to live healthy lives.
 
What do you want out of your government?

Well, first and foremost, I'd like to see the Liberal Party of Canada out of my government, and yours too - out of government, generally, for, say, a generation or so.
 
All I want from the Gov is simple  1/ Stop being bloody Tree hugers second grab a back bone .
 
Integrity and compassion. These two alone assure the rest.

And a sharp hedge trimmer for the Bush administration.  >:D
 
And a sharp hedge trimmer for the Bush administration. 

I didn't realize that President Bush is a member of the Canadian Liberal party?! When did that happen?
 
How bout a responsible and government.

The Feds wrap themselves in that Charter and it drives me nuts.  EQUAL RIGHTS my ass all they are doing with is giving in to every other minority or religous group that says well in my country we do it this way.  ANd we give into that. What about our rights and heritage.  Example the mounties. 

We need a government that will set a standaard and check to see the standard is being meet.  Not a government that is over everynight eating all the food you have in your cupboards.

The Charter is for all the people in Canada not just the minorities.  This same sex thing drives me, if they want the same rights they can have them leave the title as that is based in religon.  Have the government get out of the marriage business and into civil unions. 

Health care another stupid issue.  Set a standard then enforce it.  Don't let provinces say well we need to make a two tierd system to work bull s h i t!!!!  If you get federal and provincial tax dollars then that is what you use don't charge me to see a doctor.

Military this could be long but i will keep it short stop wasting money studing crap to death if it works and is requested get it.  Don't buy everything from Quebec, or a party supporter. Back the troops not your political buddies.  Get more troops.

Imigration i say we close the doors till we kind find everyone we let in over the last 15 yrs and document all of it properly and like camo chick said.  " lets not let in everyone with a sob story" it should be  what can you do for this country.

Welfare, revamp the whole thing should be more like work fare and i don't care about the uproar.  If i am at work everyday so you can sit on your ass and drink beer and smoke cigaretts no i don't think so.  You can go to the homeless shelter and feed them and clean up, you can work with road crews, do something, nothing should be free there. And there should be a limit as to how long you can be on it.

Ahh my penny and a half.

 
A look at the origins of our system, and the principles that we need to keep in mind. Bold annotations by myself

Sic Temper Tyrannis
1649 and now.

By Arthur Herman

In the raging debate about the meaning and significance of the Iraqi election on Sunday, no one has noticed a strange fact. This election, which many hope will spark a democratic revolution for the Middle East, falls on the same day â ” January 30 â ” as the event which set in motion the modern West's first democratic revolution more than 365 years ago. It was on that day in 1649 that King Charles I of England was beheaded after his formal trial for treason and tyranny, an epoch-shattering event that destroyed the notion of divine right of kings forever, and gave birth to the principle that reverberates down to today, from President Bush's inaugural address last week to the Iraqi election this Sunday: that all political authority requires the consent of the people. Although few like to admit it now, it was Charles's execution, along with the civil war that preceded it and the political turmoil that followed, that established our modern notions of democracy, liberty, and freedom of speech. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "the tree of liberty must sometimes be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," he was thinking primarily of the legacy of the English civil war.

Charles I's trial and execution followed years of violence which dwarf anything happening in Iraq today. Still, the parallels between Iraq in 2005 and England in 1649 are striking. While Charles I was no Saddam Hussein, he had jailed and even tortured his opponents to exact obedience to his autocracy, and had used his army to wage war on his own subjects. It took six years of bloody fighting across England, Scotland, and Ireland to finally topple him and his regime, in a civil war costing thousands of lives â ” more in a proportional sense, than died in the First World War.

This was also a conflict shaped by religious rivalries, with Catholics and Anglicans, the equivalent of Iraq's Sunnis, fighting against Presbyterians and other radical Protestant sects who, like Iraq's Shias, had lived for decades under the heel of their oppressors. And like Iraq, the war invoked fierce ethnic hatreds, pitting Englishmen against both Irish and Scots and leading to atrocities on all sides. Nor was there a United States to step in to shape events or to guarantee security against hostile neighbors, like Spain and France, who tried to prop up Charles's cause and prevent the democratic revolution unfolding in England from reaching their shores.

Yet in spite of the chaos and instability, the defeat of the English monarchy shattered once and for all the idea that had governed Western political institutions since the Middle Ages, that a king's authority was divine and beyond question. When Charles I went to the execution block on January 30, a brave new world was born, that of sovereignty of the people. The declaration of a self-governing English commonwealth took place the following March, while debates and discussion had already taken place across England about whether popular sovereignty literally meant one man one vote or required a property qualification; or meant the abolition of property as radical groups like the Levelers argued; or even whether women should have a role.

Few of the participants in these debates, and in the pamphlet explosion which the king's death set off, were intellectuals like John Milton or Thomas Hobbes. Most were soldiers, ministers, farmers, and ordinary working men-the equivalent of the bloggers in today's post-Saddam Iraq. Yet the ideas they forged in the flames of revolution would inspire the writings of John Locke and later the Founding Fathers.

They included the idea that human beings have a "natural right" to liberty; that a free commonwealth requires a free and open public square for debate and deliberation, a affirmation of free speech which John Milton passionately defended in his Aeropagitica; and that politics is about human needs and issues, not divine dictates and ordinances. Although participants on both sides freely quoted the Bible to support their positions, they also recognized that if freedom was to reign, political authority must be detached from religious authority. This was the original formulation of our doctrine of the separation of Church and State: 366 years ago, Englishmen had come to realize that the mullah must yield to the magistrate, and that both must ultimately yield to the people.

Not bad for a decade of chaos and turmoil. And although the throne was restored eleven years later in 1660, it was for a king who admitted the principle of parliamentary consent. England had become Europe's first true constitutional monarchy. Will anything as important and influential come out of Sunday's election in Iraq? Hard to say. But just as Milton and Algernon Sidney and John Locke, and later Jefferson and Adams, translated the ideas of the English civil war, along with those of the Greeks and Romans, into the idiom of modern democracy and freedom, so this generation of Iraqi democrats may do the same for Islamic political thought in the Middle East. No one should underestimate the revolutionary power of the ballot box-or the executioner's axe.

â ” Arthur Herman is the author of To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, published by Harper Collins.

 
 
I want them to sort this mess out:

Pension Income in Canada ~ Only in Canada
              Ladies and gentlemen:

              Read it and weep!
  From the hard copy of the Toronto Star, 18 April 2004.

  I found it interesting that the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly Allowance of $1,890.00 and each can also get an additional $580.00 in social assistance for a total of 2,470.00. This compares very well to a single pensioner who after contributing to the growth and development of Canada for 40 to 50 years can only receive a monthly maximum of $1,012.00 in old age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement.

    Maybe our pensioners should apply as refugees!

    Lets send this to all Canadians, so we can all be fed up  and maybe we can get the refugees cut back to $1,012.00 and the pensioners up to $2,470.00 and enjoy some of the money we  were forced to submit to the Government over the last 40 or 50 years.
 
Constituent Service
Newsflash: Bush is a politician.

http://www.nationalreview.com/ponnuru/ponnuru200502010909.asp

President Bush has selected his policy agenda with an eye toward strengthening the Republican party and weakening the Democrats. Unlikely as it seems, that was front-page news in Sunday's Washington Post.

Thomas Edsall and John Harris quote liberal activist John Podesta, who says that Bush is pushing for tort reform for political rather than economic reasons. The always interesting New Democrat Ed Kilgore, in a post about the article, echoes the point: "The extraordinary attention the GOPers are paying to so-called 'tort reform' . . . is a simple function of the amount of money trial lawyers contribute to Democrats, and the amount of money their enemies are beginning to contribute to Republicans. Similarly, the administration's ongoing efforts to reduce public employee rights is no accident, and is driven less by ideology than by the amount of money public employee unions contribute to Democrats." Kilgore concludes that "the Edsall-Harris piece implicitly demonstrates . . . that actually making conditions in the country better doesn't seem to show up anywhere in the Bush-Rove priority list" (emphasis his).

Edsall and Harris are aware that the pursuit of partisan advantage is not unprecedented among presidents: "All presidents weigh the political implications of their agendas, and hope that policies that prove popular will strengthen a party's claims on particular constituencies." That is the entirety of their concession, and the following sentence diminishes its force: "What is notable about the Bush White House, some analysts believe, is the extent to which its agenda is crafted with an eye toward the long-term partisan implications." So this president, supposedly, has a more politically-driven agenda than others have.

The Edsall-Harris article, some analysts believe, leaves out some crucial points. It ignores a Bush initiative that is hard to fit into the thesis: the Iraq war. Bush didn't start it for crass political reasons (I'm going to ignore infantile theorizing to the contrary). He risked a lot more politically on an initiative he believed to be in the national interest than his predecessor ever did.

The fact that Bush had a predecessor is a bit of useful context that, some analysts believe, is missing from the Post article. We are not given a single example of a Democratic initiative that was either designed for partisan reasons or had predictable effects that favored Democratic constituencies. Was President Clinton's proposal to hire more public-school teachers an attempt to expand the Democratic party's base? Was the Democrats' proposal for a patients' bill of rights an attempt to create a new source of funding for the trial lawyers? Were his proposed changes to labor law a way to strengthen the unions? I don't recall the Post ever asking those questions. Never mind that liberals openly defend what they call labor-law "reform" as a way of strengthening the unions.

Then there's the Clintons' health-care plan of 1993. Clinton aide Stanley Greenberg openly defended it as a means of winning the loyalty of the middle class for the Democratic party.

To be sure, Democrats believed that there were reasons for all of those policies besides their effects on various constituencies. Still, it is hard to believe that their likely partisan effects were irrelevant to their placement on the party's priority list. And, of course, Bush believes his policies to be in the national interest too. Podesta's comment creates a contrary impression by slicing the issue too thin. A reform of medical-liability laws, a settlement of asbestos cases, and efforts to rein in class-action suits may not in themselves amount to much of an economic agenda. But surely Bush believes that the costs of commercial litigation is a big problem for America, and that his proposed reforms represent the beginning of a solution to them. (I oppose both Bush's medical-liability reform and the most recent version of the asbestos bill, but that doesn't affect my conclusion here.)

Republicans have a lot of policy goals, as the Democrats do. Some of them are easier to achieve than others. Some of them, if achieved, would make it possible for them to achieve other goals. A liberalization of labor laws that weakens the unions might eventually make it possible to liberalize trade, too. Wouldn't a rational party devise its list of priorities with these effects in mind? And wouldn't a rational party give these effects even more weight when dealing with a situation of partisan parity and policy stalemate? If both parties have increasingly sought to gain advantage from policy changes, there's your explanation.

Modern liberalism has a tropism toward increased public dependence on government. Liberal proposals will tend to expand government, thus making the public more dependent on government and the party of government. Market conservatism has the reverse tendency, which is hardly more sinister. So it is very often going to be possible to describe the policy agenda of the moment on either side as a means of seeking partisan advantage.

As it happens, I'm not convinced that Bush's proposals, if implemented, would give the Republicans more than a momentary advantage. Personal accounts within Social Security may very well make the public more pro-market and less inclined to look to the government for help. But the parties might react by shifting their positions accordingly. The base of the Republican party would see that it could demand more and still hold on to power; the base of the Democratic party would see that it would have to ratchet down its demands. Parity would be quickly, perhaps instantaneously, restored. I suspect that modern politics is efficient that way. If Bush did lock in a Republican advantage, Democrats would have good reason to be concerned â ” but no good reason to complain of unfairness. They would simply have lost the normal political game for a time.

 
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