Canadian Elections 2004

[MY2K]

You can view where everyone's standing on all the issues and what they say they'll do about it here:
http://www.ctv.ca/mini/election2004/...es/issues.html

[Kuja]

Well, since I've missed the mainstream of all the commentaries and there's no chance of me feeling like going back and reading it all, I'll just make a blanket statement.

In Canada, there has been about three months top of pre-election jabber, with one month of campaigning, ending on June 28th, 2004. End end.

In the United States, there has been election coverage since about the begining of 2004, with about a full year of campaigning, with it ending likely sometime late into 2004. Early 2005 if Florida has a say.

So, all I can say is, yay! We only have to spend a quarter of the time the Americans do, getting shoveled nothing but bitter spiteful lies! WOO!

[AnonCastillo]

Originally Posted by Devon Lake

*Yawn* Oh, a comparison to the Soviets eh? *Ignores and moves on without dignifying such a ridiculous comparison with a response*

Comparing one socialized system to another and pointing out that the flaws of one are present in the other isn't a very ridiculous comparison. This is especially true since you specifically complained about the long wait times (4 hour wait for emergency room treatment (which, if it's a real emergency, is just fucking insane) and about having to wait months for certain treatments), and long wait times were a major problem in the soviet economic model.
Comparing your socialized system to one that's been tried and failed, and pointing out that yours suffers from many of the same flaws, is perfectly valid.

But, hey, as long as you're going to ignore a valid complaint and instead bring up a straw man argument and claim that I want to privatize the police, let me bring up an argument for you. Since being able to eat is a more basic human right than medical care, why should some people get to eat more or better food simply because they're rich? By the same arguments you use to defend nationalized health care, why not just have the government take ownership of every farm, supermarket, restaurant, etc. in Canada and control the food supply?

Originally Posted by Devon Lake

Have any references for that? The only people I’ve ever heard of who couldn’t get treated for whatever ailed them were other transsexuals, and that’s just because no doctors seem to feel like specializing in our area of health. Whatever deficiencies our system has is a matter of piss poor funding rather than a failure to privatize a human right.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102703C.html

Also, you've admitted to the extreme delay in treatment - if somoene dies during the 4 hour wait for emergency treatment, or the months or even years of waiting for major operations, then they obviously didn't get necessary health care - care which they would have gotten in a more timely fashion in the US.

Besides, the fact that transsexuals aren't getting equal treatment under the Canadian health care system is another point against it. In the US, any doctor who wants money will treat you. There are specialists here who deal with transsexuals, because transsexuals are paying customers just like anyone else. Sorry doctors in Canada are more biased.

Originally Posted by Devon Lake

I’m sure that they could privatize the police to if they wanted. Think of it, each household could by police insurance form numerous competing departments, and depending on the coverage level they pay, they can count on given levels of protection. If the police must prioritize their response to a few given crimes in progress, they can just quickly look up the membership levels of the given complainants and go after whoever’s got the more prestigious membership. Doesn’t that sound fair? A business tycoon can have an armed police escort everywhere they go and trained officers guarding their property day and night, as they deserve for getting a good job and contributing to society.

So what if a few poor bums who can’t afford to pay for police insurance get mugged, raped or killed with no protection whatsoever from the police force and thus no recourse against the assailants? The lousy bums should have just gotten some damned jobs! With the lower tax rate of not having to fund inefficient government police, anyone should be able to pay; letting those who can’t afford police protection die is just natures way of taking out the trash. Capitalism’s supply and demand nature would ensure that societies policing needs be served far better than some socialist government department, and besides, having such a burgeoning public sector would help boost the economy!

Nice straw man argument. Way to bring up something completely unrelated to the topic at hand, and that I don't even support.

The difference between a government run police force and a government run health care system (or government run food supply) is that I don't believe that health care (or even food) is a human right. You don't have a right to force others to provide for you if you can't do anything for them to make it worth their while. However, you do have a right to not be violently attacked, robbed, or otherwise negatively interfered with.

Originally Posted by Devon Lake

*Ahem* THE SAME IS TRUE OF THE MILITARY SPENDING AS MUCH AS IT IS ANY OTHER GOVERNMENT SPENDING!!

Never said it wasn't. I think the US should pull it's military out of most of the 100 or so countries we have troops stationed in. Worst part is, there hasn't been a day since WWII that we haven't had troops stationed in both Germany and Japan. We still have troops in Kosovo, even though our "police action" there supposedly ended years ago. We probably won't pull out of Iraq for decades. I think our military should be strong enough to protect us from foreign invasion, and to retaliate if necessary, but not to occupy half the world. Don't think I'm only getting pissed about government spending when it's interfering in the economy and making everybody poorer in order to fund programs that are less efficient and provide worse service to fewer people than their capitalistic counterparts.

[Archbio]

And their is a provincial bloc: it is the Parti Quebecois. the PQ was intended as the main party of the Province, while the Bloc was there to provide the (at that point) separatists with Federal Representation. After the 1995 Referendum and the decline in support for Separatism, the Bloc slightly morphed into a role of a special interest group for Quebec, rather than a completely separatist party.

I didn't mean a party like the Bloc who runs in provincial elections, I meant some kind Party for the Proncinces' Interests or something like that, running in the federal elections with the aims of giving every power more province against the federal government. Come to think of it, that's not really the Bloc at all!

quebec IS different. far different than the rest of canada, save for montreal, which is more mainstream canada. the bloc exists for the protection of quebec's interests, and that includes separation of need be. i don't see the defenders of quebec trying to go to alberta and rally up support there.

And the rest of Canada is different compared to Quebec! Of course the rest of Canada is a more homogeneous, but it's still not the absolute zero of difference.

But, hey, as long as you're going to ignore a valid complaint and instead bring up a straw man argument

I actually thought bringing up the Soviet Union was already a straw man argument, about as much as comparing your view to a "privatize all" impulse was.

You don't have a right to force others to provide for you if you can't do anything for them to make it worth their while. However, you do have a right to not be violently attacked, robbed, or otherwise negatively interfered with.

That's a perfectly arbitrary distinction. Protection is a service, and injuries and infections and the like are negative interference with individuals. Also arbitrary is the right of health specialists to be paid as high as the market dictates (they are already being paid, from what I understood). I am having a lethal case of disagreement with you, and I won't argue any more than that.

Altough I still think a minoritarian government composed by either the Conservatives or Liberals, it might not be feasible. But I really can't stand them having the majority. I think my vote is leaning for the Bloc.

[Kuja]

Originally Posted by Archbio

Altough I still think a minoritarian government composed by either the Conservatives or Liberals, it might not be feasible. But I really can't stand them having the majority. I think my vote is leaning for the Bloc.

Although it is pretty much all but confirmed that the Bloc or the NDP will hold the ballance of power, it would be nice to see an NDP majority...Ha ha! I'm just kidding. The day the NDP forms a majority is the day that eternal peace breaks out in the Middle East.

But chances are, once we do have a Minority Government in place, it won't last for too long, as in the past there's been about eight federal minorities, and none of them have outlasted a year and a half.

[slightly aboveaverage man]

AHA! that is where you are wrong. Lester B. Pearson, founder of Canada's Flag and the Canada Pension Plan, Nobel Prize winner, managed to hold two minority governments together from 1963-1968, the first lasting 2 years, and the next one lasting 3. Pearson was a negotiator by trade, thus he was perfectly suited for a Minority government, Martin, Harper and Layton, however, certainly are not.

[Devon Lake]

Comparing one socialized system to another and pointing out that the flaws of one are present in the other isn't a very ridiculous comparison.

It’s about as fair to cast Canada in the same light as the former Soviet Union for its left wing leanings as it is to cast the US in the same light as the Nazi Germany because of its right wing leanings. We aren’t imprisoned here with giant walls and sent to gulags for speaking out against the government, likewise, the sort of pathological resource rationing and mismanagement of the Soviet Union are unknown to us.

This is especially true since you specifically complained about the long wait times (4 hour wait for emergency room treatment (which, if it's a real emergency, is just fucking insane) and about having to wait months for certain treatments), and long wait times were a major problem in the soviet economic model.

That might make sense if, you know, Canada shared the economic model of the Soviet Union, but since we don’t, you might as well be trying to pin Canada’s healthcare woes on the socio-economic situation of the 19th century Ottoman Empire.

But, hey, as long as you're going to ignore a valid complaint and instead bring up a straw man argument and claim that I want to privatize the police,

As long as you’re suggesting that Canada’s under the reign of Stalin, I think I’m likewise entitle to few snide comments of my own.

Since being able to eat is a more basic human right than medical care, why should some people get to eat more or better food simply because they're rich?

Honestly, I’d be all for a national food program, and hell, housing for that matter, but I’m quite a bit farther to the left than your average Canadian. However, there’s an important difference between what is considered a right and a luxury; this is a concept you will find in our healthcare system to. If I have breast cancer, it is my right to be given the treatments I need to save my life. However, in the case of something that doesn’t actually affect my health like breast enlargement, then that would be something I myself would have to pick up.

As for food, it really doesn’t take very much to meet your average person’s dietary needs; what’s rice, a variety of vegetables, pasta, bread, water and a all the other dietary staples cost? Essentially nothing in the grander scheme of our budget. It really shouldn’t be such a hassle to provide that free of charge to the entire populace. The thing is though, most North Americans like to gorge themselves stupid with copious amounts of meats, snacks, sweets, dairy products, delicacies and so on and so fourth, most of which contain next to no nutritional value, and more calories than could be burned off by an arctic explorer.

Now, in my opinion, morbid obesity is a luxury, something that we not only CAN do without, but really probably should do without (not that I’d deny it to anyone), thus it ought to be financed by each individuals own disposable income. So, there’s really no need to nationalize the entire agriculture and food industry when the actually part of it we NEED is such a small portion of it. It would be just fine and dandy though for the government to pass out food stamps for rice, veggies, and water to everyone who needed them though.

Likewise for shelter, I really don’t think it would be such a travesty to lend families in need a little one bedroom apartment to jam into free of charge. Now, if a person wants, you know, a NICE house, with some room in it and some actual possessions, that’s something they ought to pick up the tab for themselves considering as far as basic human needs go, they could get by just fine in a little one room flat, possibly with communal washrooms and bathing. The reason most people don’t champion such causes though, is that dinky shack and a bowl or rice don’t really cost anything to your average North American; on the other hand, heart surgery can cost more than your annual income, and that’s why folks are more eager to secure THAT right.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102703C.html

Also, you've admitted to the extreme delay in treatment - if somoene dies during the 4 hour wait for emergency treatment, or the months or even years of waiting for major operations, then they obviously didn't get necessary health care - care which they would have gotten in a more timely fashion in the US.

Nice statistics, but it really doesn’t get to the core of the matter. The problem is that our doctors are paid SHIT. In economics class I saw a bar graph showing that a Canadian doctor gets paid about as much as a worker on an assembly line; the only reason our doctors would even appear to be fiscally well off is because they’re forced to work 60 hour shifts.

This isn’t due to any fundamental flaw in public healthcare though; it’s due to funding mismanagement. It’s not an issue of private vs. public; it’s an issue of no-funding versus funding. Cut funds to any government department and you know what happens? It goes to shit. The same goes for schools, roads, the military, you name it. I’ll admit that privatized medicine is probably better than horrifically under funded medicine, but then, I’d rather have a public Medicare system that had the money it needs to function.

[Devon Lake]

Besides, the fact that transsexuals aren't getting equal treatment under the Canadian health care system is another point against it. In the US, any doctor who wants money will treat you. There are specialists here who deal with transsexuals, because transsexuals are paying customers just like anyone else. Sorry doctors in Canada are more biased.

Oh no, it’s not a problem with bias. Doctors are still paid to see us and treat us just as much as they are any other patient. The problem lies in the fact that there isn’t enough expertise out there for us. My girlfriend tried getting hormones from a regular MD, but she refused saying it would be against the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm since she didn’t really know anything about HRT in transsexuals. Likewise, a lot of endocrinologists are a bit iffy on the subject too because they’ve never been trained for proscribing female hormones to male patients; if they wanted to do it properly, they’d have to dig into the medical journals.

So, as it is, there’s pretty much only one guy for all of Ottawa and the surrounding countryside who’ll proscribe hormones. If Medicare was funded back to sensical levels so that we could afford to pay our doctors decent wages, there might be more specialists around who’d take the time to do their homework on us. Let me interject that it really isn’t much better finding hormones in the US though, because likewise, not a lot of doctors know what the hell you’re doing. The only benefit you have is online pharmacists who you can buy hormones off without a prescription so that you can medicate yourself (Which as you might be able to imagine, can be very dangerous.) All of that “Harry Benjamin Standards of Care” Shit that’s in place on both sides of the border really doesn’t help either. No matter what we’re forced to wait if we go through the “proper” medical system.

Another issue is sexual Reassignment Surgery. My province used to cover it, but the problem is that a handful of stupid unscrupulous politicians delisted it from the provincial healthcare plan without talking to ANY doctors in the area about it. Stupid Conservatives! Every reputable psychiatrist working in the area could tell them it’s as psychologically necessary as reparative plastic surgery for a burn victim, but NO, they were just a bunch of bigots who decided for themselves that us freak trannies don’t deserve to be treated as humans with needs like everyone else! *grrrrrrrr* But then, few HMOs in the US cover SRS either; Next to none from what I hear. Actually, most drug plans in the US refuse to pick up hormones either.

Nice straw man argument. Way to bring up something completely unrelated to the topic at hand, and that I don't even support.

*whiny annoying child voice* You staaaaaaaaarted it! I mean, as long as you were bringing up something like socialism of the Soviet Union, I feel entitled to interject with my own stupid comparison. I mean, you were arguing for the merits of privatization in general after all, or at least that’s what I can only assume by comparing a specific public institution with the bloody Soviet Union.

Nice straw man argument. Way to bring up something completely unrelated to the topic at hand, and that I don't even support.

The difference between a government run police force and a government run health care system (or government run food supply) is that I don't believe that health care (or even food) is a human right. You don't have a right to force others to provide for you if you can't do anything for them to make it worth their while. However, you do have a right to not be violently attacked, robbed, or otherwise negatively interfered with.

Well what can I say, that makes no sense to me. Simple nourishment is a luxury for those who can afford it and yet when it comes to personal security we’re all supposed to pull together and finance the protection of absolutely everyone? So what’s the fundamental difference between nourishment and protection? How is saying to those who can’t afford it, “Screw you, buy your own food!” different than saying likewise to the underprivileged, “Screw you, buy your own protection!”?

Never said it wasn't. I think the US should pull it's military out of most of the 100 or so countries we have troops stationed in. Worst part is, there hasn't been a day since WWII that we haven't had troops stationed in both Germany and Japan. We still have troops in Kosovo, even though our "police action" there supposedly ended years ago. We probably won't pull out of Iraq for decades. I think our military should be strong enough to protect us from foreign invasion, and to retaliate if necessary, but not to occupy half the world. Don't think I'm only getting pissed about government spending when it's interfering in the economy and making everybody poorer in order to fund programs that are less efficient and provide worse service to fewer people than their capitalistic counterparts.

Jolly good. My point was merely that funding the military has the same merits from an economic standpoint as funding say, hospitals. The thing is, between the two, why the hell would anyone choose the military? I mean, it’s basically funding a bunch of burly macho men to run around with guns slung over their shoulder all day. War is simply the most idiotic waste of resources imaginable. That we would actually invest billions in sending our young healthy people to just run around and kill foreigners and blow shit up while foreign armies try to do the same is simply unbelievable. We might as well take all that equipment, manpower, science, technology, food, and so on, and just hurl it into the ocean; at least that way it would be less destructive. Don’t even get me started on the current state of the US and its annual military budget that takes up half of government revenues and equals somewhere around the budgets of every other military in the world combined. I mean, FUCK THAT’S DUMB.

[Chahiero]

The Liberal support here is overwhelming, or so it would seem.

I despise the liberal government more than I do any other government here past or present. Martin has conflict of interest written all over him in big black letters and out local candidate couldn't even formulate a logically constructed argument.

I'm a month off being able to vote, so naturally my opinion doesn't matter, but of the representatives in our riding, the Conservative representative is definetely the best bet. He has a well-constructed and thought out platform, which I can't say for the other candidates in the riding except the Green party candidate, and the Conservative candidate also is very open and accessible to people in his riding. I couldn't even get a hold of the Liberal candidate outside of the debate they had that I attended, whereas the Conservative candidate I have seen quite a few times outside of such functions. He goes that extra bit, 110% percent, and THAT is what we need in a government.

When it comes down to it I vote for a representative and not a party, because the representative is YOUR representative, regardless of party.

[Devon Lake]

Well, the election's done and over with and here are the results:
135 seats to the Liberals
99 seats to the Conservatives
54 seats to the Bloq
19 seats to the NDP

So, we have a minority Liberal government. *Phew* All of those projections that the Liberals and Conservatives would be neck and neck with the Conservatives forming the next government turned out to be crap. What a releif. It's nice that the Liberals got cut down; hopefully it'll smarten them up. I would have liked a stronger showing for the NDP though. I was really happy watching the priliminary poles which had them at 27 seats or so. Anyhow, I think this is sufficient for keeping the pure evil of Stephen Harper and his goons at bay. It'd be nice to see a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP; hopefully then Martin can be kept to all his elft wing promises. So ya, what a releif...

I voted NDP but they came dead last in my riding to the Conservatives... DOH!