First @ keesio
South Korea was a military dictatorship until 1987, which is a imho a hard-core conservative if you want to count them as cons. The former dictator who was killed around 1980 built almost all infrastructure used in the country today.
I also voted con before and would do it again (if I lived in Toronto I would vote Tory and not Chow, while I sure our friend Marcus would go with Ford).
So I didn’t say vote lib, I said vote anything but
THIS conservative government. And this has nothing to do with their immigration policies. I’m sure their whole goal is opportunistic and demagogic, but I am/was always against any misuse of the system, because it would lead to what we have today. What I don’t like about
THIS government approach to immigration is the undertone that almost all immigrants are fraud criminals and we must hit hard.
I am against this Con government because it changes the Canada I wanted to raise my children in. I grew up reading about Canada’s Lester Pearson and Tommy Douglas and Canada’s best UN country in the world, Canada’s the environmental paradise, Canada’s the politic respect (forget Quebec for now). Even politicians like Diefenbaker treated their opponents with respect. And Yes I knew that times were changing before I came. I have family here and knew about Harper (even about Haris in ON) beforehand.
What Harper is doing is that he changes Canada slowly with small mostly irreversible steps. Canada’s reputation is already gone (to use marcus terminology, will cost us money because of lost business deals), environmental supervision is almost gone (cost us money because one event can cost you billions while saving peanuts), non-partisan politics is gone (he has been appointing low and mid-level like-minded for 8 years) and the list goes on and on.
So yes I would vote lib next elections, not because of the merits of the libs (they have only few), but because any vote to another party is one for the cons.
marcus66502 said:
…..
Everything I own I've earned on my own (no assistance of any form from the government).
Yeah keep enjoying your costume built streets, your private police, hospitals, not subsidized drinking water. Also keep your shxxxt in your own built sewage systems, home school your children. Keep bartering with other similar minded business partners and don’t use gov money and don’t abide to any regulations (developed by people costing money).
Sometimes I really wish to some would conduct an experiment and divide the world in 2 equal parts, where persons like you live in one part where the can govern themselves without any intervention from anyone and see how this utopia state (u wanted some philosophy, eh) would fare.
marcus66502 said:
…… Because if you did, you'd probably show your ignorance of how inefficiently the Government of Canada spends taxpayer money compared to other western governments. The US taxes a lot less in every way and yet they maintain a gigantic military machine (the budget of the next 10 biggest military spenders combined), plus a massive federal interstate freeway system. In Canada, not only do we have a joke of a military but we don't even have ONE four-lane freeway that connects the country coast-to-coast (an embarrassing fact for a G7 country). Indeed, there's a single two-lane segment of the trans-Canada highway in western Ontario that is the only link between the east and the west. One accident, one road closure and the whole country is cut in half. That's the Canada you live in.
I am not going to compare the 1.3% of
Canada’s GDP with the 4.4 of the US GDP spent on defense. This is a long story. I am not also going into of the economic history of the development of the US highway system and its relation to where goods were produced and to where they were moved there, and into the fact the Canada has
never needed a cost to cost four lane highway, but where it matters, it did have a good transportation systems (which needs an upgrade admittedly). I’ll remain engulfed in my cushy ignorance and let you do all the ranting for me.
marcus66502 said:
So where does all the tax money go? I can't think of a single service I'm getting in Canada that I wasn't getting in the US. And no, it's not free health care. There's nothing free about it in Canada, at least not in Ontario. I pay 300 dollars a year for it as part of my provincial income tax (it's called the Ontario Health Premium). So the provincial health care program should be called what it is: forced government insurance. In the US I was paying a private insurance premium, here I pay it to the government, with the difference that here I don't have the option to opt out of the insurance program. So yea, it's the same crap: you pay one way or the other. Don't lecture me about free health care. Rather than making moral speeches, you should stop embarrassing yourself and instead study some basic facts.
I came here from Germany, where I last would have to pay 15.6% of my monthly income for public health insurance (must have increased since then). I also could opt out (which I did) and choose between around 400 private health insurance providers, which then will cost around 18-20%. Are you willing to exchange your $300 with this system?
If not, enjoy what you have here, rather than ranting an repeating right wing talking points, or go to the states for private health if you want.
marcus66502 said:
hey that's your opinion and you certainly have a right to it. Like I have the right to be against them.
Totally agree, so let’s leave it this way. We high jacked this thread enough.
