deathtokoalas
you don't think that mulcair or trudeau are going to shut down oil production, do you?

i mean, i'd like to see it shut down. but, nothing short of instability from a civil war is going to actually do it.

Slasherhorror19801
Of course you want it shut down it won't have any effect on you what so ever.

Who cares if tons of people are out of work.

No they wouldn't shut it down ,but they would do there best to sabotage it.

deathtokoalas
well, i think it's well established that it'll have a pretty big effect on the climate if we don't shut it down, actually.

the factor nobody understands is that that much oil on the border of the empire is a national security issue. it's in the hands of the military.

Jay Dubeta
actually she's not joking. Google it an you'll find out that the last election was rigged by the conservatives, similar to how there was a voter recall scam when Gore was up against Bush in 2000 - right before 911.

Here, I did it for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_voter_suppression_scandal

http://o.canada.com/news/federal-judge-confirms-election-fraud-in-2011-vote

deathtokoalas
this is largely propaganda, and i wish they'd drop it because it's annoying. there were some attempts to send voters to the wrong polls. while those kinds of tactics are illegal here, it's well established that it didn't affect the outcome of the election.

around '05 or so, i got a job working as a survey interviewer to give me some spending money when i was in school. i ended up going back to the place between jobs for many years afterwards, as there's a huge turnover in these places and the management liked me. some time between '05 and '11 the company converted itself from doing mostly ekos overflow to doing work for political candidates. the odd poll for liberal candidates came in, but, in hindsight, i wonder if they were legit; by the time of the '11 election, the firm was almost solely doing surveys for the conservative party.

the "surveys" mostly took the same form - call the number, ask them if they can "rely on the vote" of a conservative candidate and move to the next call. but, there were some funny aspects.

they had us harassing people in helena guergis' riding, for example. we were supposedly calling on her behalf. i doubt that. the numbers weren't refreshing, so we were just calling the same people over and over again. the purpose seemed to be to piss people off - "on behalf of helena guergis".

i was in the building the day of the election, but i was taken off the phone to do database work. at the beginning of the shift, the owner of the company gave a little speech to the room telling people to NOT read the part of the script explaining that the polling place had changed. he was very adamant about this, and stressed it throughout the day.

the firm disappeared within about a month of the election. but, that's the answer you're looking for - they weren't "robocalls", they were just kids reading a script. the fraud was being carried out by a series of polling firms connected to the conservative party. this particular firm did not co-operate, and seems to have lost the contract as a result.

but, if you've worked one of these jobs you know that:

1) 70% of people hang up without any conversation.
2) nobody believes what a polling douche tells them.

as mentioned, it's slimy. sure. but, it's a new way to do something that is endemic. and there's no evidence it made any difference.

i haven't been paying attention recently, but it's becoming more clear what's going on.

deathtokoalas
putting aside the events of earlier this week, which i do not believe fit the description of a "terrorist attack", and reflecting purely on the domestic politics...

....it sounds very nice, but the problem is that i don't believe what he says. it's less a question of his trustworthiness and more a function of not being entirely aware of the way the world has changed over the last ten years. the kind of military sovereignty that canada enjoyed through the second half of the twentieth century is not likely to be restored any time soon. our military decisions are being made in washington and brussels. he's speaking of decisions that the office he aspires to no longer has control over, and making promises he can't keep.

the liberals have not been in office during the period that power has shifted out of ottawa and are likely to experience a possibly unworkable culture shock if or when they are re-elected.

i don't know if the events have changed his policy. they shouldn't. these isolated attacks (if they are even that) have no effect on the correctness of his analysis - if anything, they demonstrate it's strength. the unfortunate truth is that it doesn't matter, because these decisions are being made over the head of the office he aspires to.

this is a solid analysis, even if it's from a distance.

something that's not being reported is that the guards in front of the monument are fairly recent. the monument is a wwI thing, mostly. there's been some vandalism at war monuments across the country. wwI was....kind of not a good war to fight, especially not from a distance over in canada. we got slaughtered. the brits used us as cannon fodder. but, this is a guns & flags patriotic conservative government so they put guards in front of the monument.

the irony is immediately apparent. in the sense that we fought for something in at least the second world war, it was to fight against police states. then, you go and put some guards in front of the monument. there is actually significant opposition to this in canada, but it's the kind of populist opposition that is without any kind of representation.

regardless, the target is sort of curious, isn't it?