PC>Hello All Fellow Canadians.,

PC>  I am very much alarmed at the way our PMs have blindly followed
  >other countrys into places based upon "ifs".

PC>  I am very sad to bear witness to the bodys of our youth coming
  >home to Canada for trying to bring peace and a normal lifestyle
  >to these regions where WE have not decided to go by a FREE vote
  >in the very institution that is called Parliament.

On the basic idea of us being in that war I agree that we either
should not be there or should not be there in the capacity that
we are. Harper wants us to turn into 'little America' and do
most of what Bush wants us to do. I believe the only reason we
are not in Iraq is because Harper wants to put out the impression
that he's not in Bush's pocket but why suddenly after many decades
of offering our services as Peace Keepers are we suddenly thrust
into a shooting war? Granted we've lost people attempting to keep
the peace as well but our policy was not to play the world's
police force, but to try to help stabalize a region after the
fighting is finished, often a longer and more thankless job.
And Canada has always been there when the war was really one we
had an interest in. I'm not saying we should never fight, but
we should choose our battles. I think we could throw soldiers
into Iraq and Afghanistan forever and never make a significant
difference. It's been tried over and over for hundreds of years.

At most we should be offering to train their people, maybe even
train them HERE where they can learn how to protect their own
country without getting killed before they know how to be soldiers.
Trade the legitimate government arms for oil and let them fight
their own war, something they seem reluctant to do.
You'd think if they had any intention of getting the country
under control themselves they'd be trying to throw us out by now,
not begging us to stay for many more years.

I honestly think this whole thing is just to shore up Harper's
image. He wants to be 'significant' in the world like the U.S.
President is, which means he has no idea how appeciated Canada
is in the world. He, like Bush, is just making more enemies out
there now. Damaging our reputation to try to make himself seem more
globally important and using the lives of our soldiers to do it.

Briefly, regarding the election reform issues you mentioned:

I think the proposed new system will make it much more likely we
will be electing a Prime Minister who is a 'Lame Duck', much like
they occasionally end up with in the USA elections, who can't get
anything done because he doesn't have enough support in parliament.
This is far MORE likley to happen here where we have 3 or 4 major
parties as opposed to the 2 they have south of the border.
The only time the gov't will function fully is when they have
enough voter support from both parts of the ballot and, in that
case, they'd have had a majority under the old system anyways.
I believe all we will be doing is making it far more likely
that the system will end up functioning like a minority gov't,
(in other words hardly at all) far more often than it does now.

IMHO
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 * SLMR Rob  * Computers are not intelligent. They only THINK they are *
 * PDQWK 2.52 #17


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