Why liberals should never be in power...

[A Black Falcon]

New Democratic Party of Canada - Liberal Party of Canada - Progresive Conservitive Party of Canada / American Democrats(they are about the same) - Canadian Alliance - Republicans

As of yesterday the Progressive Conservitive Pary and the Canadian Alliance no longer exist however and have formed the Conservitve Party of Canada, this new party will most likely be closer to the American Republicans than the Democrats because a large protion of the Progressive Conservatives jumped ship once the merger happened (including a former Prime Minister among other high profile deserters) and are either now independent or have joined the Liberal Party

In addition since the departure of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin becoming the Prime Minister the Liberal Party has taken a shift to the right and now occupy a position much closer to that of the American Democrats than during the Chretien era, now that the last remanents of the Trudeau-Pearson era have left politics.

It is expected that in the next federal election the Liberals will strengthen their majority now since they will be atracting many former PC suporters and for some reason Paul Martin, and anglo from Quebec has more support from fracophones in Quebec then Jean Chretien. While the new conservative party is expected to lose all credibility in eastern and central Canada now due to their more extreme conservative views and the image that they are a regionaly based western party rather than a true national party. The NDP are also expected to make gains as many of the more liberal supporters of the liberal party don't agree with the new more conservative positions of Paul Martin.

Ah, for the "problem" that the main party is too close to the left side of center...

dis·crim·i·na·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-skrm-nshn)
n.

1. The act of discriminating.
2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.
3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners.

#3 is clearly the relevant one. And two can play your game, Weltall... it's discrimination to not give people in the category of 'lower class' treatment that would help to improve their chances of attaining equal status.

And your sad belief that there is not racial discrimination to any significant degree anymore in this country is a big part of the problem. People think that, but if you look at society it's painfully obvious that no statement could be further from the truth. The latest immigrant group -- in our case Hispanics -- is disliked by many. They are lazy, don't work, are criminals (hmm how many dozen times have we heard THOSE statements aimed at the latest immigrants to this country before? Dozens, at least?)... and as for blacks, well, just look at the jails! A significantly larger number of blacks than whites are in them compared to population. That isn't an accident. The different races still just aren't treated fairly. And as I said it's not just the fact that the targetted minorities are poor (which they undoubtedly are in dramatically higher numbers than whites), but that as much as it would be great if race would vanish it IS still relevant. Setting percents for different racial groups based on how many would be there if it was all equal? That is an attempt to make up for centuries of (continuing in a somewhat lesser fashion) opression... if all were equal, we wouldn't need AA. But it isn't.

Maybe poor white people should have some additional benifits too, I don't know... though they would be helped a lot if we'd just do other things, such as tax reform that would actually help (by lessening the burden on the lower classes and raising it on the upper ones), free health care for everyone (that would help dramatically in these categories of people), more help lowering college bills from the government... more money and more actual attempts to improve schools in poor districts and not just tests which really are not a good indicator of how well the district is doing (especially when they can manipulate things to make themselves look better, as is possible), etc...