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So once a person rapes the child, there is no reason to even consider letting the child go. After all, the punishment for murder is the same, so why increase the risk of getting caught by letting the kid go?

And that's the problem with seeing imprisonment as punishment. It's not a deterrent. It's not a punishment. It's protection for society. Now what do you want that person to be when they're released? The US prison system produces criminals. The Canadian system is (for some retarded reason) trying to emulate the US system.

If prison isn't about rehabilitation, then you may as well have the death sentence for every petty crime under the sun. Yes there are criminals who should never be released. I think it was Paul Bernardo who said to never release him as he'll re-offend[citation needed]. That doesn't mean that he can never be a productive member of society. It just means he needs to make his contribution from behind bars.

Political ideologies (conservative, liberal) are not parties

UM...
http://www.liberal.ca/ (The Liberal Party of Canada)
http://www.conservative.ca/ (The Conservative Party of Canada)

First mention of bundling "lawfull access" (aka monitoring) and crime bills for passage within 100 days.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Conservative+majority+would+bundle+crime+bills/4580146/story.html

Link to Conservative platform containing the promise
http://www.conservative.ca/media/ConservativePlatform2011_ENs.pdf
Search for "100 days"

Subsequent comments:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/blogsection/0/126/10/10/

"The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers.

While some of that information may seem relatively harmless, the ability to link it with other data will often open the door to a detailed profile about an identifiable person. Given its potential sensitivity, the decision to require disclosure without any oversight should raise concerns within the Canadian privacy community.

The second prong requires Internet providers to dramatically re-work their networks to allow for real-time surveillance. The bill sets out detailed capability requirements that will eventually apply to all Canadian Internet providers. These include the power to intercept communications, to isolate the communications to a particular individual, and to engage in multiple simultaneous interceptions."

Have you ever looked at a Canadian Conservative Party Platform? On some things they're further to the right than American Republicans. Canadians are in a completely different political context than American counterparts and there are no direct equivalencies. Canada is a large petroleum exporter and petroleum producing companies are much more influential there than in most of the U.S. Canadians may share more of a cultural affinity with contemporary Democrats, but their issues are nowhere near the same and that affinity would be gone if they had to come up with a common platform. Yes, there'd probably be a little less evangelicalism in politics overall (again, that's more the political culture than the politics itself).

Again though, this is all assuming that an annexed Canada would be granted statehood in the Union, and there's no precedent for that happening when the U.S. government decides to annex a territory without sufficient support already in place. (Out of 50 current states, 31 were territories first. The thirteen colonies, Vermont, Kentucky (started off as southwestern Virginia, i.e., one of the 13 colonies), Maine (split off from Massachusetts in 1820, i.e., one of the 13 colonies), Texas (invaded by Americans that fought to keep it independent from Spain first, and then from México, established a government similar in form and principle to other state governments, and uniquely annexed by treaty), California (Compromise of 1850, and again with a sudden influx of Americans establishing a government similar to other state governments).)

Canada, even in this bizarre scenario, meets none of those criteria. Were it annexed, it would likely be an unorganized (Congress not creating a new government for it; not even a non-voting delegate sent to Congress) unincorporated (limited application of U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights) territory.

However, even should Palin be elected in 2012, that nightmare scenario for Canada is just nonsense.

Which word? Their legal name is the Conservative Party of Canada (or Parti conservateur du Canada).

and, of course, everyone everywhere is either a liberal or a (spit) conservative

Note for those unaware: It's not just a random label thrown about in canada to polarize issues, the current government is headed by the Progressive Conservative party. And the current opposition are the Liberals.

Our conservatives support Canada's social programs and when in power have not and will not dismantle them. The CPC explicitly supports universal access to health care - see http://www.conservative.ca/EN/4739/78188. This is something the American conservatives do not support therefore our conservatives are clearly different from their conservatives.
Its our Liberal party that is friendly with big business - since the funding rules changed and big business can no longer donate to parties its the Liberals that have been screwed since big business has historically been where they get their funding. Its the Liberals that count amoung their numbers former RBC and TD Bank VPs (McCallum and McKenna).
The CPC is the middle-class party; the NDP is the party of the improvished. The Liberals are for the elitist and those they successfully con (like recent immigrants which are thankfully waking up to discover the NDP and CPC are more in tune with them).
In any case, for the bill to pass it has to pass the Liberal dominated Senate which wasn't elected. You can just as easily blame Liberals if it passess.

What about the across the board blank media tax you guys have up there? I thought that was meant to compensate for any piracy that goes on.

Maybe we don't need a "pirate party" per se, but we need more people representing the "other side" of the copyright debate. The current Conservative government stated in their platform from the last election that they would eliminate the 'levy" on blank media (look under Section 35 Copyright Legislation). Well, that certainly has not happened, and the music industry is lobbying them hard to extend the tax to other forms of media. Add to that the efforts of industry shills from the US who would like Canada to radify WIPO and enact legislation similar to the DMCA, and I would say we are currently at a serious disadvantage.

The lobbying efforts of these various content industries are going to continue regardless of which party is in power. Take the time to write your MP, and CC each of the major political parties as well:

http://www.conservative.ca/EN/1045/
http://www.liberal.ca/contact_e.aspx
http://www.ndp.ca/contact
http://www.green.ca/en/contact

Make it known that Canadians will not support any government pandering to the one-sided arguments of content publishers. DRM is doomed to failure and propping it up with legislation is just another step towards criminalizing fair-use.

The tax should be run by the government as industry can never be trusted to regulate itself.

Money raised by this levy should be distributed fairly among Canadian artists. This way Canadian music piracy would effectively subsidize the Arts.

I think this protectionist measure would preserve canadian arts and culture. It could probably be written into existing CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television Commission) regulations.

If you ask me, we should vote the Neo-Conservatives out of office and get the Social-Democrats more seats if we want to protect Canadian music interests.

Here in Canada, we actually have four parties currently represented in Parliament. This is down from the five that were there before (two parties merged; nobody got destroyed at the polls).

However, since Confederation, the Prime Minister has been the leader of either the Conservative or Liberal/Whig party. There are other parties, and they do hold seats, but none of them have ever formed the federal government. However, some have won provincial elections.

Handy links:

• Conservative Party of Canada
• Liberal Party of Canada
• New Democratic Party of Canada
• Bloc Québéois
• Green Party of Canada (never elected any members to Parliament, but tends to get a fair number of votes at the polls)

The big problem with the current machines is that they combine both those steps & don't provide any means of independent public oversight.

Nail, meet hammer. Right on the head.

A great deal of the problem with American vote counting, as opposed to Canadian, is that, as another reply stated, with a two-party system, the second party doesn't really care if the first party gets knocked off this time around. Their position is just about as powerful; their 'leader' just doesn't get to sit in the big comfy chair and hold the remote.

In Canada, by contrast, we have the following parties:

1. The Liberals . This party has been in power the most often. They are fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and quite corrupt. They are currently without a real leader.
2. The Conservatives , formerly the Progressive Conservatives, briefly the Reform Party, even more briefly the (conservative) Alliance. One of Canada's two original parties, the Progressive Conservatives were almost completely destroyed by their own leader's unpopularity in 1992. The new Conservative party is fically conservative, socially regressive, quite corrupt, and generally whacko. Their current leader is the head whacko.
3. The New Democratic Party . Canada's semi-socialist party, fiscally socialist, socially very progressive. At the height of their popularity in the 1980s, they became known as "the conscience of the Commons". Unfortunately, when their leader retired, they lost their direction and their credibility. Their current leader is a posturing buffoon. The NDP currently holds the balance of power in Ottawa. They've never held enough seats to become corrupt.
4. Le Bloc Quebecois . One of the parties that formed following the destruction of the Progressive Conservatives, the Bloc's sole mission is to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada. They have only fielded candidates in Quebec.
5. The fringe parties. The Communist Party, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party... we've got 'em all. Full list here.
6. The Rhinoceros Party . This party disbanded after its original leader died, but it is worth noting for being the most popular 'joke' party in Canada's history. Although they never held a seat, they received numerous votes from disgruntled voters for policies like the following:
   • putting the national debt on Visa
   • turning the Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine tunnel in Montreal into a free carwash by poking holes in the ceiling
   • switching Canada to driving on the left side of the road to be more like England (and therefore less like the USA), but making the transition gradual: trucks and buses first.

As the CIA factbook used to point out up until very recently, Quebec nationalism was a significant risk factor.

Consider that the alternative to the Liberals is the Block Quebecois Smuf Blue separatist in collusion with the Western Redneck from the Conservatives party many of whom are eager to kick Quebec out to get back their english only CornFlakes boxes. Coupled with the fact that the Liberals, only federalist party in Quebec have already lost their upcoming elections, you will have, for the first time in Canadian history, a seperatist gouverment in Quebec with a federal gouverment incapable and not particularly interested in keeping Quebec.

Things will be a lot more volatile in Canada in the next 5 years.

The liberals are no better, on average, than any other political party. For instance:
The Conservatives, the previous ruling party, had a bit of an AirBus scandal, which didn't seem to get nearly as much scandal as the Liberal sponsorship scandal. I don't know which cost us more money, and don't care. I'm just pointing out that they had their own, too.

But they also had a contract to buy new helicopters for the military due to the imminent risk of our old helicopters plummeting out of the sky due to old age. This was a major part of the Liberal platform (vote for us, and no new big helicopters for our military). They won, cancelled the contract, paid the cancellation penalty, we had helicopters plummet out of the sky due to mechanical failure (no real repercussions to the Liberal party who decided to not replace them), had more helicopters grounded, and finally got a contract for a smaller version of the helicopter that the conservatives had contracted to obtain. From what I've heard from some friends in the military, these smaller helicopters will not be able to perform all of the missions performed by the current, obselete, model. This is only one of the problems caused by party politics, and I could find more that point the finger at other parties. I'm sure that searching would find me examples of where a change in ruling parties meant that bad laws didn't get passed, too.

Now for the biggest issue I have with the former leader of the Liberal party, and which went almost ignored by the media. Although publicized, they never criticized him (Jean Chretien) to the extent this deserved. There was a meeting of international rulers in B.C., Vancouver I believe, which included some known for human rights violations. Protesters did what they do, and started waving signs and shouting slogans. They may or may not have been violent, I've never seen anything to show conclusively whether or not they did. There were some rumours that Chretien contacted the RCMP and made it clear that he didn't want anything to make the meeting unpleasant. The protest ended with some protesters getting pepper-sprayed and put in jail for some period of time (possibly less than a day). Rather than Chretien saying that he was concerned about any human rights violations, or that the situation would be investigated by the appropriate parties, we get "I put pepper on my steak." The fact that these violations occurred, shit can and does indeed happen, but that it may very well have been approved by our highest elected official, and that he got elected again after this.

So let's not say the Liberals are the supporters of popular opinions, the chamions of human rights, and pretty much anything else. They're politicians, many of whom are driven by goals that are purely personal.

Some supporting links, you can find more, with more information, if you want to look.
Pepper sray incident
Conservative view of the helicopter issue

Same here in Canada, except our Liberal party's orientation occasionally varies wildly by party leader and member. Lately their policy seems to be to preach the left-wing NDP's platform, only less convincingly, and then promptly implement the right-wing Conservative platform, only less competently. Most Canadians see this as balancing out into being centrist, which is what the Liberals claim to be.
I'm represented by Liberals at the provincial and federal levels. The former loudly proclaimed during an all-candidates meeting that homosexual relationships are an "affront to God." The latter promised to champion against pro-choice bills, no matter what party policy might dictate.

You may reconsider. Election day is june 28th and Canada is about to fall under the reign of a new right wing ultra conservative party..

Forget civil liberties under Stephen Harper. He wants to judge a 14 years old like an adult, let the US bring their nuclear missiles here, invade irak, police the internet, etc. Just have a look here and here

You may reconsider. Election day is june 28th and Canada is about to fall under the reign of a new right wing ultra conservative party..

Forget civil liberties under Stephen Harper. He wants to judge a 14 years old like an adult, let the US bring their nuclear missiles here, invade irak, police the internet, etc. Just have a look here and here

Also wanted to add that I was pleasantly suprised to find the site running PHP and Apache, rather than IIS and ASP.NET, like the Liberals and Conservatives. The NDP appear to use some sort of content management system, with most of the site being static, the server reports Apache with PHP installed.

I followed this case quite closely. Despite our highest court ruling in favour of Monsanto, all it would take is this to become an issue in our upcoming federal election (will be called this Sunday), and our patent law will be changed. Once the law is changed, the Monsanto case's precedent will be tossed aside, and we will get back on the right track.

Our (Canada's) patent law is quite out of date, it does not address the issues regarding patenting of genome, plants, organisms, and other living matter. Once it is brought up to date (not when, it would be political suicide for all parties not to protect farmers like Schmeiser), we will get things right.

All parties which are running in every riding have to deal with this the correct way.

- The new Conservative Party of Canada will stand to loose grassroots support if they do not protect the rights of farmers to save seed. Although I wouldn't vote for them because they have yet to release their platform... shuuush... they don't want people to know that yet.

- The Liberal Party of Canada will stand to loose support in Ontario where Schmeiser was situated, although it is slipping because the provincial government did a 180 in the first budget.

- The NDP hates GE food, says there is no viable market for the stuff, it should be labelled, etc etc. They would definitely protect the rights of the farmer to save the seed.

- And the Green Party. This is a given, they don't like GE foods, they don't like GE anything, because it destroys biodiversity.

This is just a temporary setback. The justices here did not fully comprehend the severity of their decision, but they were forced to work within the framework of the laws given to them by Parliament in 1985. Things have changed, and this act of Parliament will be apart of our next election, and will be dealt with the next government.