[CaptainCrunch]

Well currently we spend 8.2 billion a year according to the figures that Cube put up, which equals 1.1 per cent of GDP as of 2002. Since it is now 2004 and the economy has been growing at about a 3 per cent clip since 2002, it would be safe to say that the number to get Canada to the conservative goal of 2 per cent would be 8 billion dollars. As for the rest of your post, I believe that it flies in the face of what most Canadians desire. The Reform/CA/Conservative party has been running on that platform for the last 4 elections, with appropriate success (with the exceptions of the RCMP plan and the dope plan). I still think your numbers would not add up. Canada Post is a profit making crown corp, and privatizing mail would be extreme even for Dubya. And the RCMP thing just does not make a lot of sense to me, I guess places like Beiseker would have to have town cops or something in order to provide for a better military, something that would certainly add to the costs for rural Canadians. And while I think the Libs will throw some money in the future at Air Canada, I do not think that they have in the past 11 years. Welfare is Ralph Klein's problem, it is in provincial jurisdiction.

The last hard figure that I saw before the election was a $ 3million dollar a year increase, which would actually get less expensive after we modernize the forces and lower maintenance costs.

why does it fly in the face of what Canadians want. do you think Canadians are ok, while our troops fly around in Helicopters that are one second from falling from the sky, do you think they have a great deal of pride when our soldiers are in Afganistan with forest colored camo's?

Canada post is only profitable via a fluke and via passing heavy costs on to the Canadian people, its robbing peter to pay Paul. Not only do our tax dollars go towards it, but every year we see a cost increase that is passed directly onto the Canadian people. Its in a non competitive vacuum because other companies are not allowed to compete with Canada post.

The RCMP's day as a national law enforcement agency is over, we saw that in thier lousy investigations of the federal government. The American's don't have a national police force made to garrison small towns. The RCMP can be symbolic, or maybe fulfill the same kind of role as the FBI, but we don't need thousands of these guys accross canada when there are better and more efficient ways to do things.

And again we haven't touched the point that the Canadian government is more than top heavy as far as management goes, we could probably save 5 or 6 billion a year by cutting our repetitive government departments and top level management where its not needed