[Savvy27]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I don't neccessarily disagree, however the prime ministers office has called in investigations on multiple occassions in these influence peddling issues, If your going to be fair about it then some credit has to go to that.

I do give them some credit for doing what is absolutely necessary, but it is outweighed by the huge mistake of bringing him into the fold in first place when his history was a matter of public record.

I've discussed this recently, but the whole thing came across as partisian gamesman ship in a lot of ways to me when the committee is made up of the people that are bascially charging you with it. If your going to do contempt of parliment proceedings then the process has to change to depoliticize it. Nice spelling

From what I understand, the composition of the Parliamentary Committee is proportionate to the composition of parliament. It's not like the opposition was waiting for a chance to finally make up the majority of a committee and it isn't like the charge came out of nowhere. The government had plenty of opportunity to produce the information. If they didn't have the information, then they should not have gone forward with the purchase.

Thank you?

Every government has probably done this, I look at the hedging that the Liberals did on the long gun registry. They were no where near forthcomign on the costs of that program. And I would have to go back but there were some serious problems on the IT upgrade programs under the Liberals as well. Every government has done it, its why the Canadian system to me is broken.

This is what I don't get. You don't know that there are precedents for the Conservative mistakes, but you assume that there are and that is enough for you to overlook them. That doesn't make any sense even if there is a precedent because you didn't like the way that the Liberal governments did things.

I would expect that every government wants oversight on its employees before they run to the press. If your going to work for the government I think its normal that you have to clear things before going to the press.

A democratically elected government suppressing scientific findings because they are politically inconvenient is totally unacceptable. If the green party was in power and muzzled scientists who found data that disproved climate change, it would be equally unacceptable. Canada doesn't need an ideological government determining which science we can be exposed to.

Yeah that one I certainly didn't like, unfortunately she didn't do anything criminal, she was just incompetant, and as we know if your a boob at the upper level of government and your getting removed from your post your going to get paid.

Even if she was merely incompetent, the Conservatives won the 2008 election on a campaign to bring transparency and accountability to Ottawa. It took them three years and media coverage to figure out that she wasn't doing a good job?

It was the same situation with the RCMP appointed civilian commissioner who got terminated. I'm sure if we did some research you would see at least one or two per term that got bounced and got a massive parachute.

I guess I will have to take your word for it. It doesn't change the failures of this government though.

I actually agreed with the Conservatives on that. Harper came out before the budget and did say that he was willing to talk to the opposition parties, and he clearly talked to Layton and put in what he could deliver. But there was no way that all of Layton's ideas were going into that budget. And I agree with the time to negoiate the budget is before not after. And I think that if people were fair, all parties need to take blame for the poison environment in Parliment.

This is fine, but the Harper government is in a minority position. They need to reach a consensus with at least one other party to pass any legislation. They do not have the mandate to draft a bill that is only acceptable to their own party. The Conservatives may have wanted an election, but they certainly can not blame any other party for refusing to support a bill that they do not agree with.

Its not just Harper.

Harper is a very smart man and a shrewd politician, but he is trying to do things that he does not have a mandate to do and disregarding democratic institutions to do them. That is enough for me to not want him to be the leader of this country.

Maybe I'm jaded, in that I expect scandals in every government and some level of crap in every government that it becomes degrees of crap.

Shawnigate and Adscam to me were incredible levels of corruption for example compared to what we're seeing from the Conservatives.

But I'm not basing my vote on the ethics issue anymore as I don't believe that ethics and civility exist anymore. I'm more voting on personal ideaology versus platform announcements.

So you decided to stop voting on ethics when your party of choice violated the ethics that they were elected on?