For one thing, all those "anybody but Harper" folks could have made hay by bringing up the SPP gig. Becoming part of the USA is a huge deal to most Canadians.

Global Warming was mentioned, definately a big part of the Liberal platform [green shift], but how about the federal resistance to ELECTRIC CARS?
I am surprised that Liz May and the Greens didn't try harder to make climate change a scarier thing in their campaign.

And, once again, NOBODY dared question the war on terror, or it's original impetus of the curious day we call 9/11. Canada is, after all, spending big bucks fighting in Afghanistan due to that day. Perhaps it would be too radical to even question the official version of 9/11 [which says something about conformity].

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Is the fact that these issues were left out of the debate a reflection of the disinterest of the population in human rights, or is it a symptom of our political leaders' unhealthy reliance on briefing notes, as evidenced by the carefully repeated and simplistic marketing messages that they regurgitate to us with monotonous precision?

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[ 25 October 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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In a 544-page report made public yesterday, retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Department of Foreign Affairs collectively failed the men: Arab-Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyad Nureddin.

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Ottawa Citizen

Nicely timed for after the election. Nice going, Iaccobucci.

But even if it was released during the election, I doubt it would have made much impact. The torture of Arar, Almalki, El-Maati and Nurreddin by the RCMP and CSIS by proxy is not something that Canadians are too upset by.

I think much has to do with the fact that the fellow citizens of these gentlemen don't see them as fellow citizens. Obviously, racism plays the majority role here. And a mix of "they wouldn't do that to me" and "Well, they (the authorities) must have had a reason...." and there you have it.

But, I think it is also something deep rooted in Canadian culture. I think we are a people impossible to outrage.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Nicely timed for after the election. Nice going, Iaccobucci.

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Far too many times I have heard comments like; "they moved to Canada to get away from their country of origin, what are they doing back there then" or "they can't bring their country of origin's problem here". Failing of course to see, even when pointed out, that "white Canadians" visit their or their ancestors country of origin too.

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I do not want to contemplate what it would take to outrage my fellow citizens.

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[ 27 October 2008: Message edited by: contrarianna ]

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Associated with SPP is TILMA, which British Columbia's Liberal premier Gordon Campbell and Alberta's Conservative premier Ed Stelmach have already signed and which Stephen Harper and Trade Minister Maxime Bernier are promoting to other provinces. The SPP came to light because activists started to dig into TILMA, which came into effect on April 1 of this year. TILMA seems to have been a provincial intiative, signed by Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell, but the federal Conservatives now are promoting it to other provinces."

According to the Council of Canadians, it "allows corporations and individuals to sue provincial governments for any provincial or municipal government measure that they feel 'restricts or impairs' their investment (ie their profits). Under TILMA, even measures designed to protect the environment and public health are vulnerable to attack from corporate lawsuits with compensation penalties as high as $5 million."

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There were a lot of missed election issues - Human rights, SPP and TILMA, Torture, Drug Laws, + "160+ things".

Seeing Premier Campbell in these replies reminded me of FISH FARMS - supposedly a Federal juristiction, and a serious matter to those of use who would vote for Salmon rather than any of the frontrunners.

And election reform - nobody wants to reform a system where half of us don't vote because we have no faith in the electoral system? Or where the Greens get 9.6% of the vote and don't get one seat [but the Bloc gets 50 seats with 10% of the vote].

Big picture: So, it wasn't just me, that election was a bunch of fluff. It looked like an attempt to say "things are fine here in Canada, go ahead and return Harper". I puke on all the non-Conservative candidates for allowing that to happen!!

These results were released on about Oct 17th 2008, and barely reported on the back pages of a few newspapers - I saw it in the Vanouver Sun. There are a few websites that reported it too - links below.

The War on Drugs, which is massively unpopular with Canadians, took a big hit on it's premise that "illegal drugs and users must be stopped". It hasn't worked so far, and every time the Drug Warriors step it up, the results are that more drugs and more users exist.

So, the heroin study:
Naomi is a group that GAVE about 100 users in big cities of Canada the Heroin that they take, and just watched to see how these users did.

They did well. They didn't commit crime, they didn't even supplement the amount given to them with street supply, they got HEALTHIER, and many of them started jobs and are no longer homeless.

I want to start a new thread to have this discussion about the War on Drugs and prescribed heroin in another forum, but for here I just want to point out that it was a really juicy issue that could have been helped along with some healthy discussion during the election campaign. I fart on all the parties for not bringing it up, and the media for not bringin it up [perhaps the Marijuana party TRIED to bring it up?]

Links:
Naomi main page - link to the study results