APPAWAPISCAT
Housing, poverty and all this good stuff as it relates to the lifestyle of our Indian friends,natives,aboriginals the great grandchildren of our north American original population.

Note, it has taken over 500 years for successive governments, that is about 20 generations to properly refer to these, our original inhabitants of this region, north, central and south American peoples to call them something other than Indians. I covered this extensively on my other blog but that's not the subject of this posting.

We, Canada, paid the British multi million dollars for a couple of outmoded, defunct submarines. One of them nearly met with disaster on its way to our shores (fire) the other one as well needed extensive repairs and refitting. Both of these ships have never been used and are now being scrapped which will cost more millions, keep in mind that they've never seen any useful service for Canada.

If our aim was to cruise around the three oceans bordering our country, we obviously failed and would have been better off to spend this money in this country on fixing up our remote villages and towns inhabited by our original citizens native population.

Conservatives...the CP's in power

Peter MacKay is in the news. Again. This time some big deal about a hotel bill in Munich, apparently his room was about 8 times as expensive as other rooms in other hotels nearby occupied by some of his staff.
I have a feeling we are making too much of this,we probably (media) should pick a few other targets. That's the trouble with a nonexistent or poorly defined opposition, we zero in on a few visible interesting individuals until other newsworthy moments show up.
As if the free helicopter rides by rescue training service members was not enough, we now scrutinise some old hotel bills, big deal indeed.
I would be much more concerned with the stupid and almost idiotic duplication of sending three (yes 3) government jets, with three officials to some function recently, all three originating in Ottawa to the same destination, Toronto I believe. A bit of co-operation and co-ordination could have saved some expensive jet fuel which in the form of heating oil could have been routed to one of our needy Indian or Native population villages.

But, back to Peter for a minute.
A Star guy with an obvious rug on the tube the other night referred to Peter as a lightweight,the Priminister likes him to be there when the ships come home. Funny .He's good looking, well I'm not sure about that comment.

If I have one complaint about Peter the munitions minister it would be, that:
A while back MrMacKay had a meeting with Arnold of California, the former governator and interestingly enough, during the conversation....on TV, Peter commented on having a common border with California. Bad.South of BC the US State is Washington state,with Microsoft, Boing close enough for Vancouverites to go shopping there.Then there's another state south of it...you look it up. And only then to the south  there is  California with it's population somewhat larger than that of Canada. Peter should indeed brush up on his geography.And interestingly enough Arnold Schwarzenegger did not even flinch when he heard that comment.

One more thing about Peter MacKay. He is probably the reason the Conservatives are the conservatives at all and in power at the moment. Why you ask? After two majority elections some years ago won by Mr.Malroney the party was almost totally wiped out at the end of the second term. Two seats were the resuls of this horrendous contest, the Liberals won and stayed in power for a long time.You may recall that the only re-elected PC at that time was the fellow who turned Liberal and eventually ended up running Quebec as it's premier. The other seat was won  by a popular former Halifax lady mayor. The point is that the party was totally wiped out and at the end of the slow rebuilding process young Mr.MacKay was the leader, but still with only a handful, of elected MP's.
A mister Manning started the new reform party in Alberta I believe and eventually reform and it's members,doctrine, aims and aspirations merged with the lonely handful of rebuilding PS's and the Progressive Party, eventually with it's new emerging leader Mr.Harper was re-born.

The difference between liberals and conservatives

The difference between liberals and conservatives

The question is

 is it possible to give a nice, neat explanation of where liberals and conservatives (the ideologies, the "left" and the "right" ) fundamentally differ?

As we all know in this country, the recent federal election has finally given the PC's Federal Progressive Conservative party the numbers needed to rule for a while. Good? Bad? it's hard to tell. There will be four years of conservative rule, the man at the top, Mr. Steven Harper.This is the party to the right..generally that is supposed to mean less government than the more socialistic leaning parties.. to the left.Liberals to the left, New Democratic Party (NDP) to the more far left..sort of.

In the process; the last opposition( Liberals) has been banished to number three. Their leader,a well educated and intelligent fellow could not even manage to get a seat and after the election promptly resigned.( Michael Ignatiev)..They say he's been out of the country too long qualify for the job. Teaching political science at Harvard I believe...for 25 years or so. Somehow or other, their last leader in power ( Paul Martin) managed to alienate the left wing of the party (Miss Cobbs group).

As well, during the last election the once popular Bloc Party in Quebec which was established solely to take the province out of Canada ( Separatist Party) has been all but wiped out.
And in the process of realignment and Quebec making peace with the rest of the country, more or less the NDP with their cancer stricken leader, Mr.Jack Layton (who shortly after the election passed away) managed to become the official opposition. Imagine, the opposition party without a leader.

And so today we have the Progressive Conservative Party in power. ( Sort of PC, more on this later)
And the New Democratic Party, NDP without a leader in opposition.
The Liberal Party as the third party in numbers with an ex NDP fellow  washed up Bob Rae, acting like the opposition.
The Bloc reduced to 3 seats in Quebec. And finally one seat for the green party their leader finally managing to get elected. (Miss Elisabeth May I believe).

Canada, politics my views;

I've been asked..why not write more about Canada, the Canadian scene, the political situation, interaction with our people, that sort of subject subject. Pollution, ownership of our resources, industry,oilsands - fertilizer concerns and related  topics need looking at I am told.
Explore and write about this they tell me, rather than question the Americans or America. Oh well.
I promise to try a bit of this, Canada from the inside...instead of looking outside the country at the USA and other parts of the world.

Politics
Frankly, our political situation at the moment is extremely weird to say the least. The PC's ( Progressive Conservative federal party) have a majority and for the foreseeable future ( 4 years until a new election is legally required) they are in charge of the country.Separation by Quebec appears to be not much of an effort by the folks of that wonderful  province, during the last election they pretty well blew away the previously popular separation party The Bloc, and elected a group of NDP members making the NDP the official opposition.

The once mighty and powerful Liberal party is reduced to 3rd. party status although listening to their current temporary leader ( ex NDP Bob Ray...after a 10 year break) you would never know it.
Imagine, the NDP, being the official opposition. Their wonderful and unbelievable energetic  leader Jack Leyton died of cancer shortly after being elected and the is presently operating without a new person to lead the opposition charges.

America...what's in the name?

America; the name... a german connection

A work of art the above map was originally produced by a German Artist, a painter and mapmaker.It should be one of the most important pieces of art in North and or South America.

The obscure map is based on the travels and explorations of an Italian monk, his name was Amerigo Vespucci. The artist put the monk-explorer-travelers name somewhere on the American map in the area which is now known a Paraguay.(1500 about, and only a few years after Columbus/ Colon discovered what he believed to be India).

The work of art clearly depicts India on the left side as being totally separate from the newly found continent. This was first time ever that the American continent, in this case mostly south America was shown as a distinctly separate continent, of course the great distance to Asia ( Indian ocean) was not known at that time.