1 You asked back in the "break up of Canada" thread what I thought what might happen in the Maritimes if/when Canada starts to come apart -- since that one's sliding down the page I thought I'd offer my thoughts here. So, how the Maritimes might go if/when Canada comes apart -- I have a tough time figuring it out myself. There are good, honest, hard-working people here, who get sick and tired of being dumped on by the rest of Canada, called lazy, destitute, welfare bums, etc. I myself am working in a successful engineering start-up firm that has grown from 4 to 20 people in just over two years. No NDP supporters in our group, let me tell you -- and yet, my own boss harbours those same "scary Conservative" thoughts that too many Ontarians do. Halifax is one of the most successful cities in the region yet it's afflicted with a malaise of NDP voting syndrome right now, at both the federal and provincial levels. I really can't explain the dichotomy. Then there's the other side of the coin, the friends I know who work in the woods four months a year and draw pogey the other eight while playing hockey five times a week all winter. These are the bums, the good-for-nothing leeches who make the rest of us look bad. They may have no love for Quebec, but cut them off from that federal trough and I'm not sure they'll survive. As such, preserving the status quo will be all-important to them. I think at the separation, the leeches among us will beg not to be cut loose, and what's left of the federal government will play along for a while -- until Ontario decides we're not worth the bother and cuts us loose. Then we honest ones will have to pick this region up by our bootstraps. I have no illusions that it won't hurt, and probably hurt bad, for a while, but in the end we just might be the better for it. Joining the USA will not happen, period. I doubt they'd even have us. We'd end up as some sort of not-quite-first-world state, the three provinces merged into one, I think (I suspect Newfoundland would go it alone if it came to that). Oh, one last thought, on a tangent: surveying the field of possible successors to Paul Martin, I think the best candidate out there, and by a wide margin, is former NB premier and current US Ambassador Frank McKenna. He's a straight talker who keeps his word and gets things done. His very first promise when he came to power in 1987 was that he would serve no more than ten years -- and come 1997, he stepped down, even though he was still popular and had two years left in his term. He accepted no excuses about NB's small size or have-not status when working tirelessly to build the province's economy and sell the province as an environment for business. I don't recall any major scandals through his term, save the TCH toll highway deal right toward the end that ended up undoing the Liberals in 1999 (it was announced very quickly one summer out of backroom negotiations with a construction firm headed by a former Liberal cabinet minister -- the Tories killed the tolls once they took office. Every now & then the Liberals try to play up the contract penalties the Tories had to pay but it doesn't gain any traction). Give him the Liberal party, let him rebuild it from the ground up, and he can make it into something worthy of respect. I might even vote for such a party. If Canada survives long enough, that is.

2 Ian in NS, The only problem I have with your good comment is that, even though you do understand and recognize the damage the Liberal Party has done to everyone in Canada, you still say you would vote Liberal if there is a change in their leadership. A change in the leadership will do nothing. Don't you understand? The problem isn't Martin, although he's the front man. The problem is the few very rich people who are controlling the Liberal Party. In addition, the RCMP said in 2000, and again a year or two later, that they were very concerned that the mob was taking over the government. In my opinion that has largely happened. Witness Gomery for instance. How may people in the Maritimes even care about Gomery? I don't know because I'm not there, but I understand not many. We don't need a change in the Liberal Party leadership. We need a change in the government. And then, when that happens, we need three or four inquiries with teeth to help put a lot of these criminals, and that is what I believe they are, in jail. A change in the Liberal Party leadership would just be business as usual. Why are all you people so unwilling to give the Conservatives a chance? You seem very enlightened but yet you'd still vote Liberal if they elected a new leader even after all they've done to Canada. It's things like this that will guarantee the separation of Alberta, with BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in all likelihood following. With the four western provinces out of Canada where is all the money the federal government sends to the Maritimes each year going to come from?

3 John, I think I understand where Ian is coming from. I gave some consideration to supporting Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign last spring but the antics of the rest of the Democrats caused deep concerns as who he would need to appoint to Cabinet should he win the presidency so I chose to stick with Bush -- I trusted him and the members of his Cabinet (although it took me awhile to warm up to Ashcroft and Minetta.) My break with tradition (my family has voted Democrat since JFK) came from the consciousness that my country is at war, though, which is a far different mindset than those in the Maritimes likely have. But, and this is what irreversibly tips the scales, I am cannot believe that people here in Ontario are not as traumatized by the Nine Days as are many of us, and, if I'm reading between the lines rightly, I gather than those in the Maritimes too are not fully cognizant of the implications of what has actually happened. My American brain keeps screaming "how can they not be aware of all this?" You've probably read comments by Americans here who are trying to be polite but just don't understand why the people of this country are not up in arms (of the pitchfork and torch variety, that is, or at least an orange scarf or two!) I too cannot grasp this. I cannot grasp how proud Canadians can ignore these last two weeks and although I've been trying very hard to temper my words I am in turmoil.

4 Debbye, I too am simply aghast at the complete (apparent) lack of outrage in the Canadian populace. I can't even fathom how people can still support the Liberal Party at the levels they are polling at in the face of such massive corruption (and, in the opinion of some, abandonment of proper parliamentry practice). The apathy of my fellow Canadians to this is, in my opinion, unconscionable. It does speak to how ingrained the Liberal Party has made itself in many people's minds that in the face of tyranny the people still support the tyrant. Cheers, Keith.

5 Debbye, There is no excuse for ignorance in this day and age. If people choose to live in ignorance they will get what they deserve. It is all too easy to begin accepting handouts and then fear losing them. But I have no patience. I am a proud Canadian. I lost three uncles in WWII, two of them giving the French back their country. The allies persevered and gave us a free and proud country. My uncles did not die for the country Canada has become. I have never applied for nor accepted welfare, UI or a government grant of any type. I am almost 67 years old. My wife and I raised three children and bought or built two homes during the first 26 years or our marriage. It wasn't easy. I was an artist and artists, at least young ones starting out, are not known to be rich. But we made in on income from the sale of my work. We had no other income for most of those years. I did this knowing that many other artists, who I was competing with for sales, were living from government grant to government grant. They had mastered the ability to live with one hand out in front of them all the time. But I didn't let that bother me. I was too busy making a living. I have visited the Maritimes and Quebec several times, I did a series of 19 paintings on the Eastern Townships of Quebec for a collector. I understand this area of Canada. There are many proud and industrious Canadians from the Maritimes and Quebec. Just not enough in my opinion. I could also say much the same about BC, where I presently live. In any case, I have no patience with ignorance anymore. I could go on...

6 Ian in N.S.: Then there's the other side of the coin, the friends I know who work in the woods four months a year and draw pogey the other eight while playing hocky five times a week all winter. These are the bums, the good-for- nothing leeches who make the rest of us look bad. . . . ut them off from that federal trough and I'm not sure they'll survive. Not to worry, Ian. Such folk are *very* practical, and will effectively turn to when they get cold or hungry, or their children do. A note from the U.S. experience: In the 1990s, the mean and eevial Republican Congress enacted a welfare reform, limiting lifetime welfare grants to a maximumof five years for able-bodied recipients. Contrary to predictions, the sky did NOT fall, and the welfare rolls have stabilized at a level 50% below their previous size. Lovingkindness, Sid Cochran

7 John, it is not so much a change in the leadership of the Liberal party (and I should've expanded on that point -- which I will in a minute) -- it is a change in the leadership of this country AWAY FROM A CENTRAL CANADIAN. For over thirty-five years this country has been led by an unbroken string of central Canadians -- Pearson, Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien, Martin (Clark, Turner, and Campbell don't count for spit) -- and our society has gone ever further down its spiralling descent to this point. Mulroney was the only one who even partly grasped what was happening (the Liberals of course are stuck in permanent denial), and tried to at least bring us some constitutional peace. Given the dismal track record of Ontario and Quebec prime ministers, we BADLY need leadership from outside the centre to force a new perspective into the national discussion. McKenna is the only name from this end of the country that's up to the task in my view (I like Bernard Lord but I'm not yet convinced he's national material; nobody from NS, PEI, or NL rates as far as I'm concerned, and I am bitterly disappointed that John Hamm equivocated and Danny Williams actively pressured for passage of the Liberal budget). As for my stance on McKenna, I should've added that the Liberal party that McKenna would have to take over for me to consider it would be one razed to the ground in a 1993-style Tory wipeout, the entire leadership, and especially the Quebec & Ontario wings, purged, and rebuilt from the ground up by McKenna. If you just lopped off the head of today's poisonous snake and replaced it with McKenna, no, that wouldn't be enough. And I am a card-carrying Conservative. I can see all too clearly what this country's coming to, and that soundly defeating the Liberals at the next election, 1993 style, may be the only hope for keeping Canada together. Given Ontario's dismal track record in the last three federal elections, however (and, yes, the polling out here), I don't hold out much hope for that outcome.