Will the Cons ever turn into Tories???

[QUOTE BY= mac/dief] "Good points....I'd argue that R.B. Bennett should be exempted from the list of scrooge-Tories, because although he took a while to improve people's lives, he did his best, and died a broken man. Imagine a man who created the CBC, U.I. and the Bank of Canada was thought of as someone who didn't do enough. In 12 years, not 5, what did Chretien do? Cancel a deal for a helicopter we needed and nearly lead the country into disaster in 1995. My how standards have dropped." Well Bennett did create the National Wheat Board, the CBC, Air Canada, the Bank of Canada and other crown corporations designed to protect Canadian culture and make Canada a world player, yet on the other hand it took him until his 5th year in office to finally relent and agree to provide services towards the people. He not only allowed for employement and living standards to drop without acting he also took very cruel measures against the poor. For example he forcibly interned almost 30 thousand Albertan worker's in so called "worker's relief camps", because he was afraid of their "communist influences", and blacklisted tens of thousands of Eastern European immigrants, yet on the other hand he enthusiastically supported the hiring of the than National Socialist Christian Unity Party's headman, Adrienne Arcand as the Conservative Party's head of recruitement in Quebec. Im not even sure that his death bed conversion towards government welfare was really that sincere, more like a ploy to keep him in office. And to me it takes a very small man to blame his defeat on his own nation, move away, never return and refuse to even be buried there. Also Im pretty sure that it was Arthur Meighen who pushed Bennett to create the CBC. King might not have been perfect, and is definately over rated, but I have to give im credit for being far more compassionate during the Great Depression! [/QUOTE] Good points....I'm not sure King was very compassionate at first either, but yeah, he liked getting elected quite a bit so he improved. Also, regarding Bennett, he did say "Hold me responsible" in 1930, but 5 years later he hadn't done much, although he did apparently say to his co-workers that the depression was out of his control, which it was and wasn't....the response was in his control, but to be fair, his eventual actions were probably seen as quite radical at the time, so he redeeem himself a little bit.

[QUOTE BY= mac/dief] [QUOTE BY= mac/dief] My how standards have dropped." [/QUOTE] Yeah Chretien hasn't done much to make Canadians believe in our politicians anymore, atleast Mulroney had SOME vision when it came to Charlottetown! What we REALLY need is another John Diefenbaker, Orchard might be no Diefenbaker, but you will not (at present anyway) find anyone else in the mainstream nationalist movement with the same type of deep nationalism and strong understanding of Canadian history, heritage, identity and culture! [/QUOTE] Yet he was an Eisenhower worshipper who ended up being a continentalist, what an enigmatic guy.

[QUOTE BY= gaulois] [QUOTE BY= mac/dief] Actually Canadian sovereignty is a HUGE issue with Canadians, you can see it practically everywhere. [/QUOTE] Not sure if I agree with how HUGE this is. People are certainly more aware of this due to our dependencies on the US that are really starting to hurt us but are not prepared to do anything about it (e.g. change certain consumption habits, vote differently, etc...). I think it is a whole lot more than "education". People have been brainwashed to believe certain things and it will take a generation until these beliefs fade away in front of the reality of the declining US. Until then I think we will have to deal with this wishy-washyness of the electorate (as observed in Quebec dealing with its own Sovereignty issue); Quebec had this language thing that really crystallized the issue; Canada does not have a similar very personal thing to fire people up. Canadian Sovereignty will be a much longer matter than the one in Quebec.[/QUOTE] Yeah....I think there are just so many competing interests in the rest of canada....I mean, immigration is nice to a point, but we've had mass immigration from all over the world since the 1970s, and this hasn't helped the sovereignty cause, as people take time to learn a political culture. People who have lived here a long time are generally in the dark, so one can only imagine how in the dark an immigrant is. They don't participate, or they vote en masse for the party that let them in....no wonder the Liberals love them--they are Liberal voters. Also, the regions always were quite isolated from each other, and the provincialism and hatred of big cities (Toronto) by other places, even other cities, has really hurt Canada. I mean, Canadians have proven they are quite small-minded for a while. I'm not sure most people alive today know anything about our history whatsoever, so blame Toronto, blame Ottawa, blame Quebec, blame Newfoundland, whatever.....the majority voters are generally more established, older people, so old habits die hard, and like I said, immigrants coting en masse for one party isn't democracy either. My conclusion is Canada is far to complicated and clueless a group of people to generalize about.