1. EXTEND THE 59 TO THE GALERIES D'AYLMER
2. INCREASE SERVICE ON THE 58 AND REPLACE THE 59 WITH THE 58
3. CREATE A TRUE BUS-ONLY LANE GOING ALL THE WAY TO OTTAWA DURING RUSH HOUR

• Once the Boulevard de l'Outaouais expansion is complete, it may be worthwhile to create an express bus that uses this highway to connect the "Aylmer sector" and old-Gatineau. Demand may not justify a regular line and since there are few stops along the way, an express fare would be justified. I think this would be a rather attractive option for people who work in old Gatineau.
• Since there would be several local lines, now, that do not leave the "Aylmer sector", perhaps you could offer a reduced fare to help fill these busses during non-peak hours. For example, you could allow people to ride for a dollar, but only on local busses and there would be no transfer given. You could offer a monthly pass allowing for unlimited usage of this type for around $40 per month.
• Could you install an info Plus panel or something at the stop on Rideau Street? Ever since they removed the shelter, there has been no schedule or anything. There is not even an infobus line to call. It is very discouraging to have to wait for the bus without any idea of how long you have to wait for the next bus. It really helps to know how long you have to wait because then you can decide whether you have time to go grab something to eat at McDonald's or some coffee at Starbucks because you have a while or whether you should just stay put because the bus is coming in two minutes. This will probably frustrate riders because they will wait outside in the cold for a long time, not knowing when the next bus will come, when they could do something to relax, instead. Less frustrated riders would result in less stressed drivers.
• Create a "bar run". There are so many bars in downtown Hull and Ottawa and it would greatly reduce drinking and driving or at least reduce the cost of taking a taxi home if there was a bus that ran from downtown Ottawa, through downtown Hull, to the Galeries just after closing time, around 2AM. You could probably fill a bus quite easily at this time on most nights of the week as people who would otherwise take a taxi or drive home would probably take the bus.
• Another small thing: sometimes, it's difficult to tell whether a bus is going where you're headed and although you can always ask the driver, this takes up their time and slows down their trip. Perhaps, create a system by which as routes merge into the same route, the become the other route in order to reduce confusion. For example, the 59 could become the 39 after it passes boul. St-Raymond and it could become the 37 after it passes St-Joseph.

• HEALTH: Health is a provincial responsability according to the constitution so I'd do it right and make sure it returns to that. I would abolish the Canada Health Act and Health Canada. And if some provinces want private health care, they should go ahead and do it. It's up to them. What happens now is that the provincial governments always blame the federal government for problems with their health care system and never take responsability. By returning health care to the provincial level, provinces would now have to be accountable for their deficiencies. The only thing I'd keep at the federal level is an emergency plague response team. It would control the spread of plagues and stuff but this would be a branch of the military. Also, I would change patent laws to prevent drug companies from changing a drug just a little bit and then re-patenting it. After 15 years, you're up!
  
• EDUCATION: Education is a provincial responsability. I would eliminate student-loan partnerships, federal bursaries, and transfer payments especially for education. If you have a problem with education in your province, blame your premier! The only thing I might do is encourage things like the Gutenberg project which puts non-copyrighted works online. I think it's important to increase access to knowledge so that provincial education departments can easily produce learning materials and stuff. I would also change copyright laws so that they are much shorter. I mean 50 years after the death of the author? Come on!
• NATIONAL SECURITY: I would make it illegal to sell and posess handguns. But if you need to protect your home and business, by all means, you can use a rifle and if you have to shoot somebody to defend your home and business, the law would back you up. I would also have a gun registry. Honest people who own guns should have nothing to fear as they would have nothing to hide. I would give some sort of cash compensation to encourage gun registration and make it illegal to purchase ammo without a registered gun. I also support the 'responsability to protect' doctrine which says that the UN should support missions to attack countries which don't pose a threat to other countries but who are committing all sorts of crimes against humanity. Currently, according to international law, national sovereignty trumps human rights. Canada usually gets involved in peace-keeping missions but in some cases, the peace treaties we enforce are completely unfair. Fuck being neutral! If a country is doing wrong to its own people we should go in there and fight for humanity! I would strictly control the sale of arms involving Canada in some way. i.e. I would prohibit Canadian arms companies from selling arms to evil dictatorships. I would also never give weapons or money to buy weapons to other countries. If they need military assistance, we can send in our own military to assist them. But we won't arm foreign governments even if they are good (because there can always be a military coup).
  
• WELFARE: I would make welfare a federal responsability. I would continue disability insurance, the pension plan and EI the way they're going and I would replace welfare per se with a minimum income system. It would give everybody a certain amount of cash every year that would be determined as the minimum necessary for survival in Canada. Then it would tax them on the amount they make above that. For example, if you are a family of 5 that makes $100 000 per year. You would get an extra $35 000 from the government and then you would be taxed at say 45% so you would be charged $45 000. So you would pay a net of $10 000. This may seem kinda low but there will be other taxes added to this. However, people who don't even try. i.e. who don't work and don't even try to get a job for years (the true moochers) would not get any support. But if you are trying to support a family but are working for minimum wage or just got laid off, this would help. It would also eliminate the incentive for people on welfare to not seek employment. The way it is now, often if you go off welfare to get a job you would get less money so there's no point in getting a job. This way, getting a job would always mean you get more money. I would also make a grant system that gives people a huge lump sum payment to every citizen as they turn 16 be invested in their future as they choose (not spent frivolously) in education or financial markets or starting a business, etc.
  
• ENVIRONMENT: I would have it so that there would be financial penalties for polluting and high gas taxes and pollution taxes for factories and rules limiting the amount of water people can draw from a certain body of water in order to keep a sustainable level. And I would limit the amount of trees you can cut and stuff like that and make rules that you have to re-plant them and stuff and I would make it the law that ALL paper mills have to use scrubbers to eliminate the stench. And a bunch of other stuff. Basically, I would discourage things that are harmful to the environment (through taxes and regulation) but I would not spend money to encourage things that are good for the environment but these would become the natural alternative since harmful things would be not worth it.
• INDIANS: I would find permanent solutions to address native poverty rather than keep throwing money at them. I would face up to the fact that some reserves aren't economically sustainable and encourage the indians to move to another reserve or to the city. I would honour all treaties, though.
• FAMILIES: I would create a task force to come up with permanent solutions to the structural problems that lead to family poverty. I would give more financial support to families, pregnant women and single mothers and create a national allowance program that gives money to children directly starting at age 8. I would consider instituting a man-tax that is an additional income tax only on childless men in order to help single mothers.
  
• ECONOMY: I would stop giving so many grants to business. Business can take care of itself. I would introduce a labour-based currency. I already talked about this in my blog.
  
• TAXES: I already mentionned making a minimum income system and a man tax. I would also institute a land tax which is essentially a tax on the property that your house or building is on. I would increase corporate tax but drastically reduce personal income tax on income derived from investments in Canadian companies. I would ensure that gas taxes cover the entire cost of building roads and discourage pollution and subsidize less pollutant forms of transportation. I would eliminate the GST. I'm not against the idea of having a sales tax. It's just that the provincial governments already have PST and 15% is too much.
  
• HOMELESSNESS: I would create a task force to come up with permanent solutions to eliminate homelessness once and for all. I would make it easier for homeless people to get welfare even if they have no address.
• CRIME: I would legalize marijuana (I discussed the specifics of how it would work in another post). As for other drugs, I would recognize that certain hallucinogens are an integral part of certain people's culture and I would allow their use to a limited extent provided that participants give their full consent and measures are taken to ensure their safety. I would keep going after producers and suppliers of hard drugs but as for users: forced re-hab. I would make jails less of luxury resorts and more as jails. I would encourage the use of prison-labour to help defer the costs of prisons. I would criminalize abortion and ensure euthanasia remains illegal but have public education campaigns to explain to citizens why these should be illegal.
• FOREIGN AFFAIRS: I would impose economic sanctions on the US for screwing us around with regards to softwood lumber. I would also impose sever economic sanctions on countries that have poor human rights records such as the people's republic of China and I would encourage other countries to do the same. I would be in favour of free trade but also free immigration. That is, I would make it legal for anyone to come here and work without restrictions. I would also establish a task force on international poverty. I would increase foreign aid but also make sure it gets into the right hands.
  
• FEDERALISM: I would try again to bring Quebec into the constitution. I would also consider making a constitutional ammendment to make health care a federal responsability if all provinces agree. I would encourage provinces to make partnerships. i.e. If Manitoba doesn't want to handle it's own Health Care system, they can share a health care system with Saskatchewan. There already is some sharing between provinces. One of the territories shares an education system with one of the provinces and the maritimes share a gaming commission. I would encourage more of this so that provinces can choose the level of autonomy they want. I would have the federal government enforce these agreements and act as an arbiter in case of a dispute. I would also have any promotion of culture done by the provinces as well as tourism. These would be no longer federal responsability. I would also try to get an African nation to join Canada so that there would be somewhere for people who want to live in Canada but hate the cold. I would help less developped provinces by giving them grants from the federal budget but not by taxing provincial government revenues.
• LAND REFORM: I would restrict property rights on land. i.e. you can never own land. You can just own the right to use it for certain purposes for the next 150 years.
  
• ELECTIONS: I would have major electoral reform but this is the subject of a future post.
• MEDIA: I would eliminate all free-speech restrictions on the media (i.e. the CRTC). I would also stop funding the CBC and replace it with a government-sponsored national website. The interweb is a cheaper media.
• GOVERNANCE STRATEGY: As it currently works, many parties will admit we have a problem in some area and they will all promote certain solutions for dealing with it and have you vote on who has the best solutions. If I were running for elections, I would instead set goals, have people vote for my goals and then find out the best ways of acheiving those goals using research. Because you can't find out what works the best through democracy - this must be done thru empiricism!

I am in favour of the legalization of Cannabis and its derivatives for
recreational use. People should be allowed to do what they want if it
does not harm anyone else and a senate committee found that cannabis consumption
is no more harmful than alcohol. Legalization would cause many problems
such as:

• A negative effect on Canada-USA relations because the USA would
  probably not legalize it and Canadians might try to export it to the USA.


• An increase in cases of people driving whilst intoxicated with
  the drug,


• An increase in health problems due to increased use of the drug,
  placing a burden on our Medicare system,


• An increase in addictions and abuse of the drug.

The problem with de-criminalization is that...

• it does not take the above-mentioned effects into consideration,


• it would involve annoying fines to users,


• the government would not get tax revenues from the sale of the drug


• and it would stimulate the demand much more than the supply, so the price would increase.

My solution involves a controlled legalization of Marijuana and Hashish.
It would solve all the above-mentioned problems and more.

The drug would be only available in special licensed bars, etc. They
would only be allowed to open from Thursday to Monday or something to avoid everyday use leading to habituation.

The bartender would have to make sure...

• that customers do not leave with cannabis that they can export
  to the States,


• that customers do not drive themselves home, whilst intoxicated,


• that customers receive proper medical attention if they become
  ill,


• that people do not fight and


• to use discretion in order to not serve too much cannabis to customers.

The bars would only be able to obtain their products from socially responsible
growers rather than Criminal organizations like the Hell's Angels, etc.
There would be a minimum age for entering these establishments, such as
16. They could get extra money by selling “munchies”. The
government would charge excise taxes to offset the burden placed on the
Medicare system and they could make money on income taxes resulting from
the sale of the drug, whereas, they cannot do so, now. Supply would have
more to gain than demand, because as is, if someone is caught dealing,
they get HUGE penalties, whereas possession is harder to track down and
generally ignored by cops. So, the price should go down, slightly, to
about $9/g instead of $10/g even with all the new taxes and such.

If I was running a federal political party this would be my constitution platform.

• Decentralization - more power to the provinces: each province
  should have its own criminal code, and establish its own rules on fishing,
  mining, agriculture, etc. as well as its own culture policies. There is
  no such thing as a common Canadian culture. British Columbians are different
  from Newfoundlanders and Québecois. So, each province should have
  its own policies to encourage their culture.


• Flexibility: for example, each province should be in charge of
  their own educational policies, criminal code, etc. but certain provinces
  could group together to create a common ministry of education, if separate
  ones would be inefficient, etc.


• A federal constitutional that defines the rights and responsibilities
  of citizens, defines the role of each level of Government and limits their
  powers (for example, even if each province would have its own criminal
  code, the federal constitution could prevent them from legalizing the
  death penalty)


• A president elected through universal suffering, I mean suffrage. The
  President would appoint a cabinet, 2 Vice-Presidents and answer to the
  Governor-General who shall still answer to the Queen.


• The federal government should handle Medicare because all provinces
  have Medicare anyway and the federal government has to do all sorts of
  transfer payments for it to run property.


• The feds should also continue to handle defense, diplomacy, the Supreme
  Court,

 Hehe... The only middle-eastern country without oil is the stage for one of the most violent conflicts going on in the world today.

On one hand, the Jews were PROMISED that land by God himself. They went through a lot these past millenia and well they could use a break. They do attack the palestinians and stuff but its in the name of security. The palestinians are constantly attacking them with terrorists and stuff.

On the other hand, the arabs sorta also descended from the same people (it's kinda complicated) so they were kinda also promised the same land. The Jews took away their homes and they sporadically attack them for no seemingly good reason!

But can't they all just get along?

I says yes! Using a little technique I like to call compromise! Here's how it can go down:

The jews compensate the palestinians for their land or just give it back in certain cases. The jews allow arabs to live there in peace. The arabs allow Jews to live there in peace.

They form a new government with a neutral name (like the original name of the area): The Republic of CANAAN! This will be a federal government but the states (which will be called nations because they will have distinct nationalities) that make up the federation won't be defined by physical boundaries but by nationalities of the governed people. For example, all Jews will be ruled by the Nation of Israel. They will have Jewish schools and hospitals, etc. and the government of Israel would collect taxes from all Jews and only Jews would be allowed to vote in their elections. The Nation of Palestine would handle the same things for the palestinians. They would run seperate governments even in the same area! This would be sorta like if Ontario ran services for the English folk in Quebec and Ontario and the government of Quebec ran services for the French population in the same area! The federal government would be completely neutral and not discriminate between the two nations and peoples and they would control neutral things such as defense and roads and stuff. This could give long-term political stability to this area while still keeping the pride of both nations! It will, however, take a while for the culture of hatred and conflict to die down, but with the official government at peace, they could work together on this!

Peace!