Many lifestyles available 200 years ago are no longer available. Around here the people had it pretty easy, work like hell for a couple of weeks catching salmon and preserving them and there was their years supply of food. Hard to do that anymore. Those same people have it pretty shitty now after generations of being sexually abused and worse by the local religious people trying to assimilate them.

Yes the whole thing was a mess but the Conservatives, who ran on a platform of transparency, did introduce a bill designed to fuck the opposition and pushed it through. That's the problem with this government, it takes a lot of screaming before they listen, generally they sneak the worst shit in using omnibus bills so people have too many options about what to scream about. So far it seems only the Supreme Court has really been able to reign them in. I wish we still had our minority governments as majorities just have too much power no matter who is in power.
About the only good thing about the American system is the lack of party discipline and Canada would be better if MPs could vote what their constituencies wanted instead of the party head..

I'd like a citation for that. Just spent half an hour looking and can't find anything for the Canadian Federal Liberal Party though it wouldn't surprise me too much as they were quite corrupt. I do know that I never had a problem voting in a federal election until the last election when the early voting place was 30 miles away in the wrong direction instead of the normal place, a problem for me as being self-employed I have a harder time taking Tuesday afternoon off. Not to mention the severe shortage of choices on the ballot.
I also know that the Conservatives are trying to remove the right to vote from my wife and son. My wife has never had a problem voting before but since she doesn't drive it appears that her ID is no longer good enough and it's going to take years for her updated ID to be issued by the federal government.
I'll say one thing about the Conservatives, they make the Liberals not seem quite as bad, perhaps they need to do more in the way of giving Senate seats to media people to get their message out, then again by threatening to bring in American media companies if they don't toe the line perhaps they'll keep the independent media dependent.

Ideally the Constitutional Monarch should have just slightly more power. Currently in Canada the Governor General does whatever the PM tells him to do, right or wrong. This has resulted in Harper proroguing Parliament when the shit was about to hit the fan a couple of times including once when he's government was going to lose a vote of confidence the next day, then he went on about how it wasn't democratic if the opposition parties ganged up on him and formed a coalition government like the UK and Australia currently have. A government consists of which ever part[y][ies] can pass a budget and if none can then Parliament is dissolved and there are elections. The voters get pissed off if this happens too often.

The Conservatives got training from the American Republican Party. They have been caught cheating, there is lots of other evidence of other cheating and now they're changing the rules so that our formally excellent system is no more. Elections Canada isn't even going to be allowed to tell people where to vote, little well investigate polling irregularities, campaign irregularities and so on.
While Canada's electoral system was very good, our Parliamentary system not so much as if a party gets a majority they have up to a 5 (usually closer to 4) year dictatorship and that is the current problem. Last time the Conservatives were in power they were reduced to 3 seats when the people judged them. That is good when a government fucks up badly, they lose badly. Now this government is changing the rules in an attempt to prevent our electoral system from working.

Considering one of Harpers (and Reforms) original platforms was Senate reform, he sure has taken advantage of the status quo. I like the idea of the Senate, just not the implementation. One quick improvement would be letting the Provinces appoint Senators however they want, elected, appointed or whatever. Meanwhile Harper won't even appoint the one that Alberta voted for.

I've often thought about a similar idea here in Canada, except it being the Senate (appointed in Canada) that is made up of random people. Elected part of government still proposes laws and budgets but the Senate can shoot them down or force changes.
Problem is a lot of people just can't afford to take a few years away from home and work and they'd still be vulnerable to bribery such as the promise of a good easy job after their term was finished.

This is Canada, we're the mice who get a choice of cats, white, black, even multi-coloured. They all promise that they'll do the best for us mice, but the truth is they're cats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

62% of the Canadians who bothered to vote, voted against this government, so we have the tyranny of the minority. Luckily with the Fair Elections Act they're trying to make sure that many of those 62% won't be able to vote next election.

The State of the American prison system where rape seems to be common and glorified as just punishment, torture in the form of solitary confinement is also common, 1 in a 100 American adults are there and you still have the medieval concept of felon where civil rights are removed permanently forming a segregated society.
Barbarianism comes in many forms though often with self righteousness.
(apologies if you're not American)

That's right, the good guys would lock the thief up with a bunch of homo sexual rapists so the thief could practice the freedom of being the raped or raper. Or perhaps lock him in a cell with no human contact, nothing to do, no exercise for a good chunk of his life, then release him while denying him rights like being able to support himself then complain that he's still a thief and repeat the locking up stuff.

You mean the consequences of theft?

It was often that way with slavery, inter-racial marriages and even savages keeping their stuff. It's a problem with democracy, too easy for an organized group to remove the rights of others which is partially solved by things like Constitutions with Bills of Rights but even then a large enough majority can remove rights.

Half of those things you list infringe on the rights of others. You may have heard of the saying that the right to swing your fist ends where my face is. You should be allowed to smoke anywhere you want if no-one else is getting negatively impacted. Walking nude should mostly be legal with perhaps limits in restaurants and such. Taxes are a package deal which are used to allow you to have money. Drinking liquor depends on how you handle it and firearms are often used irresponsibly. Sometimes so many people use something so irresponsibly that they routinely infringe on others rights, real rights such as the right to life so things like drinking and using firearms get restricted.
Marriage doesn't usually affect anyone else and when it does it is illegalized such as polygamy.(large numbers of men who are kicked out of their community to protect the few who have all the wifes)

We're drifting away from that. For my marriage, I went to the government office, payed $35 and got a marriage license. Then arranged for a marriage commissioner (basically government) to show up ($75 + mileage), say some non-religious words and my wife and I said some words, pieces of official paper were signed and witnessed and we were married. Note that it was always considered marriage, not civil union or such.
My son has probably never touched a bible and probably couldn't quote any of it. The religous stuff he did go through was more practical, such as being presented with a paddle at 13 yrs in case of finding himself up the creek and the other religious stuff was always presented as to why these beliefs existed. (Mostly revolving around respect with rites that were handy in a society that had no writing)