FYI the word you’re so desperate to use is milquetoast, not milktoast.

I completely agree with you that mandatory enlistment is essentially never acceptable as if a conflict is so dire, you’d expect citizens to feel empowered to join the fight without fear of penalty or retribution if they didn’t.

That being said, I think most of what you were replying to was not an argument for mandatory enlistment, they were suggesting that we might want to include a couple years of work placements following high school, with one option being military service but other choices being available and none decided by the government. I also believe they were suggesting that the penalty for not doing so would be similar to penalties for not attending high school and not what we’ve seen countries implement as penalties for conscription. I’m not saying that plan is perfect but I can at least see a significant nuance between their suggestion and military conscription.

Just FYI, you’re the only one making a spectacle of themselves in this thread.

The LDC is an independent commission established by the Government of Canada. The list of who is serving on the Secretariat and the Advisory Board can be found here https://www.debates-debats.ca/en/about/commission/

Your post would be better worded as “if your riding isn’t competitive for conservatives, you don’t have to vote strategically and can vote for your preferred candidate/party.”

Another thing to consider is that the PM being in the house of commons effectively elevates the leader of the opposition to being a near equal to the PM. If the PM weren’t even there, would anybody pay attention to what the leader of the opposition was saying?

I think that’s a very interesting thought, I hadn’t considered the impacts on the opposition if the PM wasn’t in the house when I wrote my previous reply.

I definitely agree with you that there’s pros and cons to either systems and it comes down a lot more to how its implemented than anything else. I also agree that this is not the best time to be experimenting with new systems/tweaks to the system and I wish there was a way for us (as a society) to better assess how a system might work without risking so much.

It’s definitely an interesting conversation to have, and I think you raise some excellent points on whether it’s the most effective use of the PMs time to be in the House. I think one big drawback if they aren’t is that the opposition would be able to speak about the PM without the PM being able to directly respond but a) that doesn’t matter much if the party has a majority, b) it’s possible this wouldn’t be as big of an issue over time if we had multiple PMs not in the House as it’s possible the opposition would start focusing on the leader in the house (such as deputy PM), c) it also wouldn’t be entirely unprecedented as the PM isn’t always in attendance, even if they are allowed to.

He absolutely could remain PM without being an MP but I believe he then wouldn’t be allowed to actually sit or speak in the House which is obviously not ideal.

I haven’t done enough research to confidently answer your second question but for your first one:

That is the official website of the House of Commons of Canada. The process varies a bit between paper petitions and e-petitions but essentially, once the petition is certified (has enough signatures (25 for paper petitions, 500 for e-petitions), is formatted properly, and an MP is willing to present it) it will then be presented in the House by the MP associated with the petition and the government then has 45 days to respond to the content, if they fail to respond within 45 days, the MP who presented the petition can designate a committee of the house to look into why the government failed to respond.

So it doesn’t force the government to enact the content of the petition, but it forces the issue to be brought up in the House and forces the government to respond.

Source of most of that info: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/home/index

Shame that matrix.ca is already registered even though it points to nothing right now. I was thinking of volunteering to cover that cost (depending on renewal fee) if someone was willing to help out with spinning up a matrix server.