Or they would just die sooner. :yelsick:

I say again, don't believe what the news is spitting at you.

In the last year, wait times in Canada for most procedures have actually started to decrease. This is due to the fact that the Canadian governement has been running a sizeable surplus. The surplus is being used to pay down the debt. Most of the money saved on interest payments on our debt is being redirected to health care.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/media...t2004mine.html

What kind of surplus is the US running?

Talk to me about health care in 5 years. We've bottomed out and will now continue to improve.

said the former Worldcom executive...

While in the U.S. military years ago, I had the chance to visit a base in Germany occupied mostly by Canadians. Very efficient soilders from what I could see. The only problem was at night in the bars. The French Canadians and American speaking Canadians appeared to love to brawl. The only problem was it was between each other. However, really no difference than say the U.S. rangers and the Marines. During that period they seem to do the same.
I guess it was that Psychoactive addictive drug alcohol causing the violence. :thumbsup:

6 to 12 months might have worked in 1940 but today wars can be lost in days sometimes hours. Especially when the citizens are unarmed. :eyebrow:

Medicaid/Medicare have some very tricky rules about foreign nationals. A person can't just show up here and be enrolled with no questions asked. Yeah, you can get treatment in an emergency room for a bona fide emergency, but that's about it. Those aged Canadians would have to get legal immigrant status AND prove that they are indigent. Any strains on our system come from folks crossing our southern border - NOT our northern one.

My father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII, so my observations about Canada are not totally ivory tower ones.

My point was that regardless of why they move south, they remove a burden from Canada's system.

Large aggressive neighbors don't just get that way overnight. Generally they are ten+ years in the making. Diplomacy, spies, political boasting, and propaganda will long since identify threats. It is why 6 to 12 months would be more than enough time for Canada to prepare.

In the meantime we have this other lesson from history. A nation that operates militaries far larger and in excess of all other nations eventually gets a hard-on. And then wants to stick his dic everywhere it does not belong. The great threat to world security is the nation that sees enemies everywhere even where they don't exist - Iraq, Iran, and N Korea.

How big is our hard-on. We are now approaching (and probably exceeding once you add all the money not authorized) cold war military spending. Why? Where are all these threats - except where we make enemies by leaving our military where it was not wanted.

We now have a nation full of hard-ons. Oh. They are called war-mongers. People who want to save the world from itself. We call it being a world policeman. The world calls it vigilantism.

The Canadian question is now resurrected. Yesterday Condi announced that she would not visit Canada due to their non-participation in funding the missile defense shield.

Canada is hoping that TW is right and that a missile defense shield will never really work. Or that if it does, the US will still shoot down missiles headed for Canada out of the goodness of its North American-loving heart, or with the notion that the US can't be sure exactly where missiles are headed. It is an interesting gambit made for solely political purposes - according to the NYT story, the US was looking mostly for moral support on this and not money.

Bonus for Canada!

Most Canadians are rabid anti-Shrub. It would be political suicide for the minority Liberal party to be seen too closely involved in what is viewed by most as another GWB adventure that provides his associates with money but very little in the way of a practical defence.

I'm against anything that might result in a nuclear weapon being brought down over my head. :)
Not that I think any nuclear attack against the US would be missile based. Much easier to ship it over in a container of cheap TV's.

I'm all for missile defense research. At the very least, it will eventually provide more technology to the private sector, as does most military research in the end. It's a bit early for deployment, though.

Unless, of course, one of the missles hits Toronto instead of Buffalo which, on the bright side, would produce about 162 million kilos of Canadian bacon. Mmmmmm. Bacon.

Why would anyone fire a missile a Toronto? As far as I know Celene Dion is still in Vegas...:p

A more likely scenario is a missle on the way to DC or NY is deflected by a near miss attempt to bring it down and ends up coming landing in TO.

If the shield works, and the US says it won't necessarily shoot down north-bound items, Canadian cities become "unhardened targets" representing the west in general. If the shield works it would become a waste of time and money to shoot at Seattle. But Vancouver...!