Queen Elizabeth II - 1; Canadian Parliament - 0

[johnny861]

It may not be QE II granting the permission directly, but it should be a reminder that Canada is not an autonomous nation.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/...a/05canada.php


Canada's parliament closed in bid to keep prime minister in power

OTTAWA: Canada's parliamentary opposition reacted with outrage on Thursday after Prime Minister Stephen Harper shut down the legislature until Jan. 26, seeking to forestall a no-confidence vote that he was sure to lose and, possibly, provoking a constitutional crisis.

Harper acted after getting the approval of Governor General Michaëlle Jean, who represents Queen Elizabeth II as the nation's head of state. If his request had been rejected, he would have had to choose between stepping down or facing the no-confidence vote on Monday.

The opposition fiercely criticized the decision to suspend Parliament, accusing Harper of undermining the nation's democracy. "We have to say to Canadians, 'Is this the kind of government you want?' " said Bob Rae, a member of the opposition Liberal Party. "Do we want a party in place that is so undemocratic that it will not meet the House of Commons?"

That sentiment was echoed by constitutional scholars, who lamented that the governor general might have created a mechanism that future prime ministers could use to bypass the legislature when it seemed convenient.

"This really has been a blow to parliamentary democracy in Canada," said Nelson Wiseman, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. "It has lowered the status of the elected Parliament and raised the status of the unelected prime minister."

Thursday's events had their origins in a hotly contested election, which Harper's Conservative Party won less than two months ago without achieving a majority, leaving it vulnerable to challenge. In light of that and the growing economic turmoil, Harper promised to work closely with the opposition in the Parliament.

But the proposed budget he presented last week had none of the stimulus programs that the opposition had sought to help Canada's sagging economy. The final insult for the main opposition parties, the New Democrats and the Liberals, was a provision that would eliminate public financing for political parties. They considered it a deliberate slap because Harper's Conservative Party is currently far better financed than they are.

With that, they began scrambling to put together a coalition with the backing of the separatist Bloc Québécois to displace Harper's government.

Harper said he suspended Parliament to allow time to put together a budget that he would introduce in January, and he once again spoke in conciliatory terms, inviting the opposition to participate in the drafting. "Today's decision will give us an opportunity — and I'm talking about all the parties — to focus on the economy and work together."

But Stéphane Dion, who leads the Liberals and who would become the coalition's prime minister, dismissed the idea of working with Harper and said the Conservatives' budget was unlikely to satisfy the opposition's economic demands.

"We do not want any more of his words, we don't believe them," Dion told reporters before the closed doors of the House of Commons. "We want to see changes, monumental changes."

Opposition leaders said they would continue to try to form a new coalition, and strongly criticized Harper's attempt to thwart them. "He's put a lock on the door on the House of Commons," Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democrats, told reporters. "He refuses to face the people of Canada through their elected representatives."

The opposition's move to form a new coalition has, in turn, elicited sharp criticisms from some Conservative members. "That is as close to treason and sedition as I can imagine," Bob Dechert, a Conservative member, said Wednesday, echoing a refrain heard widely in Alberta, the prime minister's home province.

Technically, what Harper did was to "prorogue" Parliament, a move that stops all actions on bills and the body's other business, and thus goes well beyond an adjournment (which was not available to Harper in any event, as it requires parliamentary approval). It is not unprecedented — prorogation is used occasionally to introduce a new legislative agenda — but this is the first time any Parliament members or constitutional scholars here could recall the maneuver being used in the midst of a political crisis and over the objections of Parliament.

Harper declared the parliamentary suspension after a two-and-a-half hour meeting in Ottawa with Jean. While no governor general has ever previously rejected a prime minister's request to prorogue Parliament, several constitutional scholars said Harper was the first one to have asked permission when he did not have the support of the legislature.

"That's why they spent two and a half hours talking," said C. E. S. Franks, a professor emeritus of political studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Jean did not explain her decision, but Professor Franks speculated that Jean thought it was the least disruptive option. "There's every likelihood that saying no would have thrown the whole system into turmoil," he said. "But maybe it needs that."

None of the opposition parties have suggested that they will mount a legal challenge. Adam Dodek, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has studied the governor general's powers, said Canadian courts could offer only an opinion about the constitutionality of the decision. They lack the ability to issue orders to the governor general.

"I think it highly unlikely that any court would want to deal with this," Professor Dodek said.

He added that an appeal to Queen Elizabeth was impossible.

In contrast to the relative public indifference to the elections two months ago, the current situation has provoked a passionate debate in the country and inflamed latent regional tensions.

In Western Canada, the Conservatives' main base of support, political commentators are arguing that the coalition represents an attempt by more populous Ontario and Quebec to deny political influence to the West. But many Quebecers, particularly French speakers, have been offended by Conservative suggestions that they have no interest in remaining a part of Canada.

[PETA]

lolz... clearly this is a lie. Canada is a utopian eden where universal health care keeps every hockey player with a full set of teeth and every pregnant mother waiting only 10 months for a delivery room.

[tricky]

Originally Posted by St. Stalin the Apathetic

lolz... clearly this is a lie. Canada is a utopian eden where universal health care keeps every hockey player with a full set of teeth and every pregnant mother waiting only 10 months for a delivery room.

Government and private health and public policy analysts have compared the health care systems of Canada and the United States.[1][2][3][4] The U.S. spends much more on health care than Canada, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP.[5]In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in the U.S. was US$6,714; in Canada, US$3,678.[5] The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 10.0%.[5] In 2006, almost 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 44.7% in the United States. Total government spending per capita in the U.S. on health care was 23% higher than Canadian government spending, and U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private).[6]
Studies have come to different conclusions about the result of this disparity in spending. A 2007 review of all studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the U.S., in a Canadian peer-reviewed medical journal, found that "health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent."[7] Life expectancy is longer in Canada, and its infant mortality rate is lower than that of the U.S., but there is debate about the underlying causes of these differences. One commonly cited comparison, the World Health Organization's ratings of "overall health service performance", published in 2000, which used a "composite measure of achievement in the level of health, the distribution of health, the level of responsiveness and fairness of financial contribution", ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th among 191 member nations. This study rated the US "responsiveness", or quality of service, as 1st, compared with 7th or 8th for Canada. The average life expectancy for Canada was rated 12th at 72.0 years compared with 24th for the U.S. at 70.0 years.[8] However, the WHO's study methods were criticized by some analyses. Some argue that Canada has had higher mortality rates for some conditions, such as heart attacks.[9] A recent report by the Congressional Research Service carefully summarizes some recent data and notes the "difficult research issues" facing international comparisons.[10]


Must be a real shithole way up nort' in Canada. More babies living and people living longer.....such a shame

[PETA]

Originally Posted by tricky

compare Canada and the United States.

Canada Population: 33,390,141

California Popuilation: 36,553,215

US Population: 305,817,000


Infant mortality is calculated differently in different countries... http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/sectio...cle_443950.php


neither here nor there... as I said Canda is an eden... ever been there?

[tricky]

Originally Posted by St. Stalin the Apathetic

Canada Population: 33,390,141

California Popuilation: 36,553,215

US Population: 305,817,000


Infant mortality is calculated differently in different countries... http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/sectio...cle_443950.php


neither here nor there... as I said Canda is an eden... ever been there?

And I guess they count life expectancy differently there too. This "evidence" you present is an editorial by two doctors using the work of 2 guys known to be against single payer healthcare. This "book" Goodman wrote is just some anti single-payer health care propaganda. Also, this Erbstabt guy is a partisan hack (albeit with a PHD) from the AEI. The OC Register is a small market paper with 20% of the circulation of the NY Times in a conservative area. This is not a peer-reviewed study or anything even close to academia or actual research. Editorials are not facts, they're opinion...but good try.

On to this

A 2007 review of all studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the U.S., in a Canadian peer-reviewed medical journal, found that "health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent."[7] Life expectancy is longer in Canada, and its infant mortality rate is lower than that of the U.S., but there is debate about the underlying causes of these differences. One commonly cited comparison, the World Health Organization's ratings of "overall health service performance", published in 2000, which used a "composite measure of achievement in the level of health, the distribution of health, the level of responsiveness and fairness of financial contribution", ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th among 191 member nations.

Peer reviewed....not pulling facts out of their ass...

First fact, still true...unless they count differently?

On to the 2nd fact I bolded. Is that just some more BS some from some damn crazy organization?

As to actual population size? Comparing Canada vs California....

Canada

total: 5.08 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 5.4 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 4.75 deaths/1,000 live births (2008 est.) https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/ca.html
http://www.indexmundi.com/canada/inf...lity_rate.html

California

The worst infant mortality rate in California was ZIP code 90008, covering the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. Babies died there from 1992 through 2001 at a rate of 13.8 for every 1,000 live births. The state average was 6.1. Of the 66 babies who died, 56 were African American, an all-too predictable statistic.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG7A8TEKJ1.DTL

And more refuting your AEI guy...

The other myth about infant mortality rates in America is that our numbers look so bad because we're actually better than those other countries; we're supposedly counting micropreemies that aren't even considered live births in other countries. It's a persistent rumor, but it's demonstrably false.
The Centers for Disease Control/National Center for Health Statistics, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization all use the same definition for live birth:
http://www.cdc.gov/...

live birth is the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life such as heartbeat, umbilical cord pulsation, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, whether the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached. Each product of such a birth is considered live born.

I tried to track down the source of the "different definitions" myth two years ago, when one of my colleagues taught it in the classroom and my students started repeating it. If the NCHS itself maintains that international infant mortality rates are indeed based on identical definitions, who keeps saying otherwise?
What I found were references to old data which claimed that, since many countries used different definitions of live birth in the Cold War era, their current data for infant mortality rates aren't comparable to our current data. That's the argument in an editorial by Michael Arnold and Robert J. Cihak that appeared in The Orange County Register on March 16, 2005. (I'd love to give you a link, but the paper has apparently started charging for full text access since I last looked this up.)
Arnold and Cihak cite medical economist John Goodman as their authoritative source on these so-called "data-reporting differences." I would give you a link to Mr. Goodman's web site, but I'd rather not give him the page hits. His front page calls him the "Father of Health Savings Accounts," and he's a pro-insurance, pro-privatization partisan who suggests that it's good for you to have services denied by your insurance company. This is a reliable source for critiques of health statistics data?
So there's the source of that myth for you. "Our infant mortality rates aren't that bad because we count them differently" is a type specimen of right-wing talking points.
Our infant mortality rates are that bad. Lots of Black families and poor families are burying their kids every year, and it doesn't have to be that way.

[PETA]

lolz... I keep calling Canada an eden... if you love it so much why don't you marry.. er fucking move there.... please

edit: that different countries calculate the rate differently is anything but controversial

here's a bit from wiki on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_...ortality_rates

[tricky]

Originally Posted by St. Stalin the Apathetic

lolz... I keep calling Canada an eden... if you love it so much why don't you marry.. er fucking move there.... please

Aww that's cute. You got shot down with facts and resort to telling me to move there.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by tricky

Aww that's cute. You got shot down with facts and resort to telling me to move there.

haha - well - won't you? please?

Anyway.. I didn't dispute any "facts" I said infant mortality rates are calculated differently in different places. Which is true.

again...... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_...ortality_rates

[Nyteshade]

Canada

total: 5.08 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 5.4 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 4.75 deaths/1,000 live births (2008 est.) https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/ca.html
http://www.indexmundi.com/canada/inf...lity_rate.html

California


The worst infant mortality rate in California was ZIP code 90008, covering the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. Babies died there from 1992 through 2001 at a rate of 13.8 for every 1,000 live births. The state average was 6.1. Of the 66 babies who died, 56 were African American, an all-too predictable statistic.

Comparing the average of one area against the highest outlier of another area is very faulty. You should know better than that.

[C-fer]

The worst infant mortality rate in California was ZIP code 90008, covering the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. Babies died there from 1992 through 2001 at a rate of 13.8 for every 1,000 live births. The state average was 6.1. Of the 66 babies who died, 56 were African American, an all-too predictable statistic.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG7A8TEKJ1.DTL

What's your point on this quote? Is 66 the number of babies who died in cali as a whole or just in South Central LA? If the latter, it would only be logical that most were African American, after all that is the primary ethnicity in that area.

[tricky]

Originally Posted by Nyteshade

Comparing the average of one area against the highest outlier of another area is very faulty. You should know better than that.

Which is why i also added the state average...i'm not that much of a partisan hack when it comes to data. I leave that to Xian.

Originally Posted by DjKrispy

What's your point on this quote? Is 66 the number of babies who died in cali as a whole or just in South Central LA? If the latter, it would only be logical that most were African American, after all that is the primary ethnicity in that area.

I just added the outlier for shits and giggles. The 6.1 is the number to be concerned about.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by tricky

Which is why i also added the state average...i'm not that much of a partisan hack when it comes to data. I leave that to Xian.

indeed you're quite objective

lol - you're having an argument with me, again, where you make up my side and argue against that fiction rather than what I said.

Again... the only assertion (other than that Canada is an eden) that I have made is that infant mortality rates are caluclated differently in different places... which is still true... every time I note it and give you a link for more info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_...ortality_rates

[Nyteshade]

Originally Posted by tricky

Which is why i also added the state average...i'm not that much of a partisan hack when it comes to data. I leave that to Xian.



I just added the outlier for shits and giggles. The 6.1 is the number to be concerned about.

Now how about using similar dates? You're now comparing Canada's average infant mortality rate in 2008 against California's average from 1992 - 2001.

[tricky]

Originally Posted by St. Stalin the Apathetic

again...... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_...ortality_rates

Some claim that the method of calculating IMR may vary between countries based on the way they define a live birth.

However, all of the countries named adopted the WHO definition in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

That second part is crucial to read and understand. All countries are using the same methodology, now. What they did in the past is irrelevant. I'm not posting about the rate in 1962 or 1856. I'm posting about current, today.

That Us News Report article? Based on the same evidence of the hack from the AEI....Nothing new or better evidence, just located in a different publication.

Don't blame me for you inability to understand that.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by tricky

That second part is crucial to read and understand. All countries are using the same methodology, now. What they did in the past is irrelevant. I'm not posting about the rate in 1962 or 1856. I'm posting about current, today.

That Us News Report article? Based on the same evidence of the hack from the AEI....Nothing new or better evidence, just located in a different publication.

the entire quote - left out a bit there didn't you?

The infant mortality rate correlates very strongly with and is among the best predictors of state failure.[1] IMR is also a useful indicator of a country's level of health or development, and is a component of the physical quality of life index. Some claim that the method of calculating IMR may vary between countries based on the way they define a live birth. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a live birth as any born human being who demonstrates independent signs of life, including breathing, voluntary muscle movement, or heartbeat.

UNICEF uses a statistical methodology to account for reporting differences among countries. "UNICEF compiles infant mortality country estimates derived from all sources and methods of estimation obtained either from standard reports, direct estimation from micro data sets, or from UNICEF’s yearly exercise. In order to sort out differences between estimates produced from different sources, with different methods, UNICEF developed, in coordination with WHO, the WB and UNSD, an estimation methodology that minimizes the errors embodied in each estimate and harmonize trends along time. Since the estimates are not necessarily the exact values used as input for the model, they are often not recognized as the official IMR estimates used at the country level. However, as mentioned before, these estimates minimize errors and maximize the consistency of trends along time."[2]

While the United States reports every case of infant mortality, it has been suggested that some other developed countries do not. A 2006 article in U.S. News & World Report claims that "First, it's shaky ground to compare U.S. infant mortality with reports from other countries. The United States counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths. In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) to count as a live birth; in other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless.[3] And some countries don't reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth. Thus, the United States is sure to report higher infant mortality rates. For this very reason, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects the European numbers, warns of head-to-head comparisons by country."[4] However, all of the countries named adopted the WHO definition in the late 1980s or early 1990s.[5]

Historically, until the 1990s Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union did not count as a live birth or as an infant death extremely premature infants (less than 1,000 g, less than 28 weeks gestational age, or less than 35 cm in length) that were born alive (breathed, had a heartbeat, or exhibited voluntary muscle movement) but failed to survive for at least 7 days.[6] Although such extremely premature infants typically accounted for only about 0.005 of all live-born children, their exclusion from both the numerator and the denominator in the reported IMR led to an estimated 22%-25% lower reported IMR.[7] In some cases, too, perhaps because hospitals or regional health departments were held accountable for lowering the IMR in their catchment area, infant deaths that occurred in the 12th month were "transferred" statistically to the 13th month (i.e., the second year of life), and thus no longer classified as an infant death.[8]

Another challenge to comparability is the practice of counting frail or premature infants who die before the normal due date as miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) or those who die during or immediately after childbirth as stillborn. Therefore, the quality of a country's documentation of perinatal mortality can matter greatly to the accuracy of its infant mortality statistics. This point is reinforced by the demographer Ansley Coale, who finds dubiously high ratios of reported stillbirths to infant deaths in Hong Kong and Japan in the first 24 hours after birth, a pattern that is consistent with the high recorded sex ratios at birth in those countries and suggests not only that many female infants who die in the first 24 hours are misreported as stillbirths rather than infant deaths but also that those countries do not follow WHO recommendations for the reporting of live births and infant deaths.[9]
Another seemingly paradoxical finding is that when countries with poor medical services introduce new medical centers and services, instead of declining the reported IMRs often increase for a time. The main cause of this is that improvement in access to medical care is often accompanied by improvement in the registration of births and deaths. Deaths that might have occurred in a remote or rural area and not been reported to the government might now be reported by the new medical personnel or facilities. Thus, even if the new health services reduce the actual IMR, the reported IMR may increase.

Again - the entirety of my point... different places calculate the rate differently.... they do