To Spend or Not to Spend.....

At the beginning of World War II Canada's military forces were undermanned, ill prepared and poorly equiped. This resulted in a massive effort on the part of the Canadian government to get our forces "up to speed" in order to meet our committments to the other allied forces. Many people today feel Canada's military is in much the same state as government military spending has been severly cut and Canadian citizens put more emphasis on domestic issues such as health care and education.

Do you think it is important for Canada to have a strong military force? Would you support additional tax money being spent on the military and if so where do you think that funding should come from? If you do not think military spending should be a priority where do think government should spend its money?

Remember to sign your post with your initials and period.

Testing your political views

Read the following instructions and complete the two activities. These were developed by a friend of mine, Mr. Thielmann, over at DP Todd.

Activity One
Purpose: find out what kind of political views you have and how they compare with world figures and political parties

Instructions:
go to http://www.politicalcompass.org/
read the instructions and complete the quiz
read through your results page to learn about your views
summarize what you learned from the quiz by commenting in response to this posting on the course blog -- http://www.soc11eh.blogspot.com

Tips:
left vs right: left-wing usually means more government control over industry and economy; right-ring usually means less government regulation and intervention (laissez-faire)
authoritarian vs libertarian: authoritarian means powerful government which controls rights and freedoms, sometimes it can be a dictatorship; libertarian means less government control of rights, sometimes less government in general

Activity Two
Purpose: learn about different ways of organizing nations by politics, economy, and values

Instructions:
go to http://www.nationstates.net
read the introduction and sign up to “build” your nation
experiment with the simulation for as long as you need to see how it works, more if you have the time (warning: NationStates can be addictive!)
summarize what you learned from the simulation by commenting on this posting on the course blog -- http://www.soc11eh.blogspot.com

Tips:
See how the choices you make at the beginning affect the kind of country which is generated by the simulator. Look at other countries and issues around the “world” to see what others have done.

Dealing with Poverty

During the 1930s in Canada people were putting increasing pressure on the Prime Minster and the government to come up with solutions to the economic depression and resulting widespread poverty. While today in Canada, and specifically British Columbia, we have are experiencing a strong economy with low levels of unemployment we also see many of our citizens living in poverty with little or no hope for the future. This brings up the questions how much responsibility should the government take in providing people in poverty the basic necessities of life and how should we as a society care for our fellow citizens?

Your blog response this week is to comment on what you would do if you were in a position of power in the government (federal or provincial) to address the question of poverty in Canada?