Best Prime Minister

Who was the best Prime Minister?


  • Total voters
    31
Is there a brief and reasonably unpartial review of all these prime ministers? Just to get a feel of what they represented and what policies they succeeded in enacting.
 
You could try Wiki I would guess (though those could be biased, depending on the author(s), or you could just Google their names.

I see three people so far have voted "other", perhaps you could share with us who you mean?
 
cairo140 said:
WAIT JUST ONE SECOND? Who voted for Brian Mulroney? You're a complete..... I mean, I would be interested to hear your justification.

Coming from the man who said that Laurier was divisive when in reality he was known as the great compromiser?
 
sysyphus said:
Personally I thought Trudeau just rode on Pearson's coattails


I do not go to RMC.(aka 10 chars)
 
Alpine Trooper said:
Jamiethearcher, you are so far removed from the nearest definition of Canadian it troubles me that you could even remotely have the slightest form of citizenship in Canada. To vote for Brian Mulroney shows your obvious contempt for every stride this nation makes in furthering itself and its values. Thank the Lord that you are of the most extreme minority within this country.

My vote goes to Trudeau.

Easy cowboy. While I will be the first to say that jamie is not a "Canadian" (member of the nation of Canada, ignoring the state of Canada), it is not because he likes Mulroney. Many Canadians think favourably of Mulroney and this does not make them any less Canadian.

In my mind what makes jamie un-Canadian is the fact that he does not believe in the Canadian nation, which makes it hard for him to belong to it.

Simply because someone is right of you on the political compass is no reason to begin hurling insults.
 
Off that list, I'd say Pearson is the "best". After all, there's a NHL trophy named after him! ;)
 
Goonie said:
Coming from the man who said that Laurier was divisive when in reality he was known as the great compromiser?

Compromiser, my friend??? "Compromiser" was his mantra, certainly, and I am in no way denying the fact he made many efforts to listen to all of the different perspectives in the country. Nevertheless, the end result of his decisions DID DIVIDE the country. I'll draw upon one of several major blunders:

Naval Situation: Britain tells Canada to give them money to build their own navy. Instead of being a nice little pacifist and sat back and built national infrastruction instead (thereby pleasing the Quebecois), and instead of supporting Britian wholeheartedly by just giving them the money they needed (thereby pleasing the Loyalists), Laurier "compromised" and tried to build his own navy... lo and behold, he divided the entire country and came out of it with........ 11 boats!!!!!!!! What a navy....

Not only did Laurier divide the nation, he came out of it with a pittance of a navy.
 
Alpine Trooper said:
Jamiethearcher, you are so far removed from the nearest definition of Canadian it troubles me that you could even remotely have the slightest form of citizenship in Canada. To vote for Brian Mulroney shows your obvious contempt for every stride this nation makes in furthering itself and its values. Thank the Lord that you are of the most extreme minority within this country.

My vote goes to Trudeau.


The hatred....the hatred.... glad to see what an open minded country Canada is. To think it was Goonie who stood up for me this time!

I think people who try to define what it is to be Canadian are a bunch of farking hypocrites. Its supposed to be a multicultural, open society where people are free to express their opinions, but when I express mine, people say I am not Canadian. I hope you realize how silly and narrowminded that makes you look to other people.

While I may not agree with Goonie on much, I can at least understand why he says I am not Canadian, even though I disagree with his reasoning. But those people who say I am not Canadian becuase I like Mulroney....He was elected to 2 majority governments, so what the heck does that make the rest of the country?
 
Well hey, looking at the poll, it seems we can all at least agree that Diefenbaker wasn't the best.

Kill the Avro Arrow eh? Shower 1, Dief 0. Good.
 
sysyphus said:
Well hey, looking at the poll, it seems we can all at least agree that Diefenbaker wasn't the best.

Kill the Avro Arrow eh? Shower 1, Dief 0. Good.

I wanted to have 9 choices, and one "other", and I sure as heck though the Chief would be a better option than Joe Clark...hahaha. And don't forget Dief won the largest ever majority until he was beat by none other than.....Mulroney.
 
sysyphus said:
You mean someday we'll think that having signed away all the soverignty of our resources was a good thing?



So great that Mulroney's protegee Harper rushed to cut it?



Indeed a monkey could have balanced the budget. The fact that the Tories couldn't speaks volumes.

I will be the first to admit an income tax cut would have been a better use of resources than the GST cut. I think the GST is a very effective, very fair tax, as it taxes everyone evenly, based on their consumption, rather than how hard they work. I am glad Mulroney had the will to stand up and do something that was unpopular, but at the same time, right for the country.

As to the balance budget issue, I firmly beleive that had the Tories won in 1993, they would have balanced the budget too. Things like the Free trade agreement took time to have an effect on the economy, and its benefit wasnt seen until later. I do not know how familiar you are with the various agreements, but they had many different "phase in" periods for MANY of the products. Today free is fully implemented, but that wasnt the case during the end of the Tories government.

As to soviergnty over natural resources, I don't really have an answer to you other than, we might as well sell that oil in Alberta now, before the planet switches over to a non-fossil fuel economy. Tons and tons of oil isnt going to be worth very much then, so get some money for it now.
 
You do realize that the GST and like taxes are actually mildly regressive?
 
cairo140 said:
Compromiser, my friend??? "Compromiser" was his mantra, certainly, and I am in no way denying the fact he made many efforts to listen to all of the different perspectives in the country. Nevertheless, the end result of his decisions DID DIVIDE the country. I'll draw upon one of several major blunders:

Naval Situation: Britain tells Canada to give them money to build their own navy. Instead of being a nice little pacifist and sat back and built national infrastruction instead (thereby pleasing the Quebecois), and instead of supporting Britian wholeheartedly by just giving them the money they needed (thereby pleasing the Loyalists), Laurier "compromised" and tried to build his own navy... lo and behold, he divided the entire country and came out of it with........ 11 boats!!!!!!!! What a navy....

Not only did Laurier divide the nation, he came out of it with a pittance of a navy.

Ah right... so siding with either english Canada or french Canada would have been a much wiser situation.

Simply alienate one group completely in order to unite the country. Will keep that enlightened theory in mind.
 
I voted Trudeau, because he's the only one who had the balls to tell people where to stuff it.

Apart from that, they're pretty much the same, which is to say, not overly spectacular. I can't believe how well we've adapted to mediocrity...
 
Goonie said:
Ah right... so siding with either english Canada or french Canada would have been a much wiser situation.

Simply alienate one group completely in order to unite the country. Will keep that enlightened theory in mind.

By golly! I think you have finally come up with the solution. Of course Laurier should have stuck with one side of Canada... the FRENCH side. The Loyalists weren't gonna stay mad for long (they had enough of that other stuff anyways), and shelling out dollars on roads and technology is monumentally better than spending the modern equlivalent of tens of millions of dollars on a toy navy.

I am very interested to see quite how this poll ends up. Although the "Mulroney was a douche" option cannot be implemented, I'm going to sit back and passively root for King and Pearson.
 
jamiethearcher said:
As to soviergnty over natural resources, I don't really have an answer to you other than, we might as well sell that oil in Alberta now, before the planet switches over to a non-fossil fuel economy. Tons and tons of oil isnt going to be worth very much then, so get some money for it now.

Not really true. Polymers are becoming the most important materials in the manufacturing of almost everything. The main raw material for polymers is oil.

We can use other sources such as plants, but it's more expensive to extract the base molecules from plants than from oil and with Canada having a limited amount of arable land (more and more of which is being cemented over with urban sprawl), we'll put ourselves at a disadvantage for key materials if we burn away our more abundant source.

Yet one more reason to get away from the combustion of fossil fuels as a source of energy.

pboily said:
Apart from that, they're pretty much the same, which is to say, not overly spectacular. I can't believe how well we've adapted to mediocrity...

In just a little longer than my lifetime, we've gone from Lester Pearson to Michael Ignatieff, from Robert Stanfield to Stephen Harper, and from Tommy Douglas to Jack Layton.

If this is representative of the evolution of leadership in this country, by 2020 we'll be voting for plants.
 
sysyphus said:
In just a little longer than my lifetime, we've gone from Lester Pearson to Michael Ignatieff, from Robert Stanfield to Stephen Harper, and from Tommy Douglas to Jack Layton.

If this is representative of the evolution of leadership in this country, by 2020 we'll be voting for plants.

I'll second that thought!
 
Lester B. Pearson all the way!
 
Goonie said:
You do realize that the GST and like taxes are actually mildly regressive?

All taxes are mildly regressive, and they all stifle the economy. The GST is not a bad tax, and I'll commend Mulroney for that one. But cutting it was certainly not the right idea, particularly since to do it, Harper raised the base income tax level by half a point, thus making it easier for the rich to spend on luxuries, while making it harder for the poorest members of the economy to by basic things, like food (which are exempt from the GST). Our buddy Stephen is trying really hard to copy your buddy George.

It's kinda off-topic, but it needed to be said. And up until about 5 minutes ago, I thought GST stood for General Sales Tax :p
 
All taxes are regressive?

What about the progressive ones?
 
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