Women's Day on March 8 gives us all a mandate to examine our progress, and to reflect on our values, ideals, and plans for ourselves and our societies. Norway is regularly nominated as one of the best and most equal countries to live in the world.

What the CBC altogether missed was the most important plank of opposition to affirmative action: namely, that students should be admitted to college not according to shifting conceptions of "diversity" or to sweeping assumptions about racial-minority experience, but rather according to merit. In other words, prospective students should be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character -- in particular their academic aptitude and personal potential.

In a recent article, Rex Murphy characterized affirmative action as "an inequity in itself," "hollow" and "false." I, on the other hand, think that the CBC commentator's call for a more open debate on affirmative action is important. Affirmative action is to our society what the CBC is to television and radio broadcasting in Canada.

John Duffy (L): For the PCs, the core proposition is the idea that Premier McGuinty's Liberals manipulate the public policy of the province to their own purposes and those of their favoured constituencies, leaving the "rest of us" to pick up the tab. Call this concept "restitution." The Liberals have a different construction of "change." Call their concept "uniting."