Mélange Adultère: Part Four

Sloth Makes Waste:

The extravagantly titled Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Baird recently yapped excitedly about his expectation that federal infrastructure funds will flow "ten times faster than anything in the modern era". That's a relief, because the Building Canada Fund his government created in 2007 to dole out infrastructure money to municipalities has, so far, transferred precisely nothing: breaking its funds-disbursement speed record might just be something this government can do.

I was amused to hear Baird explain why he sees no need to conduct strict oversight of the way infrastructure funds are spent: he's not worried, he says, because provinces and municipalities must provide matching funds for their federal money--an obligation which apparently provides "the biggest form of accountability" conceivable. Thus, a senior member of Canada's ostensibly "fiscally conservative" party maintains that the optimal agent of governmental accountability is another level of government and that governments become reliably self-policing whenever they are forced to spend money in order to get more money.

I wonder--is the term "fiscally conservative" really something that this party believes it can claim unironically, or are they aware that it's become merely the punch-line of a sick joke?



The West Wants In (To The Trough):

Just because you allow a barely-staffed "commission" to sit idle whilst funnelling a million tax-payer dollars into its inertia does not mean you can't violate the principles on which it was established in order to toss out partisan pork to under-qualified courtiers.

Only a few years after elevating himself to Canada's pontificate of political moral supremacy and waging an electoral campaign full of ad urbis et orbi fulminations against government waste and arrogance, Stephen Harper invited a lorry-load of his ideological confederates to dip their biscuit faces into rich, thick tax-funded gravy. None declined the honour, though I am sure they all retain their commitment to their libertarian, anti-government ideals.

I love the statement from the PMO on the matter:

"...a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office says the posts went to qualified candidates, and that their partisan activities and friendships with Harper should not exclude them from the jobs".

One is struck by how radically different this exculpatory whine is from the rote statements issued by Liberal PMO's down through the decades; for instance, it contains the word "Harper" rather than "Trudeau", "Turner", "Chrétien" or "Martin". If you don't think that's a huge difference, you're clearly with the terrorists. And you're probably gay. You no doubt also speak passable French.



“Just Because I'm The Minister Doesn't Mean I Have To Do Stuff”:

Minister of Defence Peter Mackay assures us that "the federal government is constantly looking at[sic] ways to improve search and rescue response", except where the need for improvement is obvious and pressing.

Should a transit point for hundreds of heliborne offshore oil-rig workers--a place that witnessed the deaths of seventeen men in a tragic crash a few months ago--be given a dedicated search-and-rescue helicopter? Maybe. Minister Mackay doesn't know. Moreover, he says, it's not his problem: it's the Armed Forces' decision to make. "I guess that's a judgment call that the military make based on the information that they have," he bleated.

Astonishing. Harper's tin soldiers are proudly political about sending young men and women to Afghanistan to die defending a corrupt Islamist narco-state; it's personal to them--a crusade, a vendetta. When it comes to their sedulous patronage of warlords and Talib fellow travelers, offered with a smile from the ivied ignorance of the Centre Block, they show fearless leadership indeed.

When it comes to providing security to their own citizens, to hard-working tax-payers doing some of the world's most dangerous jobs on Hibernia's oil rigs, Harperoids will let faceless, irresponsible, non-executive bureaucrats make the key decisions. After all, the Canadian military cannot be expected to do everything: it can't prop up Hamid Karzai's rule over Kabul's suburbs and prevent needless catastrophes by providing a minimum standard of search-and-rescue capability to its own people. Let's keep our priorities straight: warlords first; Canadians second.

Why Wont Stephen Harper Support Our Troops?

We now have graphic confirmation that our forces on the ground in Afghanistan have been pursuing negotiations with "moderate" elements of the Taliban (which sounds rather like "pacifist elements of Al Qaeda"). We can even put names to the operation:

A Toronto newspaper quoted Lt.-Col. Gordon Corbould, the new battle group commander, and Sgt. Tim Seeley, a civilian-military co-operation officer for Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team, on Thursday as saying that channels were being opened to moderate Taliban. Other officials in Kandahar, who spoke privately, backed up the military's assessment, calling it creative thinking.

We must assume that this gesture is seen by those who are best able to make such determinations as the only route to stability. It is also a gesture that was spitefully and unanimously derided by Harperoid troglodytes as a reprehensible act of cowardice. Awkwardly, the "Conservatives" must now inflict upon Lt.-Col. Gordon Corbould the odium they heaped upon "Taliban" Jack Layton. According to Stephen Harper's standards, our Afghan battle group commander is a terrorist sympathiser and a disgraceful Chamberlainesque appeaser.

The grotesque surreality of our situation is unprecedented in our history: the ranking commander of Canadian Forces in the most crucial (indeed the only) theatre of Canadian combat operations is pursuing a policy not only utterly at odds with and repugnant to the government's own oft-declared principles but, more seriously, premised upon objectives totally contrary to those our government has been broadcasting as the moral rationale for the conflict. As Harper bangs his little fist into his clammy palm whilst yammering sententious platitudes about "defeating" the Taliban, our soldiers join Hamid Karzai in his two-year-old bid to enter into negotiations with people once described by outgoing Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier as "scum". It is as if Montgomery had decided to scrap Alamein and send Rommel an invitation to tea instead ...without informing Churchill. This is the lunacy we're living.

We may, I suppose, assume that the government has been fully aware of our attempts to negotiate and that Harper has simply been burying the truth under the kind of perfervid rhetoric he obviously feels Canadians require to stay motivated--as if we're incapable of being inspired by anything more nuanced than the prospect of "killing us a whole bunch of Islams".

We may believe that. Appearances suggest, though, that Peter Mackay was truly taken aback by these latest reports--that what was news to us was news to him also. We are faced, therefore, with the troubling probability that our government has not the foggiest notion of what's actually transpiring in Afghanistan. Apparently, the falcon cannot hear the falconer: our Afghan contingent is clearly acting on its own initiative, independently of government direction--wisely, I believe, since, as the army has doubtless learned (and as most Canadians have known for years), Stephen Harper is intellectually, emotionally and morally unequipped to direct himself across a foot-bridge at a mini putt. Thus, our Forces are politically leaderless; Harper's incompetence has turned them into unwilling rogue agents.

I should like to know what effect Mackay's response to Corbould's initiative will have on our troops' morale. After all, Mackay said, "We are not talking to the Taliban. We are not having direct discussions with terrorists" immediately after learning that, in fact, our soldiers are talking to the Taliban. Thus, either MacKay has ethically devolved so catastrophically that lying is no longer merely an option but an instinct with him, or his definition of "we" is meant to exclude the military.

If the latter is the case, Mackay seems to be severing the government from the Forces--putting a firewall between them, as it were. I am sure the men and women who are daily putting themselves in danger's way at the irresponsible behest of these candy-assed, pinstriped poltroons will be fascinated to learn that the Harper ministry considers itself unconnected to and unaccountable for the actions of the Canadian Afghan contingent. They stand in awe too, surely, at Mackay's power to beget ineptitude upon ineptitude: after revealing his total ignorance of field realities, Mackay responds, not by countermanding the ranking officer and re-taking control of events, but by simply distancing himself from the operation and feebly announcing his opposition to it.

So this is the best Mackay can offer our soldiers in Afghanistan: negation without leadership. He stabs our soldiers in the back and hasn't even the decency to catch them as they fall. Right now, the most fearsome enemy our soldiers face is not those who fight them, but those who "lead" them.