But I never made the mistake of blaming the U.S. for what happened. We made this "Black Friday" dungheap for ourselves. It is simply the Canadian Government Disbelief in Achievement Disease, at work again.
Posted on 03/05/2004 5:31:09 PM PST by MegaSilver
With all the excitement, propaganda, and media attention surrounding Paul Martin’s ascension to the prime minister’s seat, it was easy to buy into the myth. Canadians were told that Paul Martin would be the magic bullet for all our problems; he’s fiscally conservative, he’s going to reinvest in education and healthcare, he’s going to clean up Ottawa, and he’s going to restore the faith of the West. Sadly, pleasant dreams are often shattered by cruel reality. In Paul Martin’s case, it took less than one month to snap us out of our trance.
Paul Martin claimed to be the man that would de-whip the party. The prime minister announced he would allow his MPs to vote freely without needing to tow the party line. Finally, the politicians elected to represent the people would be able to do so by voting in a way best for the individuals in their constituency. Like many promises from Ottawa, this was short-lived. Martin has since announced that certain key pieces of legislation, including the controversial “Billion Dollar Boondoggle” – the gun registry – would not be subject to free vote.
But that’s OK. After all, Paul Martin is the guy who’s going to start a golden era in politics, so surely we can allow one little concession.
But then it was discovered that Mr. Martin’s corporations (he is a multi-millionaire business leader, you know) were not paying their fair share of taxes. It seems that the PM had registered some 20 odd businesses in the Caribbean in order to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes to the Canadian government. At the same time, he was able to avoid Canadian labour and environmental laws. Mr. Martin’s former business partners with the company claim these were necessary moves to remain competitive. But that logic seems weak when you consider that CSL, Martin’s shipping company, had $983-million in capital last year. Imagine that: the man who is in control of writing and enforcing of our laws in Canada is also one who’s actively avoiding those very same laws.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that CSL has done business with the government in the past – big business. When the amount of business that CSL did with the government was examined to ensure there was no conflict of interest, it was originally reported as being $137,000 over a period of 10 years. Given access to government work and grants, this number seemed reasonable. It wasn’t. Mr. Martin recently corrected that figure a few weeks after announcing it by slipping a correction into the middle of a mid-week press conference in hopes that it would go unnoticed. The actual value of business done with the government was over $161-million in 10 years, a difference of well over 100,000 per cent.
Oops.
Well, at this point, some Canadians are sheepishly hanging their heads. “Okay, we got duped,” they might admit. “Martin’s not going to be as great as his P.R. team said he would be, but I still think he’ll be pretty darn good,” they’ll hope.
And so we come to the Groupaction scam revealed by Sheila Fraser, the auditor general. It turns out that while Paul Martin was the senior Liberal member from Quebec, and simultaneously was the finance minister in charge of all government spending, the Liberal government got entangled in a $250-million money-laundering scam. On paper, the government was spending this money to sponsor events in Quebec to support federalism. In practice, the government was paying money to Liberal-friendly companies for products that, in some cases, they neither requested nor received. Other times, the Liberal government would pass money through these companies to other groups, like the RCMP, for a slight handling fee, often to the sum of well over $100,000.
When confronted with the damning report from the auditor general, Martin quickly claimed he had known nothing about the scandal. Already, this is hard to believe: he was a Quebec MP, the Liberal lieutenant in Quebec, and in charge of our nation’s finances, and he didn’t know about a money-laundering scandal initiated by his government in Quebec? But it doesn’t stop there. As of this writing, three days after this scandal first came to light, Paul Martin’s story has already changed. Mr. Martin now admits he’d heard questions and rumours of the scandal in 1999, and that he had realized the magnitude of the problem when a preliminary investigation was made public in 2002. If the Prime Minister has had information about this problem for five years, and had known about it with confidence for two, why is this only now being dealt with?
To top off the depravity of this government, Martin recently chose to throw salt in the wound. When asked about how his government was able to tamper with a quarter of a billion dollars of public funds during Question Period, Martin refused to answer questions for the House of Commons, deflecting them instead to Ralph Goodale. After being involved in this gross abuse of public funds, Martin refused to be accountable to the Canadian people for it. Shocking.
Or is it? People in Canada seemingly have a short attention span when it comes to politics, but this isn’t the first time that Mr. Martin has been in trouble with public perception. Martin’s businesses were discussed recently as being a conflict of interest with his new role as PM, and so he has been forced to sell them to his sons who will now operate the businesses themselves. And let’s not forget that Martin cut $2.4-million out of the pension plans for his workers, depriving some of them of 30 per cent of their pensions after 30 years of working for him.
So what’s the total? Lies, cover-ups, whipped MPs, shady business, exaggerations, and no accountability. Yep, he’s a bona fide Liberal. Are you happy with your change in government?
Markus T. Ziesmann is a writer at The Manitoban, the student newspaper of the University of Manitoba.
(steely)
A Canadian acquaintance of mine, a mechanical engineer and to all appearances a very smart fellow, claimed that Canada was on its way to being a world leader in jet engine technology back in the '50's until the United States somehow put the kabosh on it. When I asked him "how could this happen," he said "no one knows," as if dark conspiracies were at work. Another Canadian I know believes wholeheartedly in (what seem to me) to be the most fanatical conspiracy theories that have American politicians (specifically Jews) pulling the strings of basically everything bad that happens in the world.
Now, I realize that this sample, containing just two Canadians, cannot possibly be considered statistically valid. The sample consists of the only two Canadians I know.
In other words, I've come across two Canadians, pretty much randomly selected from the population, and both exhibit what I consider "intentional ignorance," in which otherwise intelligent and educated people latch on to anti-information, even though the truth is available to them. Why?
(steely)
Yes , That will tell you a lot about a population of 32 million. :)
Your engineer acquaintance is likely referring to the Arrow program in the 50's which , for various reasons, developed the Iroquois jet engine which boosted the speed of the Arrow beyond any other engine available to the developers . In 1959 the Conservative Deifenbaker government canceled the program and the Arrows were destroyed along with all blueprints etc. NASA hired many of the unemployed designers and engineers.
And Ottawa bought into the most insane defense idea ever, The Bomarc from Boeing.
Look, I never said I was being fair!
In all honesty, his comment and theory did really get to me. I mean, how could the US stop Canada from developing any technology they want? Isn't Canada a sovereign country? Doesn't Canada have an military, with which to protect its national interests? If the Canadian government feels that developing some new technology, like jet propulsion, is important to the well being of its citizens, how can the United States stop it? Has the US been able to stop other countries from developing nuclear weapons? We've been trying hard to do so for many years, and have not succeeded. How were we able to pole-axe Canada's jet engine technology development and keep it bottled up for almost 50 years?
I'm sorry, but I've been thinking about his comment ever since he made it last summer.
How about this theory?
In the '50's, the US Government was pushing the development of gas turbines for supersonic military aircraft with incredible seriousness. We, and are British allies, were throwing money at anyone that had the knowledge to advance the art in pretty much any way.
Maybe the US was funding some or all of the Canadian program. (Before you get too upset about this hypothesis, just remember: aren't you having a huge national debate about coming up with the money to replace some of your main helicopters, which are so old they are literally falling out of the sky? I mean, Canada is not exactly rolling in dough for the development of military technology. Think "national health insurance.")
Maybe the US Government got a little ticked off when some of the fruits of Canadian research ended up in the wrong hands. (Before you get upset about this hypothesis, weren't there some rather important Soviet espionage cases that involved spies on the Canadian side of the border during the 1950's time frame?)
Maybe the combination of these things, and perhaps other things as well, simply caused the US Government to withdraw its financial assistance?
I admit this is nothing but guesswork, a theory. But the accusation that we deprived Canada of its place at the forefront of the jet age really disturbed me. You can perhaps tell how much time I've spent fretting about it.
There's a very perverse dynamic set up when a the national psyche of a country becomes fixated on the idea that some other country (or race, or ethno-religious group) is the cause of all their problems. Unfortunately it's very easy for politicians and opinion leaders to foment this sort of mythology, and it often suits their personal needs to do so.
But it's very bad for a culture, in the long run, to scapegoat all its shortcomings onto someone else. If Canadians need proof of this, all they have to do is read their own newspapers.
(steely)
First of all, thanks for taking time to send me the link to the Avro Arrow page. My friend did mention this particular project. You might be interested to know that he told me about his views on this while we toured the Canadian Air Museum last summer.
Second, I appreciate your patient responses. If I came across as angry or bitter it was unintentional. It's just that the idea that the US is behind the troubles of the world really galls me; I think it's the worse kind of ignorance (obviously I'm not objective in my concept of what the "worse" is, but I'm an American... we can be insecure too).
Third, my father worked on something called the SAGE system, and I remember him telling me about Bomarc and how these aircraft were going to be guided by SAGE. I built a plastic model of Bomarc when I was a pre-teen. I never knew it was a white elephant. I saw one at the Canadian Air Museum, and it was like seeing an old friend.
I also liked all those jet engines on display, and on racks in the back waiting to be displayed. I'm an electrical engineer but have always loved gas turbines. As a very young child (three and four years old, maybe even younger) I was obsessed by fans; gas turbines and jet engines were nirvana for me (I was born in 1955, so jet aircraft were just coming into commercial use at around the time began to become aware of the larger world).
Fourth, I have nothing against Canadians. I well remember what Canada did for the American hostages in Tehran, and the story of the amazing Candian sniper in Afghanistan (or was it Iraq?) more recently.
I will familiarize myself with the Avro Arrow; perhaps I can have a halfway intelligent discussion with my friend next time I see him.
(steely)
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