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Aren't We Wonderful? (Thoughtful CVanuck decries Canadian self-absorption)
The National Post ^ | January 6, 2005 | William Watson

Posted on 01/06/2005 1:18:12 PM PST by quidnunc

"To those countries and their citizens who are so much the subject of our prayers and our concern, we say simply that in Canada, you have the most caring of friends and strongest of allies." This was Prime Minister Paul Martin on Sunday, announcing that his government's contribution to tsunami disaster relief would be hiked to $80-million. He continued: "We will be there to comfort, to assist, to help in any way we can. Not simply for a week or a month or even a year, but for as long as it takes and for as long as you need us, because that is the Canadian way."

"The Canadian way." It almost makes you want to throw up. The Canadian way, indeed. Never miss an opportunity for self-praise. Never pass up a chance to raise our own fragile self-esteem. Never fail to remind the world what wonderful people we are.

-snip-

Anne Kingston's Tuesday Post column was headlined "It's Always About Us" — referring to our disproportionate focus on Western victims of the disaster. Why the obsession with (the always carefully pronounced) Phuket resort? That failure of empathy doesn't really surprise or bother me much. Most of us simply can't identify with impoverished, illiterate Sri Lankan fisherfolk. The tourists provide a psychological point of entry.

What is irksome is the unrelenting self-consciousness of our response. Thus Pierre Pettigrew flies back from Paris to explain why it was OK to stay in Paris. Now, because the government has seemed not to care sufficiently about Canadian victims, no fewer than three Canadian ministers will visit devastated areas. Just what their governments need: more VIP visitors to manage. How much helicopter space will they take up that could be better used for food, water or body bags?

-snip-

(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...


TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 01/06/2005 1:18:13 PM PST by quidnunc
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To: quidnunc

"We will be there to comfort, to assist, to help in any way we can. Not simply for a week or a month or even a year, but for as long as it takes and for as long as you need us, because that is the Canadian way."

It'll just take them 12 months to get there.


2 posted on 01/06/2005 1:20:48 PM PST by rhc2000
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To: quidnunc; Lijahsbubbe; Watery Tart
OY CANADA!

-good times, G.J.P.(Jr.)

3 posted on 01/06/2005 1:22:06 PM PST by Do not dub me shapka broham (The New York Times: "All the news that's fit to stint.")
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To: quidnunc
Canada and Mexico suffer feelings of inferiority for good reason.
They are the parts of North America that the US looked over and rejected.

So9

4 posted on 01/06/2005 1:27:48 PM PST by Servant of the 9 (Goldwater Republican)
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To: Servant of the 9

You may be right, I always find it amazing how so many of my fellow countrymen have such low self esteems, but I suppose that's the way it is when living next to such a powerful country as the States. I don't look at it that way - I see Canada as a little brother to the US and that doesn't bug me at all - the only competition we should have with each other is in Hockey and it should stay at that level. I suppose I'm one of those Canadians that don't see as us that different, but then again, I am conservative. Hell, if we became a part of the US, I would be very happy about it.


5 posted on 01/06/2005 1:33:23 PM PST by Ashamed Canadian
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To: quidnunc

U.S. touts its horn too, liberally and often. Everyone who helped deserves a pat on the back and is entitled to pat themselves on the back.


6 posted on 01/06/2005 1:42:30 PM PST by followerofchrist
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To: quidnunc

The Canadian response is that the bulk of this aid will consist of four ex-Royal Navy submarines to be anchored off shore as tsunami detectors.

Not to be out done Tony Blair has just announced that the British contribution will increase to $4 billion, the bulk of
which consists of Bowman radios ordered from the Canadians in a deal for four submarines and after field tests have proved effective anchors.


7 posted on 01/06/2005 1:49:06 PM PST by ijcr (Age and treachery will always overcome youth and ability.)
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To: Servant of the 9

That's the US' loss ... with respect to Canada at least.


8 posted on 01/06/2005 2:00:22 PM PST by NorthOf45
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To: quidnunc
This excerpt was posted at InstaPundit:
There's little to say about the tragedy of Canada's response to the tsunami tragedy that hasn't already been said. A lot of excuses have been bandied about for why Canadian soldiers weren't sent, when Australia, Taiwan, Israel, and other countries despatched forces early, and the American military launched its largest operation in the area since Vietnam to try to save lives.

In the end, though, the answer's pretty simple: 600 tonnes.

That's the amount of airlift required to move the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team). Since Canada only has the 4 CC-150 Polaris (modified Airbuses) for strategic airlift, with a cargo capacity of 13 tonnes each, rapid deployment of DART anywhere outside the effective ferry range of our 30-odd additional short-range Herc transports (ie, off this continent) was a mathematical impossibility, without civilian airlift... and civilian airlift is in pretty short supply at the moment. . . .

The lack of airlift was a conscious decision, based on the little remarked-upon shift in the tail-end Chretien period, during John McCallum's time as defence minister. . . . "The world needs more Canada," Bono said. Well, it's unlikely at the moment to get it, at least not in the uniformed variety.


9 posted on 01/06/2005 2:10:03 PM PST by 68skylark
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To: quidnunc
Here's the link to the article excerpt I just posted:

Flightless DART

10 posted on 01/06/2005 2:14:55 PM PST by 68skylark
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To: 68skylark

IMO, Canada's military priorities should be along the lines of recruitment, training for said recruits, improved equipment for all soldiers, airlift capacity, new multi-purpose supply ships (as proposed by the Conservatives) and helicopters (in progress ... sort of). Then, follow this this up with jets for the Air Force and destroyers/subs for the Navy.

Sadly, the libs just don't get it.


11 posted on 01/06/2005 2:20:56 PM PST by NorthOf45
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To: NorthOf45
Canada should be one of the best military powers on earth (and I mean "best" in several different ways -- strength, competence, moral example, etc). Their military has always been known for being the best in the world.

Sadly, some politicians (and some voters) have thrown away this history. If those of us in other countries try to call attention to the problem it's not because we don't admire Canada. It's just the opposite -- the world could use more Canadas, if the country had it's old will and strength back.

12 posted on 01/06/2005 2:30:40 PM PST by 68skylark
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To: NorthOf45
I have to agree - Canada should be focused on rebuilding its own infrastructure. That they had to contract Russian Aircraft to get their 'DART' team on station should be a national humiliation.

Nations now seem to have lost it - they are caught up in a 'conspicuous compassion' one-upsmanship game that is rather foolish.
13 posted on 01/06/2005 2:52:06 PM PST by SolutionsOnly (but some people really NEED to be offended...)
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Aren't we wonderful?

William Watson - National Post - January 6, 2005


To those countries and their citizens who are so much the subject of our prayers and our concern, we say simply that in Canada, you have the most caring of friends and strongest of allies." This was Prime Minister Paul Martin on Sunday, announcing that his government's contribution to tsunami disaster relief would be hiked to $80-million. He continued: "We will be there to comfort, to assist, to help in any way we can. Not simply for a week or a month or even a year, but for as long as it takes and for as long as you need us, because that is the Canadian way."

"The Canadian way." It almost makes you want to throw up. The Canadian way, indeed. Never miss an opportunity for self-praise. Never pass up a chance to raise our own fragile self-esteem. Never fail to remind the world what wonderful people we are.

Does anybody read this stuff before the PM speaks it? "To those countries and their citizens who are so much the subject of our prayers and our concern, we say simply that in Canada, you have the most caring of friends and strongest of allies." Are we more caring than the Swedes or Italians or Australians or the dozens of other peoples who have dug deep as we have and have actually managed to show up? Are we stronger allies than the Americans, who have 12,500 military personnel in the region, an aircraft carrier, field hospitals and helicopters?

It turns out helicopters -- helicopters that can actually fly -- are useful things in a disaster. Even Bangladesh has sent helicopters and, of all things, two C-130 transports. Military aircraft are a shameful extravagance for such a poor country. But for a country like Canada that aspires to be a player in the world, the soft power of good intentions and eloquent resolutions is not enough. The hard power of helicopters is what people really need.

I wonder if past recipients of our aid would testify we have been there for "as long as it takes." They would be wise not to count on us "simply for a week." It takes us a week to get there.

Is there a more self-conscious country than contemporary Canada? There's nothing we don't do without worrying about what it means for our Canadianness. Do you suppose the Prime Minister of Sweden justified help because "that is the Swedish way"? Does Jacques Chirac have to justify aid on the grounds that it exemplifies "the French way"?

Anne Kingston's Tuesday Post column was headlined "It's Always About Us" -- referring to our disproportionate focus on Western victims of the disaster. Why the obsession with (the always carefully pronounced) Phuket resort? That failure of empathy doesn't really surprise or bother me much. Most of us simply can't identify with impoverished, illiterate Sri Lankan fisherfolk. The tourists provide a psychological point of entry.

What is irksome is the unrelenting self-consciousness of our response. Thus Pierre Pettigrew flies back from Paris to explain why it was OK to stay in Paris. Now, because the government has seemed not to care sufficiently about Canadian victims, no fewer than three Canadian ministers will visit devastated areas. Just what their governments need: more VIP visitors to manage. How much helicopter space will they take up that could be better used for food, water or body bags?

The government reaction I have liked best was Quebec's. It has pledged just $100,000 of assistance and is under fire for being stingy. A spokesman, doubtless soon to be replaced, has argued that Quebecers on their own have been very generous and, besides, a good part of Mr. Martin's $80-million comes from Quebec taxpayers. But in this high-stakes caring game, such a small contribution is not politically seemly, so it is bound to be raised. Saving face is easy with other people's money.

Unless governments have assets, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters, which private aid agencies don't, I don't actually see why they need to be involved in relief at all. The usual rationale is the free-rider problem. Help for the victims relieves us all of worry and concern but it's even better for me if you pay for it, so I may simply free-ride and let you do all the giving. Thus, government has to pick up the slack because in fact many of us aren't as caring as we claim.

Mr. Martin's pledge to match whatever Canadians give on their own suggests he believes roughly half of us will act like churls. My own bet is that in one of history's worst disasters most Canadians won't free-ride. Instead of all the slaver about the Canadian way, a better message from Ottawa would be "Give or be ashamed of yourself."

© National Post 2005


14 posted on 01/06/2005 2:54:54 PM PST by Brian Allen (For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord -- Luke 2:11)
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To: 68skylark

Flightless DART - January 02, 2005


There's little to say about the tragedy of Canada's response to the tsunami tragedy that hasn't already been said. A lot of excuses have been bandied about for why Canadian soldiers weren't sent, when Australia, Taiwan, Israel, and other countries despatched forces early, and the American military launched its largest operation in the area since Vietnam to try to save lives.


In the end, though, the answer's pretty simple: 600 metric tons.


That's the amount of airlift required to move the DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team). Since Canada only has the 4 CC-150 Polaris (modified Airbuses) for strategic airlift, with a cargo capacity of 13 metric tons each, rapid deployment of DART anywhere outside the effective ferry range of our 30-odd additional short-range Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports [That is, off this continent] was, without civilian airlift, a mathematical impossibility -- and civilian airlift is in pretty short supply at the moment.


Whether to Bosnia or Afghanistan, the Canadian military flies overseas by chartered air now. Ottawa's political leaders would have had to move very fast to reserve some of the available transports (mostly Russian-made) before they were snapped up by other governments and NGOs. They didn't. [Canada and the other small NATO countries all usually employ the Russian air carrier Volga Dnepr, which will not enter into agreements that preemptively reserve all or part of its aircraft fleet to a given government in advance of calamity. Australia's military, by contrast, uses Australian domestic air carrier Adagold which employs the same Russian-built aircraft but with the the Australian military as a contracted preferred customer]

The lack of airlift was a wilful decision of the little remarked-upon shift in the tail-end Chretien period, during John McCallum's time as defence minister. His predecessor Art Eggleton, seemingly influenced by the Liberal interventionist wing comprising Richard Gwyn, Janice Steyn, Lloyd Axworthy et al), had attempted to reposition Canada as a "first-in, first-out" military, moving quickly to crisis areas with a rapid deployment force, while shunning long-term commitments anywhere.


McCallum rightly recognized that the Forces a) did not have the manpower; b) did not have the money, and c) would not have the public support for the inevitable Canadian casualties when the paratroopers dropped into Kigali, or what have you. Under Cretien's direction, he publicly switched the military's focus to a "last-in," stabilization-oriented force [Or admitted that was what we actually had] useful in a "low-intensity conflict" only and airlifted by chartered aircraft into countries with a sufficiently-stable ground picture that Canadian casualties were highly unlikely.


Starting with the McCallum years, Canada became officially "hotspot" averse. [Regarding strategic airlift, his now famous line was "No one has yet been able to give me a single instance where the absence of this capability stopped us or significantly delayed us moving people or equipment from point A to point B." Well, we've got a single instance now]


Unfortunately, as was commented on at the time, that mentality makes it now effectively impossible to deploy in natural disaster scenarios, as well.


DART, an Eggleton "first-in" project, has atrophied to the point where it proved undeployable even to Haiti during the hurricanes last year. If all this makes you wonder how effective the CF might be if that earthquake's epicenter had been located off Vancouver Island instead of Aceh. Well, wonder you should! And the answer is that the Americans will probably, thank God! have an aircraft carrier free then, too.

[Current "defence" minister Bill Graham and prime minister Paul Martin mouthed some support for the UN/ICISS "reponsibility to protect" concept through 2004, (AKA the "peacekeeping brigade") although there has been no sign to date of any actual resource allocations to meet that commission's demand for "an effective expeditionary force, capable of engaging in low- to medium-intensity conflict, anywhere in the world."


If the pendulum is switching back to a "first-in" concept, it's doing so very slowly, and the military recruiting and training crisis means actually meeting that goal would be something like a decade away at this point]


"The world needs more Canada," "bono" said. Well, it's unlikely at the moment to get it, at least not in the uniformed variety.

PS: The Canadian side of the tragedy, by the way, provides a classic example of political power abhorring a vacuum. With the federal government effectively paralyzed by vacation, the Toronto chattering elites have been looking to the city's mayor to have his "Rudy Giuliani moment" and sent planeloads of relief with a Toronto sticker on the side of the plane overseas. Mayor David Miller, by all accounts a sensible man, has avoided the challenge to date... one of his successors likely won't the next time, and the abrogation of federal powers by the provinces and municipalities will continue its Canadian snowball.

Canada: Home of the only once-Judeo-Christian-Western-Civilization-oriented people to have completely done away with even the concept of having a country -- let alone of being Sovereign Nation.


15 posted on 01/06/2005 3:27:06 PM PST by Brian Allen (For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord -- Luke 2:11)
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To: quidnunc
"The Canadian way." It almost makes you want to throw up

It's sad, really.

I remember years ago helping a Canadian girl with her college homework. There was a specialized word in the text she didn't understand. She would only use a Canadian dictionary! When I looked I realized her dictionary didn't have the definition. I got out an American Webster's and found the word. You would have thought I was trying to poison her, for the way she reacted.

I pointed out to her that the text was written in the US and it was a specialized word. I never saw anyone put-up such a bizarre resistance to simple learning.

16 posted on 01/06/2005 6:10:36 PM PST by GVnana (If I had a Buckhead moment would I know it?)
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To: quidnunc
They would be wise not to count on us "simply for a week." It takes us a week to get there.

Heh heh heh...

17 posted on 01/06/2005 9:37:06 PM PST by wizardoz (Yes, I liked Kill Bill)
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To: Brian Allen
Thanks for the FULL POSTING, friend!
18 posted on 01/07/2005 7:09:31 AM PST by ConservativeStLouisGuy (11th FReeper Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Unnecessarily Excerpt)
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To: GVgirl

<< I got out an American Webster's and found the word. You would have thought I was trying to poison her, for the way she reacted.

I pointed out to her that the text was written in the US and it was a specialized word. I never saw anyone put-up such a bizarre resistance to simple learning. >>

I deal with it every day in my [Foreign] travels.

Try the FRench -- or anyone else in and/or from the third world, come to that.

The rest of the world's morbidly envy-motivated, hatred-engined and rage-driven anti-American prejudices have become organic! It ain't the 'Battle of the Bands' we're engaged in.

This one's for keeps.


19 posted on 01/07/2005 2:04:57 PM PST by Brian Allen (ButJesus said, a prophet is not without honour but in his own country and among his own family.)
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