During the last election campaign we heard a whole lot out of Stephen Harper on arctic sovereignty, an increased military presence in the arctic, armed ice breakers partolling the shores, etc., …. 9 months into his gig we’ve seen one arctic tour, a little bit of rhetoric, and not much else.
Uncle Sam isn’t sitting on his hands, and while he’s looking to test the arctic waters to “assess Canadian claims of sovereignty” over them, Stevie has, in a fit of what the bunker can only call an ‘utterly daft lack of thought’, taken a 13 billion dollar federal nest egg and tossed it at a pet project to make the Liberals look bad; instead of using it for something like the arctic sovereignty he spent so much time talking about.
– could it be he thinks he can take enough money away from Aboriginal health programs and adult literacy to buy an ice breaker? It boggles the mind, really, it does.
Get off yer arse Stevie, and start using yer brain for something other than an ear seperator, time’s a wasting already. While you’re puttering around in the partisan garden, folks from Romania are boating onto the arctic shores, and even you have to know that our friends south of the border are gonna take that as a sign.
It’s a peculiar sort of political deceit Harper is beginning to make all his own.
The NDP have always been able to promise anything, content in the knowledge that they’ll never have to deliver on their promises.
The Liberals would promise anything, deliver on 25%, claim they had achieved 50%, and profess to be waiting to implement the rest.
Harper promises X, and does nothing, or the opposite of what he promised.
If there was ONE issue that got Beloved Leader elected, it was his promise of transparency and openness in government. Since being elected he’s stonewalled TWO ethics commissioners, defanged his own Accountability Act, spent weeks in a snit refusing to talk to reporters, muzzled his Cabinet, snubbed scrums, pulled politically uncomfortable information off government websites, silenced the Conservative Caucus, and fought against the release of campaign expenditure records…all the precise opposite of what he promised.
His much vaunted promises on Arctic Sovereignty appear to be following the same course. Not only do we NOT have a firm commitment or budget for any of the major commitments he made during his campaign - an Iqaluit deep water port, the famous armed icebreakers - but he’s doing precisely the opposite. Beloved Leader has just ditched Canada’s ambassador to the Circumpolar Nations, Jack Anawak, a former MLA, a former MP, and the former Interim Commissioner of Nunavut - probably the best known and respected Inuit politician in Canada. The entire position of Arctic ambassador has been dumped, and its functions will be taken over by DFAIT bureaucrats in Ottawa.
What an excellent way to increase Canada’s visibility and credibility on northern issues in the world community. What a stunning example of asserting our global leadership in the Arctic.
It’s been noted that the Arctic appears to be the area most affected by global warming - I suggest that may be because of the incredible volume of hot air Beloved Leader is dispensing on the topic.