It’s About the Troops, Remember?
There has been no shortage of debate in the blogosphere and elsewhere regarding the decision by the Harper government to sole source billions of dollars in military procurement contracts. The argument from the right side of the fence goes something like this: We need the stuff now. Decades of neglect by Liberal governments is putting our troops lives at stake and we have to support them with the equipment they need now – not after years of waiting that might result going through a competitive bidding process. It can be a compelling argument.Â
The argument doesn’t seem to hold up to much scrutiny when considering this item from the front page of today’s Globe and Mail. Perhaps the government can add an addendum to their lofty and sanctimonious case for needing new equipment urgently and without competition, ”for the sake of our troops”. It should read something like, the sole sourcing of our contracts is necessary for our troops so that we can get the new planes and materiel to them as soon as possible, oh, and just as soon as we have strong-armed enough largesse for the province of Quebec in the process. Here we have an unelected member of the Cabinet, Michael Fortier, holding up a previously pronounced urgent procurement of supply planes for our military to ensure his province gets the lion’s share of the lucrative contracts that go with it. It really kind of hurts the argument that this all about the troops, doesn’t it?Â
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and wouldn’t it be funny as hell if Boeing said to hell with ya – we don’t need the contract this badly.
Well not for the Armed Forces mind you.
I don’t think it is funny, Steven.
This is precisely the kind of stuff that the Conservatives promised they weren’t going to do. Instead of proceeding with the contracting under the noble guise of “supporting our troops” they seem more interested in buying votes in Quebec. Sound familiar doesn’t it?
Whooee! I reckon Fortier’ll be held accountable by the voters who elected him. Oh, wait… nobuddy elected him. What was that accountability thing, again?
I thought it was jest the crooked Q-beck-luvin’ Libranos who made backroom deals t’ steer big bucks inta Parlayvooville.
JimBobby
treehugger
I was being facetious more than anything else. However I am not surprised one bit over the politicing for vote getting purposes. Because that is what this is and the only ones that are losing out is our military.
At some point (please let it be soon) the Canadian voter is going to have to face up to the fact that while there may be differences in political philosophy across the various parties there are no differences in how they operate, or what they are willing to do, in order to achieve the party goal of staying in power.
When the Liberals engaged in blatant pandered of this manner the CPoC screamed, as they should have.
I predict we’ll hear one of two things in The House
All political parties pander to the largest blocks of voters, they have to if they want to acquire, or remain in, power – the only question they have to ask themselves is how far they are willing to go, and what they are willing to do, to acquire those votes.
Make no mistake, any party would do the same, it’s a tried and true process that works – and it works because there are enough greedy and selfish voters out there looking for something for themselves to feed just about any party process or promise.