I remember as a young man in a college philosophy class being handed a slip of paper with the following written on it: “The statement on the other side of this paper is true”. When I turned it over it said “the statement on the other side of this paper is false”. The reason I thought of this tautology was because I recently read a statement by my local Member of Parliament who offered his commentary on the New Orleans hurricane disaster.
as a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, my MP made sure that the first thing he did was bash George W. Bush and criticize him for being “slow to react” to the needs of hurricane Katrina’s victims. according to him, Bush should have personally jumped out of air Force One and set about saving lives.
He also talked about emergency preparedness and how important it was for governments to be ready for any eventuality, the implication being that as Canadians we would handle such an emergency better.
He rounded off his tirade with a rather curious comment. He claimed that governments need to be more prepared due to the impending severe changes in climate that bring about catastrophic events such as hurricane Katrina and last December’s tsunami.
Now I could be wrong, as anything is possible, but I’m pretty sure that the tsunami came about as a result of an earthquake, which if I remember my high school geology class, is brought about by a shift in the earth’s tectonic plates and not global warming.
Could it be that my member of parliament is less than brilliant?
Given the quality of governance Canadians have enjoyed these past 12 years, it’s a foregone conclusion. The old saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones applies in a big way here, considering how poorly the government of Canada reacted to the ice storm that struck on January 10, 1998. and while this event doesn’t rank at the same level of severity as hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami in loss of lives, it still took the government well over a month to deal with it. In fact there were 700,000 estimated households in Quebec and eastern Ontario that remained without hydroelectric power for over 3 weeks. This couldn’t be called a timely reaction by any standard, except perhaps, by the Liberal Party, who I’m sure are convinced that they can do no wrong.
My member of parliament represents a microcosm of what Canadian politics is all about, and I believe this goes for all sides of the isle as the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc are all at about the same level of competence and trustworthiness as are the Liberals. For openers, all our politicians, no matter what color their party membership card might happen to be, are squeamish about the truth. It’s as if the truth were something to mince and flavor, like liver or Brussels sprouts. Because there is such an aversion to the truth on the part of all our politicians, one can never have an open or honest debate about any issue.
If you have to take a catastrophe like the Boxing Day tsunami and ascribe it to global climate change because that happens to be the government’s agenda, then you do so with a straight face, assuming that there isn’t anyone who knows the difference anyway. If you have to take a catastrophe like the New Orleans floods and lie to make President Bush look bad, then it’s fair game because it makes for good headlines. Besides, the majority of Canadians don’t know that in the U.S. the first reaction in a disaster is the legal responsibility of the municipal and state authorities and not the federal government
I am finally beginning to understand why Canadians keep voting for the Liberals year after year; it’s because our political landscape has all the excitement and diversity of a 1956-era Russian hardware store. The thing is, you’d better get used to the status quo, because what you see is what you’re going to get for all eternity.