Follow the bouncing ball.
Our governments inform us that we should exercise trepidation and should prudently accept their assessment of issues that ought to command our attention if not our fear.
Fear the Moslem extremist and people of Middle Eastern appearance because after all, inside every Middle Eastern man woman and child, or inside anyone that might even resemble a Middle Eastern man woman or child lurks a potential terrorist assassin.
From the Arar Commissions report:
“On the issue of public disclosure, Commission Lead Counsel Paul Cavalluzzo, explains: “There are portions of the public report which have been redacted because of the government’s assertion of a claim of national security confidentiality (NSC). However the Commissioner is of the
opinion that this information should be disclosed to the public. The Commissioner urges the government to refer this dispute to the Federal Court for an expeditious resolution so that the public might get maximum disclosure.”
To imagine a government with “nothing to hide” is, as concept, either enthusiastically lofty in a Pollyanna-ish “Everything will work out just swell….”, kind of understanding, or evidence of a mass naiveté that boggles common sense and runs screaming from rationality.
How many years has it taken for the truth about any dark chapter in Canadian history to be afforded something akin to “full disclosure”?
From financial rip-offs to secret deals with the governments of other nations, Canadians learn of these machinations long after the Prime Ministers wife has checked out of town with the furniture and carpets from 24 Sussex Drive….. in books carefully written to permit culpability a safe escape.
To his credit however Stephen Harper is at least, up-front with handing money to American forestry tycoons after they’ve stolen it…..
How many miners died in a tragic mining disaster and were the government departments and people in charge of safeguarding miner’s safety ever brought to an accounting?
No there’s mention of the mine owners and some locals being fined but accountability at the legislature or on Parliament Hill….surely you jest….
Does the pulse of violence on Canadian streets and in Canadian communities follow any kind of detectable pattern?
Are there more homeless and more vagrants and more junkies around after governments have decided that a golf course or a museum board or a new road paved into the cottage of the sitting governments head-cheese should have priority over the Canadian treasury than adequately funding social services?
How do Canadians measure the effectiveness of their government when it comes to determining the actual antecedents to social and civil unrest?
Certainly Canadians are familiar with those times when a road is blocked by burning tires and automobile carcasses as disenfranchised natives exhausted after years of lies and double-talk forego continuing the exercise of sham justice and take matters into their own hands.
Maybe there’ll be a story or two about teen-age suicide rates on Canadian native reserves or mention of an increasing substance abuse problem in rural Canada (that just happens to be on native land)…..
Sometimes we even hear about water supplies on native lands being contaminated and how the practice of hauling water in buckets from the nearest stream is the level of attention brought to our native peoples’ difficulties by our elected officials.
The slipperiest of course are the more subtle kinds of malfeasance and corruption that get’s glossed over by a national press that’s manipulated by big money to keep the keel steady and anesthetize the great unwashed with juicy bits like sexist pulp trash cascading around a hockey player and a silver-spooned multi-millionaire playing at social conscience….
On the role of Canadian officials, taking into consideration evidence heard in public as well as in camera, the Commissioner found: “No evidence that Canadian officials participated or acquiesced in the American’s authorities decision to detain and remove Mr. Arar to Syria (…)
and there is no evidence that any Canadian authorities – Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) or others – were complicit in those decisions.” However, the Commissioner also notes that: “It is very likely that, in making the decisions to detain and remove Mr. Arar to Syria, the U.S. authorities relied on information
about Mr. Arar provided by the RCMP.”
“Although I cannot be certain without evidence of the American authorities, the evidence strongly supports this conclusion”. CSIS did not share
information with the Americans at this time.
The Commissioner also found that both before and after Mr. Arar’s detention in the U.S. the RCMP provided American authorities with information about Mr. Arar which was inaccurate, portrayed him in an unfair fashion and overstated his importance to the investigation. Some of
this inaccurate information had the potential to create serious consequences for Mr. Arar in light of American attitudes and practices at the time.”
Ok so the RCMP and CSIS didn’t “officially” talk to the goons at Homeland Security but they did “leak” erroneous false and misleading information to…., well of course we’ll never know because Stockwell Day and the caliber of such sterling folk like Guliano Zacardelli and Anne McLellan don’t want us to know the truth.
You remember, a man with a lengthy list of criminal involvement cited repeatedly by members of the community he lived near as a “psycho” dealing in stolen vehicles and hoarding firearms managed to execute four Mounties that Zacardumb and Anne McDumber immediately assured us all was outcome from a “pot growing operation”….
Oh no Canadians have to dig for the skinny on what’s going on in this nations because when we leave the administration of law finance and government to the caliber of folk we’ve seen fit to elect over the past fifty years the “truth” get’s lost along the way and we all would “at the end of the day”…..just pull our necks back into our shells and ignore what’s going on until there’s a knock on your door or a flashlight shining in your eyes held by one of our faithful keepers of the great Canadian democracy.
