Is Canadian Democracy Just School Yard Stuff?

I thought the Boss said we were some kind of a beacon of Democracy or something to that effect?

Dear Steve Harper:

Many of us thought that the hallmarks of Democracy were openness and transparency, but you’ve shown us how silly we are Steve, committees disappearing behind closed doors for in camera meetings, omnibus bills that have grown so large that we really only need to have you folk in Ottawa for a couple of weeks to vote on it then take the rest of the session off.

Does that sound familiar?  It should, it’s pretty much what you had to say after a Liberal omnibus bill a few years ago.  It seems you want everyone else to be transparent but not when it comes to government.  Or at least Your government…

Every time people try to find out what’s going on with Canada there are brick walls thrown up in their faces.  The treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, the cost of the F 35 jets that may or may not ever come to fruition, the list goes on, and on, and on…

Certainly not open or transparent by any stretch of the imagination.

But I guess the real irony is when you send your MPs to far off places to ensure they have open and fair elections, but when someone takes your people to task over Robocalls and voter suppression, well they clam up, drag their feet, and generally make asses of themselves.

From what I gather, no one in the Party speaks without clearance from the PMO.  Funny thing, we don’t get to vote on who is in the PMO do we?

And no one gets to ask questions without clearance from the PMO either?

It certainly looks like that.  You can correct me if I’m mistaken, but I heard that the Press Pool decided to give up one of their valued questions to a foreign correspondent from China, a fellow named Li Xue Jiang.  When Mr. Li stepped up to ask his question, your staff pulled the microphone away from him and when he had the temerity to try and grab the microphone back he was promptly wrestled away by four of your security detail. 

Thoughtfully, the Globe and Mail has the video here.

Way to show those commies how the leader of an open and democratic society handles inconvenient questions.  That’s sarcasm; I know it doesn’t always carry well in writing.

You want us to believe that you are in the “big leagues” internationally, but you’re not.  This is just school yard stuff being played out by someone who should know better.  Don’t like the question?  Don’t let the Chinese guy ask it.  (And have your minions drag him away) Too hot in Ottawa?  Just yell “Prorogue”!  That’s the parliamentary equivalent of picking up the ball and running away isn’t it?

We’re used to it here.  We’ve seen how you have acted for the last seven years.  Now you’ve gone and shown the world your management skills. 

By the way Steve, yelling “Prorogue” from Whitehorse, in the middle of the summer break is pretty much like yelling “I’m telling my mom” and running away.

School yard stuff, and the saddest part is how many people don’t care.

Laters, BC

More Harper equals Less Democracy

[Preamble:  I’ve had a number of thoughts running loose in my head and I’ve tried to stitch them together somewhat here.  At the risk of having Godwin’s Law or one of the corollaries tossed at me, I even read about Germany in the 1930’s.  There are parallels… look it up for yourself.

We as Canadians have taken our democracy for granted.  It seems our government was based on the idea that no party would go outside the mostly unwritten rules that have been followed for over 140 years.  Ooops.

Democracy in Canada is at risk, if it still exists today. 

This is a bit of an omnibus rant, a catchall for my thoughts. 

If you have any thoughts to add, please do.  I’d like to hear what other people thinking.  B.C.]

In a recent post, I wondered about the cost of the F-35 JSF program to Canadians.

What I was thinking was Dollars and Cents, but the biggest costs are to Truth, Honesty and Integrity of our government and our system of government.

We live in a Parliamentary Democracy.  Or at least we used to.  The voice of every member of the House is supposed to be equal and every member is supposed to be representing the voice of their constituency.

These members are charged with the responsibility of listening to and taking part in the arguments for and against proposed legislation and policy of our government both at the committee level and as part of the House.

How can this be done without the actual information that backs the proposals made by the government?

This pulls me right back to the F 35 fiasco as well as just about any legislation that the Stephen Harper Party (SHP) puts forward.

How can you realistically decide on what kind of aircraft we can afford when the numbers being provided by the SHP don’t agree with anything outside of the SHP’s little scenarios?

And now we get yet another ominous omnibus bill.

This time it’s a budget bill… 498 pages of budget bill (or so I’ve read) which contains over 100 pages of changes to the way environmental assessments are performed in the future.  Basically, the Harper Party doesn’t want interlopers like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace from having a say in any assessments, only those who are directly involved.  So if they want to run a pipeline through Your community, you can say something, your neighbours can too… then the corporate lawyers representing the corporate interests get their say.

Who will have a better argument?  I’ll bet on the lawyers.

And if some organization wants to stick up for you?  They’re not directly involved, they don’t get to speak.

And then there are changes for EI in this “budget bill” as well, such as moving changes in EI rules from legislation to regulation.

Meaning what?  That now the changes to EI will be decided behind closed doors by Ministers rather than being debated and voted on in the House.

Oh yes, they’ve limited debate on this bill as well.

Is this what the Reformers wanted?  I thought Reform was all about grass roots democracy, more say for the people.

What we are getting is less debate, more decisions behind closed doors and no say for the people.  Less democracy.

What we are getting are omnibus bills with limited debate and whole provisions added with no formal announcements or explanations from the government.  Again, less democracy.

For the first time in history we’ve have a Prime Minister who was found to be in contempt of the House of Commons for failure to provide information requested by the House.  We have Bev not Oda who lied to the House and earned a charge of contempt as well.  A government who privately boast of doing “God’s work” in promoting the Tar Sands… the list just goes on and on.

Whenever things got bad in the House for Lord Stephen in a minority, he locked the doors.  In a childish tantrum he picked up the ball and went home…  Well actually he ran to the Governor General and hid behind her skirt… twice.

Now that he has a majority, he no longer needs to run away, he just yells “Shut Up!” and limits debate and then we go to the Marionette Theatre once again.

Look, this old cat has been around long enough to see his share nonsense floating around in Ottawa.

I just want an honest and open debate about why they are doing what they are doing… without invoking closure or limiting debate.

That is democracy Stephen.  If you don’t like it, take your Party and leave.

On an aside, I wonder if instead of calling them the Stephen Harper Party (SHP) I should have called them the Stephen Harper Team?

What is the cost of the F 35 to Canada?

I see that we have an Emergency Meeting of the Commons Public Accounts Committee on Thursday of this week.

The Opposition Members of the Committee forced this to happen but they are concerned that the Harper Party majority on the Committee will vote to hold the session in camera. I hope they don’t, this is important and needs to be done in public.

The Opposition Members want to hear from National Defence about the costs of the F-35 JSF versus to costs stated by the Harper Party Minister, Peter MacKay.

In the US, they have already put the JSF program “on probation” because of the soaring costs and pork barrelling that occurs in many US programs.

We need to know what the costs will be as well.

It is not the minivan scenario that MacKay trots out, that you only consider the sticker price when you buy a minivan. Most of us have bought cars and vans and we consider what the mileage will be like, so we can afford to put gas in it, many of us consider what the impact will be on our insurance premiums…

And yes we look at the sticker price. The Captain’s seats might be nice and the two sets of DVD/video game systems would keep the kids happy, but if it’s for getting groceries and never leaves the city, well it’s kind of pointless isn’t it?

The other reason that we have to have the F 35 is that the other countries will have them and we don’t want to be left out. Except the Aussies just bought some F 18 Super Hornets, and the US Navy just bought some too.

The fact that the US Navy bought these Super Hornets is interesting, as our current CF 18s are basically the same model as the F 18 Hornets the Navy used to fly using the same suspension and even down to the tail hook for catching the wire on carriers. Our tail hooks are for small airports in the North.

Another interesting fact about the Super Hornet is the price, around $42 Million each. Compare that to the current $160 Million of the F 35 and for the same $9 Billion we have set aside, we could have over 210 Super Hornets compared to 56 F 35s. Or we could get 100 and set aside $4-5 Billion for gas… or pilots.

Apparently we are so short on pilots we are recruiting from the RAF who have been laying off their excess pilots.

But then again it’s probably just an accounting thing, it’s likely cheaper to hire foreigners to work in Canada than to train Canadians for those jobs.

The pesky Joint Strike Farce F-35 has raised its nose again.

The pesky Joint Strike Farce Force F-35 has raised its nose again.

The events surrounding this flying fiasco are getting weirder by the day, if not faster. It’s too bad the name “Warthog” is already taken, this jet is getting wartier all the time.

I’ve been looking around trying to find prices, if I have to pay for them I’d like to know what the damage will be… and the amounts mentioned in an article at RT.com look plausible. You can see it here: http://rt.com/news/f-35-british-cost-billions-590/

The article says that the Brits are expecting to pay over $160 Million a pop for these jets and that’s at the good price, the price for the partners in the JSF program.

The Harper Party script readers Fantino and MacKay are still holding to their numbers and still insisting on 65 fighters. But at $160 Million each, the $9 Billion we have set aside and “frozen” is going to come up short… by about 9 planes.

This assumes we get the same price as the UK, after all they tossed $2 Billion into the JSF pool and we only paid $160 Million

Another thing the Harper Party sticks to is the 20 year cost.

Now everyone talks about the life of this plane being 40 years, or more recently 36 years, but the Brits are costing theirs over a 50 year window. $1.4 Trillion over 50 years for 150 planes, that would be about $600 Billion for the same 50 year window for us.

Why these discrepancies? We are old enough to handle the truth so why are they incapable of telling us the truth?

Could it be that they are sugar coating the pill?

Let’s use the very tired car analogy they have been beating us with.

When you buy a new car, the service for that car for the first 2 to 5 years is quite low. Oil changes, tire rotations, just the basic stuff. After the first few years have passed, that’s when you start to repair and replace parts. Isn’t that why most people who buy new usually trade after 3 or 4 years? To avoid those expenses?

So by shortening the window to 20 years, are they trying to hide the long term cost of repair and replacement parts?

The average car lasts about 12 years, these jets are going to be used for 40 or 50 years. After about 5 or 6 years, a car gets expensive to maintain, at about ½ of its life expectancy. The ½ way point for these jets is 20 years, is it safe to assume they will become much more expensive to maintain after that point?

Finally, if we are to wait until the F-35 reaches full production, if it ever does, we are looking at 2019 before we can even get the planes. [Edit: US government sources are showing the "sweet spot" is 2021] That means that we will have to stretch the already aged CF-18s even further than they were intended to. Even with the upgrades that they received just a few years ago.

How much more will the upkeep costs of the CF-18 run in order to reach that date?

So where does that leave us?

If we stay the course, we will get the F-35 fighters starting likely in 2019. The CF-18s will be finished between 2017 and 2020. That is an uncomfortable gap.

If we maintain the $9 Billion amount of MacKay and Fantino, we will likely only get 56 of the 65 F-35 that the Harper Party says we need if we can even get that many. That is another uncomfortable gap.

Right now, we have 79 CF-18s. When the recent bomb scare occurred on a South Korean jetliner forcing it to return to BC, it was escorted through Canadian airspace by U.S. fighters.

None of our planes were available.

How many will be available when we only have 65? Or 56?

When we bought 138 CF-18s, we bought off the shelf technology. 30 years later it is still a viable aircraft.

Today we are looking at an unproven technology. Even the stealth characteristics of this 5^th generation fighter are suspect.

We need a real competition to determine our future fighter jets, not a page torn from an F-35 brochure.

But most of all, we need a transparent and honest conversation to determine just what are the true requirements needed for a Canadian based fighter jet.

I don’t think Stephen Harper and his gang are up to that.