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Smoke and Mirrors

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On Friday December 1 the St. John’s airport was buzzing with federal conservative celebrities including Ministers Loyola Hearn (fisheries), Rona Ambrose (environment) and Lawrence Cannon (transport).

They all came to get their 5 minutes in the spotlight and to tell everyone what a wonderful job they were doing up on the hill. Oh and they also announced the stationing of a new surveillance aircraft in New Brunswick that would protect our coasts from rogue vessels dumping bilge oil, killing sea birds and destroying the coastline.

According to the Ministers the craft, a modified Dash 8, is equipped with state of the art aerial surveillance equipment that will allow Transport Canada to detect marine polluters better than ever before.

The Ministers also carried the message from their keepers that, “Canada is prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect our marine environment”, (please don’t start laughing just yet) and to let us know that they are, “fully committed to protecting and preserving our pristine environment…”

Between standing in the way of a UN sponsored ban on destruction of the ocean floor, developing a “hot air” plan for dealing with greenhouse gasses, supporting rogue nations like Spain in patrolling the waters outside the 200 mile limit and putting a single plane in place to patrol all of Atlantic Canada and the Great Lakes, this new government has been very clear where it stands on the environment. About as far away from it they possibly can.

Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose, is quoted as saying, “This new technology is an excellent example of what Canada’s new government is doing to protect our environment.” I agree with her. It is a perfect example of what the new government is doing or more precisely, what they aren’t doing.

Minister Ambrose seems to believe that this single plane is sufficient to patrol the estimated 3,000 kilometre stretch of shoreline from Duluth, Minn., to St. John’s, NL plus the Great Lakes. I’m just amazed her government didn’t schedule it to cover the Pacific and Arctic oceans as well. (I wonder, have they considered that they may not be able to refuel in Gander once that airport closes due to lack of support from Ottawa).

Talk about wearing rose colored glasses, the members of the Harper government must have had surgery to implant colored contacts directly onto the corneas if they can stand behind their record on the environment .

As one environmental expert put it, this plane is “…kind of like having one cop car for the province of Ontario. If you’re a criminal and you’re planning to dump oil, and you know that the only chance of you getting caught is one plane that’s covering basically all of eastern Canada, well, if I was them, I would just dump the oil…”

Harper, the puppet master, along with all of his puppets may not have discovered the answer to resolving issues like overfishing, environmental problems, social programs, foreign affairs, equalization, and the rest but there is certainly one thing they’ve mastered in their short time in office, the use of smoke and mirrors.

By Myles Higgins

@ December 4, 2006