So this is a good time to bring up a couple of things from this week that have been like two burrs under my saddle that I haven't been able to blog about and thereby remove.
The first is with regard this post by Impolitical. About that Prime Ministerial Coup. She fights unfairly by the application of logic, a weapon to which Mr. Ivison cannot avail himself of, to conclude (MEIB):
Canada has been absent for the past decade. OK...and this means that it would be a coup should we be elected now? Well, if you look at our history of membership on the Council since 1966, if we were to be elected now it wouldn't really be a "coup." It would just be us taking our pretty regular turn, every decade. Here are our years of membership:
1967-68
1977-78
1989-90
1999-00
So if we are elected in 2010, that seems like right on schedule to me. Or, if you're John Ivison, aka standing "on the brink of a foreign policy coup." Gee, hopefully we beat out Portugal, who have been on the Security Council a whopping total of 4 years since 1966, to take our regular turn.
Now this leaves an obvious corollary unasked. "If Canada is not elected according to the established schedule, is that not a diplomatic disaster for Harper? Does it not indicate a world wide chastisement for the current government?"
That is better. Trigger will be happier now. Now for that other burr. It has to do with Harper's news conference meltdown this week regarding the unwanted jets. Impolitical and Dave at The Galloping Beaver did a much better job of covering the details of this than my attempt.
My saddle blanket won't be clean, however, until I re-emphasize this quote again:
But Jay Paxton, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, argued that a competition was already run — by the Americans.
I am well aware of the ideological considerations driving this statement but has there ever been a more barefaced statement of their lack of commitment to Canadian sovereignty?
Recommend this Post
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment