One of these days, our dear prime minister is going to have to make some decisions. Watching him doing selfies while trying for an even higher approval rating is getting boring. Some time, soon, he will have to take a stand. There are too many moves on hold.
It is best exemplified by the pipelines questions. This involves a multiplicity of complex decisions that could result in a green light to highly polluting tar sands exploitation. There are billions of dollars poised to take advantage of this decision and promises of a real boost to the Canadian economy. The only problem is that what is good for the oil sands exploiters is bad for the environment. The bad news for Justin Trudeau is there is no middle ground.
It is like Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan telling Canadians about Canada returning to a peacekeeping role. He hastens to point out that most of the wars around the globe are the types of wars where there are no battle lines. There are no combatants to get between. When you cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys, how do you keep the peace? You can hardly go into peacekeeping wearing a blindfold.
Nor can you so simply switch from making war on insurgents to keeping them peaceful. Are our military trained and ready to move from one mode to another? Can you bomb people one day and fly mercy missions the next? Are our military equipped to switch roles? And how much do we really know and understand about the world’s tensions?
Or is it just the naiveté of a prime minister who promises that the next election will do away with the system of election Canada has used for the past 150 years? This foolish election reform committee has been listening to biased academics and special interests and is heading down a questionable path for Canada. It is not listening to those most involved in politics nor understanding the risks of destroying Canada’s national political parties.
And are we mishandling the most precious of Canada’s strengths? We have a responsibility to this land of ours. We have to protect it for ourselves and we have to protect it for future generations. And did we lose lives in Lac Mégantic just to erroneously justify pipelines?
Are Canadians going to spend billions on attack fighter aircraft so we can go to war along side our American allies? Do we need submarines or icebreakers? Are we fish or fowl? Is leadership so elusive?
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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