Arrogance Kills

My level of exasperation with the Harper government has reached new heights.  Their arrogance has hit an all time high with the issue over the fake parts in our military Hercules transport aircraft.  When questioned about counterfeit computer chips in military aircraft Julian Fantino, who was associate minister of defense at the time, smugly shrugged his shoulders while assuring us “At this point in time, other than continuing to be vigilant, we don’t have any particular concerns in this country”.  He was only one of many Conservatives making this statement following an exhaustive fourteen month investigation by the US Senate armed services committee that discovered counterfeit parts in their Hercules fleet.  This is the same fleet that the Canadian C-130J comes from.

This governments blatant denial and smug responses in Question Period are putting a great number of people in further and easily corrected life threatening positions.  Bogus computer chips used in our own Hercules fleet, as identified in documents dated July 2012, clearly states that this equipment is prone to failure with “catastrophic consequences”.  And yet this government continued for another six months to deny anything was wrong.  This denial had been going on for almost two years.

All we hear is scripted arrogance everyday during Question Period, throughout press scrums, at every news release this government prepares and on every political talk show I see on the boob tube.  The Harper government just continues to lead us down the yellow brick road by telling us that sufficient “checks and balances” are in place to guard against issues like this.  And while the government is professing these checks and balances  internal Defense Department documentation is saying that no such system was in place as of the fall of 2012.  This is the same tactic we saw from this government regarding CFIA and the tainted products from XL Meat.  We had to rely on American border services to make Canadians aware of the tainted meat the same way we have had to find out from the Americans that counterfeit computer chips have been installed in some military aircraft.

And as recently as yesterday, Conservative MP Chris Alexander, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defense  suggests the Harper government is content to go on using the counterfeit parts and hope they don’t fail in mid-flight.  Anybody who has ever experienced the dreaded “blue screen of death” on their computer knows there is very little warning when your chip is going to fail.  You sure as hell don’t want it failing at 35,000 feet in the air with 300 armed forces personnel on it.  And yet people still believe that this government has the well being of EVERY Canadians at heart?

This government goes on in Parliament like no other elected official matters except the Harper people.  This arrogant and dismissive approach in the House denigrates every Canadian living in a non-Conservative riding.  This government has relegated over 60% of the Canadian population to a second class citizen status due to their own arrogance.  Meanwhile we, as Canadian tax payers, pay the bill for every ideological driven policy this government makes.  Every time there is a court challenge we pay Harper’s court costs.  And these things are getting dragged through the courts because there are still people in Canada who believe in the democratic process.

From my perspective this is really what the Idle No More movement is about.  It is forcing the spotlight onto the abuse of our democratic rights.  This is something that many people I know can’t seem to grasp.  I have no problems with a legally elected body promoting their agenda as long as it is done in a democratic way.  We live in a democracy but I am far from convinced that the Harper government is conducting themselves in a democratic way.  When hundreds of amendments made on a single bill like C-45 can be turned down by the government there is no democracy.  That is simply arrogant political bullying!

Just one man’s opinion