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Time out! Stop fighting! The downhill ski competition starts in an hour!

Canada’s mission in Afghanistan could be over in 2010, according to he latest announcement from Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor. It’s not because the Taliban will have given up by then or even because of mounting casualties.

Nope. We have to protect the home front.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of the world when a country has to devote the bulk of its armed forces to protecting an international sporting competition. Nonetheless, another NATO nation will have to step up to the plate in Kandahar when the Winter Olympics comes to Vancouver.

Our men and women in uniform will be busy making sure Al Queda or its associates don’t stockpile dynamite in the stands at Whistler.

At least now we have our exit strategy.

The silence is deafening.

Now that the Prime Minister has changed the rules of the game for dealing with China, the Conservatives’ ideological enemies have gone into hiding.

Stephen Harper’s recent broadside against the Chinese dictatorship: “I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values — our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights. They don’t want to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

The Chinese government insists that human rights were not brought up during the APEC summit, but acknowledged that Harper brought up the case of Huseyin Celil, a Chinese-Canadian imprisoned in China on terrorism charges. That’s kind of like saying that they didn’t discuss the economy… it was just a lot of talk about exports, banking, stocks, interest rates, you know, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, the Liberals are silent, or grumbling behind people’s backs that human rights is bad for business. The NDP, Canada’s so-called progressive party, by definition should be backing Harper’s stance. But from Jack Layton, we have… bupkis.

From the left, there’s the usual silence on this matter. So long as the human rights violations are not committed by the USA or Israel, it’s not worth mentioning.

It’s only been a few days since Harper made his “inflammatory” remarks, so it’s not too late for the rest of our elected representatives to say what they think. I’m not holding my breath.

It’s never a good sign when your drinking water turns brown.

My city is still recovering from the big storm. Luck is with me, though. My condo’s plumbing has somehow managed to filter out the gunk that turned the water at work an awful color. And we still have power, unlike some other parts of the Lower Mainland. Perhaps that’s an unforeseen benefit of living near Vancouver City Hall. Who knows?

Actually, it’s kind of nice to live in a place where the big news of the day is the weather.

Politics in Canada is weird.

There was this little piece in the news today about a Conservative MP from Toronto, Garth Turner, going independent. That’s not so odd. We just had a Vancouver Liberal MP shift chameleon-like into a Conservative cabinet minister not that long ago.

But then I looked at the new breakdown of the parties in ther 308-seat House of Commons. Interesting stuff: Conservatives 124, Liberals 101, Bloc Quebecois 50, New Democratic Party 29. There are two independents and two vacant seats.

How many other countries can boast 50 legislators whose raison d’etre is the breakup of the country? I guess the only nice thing one can say is that at least our socialists have only about half as many seats as the Bloc.

The word on the street (and according to a never-ending stream of polls) is that these numbers wouldn’t change at all if an election were held tomorrow. Evidently, this status quo works for us. At least it’s better than the example just shown in the US, which just traded one red party for a blue one, with no other real distinguishing features worth mentioning.

Tags: Garth Turner, Conservatives, Liberals, New Democratic Party, Bloc Quebecois

Remembrance Day has passed. By November 12, most people have likely already tossed away their poppies.

But reminders of what the day is about are still with us, not only in Canada.

In a lush park near the financial heart of Hong Kong, there is a statue of Warrant Officer John Robert Osborn of the Winnipeg Grenadiers.

I came upon it quite by accident a year ago, wandering through as a tourist. I remember looking with curiosity at the inscription on the bronze memorial. Having served with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles infantry unit in my younger days, I felt some kinship with the Canadian soldiers who had gone there long ago.

The story of the defeat of the Hong Kong garrison by Imperial Japanese forces is well-known to most Canadians with even a passing knowledge of the Second World War. The outgunned force of green troops had little chance against the battle-hardened Japanese.

It was a lost cause, but the previous experience of the Japanese occupation in the rest of China must have given the soldiers and the city’s citizens some inkling of the pillage, rape and terror that was to follow. There could have been no other choice than to attempt the fight.

Do Canadians have a habit of taking on lost causes? Most Canadian war or peacekeeping efforts of the last century or so seem to have gotten bogged down in stalemate or a shaky, contentious status quo. From Korea to Bosnia to Afghanistan, our efforts are rarely rewarded with outright victory.

Still, even when the cause already seems lost, good deeds can be done – and remembered.<