Currents

Canada is sending a flotilla of patrol ships to guard our sacred Arctic waters against… Denmark?

Granted, if global warming ever unleashes the vast treasure trove of raw resources that is our northern frontier, we might have a little more competition to deal with. And in that case, our hold on the new Northwest Passage will pretty much depend on a simple lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Russian and American blue water navy sailors to freeze their naughty bits.

There is a case to be made for sending a token force up to secure our country’s territory. Strangely, those who disparage the cost of the mission are often the same people who condemn our creeping loss of sovereignty to our southern neighbor.

In any case, let’s keep our country safe from the Vikings and other scourges of the high seas. If anyone is going to freeze their extremities off for ice-encased oil and diamonds in a region clearly unfit for most human beings, it better be us.

Kudos to the Conservatives for putting Native land claims back on the fast track. New legislation to be co-written with Aboriginals will hopefully clear up a backlog of 800 land claims over the next decade or so and clear out some of the rot in our national fabric.

Will the news head off a planned national day of protest by First Nations people on June 29? Phil Fountaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was evidently impressed enough to call today a historic day and added that he prefers negotiation to confrontation. Sounds promising.

We’re in a unique period in history. A small minority can extract financial concessions from the national government of a multicultural population that no longer really represents the invading cultures - cultures that alternately conquered or demographically swamped germ-emptied territories of the decimated minority centuries ago.

This sort of legal action is not without precedent, but the opposite situation is far more common even in present day. The Han never bothered to financially compensate nations within China that their own ethnic group swallowed up. The Ainu people of Hokkaido also got nada from the ethnic Japanese. Same goes for Russia’s far eastern native groups. Ditto for the pygmies and other groups that got wiped out by the Bantu in Africa before the European colonization really got going.

But just because everyone else is doing something (or not doing it) doesn’t really make it right.

Land claims treaties on their own won’t be a panacea for the poverty, illiteracy and lack of opportunity that are epidemic for First Nations people living on reserves and to a lesser extent in our big cities - but Natives and non-natives need to get along in this country. The government is right in its new rush to put the land claims behind us so we can focus on the future together.

(The video above shows a traditional Ainu dance outside of a replica of an Ainu home. Interesting parallels to some aspects of North American native culture).

Conservatives just can’t seem to leverage their early successes and lacklustre opposition into political gains.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that Canadians pretty much like what they’ve seen so far from our current political balance and see no reason to change it up. As soon as Conservatives started edging up in the polls, voters smack them back down.

It doesn’t even matter that Conservatives have tried to take over the center by developing an environmental plan far more detailed and visionary than their supposedly green competitors. The media and righteous pundits hoping to score some easy points are having a field day bashing the Tories with their own plan. Clearly, Canadians don’t want to change things up.

That doesn’t mean the opposition parties can start feeling entitled. None of the other parties are getting much love from the voters either. It just means we don’t want an election right when we’re getting ready for summer barbecue season.

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Canada’s parliament has narrowly voted down a Liberal proposal to set a firm date for a pullout from Afghanistan, only because the NDP thinks that two years from now isn’t soon enough.

Canada’s opposition parties are in a hurry to get our troops out of harms way and replaced by forces from other NATO nations. It’s fair enough to reject an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan with no strings attached.

But one wonders whether they would really feel all that terrible if no other NATO ally stepped up to the plate and Afghanistan descended into the same kind of chaos that birthed the Taliban regime in the first place.

Instead of arbitrary deadlines, the opposition might instead at least propose benchmarks for Canadians and our NATO allies to measure success and logically determine the prospects for a continuing mission. But for now, all we can see from Stephane Dion’s Liberals is unrealistic and cynical foreign policy on the fly and from the NDP, the appeasement of civilization’s enemies.

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When those deja-vu inducing promos came out for “Who Killed the Electric Car?” came out a while back, I started wondering whether the technology for an environmentally friendly, non-oil sheik supporting car would ever be brought to the mass market. The most highly-skilled engineers in the world could build a magic flying carpet a la Alladin, but if entrenched corporate interests didn’t like the ramifications (ie. oil profits plummet) then the final product just ain’t gonna fly.

The proposed Hydrogen Highway of hydrogen refueling stations stretching from beautiful BC down to sunny California could finally get the hydogen-powered vehicle industry moving. After all, no one’s going to buy a car that they can’t drive because there’s nowhere to fill it up. It truly is a case of “build it, and they will come.”

The Conservative government is so panicked it’s copying Liberal ideas and policies, according to Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

Wait a minute - Liberals are accusing the governing party of co-opting the more reasonable platform planks of the opposition to make Canadians happy and help the country run better, without regard to blind partisan politics… and this is a bad thing?

It is the duty of the opposition to oppose. But the party that is actually running the country has a duty to consider ideas from Canadians of all political stripes when forming policy and legislation. That isn’t a political ploy - that’s democracy in action.

Canada’s House of Commons has voted to force the Conservative minority government to create a plan over the next 60 days for Canada to meet it’s commitments to Kyoto.

This isn’t a bad thing. The Conservatives have been reluctant to embrace the new environmental dogma of Kyoto for fear of putting Canadians out of work with Soviet-style economic management.

But now they can - and should.

The Conservatives ought to include in the plan draconian measures like shutting down the Albertan oil sand projects without delay and closing any factories in Ontario that don’t meet newly-drafted environmental standards.

Such a plan will of course have no chance of actually being made into legislation. But it will force Canadians and our elected representatives to think about what kinds of sacrifices they truly are prepared to make. When Conservatives force Liberals and NDP partisans on to the defensive, it might just swing public policy back into realism.

It’s time to get past the rhetoric and partisanship. Per capita, Canadians are the worst offenders to Mother Nature on the planet. It’s time to turn ideas into action.

All the Conservatives, neocons and shills for the oil companies who are denying global warming can go suck on an exhaust pipe.

Frankly, I’m embarassed so many Conservatives in Canada are still shouting from the rooftops (or slightly less noisily on the Blogging Tories forum) that global warming is all just propaganda and junk science. The funny thing is that our Conservative Prime Minister has belatedly signed on to the cause, but far too many of the party membership seems stuck in a 2002-era time warp.

Get with the program, people. We’ve got a planet to save.