Corbella: Back to Sleep? They Never Woke Up in the First Place
Quote to Note:
*** we have a government that has spent the past decade distributing Canadian flags to patriotic Canadians and laundering tax money into Liberal coffers to better prepare THEMSELVES for their next opportune election call. ***
How else to characterize the alarming information contained in two reports released on two successive days on the Titanic-sized holes in Canada's security systems and emergency preparedness.
Yesterday, after two years of study, a Senate committee released "National Emergencies: Canada's Fragile Front Lines" that says Canada is woefully unprepared for the aftermath of a terrorist attack or even many natural disasters.
The timing was brilliant, since it coincided with reports yesterday that Canada is ranked No. 5 on an alleged al-Qaida list of sites to destabilize.
[. . . .] After all, how else does one deal with the news that Canada's border officers are not provided with a list of the 25,000 Canadian passports that are lost or stolen annually because Canadian officials are concerned about "privacy concerns"?
As the senate report states: "Within the bounds of financial realism, there is no excuse for unreadiness. Governments are paid to be ready. That is how they earn their keep."
What it should have said is: That is how they SHOULD earn their keep. Instead, we have a government that has spent the past decade distributing Canadian flags to patriotic Canadians and laundering tax money into Liberal coffers to better prepare THEMSELVES for their next opportune election call.
Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, chair of the Senate's Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, said Canadians should be "mad as hell" that the country would at best just "muddle through" a terrorist attack or natural disaster despite billions of dollars being spent since 9-11 by the feds.
[. . . .] Canada "could not get any information out of Ottawa during 9/11 ... We were fortunate that the Acting American Consul General offered to sit in the emergency operations centre and advise us on what was going on from Washington. It was effective but embarrassing."
[. . . .] The senate report also ridiculed Health Canada for its protectiveness about emergency supplies. The department has $330 million in medicine and equipment scattered in secret caches across the country.
. . . two-thirds of the 86 cities which responded to a committee survey had no idea where the caches are or what they contain.
