How do you know there is nothing going on in a country's political life? Well there are a couple of clues to look for; the country's so–called national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, is running as its top political news story something about the travel expenses of the Minister of Veterans Affairs and his chief of staff. In the normal course of events that probably wouldn't even make it on to the front page of the paper, unless an opposition party member made a stink about it. (But since most of them are still a missing person's report under investigation, that's not about to happen.)
After that there's a toss-up between the ongoing softwood lumber discord (nobody except the Conservative Part of Canada and the American Lumber Industry like the deal), and whether or not George Bush was being too familiar in calling Prime Minister Stephen Harper "Steve" or not. Of course there's a bunch of trivial stuff that nobody is making a big deal about — another case of Mad Cow disease out in Alberta, another native blockade has been thrown up in Ontario, this one in the north, and finally results of a survey on domestic violence showed some disturbing trends.
I know that as a good Canadian I should be up in arms about the softwood lumber deal and how our poor brave lumber industry is getting shafted, but quite frankly I couldn't care less about them. I'm rooting for the trees and hoping the idiots dig themselves a deep enough grave that they can't get out again. It's really hard to sympathise with people whose sole ambition in life is to cut down old growth forest that pre-dates most of Europe, and replace it with efficient logging trees.
Do I really care what George Bush and Stephen Harper call each other in public or behind closed doors? Nope. George won't be around after 2008, and if little Steve keeps going on like he has been, he'll be gone as soon as the Liberal party gets a new leader and organises a non-confidence vote.
As for Veteran's Affairs Minister Greg Thompson spending $18,000 on charter flights in and out of New Brunswick for work related duties, who cares? You try and get a commercial air flight out of New Brunswick when you're on a tight schedule, and anyway senior politicians really shouldn't be taking the risk of travelling commercial flights anyway. Do you have any idea what kind of hell that would represent for security people?
In the long run it would probably cost more money for him to use commercial flights, what with all the security arrangements that would have to be made, the car travel to airports, and the juggling of schedules so that meetings can get off without a hitch. So he spends $18,000 getting to and from meetings — at least it shows he's working and trying to get things done. Just look on it as proof that he's actually doing the job he was elected to do and let him go about his business.
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