Here’s a suggestion for Canadians

The Liberals seem hell bent on forcing an election.  They’ve done this a number of times in the past few years.  If they force an election when Parliament returns – we will have spent over $1.2 billion on elections that haven’t changed things subtantively.  In other words, we will have wasted $1.2 billion in taxpayers money to soothe the egos of the parliamentarians.

I understand the concept of Her Majesties Loyal Opposition but we have opposition parties who have voted down everything that the government has proposed even if it was good for the country and was something they would propose.  The NDP has voted against the government over 72 times in this period just because they can, they know that the bill will pass and their constituents will benefit anyhow.  I do not call that being a responsible representative of the people.

The Bloc is Quebec centric and couldn’t give a hoot about Canada so they are taking money for doing nothing good for the country.  Soon a large number of NDP and Bloc members will be vested in their generous pension plan – but they need to be MP’s until around July 2010 – whoops, they seem to have screwed up.

It would be entirely appropriate to work with the governing party cooperatively, now they won’t get everything they want but there would be pressure on the government to respond to this cooperation otherwise the people would let them know they are jerks. 

My solution and suggestion is that we send a bill to each MP for $1 million to be paid out of their personal funds so that we can fund this next election and not waste tax dollars to get the same results.  We are getting tired of living crisis to crisis when it’s just for the vanity of the political leaders.

If they do force an election  over nothing we should punish the opposition parties severely and throw those bums out on their respective asses.

Canada’s Contribution To the World

***Revised post!!***

As we closer to remembrance day, I received a version of this story in an Email and thought it was relevant.  It still is but as one comment came in it goes back to the friendly fire incident when we lost the 4 soldiers from the Pats.  So I did as suggested and found the original article.  We’ve been supporting the Afghan mission for almost 7 years pulling more than our weight in NATO – why is it that some countries won’t let their soldiers out of their bases lest they be in harms way.

The country the world forgot – again

By Kevin Myers

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/04/2002

UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada’s historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada’s entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the “British”. The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated – a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and film-makers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality – unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer British. It is as if in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakeably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves – and are unheard by anyone else – that 1 per cent of the world’s population has provided 10 per cent of the world’s peace-keeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peace-keepers on earth – in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peace-keeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement which has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace – a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.

This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well.

Canada

Lest we forget.

Fox Program Red Eye – The Ugliest Americans

Canada has just suffered the loss of 4 more soldiers in Afghanistan and they will be repatirated today and travel the Highway of Heros.  So we now have to put up with ugly stupid Americans who have demonstrated why they are hated around the world.  The Fox program Red Eye chose to mock Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan not even knowing that we have been there from the beginning of this mission.  We are one of the few countries that answered the call for combat troops who would engage in combat and these idiot Americans have no understanding of their neighbour to the north.  They have no concept of the importance that Canada is to the success and prosperity of America.  After 7 years of conflict, most of the equipment is wearing out, um, I seem to remember reading about the US having equipment problems having a large percentage of its equipment worn out sitting awaiting action in Iraq.

See for yourself:

In this video, these people demonstrate how narrow minded and ill-informed they are about anything outside their borders.  They represent the last 8 years where America damaged its standing in the world.  No longer could America legitimately claim that they believe in freedom, liberty and integrity.  They set up the Guantánamo Bay detention where they were sheltered from their own laws and conducted torture and numerous human rights violations.   There was no due process – so much for the fair minded America.

The current world financial crisis can be laid at the feet of greedy people who ignored what few rules there were and managed to bring down the worlds economies. 

We can hope that theirs is a radical minority viewpoint.  If it is mainstream then America will have to continue to bully the worlds countries and use military force to impose its will.  We all know this works, just look at Iraq.

Their comments are disgusting and they would call for an invasion should someone else say things like that about America, oh wait they did call for an invasion of Canada and those silly Canadians.

Canada 11th in Global Peace Index.

Canada moved from 8th to 11th in the Global Peace Index for 2008. Canada is still rated with a “very high” state of peace. Canada’s position changed by -1 in the change from 2007 to 2008.

“The index is composed of 24 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, which combine internal and external factors ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighbouring countries and the level of respect for human rights. These indicators were selected by an international panel of academics, business people, philanthropists and peace institutions. The GPI is collated and calculated by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

As before, the GPI has been tested against a range of potential “drivers” or potential determinants of peace – including levels of democracy and transparency, education and material wellbeing. Now including 140 countries, the GPI brings a snapshot of relative peacefulness among nations while continuing to contribute to an understanding of what factors help create or sustain more peaceful societies.”

Iceland is the world’s most peaceful nation while the United States is ranked among the bottom third, according to a study released on Tuesday. The “Global Peace Index,” compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked the United States 97th out of 140 countries according to how peaceful they were domestically and how they interacted with the outside world. Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003, leading to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, ranked lowest on the index. Afghanistan, another country invaded by the United States this decade, was also in the bottom five, along with Sudan, Somalia and Israel.

Canada unveils a new, top medal for battlefield bravery

This is our newest top military honour and it is perfectly tied to the past and still represents Canada. This article is from CP. In the second image, the clasp represents a second award.  Queen Victoria’s original award was a hand crocheted scarf made by the Queen herself although not considered to be equivalent to the VC, a total of 8 scarves were awarded.

Canada had at least one recipient of the scarf, Private RR Thompson of the RCR was awarded  the Queen’s Scarf for bravery during the South African Campaign.

“By John Ward, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – What’s old is new again as a link with Canada’s military past and a symbol for the future was resurrected Friday when the Canadian Victoria Cross was officially unveiled.

The new decoration, formally unveiled by Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean, is almost identical to the original Victoria Cross. It has been modified slightly by adding fleurs de lis to thistle, shamrock and rose and changing the original English inscription to a Latin motto, Pro Valore. It retains its frowning lion and the royal crown.

It replaces a medal which for more than a century was the top bravery award available to soldiers, sailors and aircrew of the Commonwealth.

The medal, or VC, is a modest little thing about the size of a matchbook, a bronze cross with a brownish patina hanging from a bit of crimson ribbon. But it is the highest honour Canada can bestow for heroism in battle and even takes precedence over the top level of the Order of Canada.

The VC was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856 as a way to mark exceptional courage in the face of the enemy and was the first such medal available to all ranks, from private to general.

It is said that when she was shown the first version of the cross, bearing the inscription, For the Brave, she rejected it, saying: “All my soldiers are brave.”

The motto was amended to read: “For Valour.”

The VC had been in abeyance for a generation, as Canada worked out its own system of honours and bravery decorations. In the end, though, it was decided that the historical links were too strong to be broken completely and so a Canadianized cross was born.

“Canada wanted its own Victoria Cross, a cross that would still resemble the British cross but would better reflect who we are,” the Governor General said.

The links to the past remain even in the metal used to cast it.

Since 1914, British and Commonwealth VCs have been made from pieces of two old cannon captured in some long-forgotten war.

When Natural Resources Canada was creating a unique metal for the VC, it took a piece of this gunmetal, along with a copper medallion struck in 1867 to mark Confederation, plus native copper and other metals from across Canada and melted them into a special alloy, a sort of “tinny brass,” one metallurgist called it.

The smelt produced 65 kilograms of ingots, which were locked away and which will provide the raw material for the cross for centuries.

“I think it was important historically to keep the richness of the mystique of the decoration by keeping the historical link in the metal itself,” said air force Capt. Carl Gauthier of the Defence Department’s honours branch.

“It keeps that link to those Canadians that came before us wearing the uniform, yet it is a medal for the Canadian military of today and tomorrow.”

John Dutrizac of Natural Resources helped oversee the creation of the alloy and the casting of 20 of the new crosses. It was a tricky job, using a “lost wax” technique that dates back thousands of years.

“The casting of the thin section of the Victoria Cross is a challenge,” he said. “There’s a large reject rate where you don’t get complete filling of all the fine detail . . . you have to cast more blanks than you really expect.”

The cross is only awarded for the most conspicuous bravery, or a pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice in the presence of an enemy.

Of the 1,353 crosses ( and three bars given repeat winners) awarded since 1856, 81 went to members of the Canadian military. About a dozen others went to Canadians serving in the British forces or to people who later moved to Canada.

One of the very first was awarded to Alexander Dunn of Toronto, who was honoured for his actions with a British cavalry regiment in the famous 1856 charge of the Light Brigade.

The last Canadian to win the VC was Hampton Gray, a Canadian navy pilot honoured posthumously after sinking a Japanese destroyer in the dying days of the Second World War.

The last surviving Canadian holder of the VC, Ernest (Smokey) Smith, died in 2005.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the heroes of the Victoria Cross “enshrined the reputation of the Canadian soldier as second to none.”

He also noted that Canadian troops are once again risking their lives abroad and one of them will likely end up wearing the decoration.

“We rarely hear about their everyday heroics, but some day, somewhere, one of those men and women will do something so brave, so gallant, so exceptional that we will hear about it and he or she will join the legendary group of Canadian forces who wear the pride of a nation on their chest.”"