Linda Keen... Yippee!

You go girl.

Linda Keen, deposed President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, is suing the Federal Government to get her job back.

While she is at it, she should sue Gary Lunn for being stupid, PM Harper for being arrogant and the rest of Canada's Greatest Government (TM) for just being.

Customs/Border Services is a joke

I need to send a piece of equipment to the US for fixing. I just past my fourth hour of trying to figure out the frigging documentation needed to get it there. Customs Services, my cat's butt. There are no services there, just people with nice uniforms to match their stunned looks when you ask them a question. What, am I speaking a foreign language? Last time I looked English was a language used in Canada. Why the stunned look?

Free Trade - my mother's fanny. The paperwork is stupid... the charges ridiculous and the service is virtually non-existent.

You know what its all about, don't you? It is all about the shipper who are also brokers. Brokerage is a licence to print money and legal extortion. If they opened up the border for the free movement of goods, especially stuff that is coming back after being fixed, the brokers would be the losers. And we can't have that, now can we?

The custom documents should read:

Who's sending it?
Who's getting it?
What is it?
Where did it originate?
What is it worth?
Is it a one way transit or is it being returned?

With that information of precious Customs Services people can either stamp it cleared or open it up to check for smuggled fruit.

Ottawa City Councillor John Baird, MP PC

Separated at birth

Someone on the hill just noticed that John "the screamer" Baird, Federal Minister of All Things that Glow Green, may have interfered in a process at Ottawa City Council in 2006; to whit, he suspended federal funding of a municipal project that he was told not to like. And he did this during the municipal election campaign. Not only that but he freely distributed the contents of a confidential agreement between the city and a private vendor.

We are, of course, talking about the North-South Light Rail project.

Let's get a few things straight. The decision on Light Rail was a municipal one. The federal funding of the project had already been approved, as was provincial funding. Baird had no say in the project.

Let's also understand that the project was the pet child of the then-mayor Chiarreli, who was a former Liberal MPP; and that he was being challenged by a Conservative Party member O'Brien. O'Brien won the race and now the vendor (Seimans) is suing the city for its first born for cancelling the contract and possibly breaking the confidentiality of the contract.

It was O'Brien who asked Baird to review the contract. This is the same Mayor O'Brien that has been charged with influence peddling during the same election; a charge that also has a Baird involvement.

One more example of the transparency and public discourse from Canada's Greatest Government(TM).

Did Lewis make a mistake?

Say it isn't so. Lewis MacKenzie, General to the stars and a man who have never met a microphone he didn't want to drone into, made a mistake by suggesting that 10,000 more NATO troops are needed in Kandahar, Afghanistan?

He stated this in a interview with the precious CFRA tyke, Michael Harris., last week. He then sent Mikey a memo the next day correcting himself by saying that the 10,000 was for all of Afghanistan. Only 3,000 more are needed in Kandahar, where all the real fighting is.

Two problems, Lew. Why do you need 7,000 more in the relatively tranquil north? Also, if you send 3,000 more troops in to help out the Canadians in the already target rich south, what would you do with them that you cannot do with the current contingent?

I suggest, General Lew, that you read the book, Utility of Force, written by your British peer, General Rupert Smith. Smith talks about war amongst the people, as he describes Afghanistan and Iraq. He maintains that, when you fight a war amongst the people, rather than an industrial war, the key is not bulk; the key is intelligence and stealth. Rather than 3,000 more troops, let's send in 3,000 sneaks and spooks to infiltrate the local population and ferret out where the insurgents are and what they are doing.

Also, with respect to rigid withdrawal time frames as advocated by the NDP and the Bloc, I urge the Liberals to back a continuation of the mission, for now, with the proviso that Harper, MacKay and Hillier read Smith's book. The Taliwackers in Afghanistan are in no hurry to conclude the strife. To pull out before we make some real progress would be an error.

Privatize AECL?

I wonder if there is any truth to the rumour floating around that Minister of Woodworking, Gary Lunn, is shopping AECL around to General Electric or even France's Areva Group? It could explain why Lunn recently jumped all over Linda Keen at CNSC and protected the asses over at AECL.

GE are biggies in the nuclear world. It makes sense that they would want AECL, considering that AECL has 22 installations around the world and all their research is paid for by the Canadian people.

It would not look too good to the GE folks if AECL was blamed for the isotope fiasco. Keen was a opportune target.

By the way, this sell off idea first surfaced in the Toronto Star back in May, 2007, well before the isotope misunderstanding.

But GE folks are not stupid. I wonder if they have used the isotope misunderstanding to get the price down or even walk away from the rotting mess.

You can be sure that Lunn and Harper will find a way to blame it on the Liberals.