Since when did trespassing on Canadian territory become an issue? Anyone trepassing in our Arctic territory has all the rights of a Canadian resident under the Charter, if our detection ability is enhanced then most of the government funding will have to go to providing the foreigners with lawyers to protect their rights. Surely we're not going to point guns at them!!!!

Posted by: calgarian at December 22, 2005 05:43 PM

That was well written Angry. I enjoyed that.
I figure it will when pigs fly but hey you never know.

Posted by: Jeff Cosford at December 22, 2005 08:04 PM

Hans Island is the least of canada's problems.

From its post-colonial inception, the ‘Canada Project’ has been an Ontario Project with a quasi-democratic and skewed representative set-up that favours ‘national’ control by Ontario. With the skewed representation given the Ontario-dependant Maritimes, the uneasy ‘marriage’ of confederation with Quebec seemed like a possible way to ensure Ontario dominance over the new federal entity, where the West was considered little more than a resource feed for ‘Central Canada’.

Canada is unique indeed in having resisted essential democratic reform for so long, resulting in its sad history of remaining a virtual one party state, picking on so many people, for most of its existence. Compare this to Australia, where more muscular political dynamics have led to the democratization of both proportional representation and an elected Senate. In quaint backward Canada, such basic democratic reforms are still considered ‘revolutionary’ by the national pundit caste talking about everything except the basic lack of democracy in Canada. Even a set election date is considered mind-boggling by this pundit caste stirring the soup of the one party state way of doing things.

The vast fat of Canada’s incredible resource wealth has allowed this Ontario-based one party regime to keep plowing the waters of political stagnation at the expense of democracy, regional representation and balance, and national unity. It’s not Quebec or the West that threatens national unity. It’s the Ontario-based arrogance and corruption, with its myopic clinging to power, that has been the real threat to national unity for three decades now.

Ironically, the initial intent of Confederation, creating a true federation with a clear separation of powers, was closer to making a viable Canada, than what the one party state power-garnering Liberals have made of the country since. The present issue of the ‘fiscal imbalance’ means simply that the liberal federal one party state taxes Canadian citizens so much that the provinces have less room to keep up in milking the cow dried up by Ottawa. Ottawa then uses the excess money it sucked from taxpayers to encroach into Provincial jurisdictions via paternalistic deals promising money for matters under Provincial jurisdiction. Had Ottawa not sucked so much out of taxpayers, the provinces could have taxed sufficient funds to cover those matters under provincial jurisdiction.

Worse yet, regarding ‘fiscal imbalance’, every file under federal control is a mess of cronyism, incompetence and waste, and so the failures of these federal files impacting the ‘on the ground reality’ of lives in Provincial jurisdictions, means that the Provinces end up picking up the tab for these dismal Federal failures. One example of this is the federal DIA Apartheid file where, because apartheid cannot ever work, the provincial government ministries end up paying vast sums for the dysfunctions created by the inherent racism of federal maintenance of its apartheid department.

The Canada Project still has value, but it will only have a future under far-reaching modernizing democratic reform. Genuine democratic reform inevitably means an end to Ontario dominance over the Canada Project. It also means an end to the ingrained ‘entitlement’ attitude of the liberal one party state that has led to so much legal and illegal waste and corruption. Its difficult for people used to their own warm mud bath to let go of their lucrative comfort zone. Yet, only doing so with genuine democratic reform, will save Canada.

Posted by: edward mills at December 23, 2005 01:04 AM

Angry,
Even those old and creaky Coast Guard ice-breakers wouldn't be there if there wasn't a need to keep a shipping channel open to the Port of Montreal during late winter/early spring. Another subsidy to Quebec at the expense of the Ports of Halifax/St John who have excellent rail links to the middle of the continent.

Posted by: reido at December 23, 2005 10:04 AM