Last week Walt commented on the outrageous amount -- over a billion Canadian dollars or $950,000,000 in real money -- being spent on "security" for the upcoming G8 and G20 summits. The Harper government seems bent on enriching every last cop in Canada, as well as giving the boys lots of nice new toys -- including sound cannons -- to play with.
One writer estimates that every single attender at the conferences will be protected by no fewer than 17 "security personnel", all working overtime and being fed and housed (quite agreeably -- sirloin steaks, anyone?) on the taxpayers' dime. That's not counting Bollocks Obama, who brings his own security staff with him.
Unfortunately for Canadian taxpayers, there are other costs besides "security". Leeches ["media personnel", surely! ed.] from all over the world will be in attendance, and "we" want to make a good impression on them so they'll talk up Canada in their reports to the folks back home.
One of the nicest things Canada has to offer (other than the finest rye whiskey in the world) is its thousands upon thousands of clear blue lakes. "Blue lake and rocky shore / I will return once more..." A great many -- thousands! -- of said lakes are in the Muskoka district of central Ontario, which is where the G8 summit is being held. Too bad the world's media won't be able to see them.
That's right, gentle reader. The Harper government, in its wisdom (and also to give a little punt to its feckless Industry Minister, Tony Clement) located the G8 meeting at a resort near the small town of Huntsville (in Clement's riding), which simply can't accommodate the locust-like hordes of press people. They'll have to stay in Toronto.
But Clement and Harper know how to fix that. Instead of taking the international media to the lake, the clever Canadians will bring the lake to the media!
Walt wouldn't kid you! In spite of running the worst deficit in Canadian history, the government really is going to spend about $2 million (and counting) to build an artificial lake inside the Media Centre at the Canadian National Exhibition park. It will have a fake dock and a Jumbotron to show pictures of the lakes and shores of beautiful Muskoka.
Residents of Mr. Clement's riding are addressing a petition to their nerdy MP to thank him for preventing the invasion of the media reptiles. Taxpayers in the rest of the country are predictably less thrilled.
And the opposition parties are having a field day with yet another example of Tory extravagance and mismanagement. Liberal MP Mark Holland, noting that $20-million is being allocated to dancers, fiddlers and flowers, suggested the government would be better suited to “party planning for Lady Gaga” rather than holding a substantive summit.
Click here for a video clip of scathing comments from Mr. Holland and NDP leader Jack Layton, courtesy of Canadian Press and the Globe and Mail.
Don't check the calendar. It's not April 1st. This is not a joke, although Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said the lake "is one of the funniest things I have ever heard."
Toronto councillor Adam Vaughan told the Toronto Star, "If it wasn’t so serious, it would be hysterically funny.... The federal government refuses to compensate the businesses in my ward [the site of the G20] for damages, yet they’ll build a $2 million fake lake -- across from a real lake. As far as I’m concerned, they can jump in that lake!"
UPDATE: Minister of Industry and Stuff Clement Clement is now quoted as saying it's not a lake, it's a reflecting pool! Walt guesses he wants to be like the vampire's mirror -- no reflection on him!
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