You’d think I was talking about a liberal government. You’d be wrong. Well actually hang on here, maybe I’m the one who is confused…
It’s no wonder liberals and other leftists were so dumbfounded when conservatives like me—oh and also the border guards themselves who know even better than me—demanded, over the past few years, that border guards be armed with actual loaded guns (what you liberals stridently label as George Bush and John Wayne and American cowboy-style), in an effort to do the unthinkable in Canada: protect our nation. With an aggressive stance rather than as an effeminate flower-holding smiley-face-wearing peacenik, Layton’s you’ve got to be kidding party-style. With big huge loaded guns. In Canada.
This would be not unlike national security personnel (border guards et al) in most every sensible country on the face of the earth, but “No!”, the various liberal-leftists cried! “They’re just there to collect more yummy taxes for ‘Canada’s working families’! Those clerks—uh, I mean guards—should not be armed! They’re Canadian! Vote liberal!”.
Dateline: March 27 2007, a year after the Conservatives gained power.
The all-party Senate security committee builds on a 2005 report (aptly and craftily named “BORDERLINE INSECURE”) and suggests (among many other things that I’ve mentioned on these pages which were all obvious to all conservatives) that perhaps it might be a good idea to adopt the idea (long touted by conservatives) that … just maybe … the prime responsibility of national governments never was and still isn’t inventing and then collecting ever increasingly more onerous taxes of every description—some hideously ridiculous—from already overtaxed citizens, so that they in government can spend what used to be the citizens’ cash for them instead—mostly on ridiculous self-perpetuating state-reliance-building and wrong-headed family-and-self-reliance-killing social programs—in the government’s utterly wrong-headed belief that the citizens are too stupid to spend their own money themselves.
Crazy talk: Maybe the government should be there to, I dunno, protect our nation’s borders from terrorists, gun-runners, drug smugglers, criminals, illegal immigrants, and other ne’er-do-wells (or what liberals call misunderstood candidates for social programs following their “re-integration into society”).
The Senate report suggests that at the front lines of our national security, our border, the border guards are spending too much time not actually guarding, but instead ensuring that those sacred big-government taxes are collected—minuscule taxes on the trinkets citizens buy in their little family shopping excursions down south in the family car. Yes folks, re-entry by our nation’s citizens, into their own country, is being hampered not by onerous security checks, but by our national security personnel collecting petty taxes —not unlike supermarket clerks at grocery stores.
On some levels, basic national security is still an afterthought for our government.
The Globe and Mail reports,
The committee, headed by Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, says “border crossings between Canada and the United States have placed far too much focus on collecting customs revenues and not nearly enough focus on keeping people and goods out of Canada that endanger Canadians.”
Well sorry, but that’s what we conservatives have said for years. Even the Conservative Party said that soon after they were formed. So you’d be forgiven for wondering what happened. Perhaps they need another year before they start to defend Canada. After all, women’s centers need to be funded, and environuts, and then there’s the various national daycare and early learning strategies… and increased healthcare funding… and so much more spending.
The Globe and Mail report on the report went on with things that I thought the Conservatives were way on top of years ago—at least they were complaining about these things years ago:
The panel also recommends:
• Speeding up the process of arming border guards. Current plans call for a 10-year training and equipping phase-in period.
• Greatly increase staffing levels of border officers.
• Improve the electronic technology at border points so officers can more quickly identify individuals and vehicles.
• Improve the documentation needed to enter Canada and standardize such documentation with the United States.
Perhaps like traditional marriage, national security is now too radical and right-wing a concept for Canadians to cotton onto.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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