A quest for relevance

With the Prime Minister returning to Ottawa on Saturday and convening an emergency cabinet meeting for Sunday, there is a hope that finally we’ll develop some kind of tangible response plan to the Southeast Asian catastrophe.

Sure we’ve pulled out the cheque book, annoucned a debt moratorium and pushed a few less than comfortable looking cabinet ministers in front of the cameras and promised to provide more assistance soon. But with a week already gone by since this horrible situation first developed, we’re still looking a little short on the whole response thing.

The latest promise is that if our reconnaissance team finds it useful we shall begin the process of sending our DART forces off to render aid. Considering the expected time frame of at least a week to get the force in place somewhere in the affected area, we’re decidedly looking to be a little slow on the “rapid deployment” part of the aid programs.

James Travers of The Toronto Star has provided an excellent breakdown of the complete sense of confusion that seemed to envelope "Official" Ottawa as this situation developed and raced beyond the grasp of our political leaders.

Completely unacceptable is the way this was handled by Ottawa. The last six days have not give Canadians much reassurance that their government has any concept as to how to best provide help when help is needed most. From the original offering of 4 million dollars (roughly 96 million less than was thrown away on sponsorgate, or God know how much frittered away on the gun registry) we have moved to the 40 million plateau and now find the government offering to match individual donations to registered charities. Fortunately Canadians have opened up their hearts and pockets and will surely hold the government to that promise. But some very important questions remain questions that the Prime Minister and his cabinet had best ponder with passion.

While Canada sat in neutral as far as tangible assistance goes (i.e.: actual resources and bodies to help) other countries were rushing to the scene. The Australians, the French, the Germans, to name a few, you watch the news you see their planes, they sent aid fast a small beginning but at least a beginning. The USA much kicked around in our country at times, has sent transport planes, naval ships and medical help to the hardest hit areas. While we were trying to find our feet, they had their assets on the scene. They are the world’s richest nation and obviously can do so much more, but they certainly shouldn’t be hearing any bleating from Canada about getting involved. To date one Canadian plane has arrived in the area, landing in Sri Lanka today. One plane! Yet in the Liberal caucus there was concern raised about joining in a coalition with George Bush to render assistance, rather than through the UN. Backbenchers expressed worry that we were getting to close to the American plan and not taking a more multi national approach. To those backbenchers a simple request just shut up. I’m pretty sure that the survivors in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other locales don’t give a hoot if George Bush, Kofi Annan or Paul Martin flies a plane of medicine in, as long as somebody sends the damn plane.

And that brings us to Canada’s non monetary options, other than cutting some cheques, at the moment we seem incapable of offering much more than hopeful thoughts and wishes. The simple fact is our military has been neglected to a state of pointlessness. The situation with DART only goes to highlight that sorry state of capability. In a normal response situation a much needed service such as DART should have been loaded up and in the air within 48 hours of the first word of the disaster. But Canada has no such capability to launch the program at all, our Hercules aircraft outdated, overworked and few in numbers just aren’t up to the task.

The time has come to provide the proper transport ability to respond when needed. There must be Transport planes such as the American Starlifter or the Antonov planes used by the Ukraine out there and available for purchase. The time has come for this government to write that cheque, never again must we be in the position of having to beg off of a task because we just can’t get there.

Another much needed item is some heavy lift vessels for the Navy; huge ships that can load up these mobile hospitals, vehicles and even armed tanks or recon vehicles that will provide much needed back up to forces dispatched to the worlds trouble spots. It will cost money, but I have a feeling that Canadians have been embarrassed by our weak efforts these past seven days, they’ll understand the need to spend the dollars to make sure we never find ourselves standing around wringing our hands because we just can’t get the job done.

There are disquieting reports that when we say that “DART was not requested” it was because we as a country requested that it NOT be requested. Hard to ever prove, but the simple fact that the DART service has never been put in use since 1999 lends more than a glimmer of truth to that idea.

Last year we chose not to send DART to Haiti due to the cost of putting it into motion. There must come a time when you either use it or disband it and no longer pretend that we can and will lend a hand when the time comes to step up.

The level of staffing in the Armed Forces must be increased immediately as well, we have far too long expected too much from a small but dedicated band of soldiers, sailors and air force personnel. No less than 100,000 members should be allocated to the Armed Forces, and not the pencil pushing, bureaucratic forces that we seem so over burdened with. Boots on the ground, sailors at sea and planes in the air that’s where we will find the best results.

It’s a simple question Mr. Martin needs to ask his cabinet colleagues, do they want Canada to be relevant anymore or should we just go on pretending that we can do jobs that we obviously can’t perform in any dependable fashion.

The world will be watching, because sadly we know that eventually another horrible disaster will strike somewhere in the world. The thing we need to ask ourselves today is simple. Are we prepared to step up and do our part, when the call comes. Or will we again see a repeat of the last seven days of dithering. Mr. Martin, it’s time to get back on your message and show that Canada will do far more than our share when the need is greatest. We used to make a difference, we used to respond promptly, and we used to feel proud. The time has come to stop with the used to be’s!