Everybody loves a man (and woman) in uniform

I had the chance to visit the Liberal Party of Canada’s website yesterday, all part of my self assigned tasks of being a good blogger, always on the lookout for interesting items to pass along to the occasional browser of this portal.

While I was busy logging onto the Gritland site, up popped their very informative homepage, complete with a banner picture of a polar bear, a truly great Canadian vision if ever there was one. Nothing says the true north strong and free like a huge honking Bear looking around the vast expanse, no doubt ready to chow down on some unsuspecting seal (Take that McCartney).

As I continued exploring the wonders of the Liberals heading to convention, I would occasionally gravitate back to the home page and started to notice that those banner pages were changing every time I revisited. A truly neat trick for sure, as any number of great Canadian images can be sent out the interested visitor.

There was Lester Pearson (a Liberal saint), a fisherman (how did those cod and salmon policies work out anyways), a farmer (farm policies over the years were always a crowd pleaser), as well as the obligatory vision of assorted landscapes and wildlife including the Beaver (now that's Canada!).

Click again and look there's Bill Graham with Al Gore they're locked deep into some kind of earnest discussion on climate change we bet (this must be the see we know the right people picture I guess).

And hey, what's this, there are the Canadian Forces! They make for a sturdy looking group of men and women standing at attention offering up their salutes. Maybe honouring a visiting general, maybe as a tribute to Canada as the flag is raised, or maybe as the troops heard word of the latest Liberal policy initiative. Click again and there’s another troop of soldiers doing good deeds in some far off land on behalf of Canada. If you didn’t know better you would have thought that you had stumbled across a George W. Bush website, such is the amount of military content.

Now I share in the Liberal parties pride in our Canadian Forces, they have done a marvelous job under rather stressful times, especially considereing how under equipped and under manned they have been over the years. Especially when you think back to those halcyon Liberal years, you remember those, when the Forces were relegated to the back of the procurement lines while the Liberals were busy buying sponsorship ads in Quebec, funding many other questionable other projects and generally getting caught up in a variety of boondoggles, that well, frankly boggled the mind.

To my memory, at the time of the Liberal reign of the seventies, eighties, nineties and even into the millennium the Armed Forces never quite seemed to be a high priority to the government of the day, whatever the day. There are countless tales of cancelled helicopter projects, ancient equipment that constantly would break down and rarely was replaced and too few troops, for too many tasks. The Forces at times seemed to be the living breathing example of an inconvenient truth (What the hell if they can use Al Gore, so can I) of having a nation that at times needs to decide to re-equip its militarily, a decision that in the past they more often than not chose not to make.

It’s almost unseemly as they try to piggy back on the hard work of the troops now, considering their lukewarm endorsement of them over the years. We trust that with this newfound interest in our military forces, that this week’s Liberal convention will lay out a detailed plan of attack as to how to rebuild, re-equip and give the Forces the long over due respect they truly deserve.

If they can find the time to bask in the glow of their work of today, they can get down to the job of making sure they have the tools to do the jobs that provide for the photo ops!