Let’s say I have a thousand dollars to spend on my house and my large property. The house is in bad need of repairs. I have relatives living in a cottage on the grounds that is in even worse shape: they have no running water there too. An uncle of mine is living on the streets, homeless. But what I decide to do with my thousand dollars is buy some guns and install a security system for my property. Does this make sense? Well, this is what Trudeau le Petit, PM of Canada has decided to do with his thousand dollars – sorry, your trillion dollars.
All those cosy little dinners with Obama must have given him delusions of grandeur. First Christia Freeland, the Foreign Affairs Minister, says Canada should step up to the plate, the plate evidently vacated by America, and then we hear, the following day, that we shall increase our defense spending by 70 percent. Not on my tax dollars, brother! Who exactly are we defending ourselves against with this massive increase? Ah, we find, a few days later, with effusive CBC coverage, it must be the Russians. For a detachment of Canadian troops is now settling comfortably in to protect the Latvians from the Bear. Many Latvians say this protection is unnecessary – the Bear is friendly. And, one is forced to think, how much protection will 600 Canadians afford against the Russian military?
This country ought to set a real example and adopt a pacifist constitution – save the trillion dollars for what is needed here – yet it won’t. You wonder if there are dreams of empire in the PM’s office – a sunny little empire not at all despotic. If wisdom reigned, these little corners of erstwhile empire would be left to sort out their own problems in their own time. We weren’t dragged into modernity by the scruff the neck, and nor should they be. But until we wake up to our interference in their worlds, they will be.
Paul William Roberts
