Harper's New Legacy : Be Chinese.

by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

The light of truth is blinding...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has left a new legacy for Canadians:  Become Chinese

We will soon be living in Chinada and speaking Mandarin. 
We won't have to worry about the well-being of Canadians or our historical friends the Americans on the world's longest undefended border. 
We won't have to worry about  Quebec separatists. 
We won't have to worry about  speaking Quebecois 
We won't have to wonder  if our flag has a maple leaf.   Why?
It will all be Chinese. 

 In an 'oil deal' that 99.9%  of  logical, thinking Canadians did not want, China's state-owned oil giant CNOOC  has been allowed to take over Canada's Nexen, a $15B  mistake.  A huge swath of the Canadian oil sands will now be under the control of the Chinese government.

We cannot believe our eyes. This decision casts shame on the "Harper government" --And yes, let us, in this instance, call it what it IS...the "Harper government".  It certainly does not represent the interest of Canadians.
 
Is this deal good for Canada?  NO.  Let us exclude the opinions of short-sighted politicians with their own self-serving agenda,  greedy oil barons and foreign national communists alike, who will make billions of dollars.
Let us totally ignore  the Alberta "government" , which is blinded and  inebriated by oil fumes and doesn't  give a royal crap what they do as long as they make money from dirty oil at any environmental cost, prancing in delight at the prospect of big piles of money, regardless of the iron-clad guarantee of  an unprecedented  environmental disaster the size of Nova Scotia.

The question should be: 

Since when is it in the interest of Canadians to sell control of Canadian resources to a foreign Communist nation?  
What is this government up to?   Should we "follow the money?"  The truth always comes out. 
The approval of the Nexen-CNOOC deal will change Canada forever.

This huge mistake  is reminiscent of a previous huge mistake  by the "Diefenbaker Conservatives"   to kill off the AVRO ARROW -an incredibly bad error in judgment and a  decision that destroyed Canada's huge technological lead in the aviation industry.
This huge mistake  is also reminiscent of another HUGE mistake by the "Mulroney Conservatives", the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which made billions of dollars for big Corporate North America, but did nothing for ordinary Canadians. Canadians continue to pay incredibly high prices for comparable products. 

NO disrespect, but all Canadians should be asking this question: 

   Like the "Diefenbaker Government",  why is this Harper Conservative "government" so short-sighted? 

Why do  arrogant Conservative governments repeatedly make basic, essential errors in government that ARE  huge mistakes,  unmitigated disasters with bad long-term consequences?

It seems only Stephen Harper himself could make a decision as bad as John Diefenbaker's  AVRO Arrow decision was.     
 To wit:  It will now cost  Canadians  $60B to "buy" jet fighters that still cannot out-perform the highly advanced, high-performance Avro Arrow scrapped some 50 years ago. 
John Diefenbaker sold out to the USA aviation industry, and now Stephen Harper somehow appears to believe  it's a fine idea to allow a sell-out of Canadian resources to China--at any cost.

A couple of days ago I was walking around in "Canadian"  Tire, a 'big' Canadian retailer that now sells everything made in  China.
 No matter what I picked up to look at, it was "Made in China". From baking pans to dishes to appliances to tools. Soft goods, hardware, everything in between. "Made in China". Canada --has now been 'made by China" but let us not be TOO impolite.

North America has lost the ability to produce anything.  How sad for Canadians. How sad for North America. It's NOT for lack of rich people or a dearth of investment money in Canada or the USA. Follow the money. It is going offshore to Asia.

Increasingly, little of anything is now manufactured in North America because "big Corporate North America"  and the rich can make bigger profits  and more money outsourcing  in China--where virtual slave labour,  uneducated people, being paid  slave labour rates, and living in poverty --under iron-fisted Communist rule-- are the  labour force of choice.There are virtually NO environmental regulations in China, as witnessed by the horrific, stifling and deadly pollution that is everywhere.

With the CNOOC takeover of Canadian oil approved,  Harper's recently gutted environmental rules will come in handy to China. Environmental concerns will be ignored "the Chinese -Harper way"  
Pollution in, and  destruction of Canada's north  is now assured to be the planet's biggest environmental disaster. 

CNOOC will also  "conveniently"  now dictate the necessity of construction of the Northern Gateway Pipeline through the pristine BC coast line --an earthquake prone area.  Our "trusted Conservative politicians" who have known this from the very start will 'throw up their hands like foolish children and say "Well, what can we do, it's "our" industry"...... and "acquiesce smugly" -- knowing they had this planned all along.

Now that the deal is approved, the government "swears" there won't be any more deals like these?  We know better.   ALL Canadians know that Conservatives, like most politicians,  say what is convenient  to their egos and pockets at the time. The truth eventually proves them to be blatant liars and deceivers and as such, unfit to govern. We "wrested concessions from China in this deal?? Let us now laugh in disbelief at the blatant lies.

China is already laughing;  they will also laugh and walk away from the unprecedented ecological disaster and Canada will be without remedy after the oil sands resources are depleted, and  China will 'conveniently' move on to target other resources.
 
This is a sad day for Canada.   Harper's new 'legacy'. Be Chinese. Be happy. be stupid. Shop. Pat ourselves on the head. 
Let the government run the important things".

We are far too polite to say what should be said.

The fact is, this decision is a betrayal of the trust of Canadians.
This is not only an issue of sovereignty over Canadian resources,  it is an issue of lack of common sense  and short-sighted, very  poor governance.

Stephen Harper and  the  Harper Government" must resign in shame. We no longer have any confidence in this government. This agreement must be reversed.


Is that Incoming I hear?

Does This Thing Really Fly?

Avro ARROW CF105 Fighter 1959                                                             photo courtesy of ArtEyePhoto

I would not care to have the reader  believe that Incoming Bytes  is eternally earth-bound and contains only  skepticism or criticism,  or that it is  intended  to be so at all times, but the astute reader will also recognize  with incoming news articles, bits and bytes  of information,  timing is everything.  Specific commentary is often better placed immediately.  So be it today.  Recent  announcement by Ottawa that Pratt & Whitney is being loaned $300 million taxpayer dollars  “to create and maintain” jobs is worthy of just that commentary,  and more.

Money itself is not the issue. Governments do waste money.  The loan itself,  funded by the taxpayer, is not the issue.   It is mere peanuts compared to the unnecessary  billion-dollar long gun registry, the unnecessary billion-dollar G-20 Summit security bill, and  other just-as-creative but  unnecessary  government incentives, ad nauseam.  

Don’t misunderstand,  most Canadians will applaud the idea and agree  the ‘creation and maintenance of jobs” is a wonderful thing,  indeed, it is a worthy goal and mandate of any government,  but in recalling the past and comparing it to the present, I do wonder. The memory is long, and curiosity often gets the better of me.    The shadows of political backtracking, inconsistency,   non-transparency, inexplicable decisions,  foolishness and bureaucratic hypocrisy are seemingly brought to the fore.

 In many  ways it is a  shame that the modern Wikileaks was not fully functional in 1959.   That was the year the AVRO  Arrow  was shot down, not by enemy fighters or  terrorists, but  by  Canada’s own slightly frumpy  job-maker and his helpers   who  seemingly  shot Canada  squarely in the foot as they killed off a potential  multi-trillion dollar industry.  Fifty-one years after the AVRO Arrow, -- are the Conservatives changing their minds?  How about some tongue-in-the-cheek?  Can this bird fly?  The Arrow  was  more than capable of flight at Mach 2.0 at 50,000 ft.
 
For anyone that has any meaningful  recollection of the aircraft industry in Canada, today’s  announcement must bring to mind the absolute contradiction in government policy  with the willful and unprecedented  destruction of the aircraft industry by the same  Conservative government on February 20th, 1959 .

On that date, the highly successful Canadian aircraft and aerospace industry was dealt a mortal blow, as the highly advanced CF-105 AVRO  Arrow fighter  program was scrapped  with little notice,and seemingly little justification then, or since that sad event.

 That government decision was disastrous.   Fourteen thousand aircraft workers, designers, aerospace engineers and hundreds of thousands of spin-off jobs  disappeared overnight, as  successfully-tested prototypes of the  Arrows on the tarmac at A.V. Roe   were ordered quickly chopped into little pieces to be sent for scrap metal and engineering drawings and plans were ordered destroyed. Arrow engineers quickly drifted south to the US industry.

The ARROW was proven to be a technically-advanced,  performance-superior aircraft that was faster, equipped with weaponry that is still used today, and it’s performance  remained  unequaled by any foreign fighter aircraft until the mid-1980's.   With a substantial  market potential for both the aircraft itself and the powerful, all-Canadian Iroquois engine,  the aircraft was all-Canadian and the Canadian aerospace industry was totally viable until the then Prime-Minister of Canada,   John Diefenbaker and his Conservative government shot it down, --if only to make  the American aerospace industry successful instead.
 What happened, and what was the REAL reason?  Worse yet,  at what cost was such an arbitrary, foolish decision made?
Just for the record, Pratt& Whitney is reportedly using that loan to employ 200 more engineers to develop a lighter, more powerful engine, possibly even  to be used in the “new”  F-35's Canada will be purchasing. 
Go figure. 
Maybe the backwash from that  governmental Arrow  boo-boo has finally caught up.  Extremely  expensive American  F-35's will now be purchased from the US  Aerospace industry to replace the prohibitively expensive but aging  American F-18's previously purchased from the US Aerospace industry.  Is there any lesson to be observed here?
Will this bird fly, or is the latest loan an official  admission that the fateful  decision made 51 years ago to kill the Arrow  was a “mistake” and has  finally come home to roost?