But last week, Fantino did something I personally didn’t think was possible. He made the CEO of Canada Post look like a new-age, sensitive guy.
Remember him, creator of the Deepak Chopra Workout for Seniors? Seniors and shut-ins love the end of home mail delivery, right? They can’t wait to exercise those sketchy knees and aching hips scaling snowdrifts in February to pick up their bills. Deepak said that’s what they told him, so it must be true, right?
In Fantino’s case, the veterans had a scheduled meeting with the minister and got stood up. Julian, you see, had important matters to attend to. He was at an important cabinet meeting that ran late. As a very important man, he simply had more important things to do than keep a date with a bunch of unimportant former soldiers who could be left waiting like unwanted job applicants and then sent packing down the Highway of Has-Beens.
When Fantino finally met them in a basement cubby-hole on Parliament Hill, it was to treat them like kids caught nicking stuff at Yorkdale Plaza. He took them by the ear and laid down the law — the decision to close seven of nine veterans’ offices across the country was final. Need help? Go to a Canada Service Centre and see if you can find someone trained to assist you. Feeling suicidal? Go online.
The very important man seemed to have forgotten that at least one of the veterans he stood up at that meeting was fighting fascists before Julian got his first pair of shiny boots. The minister was not talking to a bunch of office go-fers, but the senior partners of the Conservative party’s core support.
After all, who has squeezed more political advantage out of Canada’s military and its veterans than the Harper government? Remember Steve the Sniper, and Peter the Fighter Pilot in his plywood F-35?
Accordingly, the veterans talked to Fantino man-to-man, not lackey-to-minister. Fantino was told to his face that his message was “hogwash”. He was told to his face that he should resign or be fired. Leaving in a huff when one of the vets wagged a finger at him showed the men in the room what they were dealing with. Julian Fantino was an “ass” that should be grass.
It would seem Fantino’s trail of soot (that lovely phrase coined by Wayne Spear at the National Post) couldn’t get any blacker. But then came the apology. The minister owned up to his bad manners, apologized for the Il Duce tone he adopted when he finally showed. For a flickering moment Fantino seemed to get it. The whole thing, he admitted, had been “handled” wrong. The minister was sorry — for the bad public relations.
It didn’t take long for the mall cop to reappear. After issuing an apology that sits on the sincerity index somewhere between Bill Clinton on Monica and Rob Ford on everything, Fantino accused the veterans of being dupes of unions. The veterans not only didn’t know what was good for them (fewer offices means better service), they were stupid as well. This is an egomaniac’s idea of damage control.
Not so long ago, Julian Fantino would — after an episode like that — already be stuffed and mounted on the wall of shame in Stephen Harper’s political rec room beside Bev Oda and Maxime Bernier. Fantino’s behaviour would have long ago tripped Harper’s hair-trigger instinct to punish — because Harper is a politician who lives or dies by the loyalty of his base. The military vote is as important to him as it is to his Republican mentors in the United States.
And it’s not as if the facts in this matter are on the government’s side. Harper marketed the Afghanistan War — then forgot about its veterans.
Eight suicides in their ranks in a matter of weeks says something is dreadfully wrong. Where are the 447 mental health workers promised a decade ago when the government was busy promoting the war?
What happens if a soldier doesn’t have his ten years in before he suffers a “catastrophic” injury? Why can’t a vet be found who agrees with the new Veterans Charter and its one-time-only payment, intended to get the gum of a ruined life off the shoe of government?
Is this really the time to be slashing $35 million from the budget of Veterans Affairs?
As for veterans of older conflicts, the closure of most of the veterans’ offices can only have one, degrading message: That was then, this is now. Utterly disgraceful.
So what is Harper thinking? After enough time in office, the Stephen Harpers of the world begin to believe their own press releases. Their bathwater becomes champagne. They have been standing on the public’s shoulders for so long that they really believe they are tall and full of grace. Merely issuing the decree makes it so. Which is why, for now, the prime minister agrees the veterans offices must close. Just not enough people using them, blah, blah, blah.
Have you heard this line before? Didn’t this same politician say that not enough people were using those dusty old fisheries libraries, so they had to close? Truck the books to the dump. Of course, these closures have little to do with how many people were using the libraries. They had to do with a tired, empty and dishonest government putting all its eggs in the balanced budget basket.
And that’s the real Harper agenda. Don’t balance the budget by growing the economy. Do it by closing libraries, cutting mail delivery, reducing search-and-rescue services, closing scientific facilities, selling embassies and, yes, even shuttering highly specialized offices for dealing with very special people — Canada’s veterans. And then when you’ve done all that, hope and pray that no one will notice that you are asking to be returned to power in exchange for shrinking Canada like a cheap T-shirt.
Julian Fantino has gone along with Stephen Harper’s balanced budget caper at the expense of people who expected him to stand up for them — people who never should have to beg for help.
In the world where they earned those medals, it’s one thing to be missing in action — quite another to be a deserter.
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