The Conservatives had been caught lying so many times about the doomed project, it was thought by some that Alexander might at least stop his shameless cheerleading for it at family gatherings. He didn’t, so he got his miniature F-35 — a gentle rebuff from relatives tired of tall tales.
Those with good memories will recall that Alexander blamed the whole controversy about the ruinously expensive experimental aircraft on the media. That was rich. The Harper government had lied about the cost of the jets and the progress of the project, and about having a ‘contract’ in the House of Commons. They repeated those whoppers during the 2011 general election campaign.
To Alexander, the problem with the F-35 wasn’t the horrible facts of the file. The problem was bad publicity — or what used to be known as ‘truth’ in the days before Harperspeak.
Now Alexander is back blaming the media again. This time he can’t just hang up on journalists asking inconvenient questions about nauseating, non-stop propaganda. This time, he faces the whirlwind. Hardly anyone can imagine a $15 billion lie, or get worked up by a rude cabinet minister in a snit.
But everyone — including those in the Conservative party base — responds to the sight of a 3-year-old child lying dead on the sand. Alan Kurdi drowned, along with his mother Rehan, brother Galip, and eight others in a desperate attempt to escape the refugee debacle in Syria by boat.
They’re taking to calling refugees ‘migrants’ these days. I worry about that. But by any other name that photo — that motionless little body — would have rocked the world. What are we becoming?
Just before the story broke, Chris Alexander was on CBC extolling the Harper government’s superlative record on human rights and humanitarian aid. The baloney meter started to smoke. I waited for the Exorcist moment when his head would start spinning around.
Listening to the minister pile up superlatives on the Harper government’s deplorable human rights record — including with First Nations peoples in this country — was like listening to Donald Trump introduce himself. Believing his line would mean forgetting how this ‘compassionate’ clan of Conservatives refused to issue visas for injured kids from Gaza who wanted to come to Canada for medical care.
This was the same pack of philanthropists who didn’t want to extend medical coverage to refugees in Canada, forcing Canadian doctors to demonstrate in front of Parliament.
These are the same civil rights champions who have allowed, through the passage of Bill C-51, the use of evidence obtained by torture in secret security certificate proceedings — despite the fact that the use of information obtained through torture is against both the Criminal Code of Canada and the UN Convention Against Torture.
Finally, Rosie Barton threw a nice cold glass of holy water in Alexander’s face and he deflated like a cheap balloon.
But then the second shoe dropped. It turned out that the drowned child was trying to get to Canada. And according to NDP MP Fin Donnelly, Chris Alexander knew that — because Donnelly hand-delivered the file on the Kurdi family to Alexander himself.
On Thursday afternoon, Alexander’s department asserted that the boy’s family hadn’t actually made a formal application for asylum. But forget the bureaucratic noise. Here are the questions Alexander must answer. Did the minister look into the matter as he promised the NDP? What exactly did he do, what steps did he take to assess their situation? Where exactly was the personal touch? Or did he just toss the whole thing into his out-basket the moment he got back to the bunker?
Did Alexander look into the matter? If so, why would he have to break off his re-election campaign to return to Ottawa to check the ‘facts’ of the case?
Surely under that scenario, he would have known them already. All of which leads to the more likely conclusion that Alexander was blowing smoke with Donnelly, that he didn’t bother getting involved and dumped the file on staff at the first opportunity.
Chris Alexander is not back in Ottawa checking on the details of the Kurdis’ refugee application. Nor is he there primarily to get an update on the gigantic ‘migrant’ problem building on the borders of Europe. He is there to fashion damage control, to come up with cover for what on the face of it is a classic case of an epic bullshitter caught out in a partisan rant by events beyond his control.
But, of course, it’s the media’s fault.
Chris Alexander is in Ottawa for one thing and one thing only: to get his staff to fashion a survival narrative for a politician who can’t be seen in public until he has one. The dead children’s father, Abdullah Kurdi, has reportedly declined an offer of Canadian citizenship — while Alexander’s department denies any such offer was made. For now, Alexander is a dead man walking — crocodile tears and all.
My guess would be Alexander the Not So Great will blame another government’s murky rules for Canada’s rejection of the family’s refugee application. He will bury his next interviewer in statistics showing that Canada is the greatest friend of refugees in the known universe, let alone the G-7. And he will of course lay the blame where it really belongs, on ISIS, the greatest threat to civilization, blah, blah, blah … parroting his master’s voice until the bitter end.
And against all that, against all the armour that a captive bureaucracy can supply … a photograph of a small child washed up on a beach like a warning.
Not even Richard Nixon could hide from Kim Phuc. How can Chris Alexander hide from Alan Kurdi?
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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