Fri, October 15, 2004
Peacenik's price
By LINK BYFIELD
It will be some time before we hear what caused the submarine fire on HMCS Chicoutimi that killed Lieut. Chris Saunders, 32, father of two young kids.
All this week, Canadians have voiced sympathy for his widow and outrage at the federal government.
We can say that Chris Saunders died for his country, but we don't actually believe it.
Given Ottawa's perennial defence bumbling, we have to presume he died from the cheapskate incompetence of our own government.
Ottawa equips our soldiers, sailors and airmen with junk, and they die trying to make it work -- under-protected armoured vehicles, wrong-coloured uniforms, 40-year-old Sea Kings, out-of-date fighter jets, leaky submarines -- the story is forever the same.
At the same time, the feds spend billions every year for whole armies of slackers all over the country to do nothing and they call it "compassion."
The disabled submarine was purchased second-hand with three others from the Royal Navy in 1998, mostly through a cashless exchange for training facilities for the British Army.
The subs are all more than 10 years old.
That's three decades younger than our flying-coffin Sea Kings, but all four have reportedly been plagued by electrical malfunction, leaks and rust.
Not good enough for Britain, but good enough for Canada.
Good enough for Chris Saunders.
The Chicoutimi was cruising along at 20 knots on its first Canadian voyage, three days out from Scotland and bound for the naval base at Halifax.
The crippling electrical fire forced her to surface in heavy seas far off the northwest coast of Ireland.
Three injured crewmen were evacuated by British helicopters to Ireland the next day.
Saunders died, the other two are recovering.
Meanwhile, the remaining 54 crew were left to sit out a north Atlantic gale, helplessly drifting and rolling in 25-ft. waves for four or five days, too disabled to submerge, and with seas too rough to attach a rescue line from a British tug.
In one attempt, a crewman was swept overboard, but was saved by a Royal Navy diver.
I wonder what those crewmen thought of their country and their government as the cruel sea bashed and battered their 200-ft. vessel with weather she is supposed to avoid.
Apparently, their sister submarine, HMCS Corner Brook, had experienced a similar fire. They will have known that.
I wonder what they thought.
I know what I thought.
This is Trudeau's Canada.
This is peacenik Canada, which sneers at Uncle Sam while relying on him for defence.
Instead of a real navy, we have a pretend navy, in which the main hazard to our ships is that our obsolete helicopters will fall on them.
You might recall that on Feb. 27, 2003, bound for the Persian Gulf war zone, a Sea King was lifting off from the destroyer HMCS Iroquois, but seconds later crashed back on the deck.
Two men were injured, bringing the Sea King casualty count to 111. The Sea King death count, mercifully, remained at 10.
They blamed that one on pilot and mechanical service error -- just as when someone is stabbed to death you can blame it on heart failure.
The real cause of our ongoing military embarrassments is the utter contempt of federal governments, especially Liberal ones, since the 1960s for national defence.
For the past four decades, Ottawa has largely abandoned its constitutional duty to defend us, while it invaded the provincial sphere with loser entitlement programs such as the Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance, the Canada Health Act, welfare funding and regional job creation.
This whole approach is backwards.
In an always-hostile world, a national government should maintain as large and credible a defence deterrent as possible, while local governments keep their own internal social entitlements as small and affordable as is reasonable.
It's a question of balance.
The vain death at sea of Lieut. Saunders is more sad evidence that ours is woefully out of whack.
Peacenik's price
By LINK BYFIELD
It will be some time before we hear what caused the submarine fire on HMCS Chicoutimi that killed Lieut. Chris Saunders, 32, father of two young kids.
All this week, Canadians have voiced sympathy for his widow and outrage at the federal government.
We can say that Chris Saunders died for his country, but we don't actually believe it.
Given Ottawa's perennial defence bumbling, we have to presume he died from the cheapskate incompetence of our own government.
Ottawa equips our soldiers, sailors and airmen with junk, and they die trying to make it work -- under-protected armoured vehicles, wrong-coloured uniforms, 40-year-old Sea Kings, out-of-date fighter jets, leaky submarines -- the story is forever the same.
At the same time, the feds spend billions every year for whole armies of slackers all over the country to do nothing and they call it "compassion."
The disabled submarine was purchased second-hand with three others from the Royal Navy in 1998, mostly through a cashless exchange for training facilities for the British Army.
The subs are all more than 10 years old.
That's three decades younger than our flying-coffin Sea Kings, but all four have reportedly been plagued by electrical malfunction, leaks and rust.
Not good enough for Britain, but good enough for Canada.
Good enough for Chris Saunders.
The Chicoutimi was cruising along at 20 knots on its first Canadian voyage, three days out from Scotland and bound for the naval base at Halifax.
The crippling electrical fire forced her to surface in heavy seas far off the northwest coast of Ireland.
Three injured crewmen were evacuated by British helicopters to Ireland the next day.
Saunders died, the other two are recovering.
Meanwhile, the remaining 54 crew were left to sit out a north Atlantic gale, helplessly drifting and rolling in 25-ft. waves for four or five days, too disabled to submerge, and with seas too rough to attach a rescue line from a British tug.
In one attempt, a crewman was swept overboard, but was saved by a Royal Navy diver.
I wonder what those crewmen thought of their country and their government as the cruel sea bashed and battered their 200-ft. vessel with weather she is supposed to avoid.
Apparently, their sister submarine, HMCS Corner Brook, had experienced a similar fire. They will have known that.
I wonder what they thought.
I know what I thought.
This is Trudeau's Canada.
This is peacenik Canada, which sneers at Uncle Sam while relying on him for defence.
Instead of a real navy, we have a pretend navy, in which the main hazard to our ships is that our obsolete helicopters will fall on them.
You might recall that on Feb. 27, 2003, bound for the Persian Gulf war zone, a Sea King was lifting off from the destroyer HMCS Iroquois, but seconds later crashed back on the deck.
Two men were injured, bringing the Sea King casualty count to 111. The Sea King death count, mercifully, remained at 10.
They blamed that one on pilot and mechanical service error -- just as when someone is stabbed to death you can blame it on heart failure.
The real cause of our ongoing military embarrassments is the utter contempt of federal governments, especially Liberal ones, since the 1960s for national defence.
For the past four decades, Ottawa has largely abandoned its constitutional duty to defend us, while it invaded the provincial sphere with loser entitlement programs such as the Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance, the Canada Health Act, welfare funding and regional job creation.
This whole approach is backwards.
In an always-hostile world, a national government should maintain as large and credible a defence deterrent as possible, while local governments keep their own internal social entitlements as small and affordable as is reasonable.
It's a question of balance.
The vain death at sea of Lieut. Saunders is more sad evidence that ours is woefully out of whack.
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