And I'm not sure quite how I feel about it. On the one hand, its stirring up just this kind of dissatisfaction within the Conservative base that justifies, politically, making the lack of abortion funding in the gov's G8 Maternal Health initiative an issue.
On the other hand, Oda's latest statement shows--here, and in the case of the Tamil Migrants, and in the case of the flying, veiled Muslim women--that the Harper government is capable of doing the right thing once they've achieved a certain temporal distance from their own rhetoric. Because, in the end, after spouting alarmist nonsense, the processing of Sun Sea refugees has by all accounts gone forward in an exemplary (meaning humane) fashion. And after pandering to the Sun Media crowd for a couple of days, the nonsense about possible Muslim terrorists flying Air Canada while veiled has been allowed to die away (because, seriously, how could having terrorists on board make an experience with Air Canada significantly more crappy?).
Though I disagree with Wells: the CLC response to Bev's back-peddling demonstrates that the SoCons will not let Harper and Co. off lightly for this most recent display of human decency.
And, more importantly, if you think that Canada's response to refugee ships might be a little more firm, or if you think that you really should have to match your face to some piece of photo ID before boarding an airplane in our country, this whole Harper gov. tactic of masking a commitment to the status quo behind inflammatory rhetoric trivializes your debating points.
3 comments:
Um, PMO dismissed Oda's statements, saying that there has been no policy change...
That was quick!
"the Harper government is capable of doing the right thing once they've achieved a certain temporal distance from their own rhetoric."
That's basically correct. The rhetoric is just for the crazies, at least most of the time. And they stop paying attention after a while.
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