Instapundit( and lgf) are on the case of

major media putting people in harm's way unnecessarily

Police Week 2005-to those who serve on our behalf- many thanks!!

Canadians are grateful to the dedicated service of our law enforcement agencies since
they are prepared to lay down their lives to protect Canadians as unfortunately we've seen again this year. However it would be nice if the government dispatched with its smoke and mirrors campaign of saying that all is under control. The various agencies are desperately short of manpower. Demands after 9/11 for their services have been increased by at least 10% which would mean the RCMP would need at least an additional minimum 2000 officers just for that alone. The government says that they have put $10 billion into security. 2000 officers would cost about $ $200 million/yr. How many have actually been hired with that $10 billion? It's not like the government is short of money or anything as we've seen recently.

We have thousands of dedicated officers who do an outstanding job every day, just look at the effort Toronto Police and other law enforcement agencies put into finding the girl found on a child porn site on the internet. Instead of hollow platitudes, it might be an idea if the government gave them the necessary manpower needed to protect Canadians instead of just talking about it.



http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/080_2003-03-28/han080_1230-e.htm

As the CPA pointed out in its fact sheet, the 2002 federal budget allotted
> several millions of dollars in new spending for national security. However,
> only $576 million spread over six years was dedicated funding allotted to
> the RCMP. This amounted to only $87 million per year. Translated into human
> resources, it allowed for the hiring of only 446 full time employees for the
> RCMP, not over this year, not over next year, but over the next six years.
>
> Need I remind the government that its slash and gouging of the RCMP that
> occurred in 1993 resulted in 2,200 positions being lost, a loss that has
> never been recouped despite years of protests and requests for increased
> spending.
>
> Last year the commissioner of the RCMP openly admitted that 2,000 RCMP
> officers were withdrawn from other enforcement duties to respond to the
> terrorism crisis. These officers were taken from assignments previously
> considered to be priorities, such as fighting organized crime and providing
> frontline policing in Canadian communities. Many of those jobs were left
> unattended. In the commissioner's own words these files were “put on the
> back burner” while the RCMP attempted to apprehend terrorists suspected of
> using this country as a staging ground.
>
> According to the CPA, of the complement of approximately 15,000 RCMP
> officers, 9,000 were assigned to municipal and provincial contracting
> responsibilities. Of the remaining 6,000, 2,000 or one-third of them were
> taken from other law enforcement responsibilities and reassigned to the
> terrorism file.
>
> Minimally, 2,000 additional officers are needed to service the
> deficiencies that are being felt the hardest at the community level. The
> RCMP provides federal policing to all Canadians as well as services under
> contracts to all provinces, except Ontario and Quebec, the three
> territories, 200 municipalities, and more than 190 first nations
> communities.
>

In the next election the real people will be calling the shots -not the pundits and not the pollsters

Where were the media when the abuses were taking place? Waiting for the next government "leak"? Where were Canada's elite investigative journalists? Where is Andrew McIntosh?This abuse has been going on for years while the media were sleeping.

Thanks to the Auditor-Genral and Justice Gomery , Canadians now know how their money was being abused.Anybody who thinks the sponsorship was the only irregularity going on at PWGS is naive. The Star had just one deal in the paper yesterday where Crown assets were sold for $1.If the media had any true backbone , they would be doing spot checks of "deals" across the country. Guess they didn't have time since most of the time they were labelling Harper "scary". What's scary is that the media in Canada have abandoned any notion of informing the taxpayers on what's really going on behind the scenes in Canada.Taxpayers don't need their media to act as cheerleaders for the government, they require them to act as the devil's advocate for them.

your taxes went to their friends

Harper's oratory that the media semed to miss

"While the rest of Canada is striving to earn an honest living, support their families and meet their obligations, including paying income tax, we can see these Liberal organizers and their friends trying to remember whether they received their dirty money in $20s or $100s," quipped Harper.

Harper then pointed out how Prime Minister Paul Martin vowed in February 2004 that he would return "every penny of dirty money," but now we're hearing a different story.

"The Liberal party fought the 1997 and 2000 elections with dirty money. This is a fact. Since the Liberals did not return any of the money in 2004, they fought the last election with dirty money, and now it looks, in violation of an order of the House, as though they are willing to fight a fourth straight election with money that has been stolen from the Canadian taxpayers."

John Crosbie on Bananada (ht Kate)

"Two months ago, Martin forced his finance minister, Ralph Goodale, to bring in a budget reversing the canons of fiscal soundness Martin himself practised under Jean Chretien. Goodale's original budget included a 10% boost in federal spending, the largest increase since 1973-74, when Pierre Trudeau accepted a Liberal-NDP coalition. Martin's deal with the NDP for $4.6 billion in new spending brought the increase to 12%. The latest spending spree puts it over 15%.

In another Mugabe-inspired parliamentary violation last week, Goodale tabled a special spending bill based on the Layton-Martin budget agreement. This legislation provides for a $4.5-billion slush fund that government can dip into at will without parliamentary approval. As former finance official Don Drummond said, "For years government has wanted an instrument that would allow it to allocate spending without having to say what it's for. This act will do it."

More on Newsweek's mea culpa via Instapundit.com

Austin Bay also weighs in

History may see Newsweek’s fatal “Koran flushing” story as the US press’ Abu Ghraib.

Under any circumstances, Newsweek’s flagrant, tragic error is an error a long-time-coming. The magazine’s “apology” doesn’t begin to account for the damage. [The apology appears at the end of this post. Call the mea culpa “News Weak."]