Monday, June 23, 2008

Harper’s “Secrecy-First” Defence Plan

Document Dump

You have to hand it to Stephen Harper for correctly assuming that, in their haste to vacate Parliament Hill on Friday, the press would barely notice the document dump surruptiously made late last Thursday night on the Defence Department’s website outlining details of the half trillion dollar/20 year so-called “Canada First” defence plan. This and especially this makes for some VERY interesting reading. Too bad that it won’t be discussed in parliament until November maybe… if ever. Enjoy all that Harper government “transparency” and “accountability” folks.

I’m sure the “Blogging Tories” will be extremely consternated about planned expenditures of approx. $30 billion a year into the distant future without the least bit of prior examination or scrutiny by our elected officials. No? Well, maybe they’ll be concerned by the fact that by some accounts it actually represents a progressive decrease in spending as a percentage of GDP — except of course for the next two years during which time Harper will be striving for his desperately wanted majority government. Hmmm. Funny that.