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Tories overreact, ignore real threat

Two weeks, two moderate albeit dramatic threats to the nation and government, two predictable responses from the Harper Tories.
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Two weeks, two moderate albeit dramatic threats to the nation and government, two predictable responses from the Harper Tories.

In the most recent test, a lone gunman killed one of the honour guard at Ottawa`s National War Memorial before mounting an ultimately unsuccessful assault on the House of Commons.

The week before, a Russian container ship lost power off the coast of Haida Gwaii and threatened to run aground before an American tugboat intervened and managed to tow the stricken vessel to safety.

In the case of the gunman, the National Post reports the Tories response is likely to be heavyhanded: broadened law enforcement powers in the areas of surveillance, detention and arrest. According to the Post`s John Ivison, the new legislation may be similar to 2005 measures introduced in the UK, with provisions that make it an offence to ``condone or glorify terror acts`` - which could be used to prosecute people making incendiary comments on the Internet - as well as weakened criteria for arresting people suspected of terrorism.

No matter that a University of Toronto professor called the UK laws ``immensely controversial and... [infrequently] used." No, swift, unshirking overreaction will be Tory party line in coming weeks, as typified by area MP Bob Zimmers` comment to the Citizen: "We need to maintain freedom but all the while we need to address terrorists

and do what we have to do."

Zimmer was responding to a question about rounding up those on an RCMP watch list of 90 people who, according to the CBC, are the target of national security investigations due to their suspected involvement in extremism-related activities. One of the 90 killed one Canadian soldier and injured another, also last week, after his passport was taken away from him in July to prevent him from leaving the country and, perhaps, fighting abroad. The suspected is crucial here and, indeed, one of the sanest responses came from none other than Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who said before the Wednesday attack: "I'm trying to think... what you could possibly could have done to stop someone who has not been arrested or not been accused of any specific criminal offense?"

Apparently the answer now is to round up the usual suspects, Casablanca-style.

Meanwhile, consumed as everyone is by the consequences of the Ottawa attack, the Tories' response to the Simushir incident flounders as much as the 135-metre Russian ship did off the waters of a place once called the Queen Charlotte Islands.

In the House on the Monday after the Simushir had been brought to Prince Rupert, MP Nathan Cullen quizzed the government on its response. He pointed out the nearest Canadian Coast Guard vessel took 20 hours to reach the ship and its tow cable snapped three times trying to handle the Simushir, which was loaded with, among other things, 500 million litres of bunker fuel. Thankfully, the intervention of the passing tugboat and other pieces of good fortune - notably favourable winds as opposed to the usual "westerlies" that would have thrown the Simushir into the islands - saved the vessel.

But according to Gail Shea, minister of fisheries ansd oceans, luck had nothing to do with it; the Coast Guard had the situation under control, the Russian ship was outside Canadian waters and "the private sector provides towing service to the marine industry," whatever that means. Never mind that the U.S. tug just happened to be near Rupert when the distress call came and that it took almost two days in rough seas to reach the vessel; nevermind that, as marine analyst Darryl Anderson told the Canadian Press, B.C. doesn't have a dedicated tug stationed on the coast, contrary to repeated recommendations made after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Cullen wanted know how cuts from the Canadian Coast Guard of $20 million and 300 personnel affected the response and pointed out that the Russian ship was about a third of the size of the supertankers that would ply the coast if projects like Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline were built. He could also have mentioned that, had the Siumshir ran aground, the spill response would have been conducted by Environment Canada's environmental disaster response team in Montreal or Gatineau since its Vancouver office was one of six closed by the Tories in 2012.

Shea responded that the situation was under control, the government was spending $6.8 billion on the Coast Guard fleet and, of course, the Russian ship was outside Canadian waters. Liberal MP Joyce Murray pointed out that after nine years of Tory Coast Guard ship promises, "not a single piece of steel has been cut."

It boggles the mind. What appears to be a homeless crackhead attacks Parliament with a deer hunting rifle and now there isn't a civil liberty the Tories aren't prepared to trample to provide justice a priori.

Yet a ship nearly runs aground on one of the most environmentally and politically sensitive coastlines in all of Canada and the Tories can barely muster the concern of a rote answer.

Two crises, one by land, one by sea. Had the Tories urged restraint with the former and reacted with fervour to the latter, this country would be a much safer place.