Canadian Veterans: Home Sweet Home
The latest on this unseemly matter, which began a month or so ago with word that 29 elderly fellows – 20 of whom are veterans – were to be removed from their homes, is that the bureaucracy has set things right, and the boys will remain where they are.
The issue, however, remains as it was at the outset: why on earth were these men shown the door in the first place? It should never have happened, but did because the bureaucracy at Alberta Health Services (viz: the provincial government) and the managers of Chartwell Seniors Housing REIT (a private corporation) could not agree on a lease renewal at the Colonel Belcher care facility in Calgary. It was a matter of greater profit sought by the Chartwell people, against the obdurate refusal of AHS to yield and pay. So, having found themselves at loggerheads, the contending parties shrugged, declared that negotiations would cease, and the old vets would accordingly have to fnd accomodation elsewhere.
There were subsequent cluckings of sympathy from the Liberals and New Democrats, but nothing that could be described as forceful intervention on behalf of the displaced chaps. I suspect, however, that somebody in the high reaches of the Alberta government (health minister Gene Zwozdeskey, perhaps, or possibly Premier Stelmach himself) made a call or two to AHS which in essence would have asked “have you lost your minds? Fix this, get an agreement, and DO NOT proceed with eviction.”
As of a week ago, the problem was in fact fixed and there will be no consigning of Canadian veterans to the streets. It’s a good ending to a dreadful scene, to be sure, but it’s also a story which should have ended at the very beginning – with a lease signed and sealed, and no emotional strain for 20 stalwart veterans, together with nine other men, whose lives were thrown into disarray.
They were innocents impaled on the horns of disdain, but at least a measure of sanity prevailed, eventually, in the accounting offices at Chartwell and AHS – and so this dismal mess has been cleaned up.
(As a footnote, my initial post on this matter was spotted with inaccuracies which I like to think were uncharacteristic – but errors they were. The resolute Alberta blogger www.daveberta.ca set me straight on the facts, which have now been entered as corrections. But I do not for a second back away from my accompanying editorial analysis, which is now as it was then: blinkered bureaucrats, combined with flinty-eyed bean-counters, mixed with politics either self-serving or wholly indifferent, caused no end of grief for men who deserved much better from those who purport to serve them).
The Saskatchewan NDP: Cut, Splice, Edit
On June 23rd, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall held a news conference at which he was heavily critical of provincial crop insurance adjusters who had gone on strike just as hundreds of flooded-out farmers and rural townsfolk were attempting to file claims.
Wall was not pleased, and because of his stance, nor was the union representing the adjusters: a good many eipthets were flung in Wall’s direction, and at one point during his session with reporters, the premier was asked if he was annoyed by the union comments.
“I’m not worried about the impact of their rhetoric on me. I don’t really care.”
So there we have quote #1, which was delivered around the 14 minute mark of the news conference. But there was another question posed and another answer provided about three minutes and 15 seconds into the session, or roughly 11 minutes earlier. Wall was asked if he would be inclined to resume negotiations with the union, and he said no he would not.
“Union leadership that are prepared to use those flood victims as pawns in their negotiations? We’re not gonna do it. We’re not gonna do it, and they’re coming back to work.”
So we now have two quotes. A premier unbowed in the first instance, and highly irritated in the second. Enter the Saskatchewan NDP, which in a stunt that can only be described as canard of the lowest possible order, seized on the widely separated Wall statements – and edited them into a single, sharp declaration. The result was Brad Wall, in his own voice from his own news conference, appearing to have no concern whatsoever for ordinary working families.
The NDP proceeded thusly. From quote #1 it extracted the words “I don’t really care,” and from quote #2 ”we’re not gonna do it and they’re coming back to work.” That done, the New Democrats (or as they now insist, the party ad agency) composed a radio commercial in which the voice-over reader, in tones of deep and anxious concern, accused the Wall government of spending vast sums of money on its cronies, and then asked “but when working families ask for help with the rising cost of living, what is Brad Wall’s response?”
“I don’t really care. We’re not gonna to do it, and they’re coming back to work.”
There you have it: the marriage of partial quotes, and you can easily see what the NDP was playing at: selective, and morally repugnant editing, which reveals the party to be wholly capable of lying – there’s no other word for it – about what Wall thinks and says.
I suspect the utter incoherence of Wall’s “response” probably alerted his government to the grubby antics of the NDP, which is now thrashing around on the defensive and conceding that perhaps this would be something not likely attempted again. But inexplicably, the New Democrats say they’ll continue airing the advertisement, on the grounds that it’s an “accurate reflection” of Wall’s attitude toward ordinary working folks.
I have yet to see the NDP produce any written or broadcast evidence of this so-called attitude, and would be happy to offer a considerable wager it’s because there isn’t any.
CALGARY WEATHER
