FLAGSCAM? (via Tom Morin):

FLAGGING ENTHUSIASM (Mark Steyn, April 9th 2004, The Western Standard)

Canada is officially beyond parody. The latest development in Flagscam is that those Sheila Copps Maple Leafs – the flags needed to keep Quebec in Confederation, the flags only a $6 million Government program could organize, the flags whose $6 million Government program ballooned to $45 million, the flags whose free distribution wiped out the profits of Canadian flag retailers, the flags that no-one in Canada could make fast enough and so wound up being secretly imported from overseas, the flags for which millions of dollars were paid to well-connected Liberal Party middle-men for doing nothing, the flags for which the luckier Grit cronies got paid twice over for doing nothing – it turns out these flags don’t even fly.

On the CBC the other night, Doreen Braverman, who runs Canada’s biggest flag retailer, held up one of the Sheila Maple Leafs. No eyelets, no sleeve, no halyard line for your rope and toggle, no nothing. The Canadian taxpayers paid $45 per “flag” for a “flag” that can’t be flown. If what’s left of our armed forces ever gets round to seizing Hans Island back from the Danish imperialist aggressors and tearing down the viking marauders’ flag, I hope they don’t make the mistake of taking a Sheila $45 special to replace it with. One doesn’t want to think of the lads from JTF2 standing around on the barren windswept rock holding the Maple Leaf in position while someone radios back to base to ask if DND can parachute in a tube of Superglue.

Why do we need the government to spend $45 million on free flags? Well, go back to 1995. “We came within a few thousand votes of losing the greatest country in the world,” wrote Warren Kinsella a few weeks back in an impassioned defence of the Chretien years. “Under Brian Mulroney’s watch, there were no Canadian flags flying at post offices in Quebec… No flags in citizenship courts, even. Canada, as a concept, barely existed in the Province of Quebec.” It was one big no-fly zone.

Call me a pessimist, but I can’t think making a rural postmaster in the Gaspe lean a ladder up against the flagpole each morning so he can nail Sheila’s Maple Leaf into position is likely to endear him to the concept of Canada.

No idea what he's even talking about, but it's still funny.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 14, 2004 7:56 AM