Poor old Stephen Harper. He's got such a bad case of "hoof in mouth" disease that it's a miracle he has any teeth left. It's the result of harbouring a burning, radical ideology in a country that has no time for it.
Like all reactionaries, Stevie tends to shoot his mouth off and regret it later. The guy went from Tar Sands sludge brown to Eco-Green in a year. Now there's a vivid example of core values for you. Of course even the National Post dismisses Harper's epiphany as cynical opportunism.
Another glaring example is the China incident. Harper wanted to look and sound tough in front of a few reporters so he told them that he would never sacrifice human rights concerns for the sake of the "almighty dollar." No sir, this was a man of high principle, tough enough to get right in the face of the Chinese.
So Mr. Bigmouth had his photo-op, his John Wayne moment, and we've paid for it ever since. Of course Harper isn't going to be the one to eat crow. No, he's sending a man of even lower principles, David Emerson, to suck up to the Chinese.
According to some China watchers, it'll take a lot more than Emerson to undo the damage Harper caused as shown in this report from the Globe & Mail:
Wenran Jiang, director of the University of Alberta's China Institute, said the notion that two nations can have "cold" political relations but "hot" economic relations will not fly in Beijing.
"That is not going to work with Canada and China," he said. "We have cold politics and lukewarm economics." He said the Chinese can take criticism but not "grandstanding statements" such as the ones Mr. Harper made last year.
"...Mr. Emerson said Canada is losing ground to its rivals in the Chinese market. Canadian exports to China grew only 2.3 per cent in 2005, while the United States recorded a 9.14-per-cent increase and Australia reaped a 40-per-cent jump. "For Canada, I suspect 2006 was even worse," he said."
It may take Stephen Harper to undo the damage caused by Stephen Harper, but that would mean deflating his ego enough to squeeze himself into a plane to Beijing, cap in hand. Then again, Steve is getting awfully good at backpedalling.
2 comments:
Damage??? What damage???
Tell me again how are trade relations with China have been in the past? That's right...we have consistently be running a trade deficit with the Chinese.
Trade only benefits people when there is free trade...not the one sided trade approach the Chinese have been employing in Canada for many years.
In regards to Mr. Harper standing up to the Chinese because of their human rights record....all I can take from your post is that you would rather turn a blind eye to human rights abuses as long as it benefits you financially. That's simply absurd. There are many things people on the left can find fault with in regards to Harper's leadership, but in my opinion nobody can critisize his morals.
The Liberals have been turning a blind eye to the human rights record of the Chinese for quite some time...where has it got us? Trade isn't better and neither are human rights. Maybe it's time for another approach?
Of course China has a human rights problem. So do the Saudis and many others we deal quite freely with. There's a big difference between dealing with China's deficiencies productively and shoving a stick in their eye in front of the world.
I'm glad that Afghanistan is going well. You might inform Defence Secretary Gates or the British MOD or Hamid Karzai of this revelation.
Kyoto is about wealth transfer. Man you suck this nonsense up, don't you?
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