If Only There Was a Way

Imagine how the world would be different today if our political leadership was liable to criminal sanctions for willful dereliction of duty causing harm to the public.

We do it for others, why not those who, in our name, are entrusted with the ultimate levers of power?

There is a trial underway right now for the ship's officer who commanded the B.C. Ferry, Queen of the North, the night she ran over a rocky outcropping and quickly sank to the bottom some 600-feet below (almost right where Harper and Enbridge want to build their supertanker port).   Two passengers were never seen again and the former ferry officer is on trial for the loss of their lives.   The Crown's theory is that the defendant was entrusted with the safety of the lives of the ship's passengers and crew; that he neglected the ship's navigational systems causing the ship to go off course enough to hit the rocks and sink to the bottom.   Two people died, he's responsible.  Res Ipsa Loquitor.

In our ship of state, Canada, we've got Stephen Harper in the wheelhouse.   He too is ignoring his navigational instruments, all the warning signs, all the science of climate change.  He's recklessly and wilfully putting his passenger's lives and safety at risk, steering perilously close to Bitumen Shoals and he may be leaving it much too late to change course once he's gone.   Steve may just take the wheel with him when he finally exits the bridge.

Shouldn't Staggerin' Steve and his collaborative sip's officers who are doing nothing to stop him (Baird, Oliver, Kent, Flaherty) be tossed in the same prisoner's dock that now houses the fourth officer of the Queen of the North?   Do they deserve any less?

There was nobody up on the bridge of the Queen of the North that night yelling to the defendant "wake up, we're headed for the rocks."   Steve and his wardroom have plenty of warnings and they suppress them.   They are acting openly and deliberately in defiance of every warning that floods in.   That's what takes their perfidy from mere criminal negligence into manslaughter on a mass scale.

The bastards deserve to rot in jail.   If they knew that was a real possibility, we wouldn't be in the mess they've created for us.