Harper's Canada (TM)

from Canadian Geographic

The scene above is Spiteful Steve's vision of the Canada of the future. And thanks to the eradication of all that bothersome environmental oversight, hidden in the 400+ page document posing as a budget, Steve and his petro buddies from the Failing Nation to the South and the Rising Tiger in the East (China, Steve's real boss) can accelerate the conversion from the Canada we've known to the Nightmare the Cons want to impose. It's just too bad that Steve and all his buddies don't have to go live there, or even just downstream.

Steve Vaughn, Canada's (likely soon to be either unemployed or character assassinated) environmental commissioner released his report this morning on the status of previously contaminated and basically devastated sites to whom the responsibility for clean up has fallen to the Canadian taxpayers, while those who profited from the mess and long gone sitting somewhere counting their ill gotten gains.  According to the CBC:

Federally owned contaminated sites will cost the government billions of dollars to clean up, according to the 2012 report of Canada's environment commissioner.

Scott Vaughan says the government has made significant progress, closing the file on 9,000 out of 22,000 sites across the country, but the remaining sites present some major headaches.

"The government has reported its combined environmental liabilities at $7.7 billion," writes Vaughan. "Many of these sites are buried and out of the public eye, but they will impose human health risks and environmental and financial burdens for generations to come."

Frankly I would tend to think that the 7.7 billion dollar estimate is conservative, and I mean the word in its normal sense, not the name of the party of thugs, liars and thieves.  BC and Vancouver had to spend big bucks cleaning up Granville Island and the Expo lands after they who thrashed them moved on to other destruction.  And then after the Expo party was over, didn't our government kindly almost give a lot of the land away to fugitive financier Li ka-ching ka-ching, or somebody like that, all freshly cleaned up at our expense?

But for all the hoo-ha about Stevie and his gang being "economists" and frugal managers, it is not true either good business or accurate counting of "profits" as long as externalities like the mess above and the thousands of sites that are admitted to aren't considered a part of the equation. Their accounting doesn't consider the long term health costs arising from toxic waste and polluted air and water either!

But the 38-39% of you idiots who voted for this gang and gave Stevie his coveted majority, thanks a lot, and I hope you are happy that soon we can turn more of Canada into toxic wastelands even faster to benefit a few greedy and downright EVIL folks. There is nothing "conservative" about this ragtag gang of fundamentalist exploiters who can only understand a quick buck now, and only for the folks that matter.

Canadians, hewers of wood, bearers of water and shippers of RAW Bitumen!!!

I imagine to the Harper Government(tm), the clean-up costs won't matter, cuz why bother!!!

(btw, the picture above comes from an article in the June 2008 issue of Canadian Geographic, which can be found here.)