Les Bonnes Choses

There's  been a fair amount of hulabaloo lately regarding some entitled people and their jet-setting ways. In a nutshell: the Canadian people collectively own some expensive pieces of military flying machinery. They have been used to ferry around Chief of Defense Staff, General Walter Natynczyk and the Minister of Defense, Peter MacKay all over the place, including to and from their vacations.

You know that fantasy you have as you sit in a traffic jam on the 400 series highways on your way to the cottage? The one where your car has some James Bond wings that convert it into a VTOL aircraft, and you take off, leaving the slow procession of cars behind? These guys are living it.

To their credit (I think), these guys are mostly using these aircraft in the course of carrying out their jobs -- or at least, they are when they're en route to a repatriation ceremony for a fallen soldier. Another argument is that the aircraft and pilot are being paid for anyways: pilots need to maintain their skill by flying these aircraft regularly, thus we're paying for them to be in the air one way or another, whether the pilot is bringing Mr. MacKay back to his cottage, or flying loop-the-loops over Saskatoon.

That argument, however, is a red-herring, propped up only by virtue of the fact that nobody has been quite able to articulate what seems to be 'wrong' with the situation. Here's the problem as I see it: It's not that several hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer dollars have been spent flying these airplanes -- the money apparently was going to be spent anyways. I think what's really wrong here is that these dollars have been spent to the exclusive benefit of these two apparently extraordinarily important individuals. Perhaps the families of the fallen soldiers are happy that Mr. MacKay takes time out of his holidays to honour their loved ones, but I don't suppose he offered them a lift? (The answer: no, implied by this government web page, if families of the dead want to be at the repatriation ceremony, they're getting there on their own dime).

So, sure, I'm happy these clowns are doing their bit to make sure to optimize the use of our national resources. But in all fairness, maybe they should give someone else a turn.