Step 1: Wait until a group of Liberal Senators plan a fact finding mission to various spots abroad including Afghanistan.
Senate Defence Committee to Conduct Fact-Finding on Terrorism and Port Security in the UK, The Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates - September 5 to 11, 2006
Step 2: At the last minute tell the Liberal Senators that the situation in Afghanistan is too dangerous for them to visit…
But Senator Colin Kenny, the committee chair, was told it was impossible to travel to Afghanistan before the four senators left Ottawa.
A document obtained by CTV News shows the military met with Kenny in his office on Sept. 2
…even though it wasn’t too dangerous for Gordon O’Connor to visit just a few days earlier.
OTTAWA, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) — Canadian Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor kicked off a trip to Afghanistan earlier Tuesday in a bid to boost troops morale amid rising fatalities of Canadian soldiers recently.
Step 3: Tip off a journalist who will report that the Liberal Senators wasted taxpayer’s dollars living it up in Dubai–where they had legitimate business–after they couldn’t travel on to Afghanistan…
Canadian senators waited in an expensive Dubai hotel for seven days after a failed attempt to reach Afghanistan when the military had warned them not to attempt the trip in the first place, CTV News has learned.
…and rebooking the flights would have been more expensive.
We were finally advised on Monday afternoon, Sept. 11, that option three was not going to work out, and that the situation in Kandahar continued to be in “flux.” At this point the staff commenced efforts to rebook the committee for an immediate return to Canada.
Try as they might, this was not immediately possible, due to fully occupied flights or incurring additional costs which would have been greater than the cost of the hotel rooms.
Now that’s a first class set-up.
Does anyone else remember reading a press report about a future senate committee fact-finding mission re spending irregularities in Afghanistan? The story was primarily about funds mismanagement with a tagline that a senate committee would be visiting and investigating. Was that part of this mission? I know I read this somewhere but an hour of googling hasn’t turned it up. Anyone?
This is the kind of behaviour I saw on an almost daily basis when I worked for a large, international corporation. The energy that was expended and the time that was wasted to ensure rivals would be made to look bad was mind-boggling.
And meanwhile, things that needed to get done were either ignored or rescheduled to the detriment of the company’s bottom line and reputation.
This is exactly the behaviour I expected to see from these frothing-at-the-mouth adolescent bullies.
How much more of this are we expected to put up with before we kick their sorry asses out of office? These shit heads don’t deserve the privilege of governing.
Came back to report an answer to my own question.
Couldn’t find the past mission statement but there is this CP quote today :
“Kenny said the committee investigation of the deployment in Afghanistan, primarily its questions over reconstruction spending, are hitting close to home.”
It’s pretty obvious that this sort of junket can never come to fruition. The reason is simple, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives want Canadians to actually know what’s going on in Afghanistan. If they did, we’d have to start to come to terms with the fact that the mission was a blunder from the get-go.