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Lieberal response to tsunami a disgrace
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| ShadoWolf |
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/nati...nami041229.html
Canada to send advance team to see if DART needed
Last Updated Wed, 29 Dec 2004 16:18:40 EST
OTTAWA - Ottawa will send an advance unit to southern Asia to determine whether Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team should be deployed to help out with relief efforts in the aftermath of Sunday's deadly tsunami, some reports say.
Defence Minister Bill Graham is also expected to announce that Canada is sending more planeloads of relief supplies.
It's still not yet clear if the military's DART contingent will necessarily follow.
The federal government has faced questions as to why Canada has not yet sent out its 200-member rapid response unit, which can operate a mobile command centre, a medical facility, and water purification equipment capable of producing 100,000 litres of clean drinking water.
Officials have said DART is not a "short-term response mechanism" and usually isn't deployed within the first 72 hours of a crisis.
But they did not rule out sending the team.
Earlier this week, Graham said none of the local governments involved had requested the unit, and that Canadian officials had been advised that sending DART was not necessary at this time. |
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| ShadoWolf |
We don't need a bunch of bureaucrats to know that DART is needed!!!!!
:whip: :whip: :whip: :whip: |
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| ShadoWolf |
Armed Forces disaster team grounded by paperwork
Military expert 'appalled' by slow Canadian response
Chris Wattie
National Post
December 28, 2004
Canada's military disaster response team must wait for an official request from the Department of Foreign Affairs before it can be sent to help victims of a tsunami in Southeast Asia.
While other nations had teams already in the air yesterday to help with the aftermath of the deadly tidal wave, defence spokesmen said the Canadian Forces' Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) will not be going anywhere without the proper paperwork.
"A formal request would have to be made by the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Department of National Defence," John Morris, a spokesman for the Defence Department, said yesterday.
"To date, we have not received a formal request for our assets at this time."
Bill Graham, the Defence Minister, said the military teams will remain on standby for now, awaiting a formal request from one or more of the governments in the region hit by the tsunami.
Foreign Affairs would then pass the request along to the Forces, he said. "The DART team obviously is a potential tool," Mr. Graham told a news conference
"It's a wonderful tool, but it's for specific purposes, and we haven't seen where that's necessary at this particular point."
However Dr. David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, strongly disagrees.
"It's exactly what [the Forces team is] designed for, and what it was actually used for up until the late 1990s," he said. "It's appalling that they haven't been offered already."
"What do we have a DART team for, if not for things like this?"
The Israeli Defence Forces yesterday dispatched a medical relief team to Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The Israeli military has also offered help to India, including a military search-and-rescue team and consignments of food and medicines.
The United States military also activated its military disaster-assistance teams yesterday, including units based in the Philippines, and Australia began loading emergency supplies on board two Royal Australian Air Force cargo planes.
"It's the sort of thing that makes me ashamed to be Canadian," Dr. Bercuson said. "It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that they have a disaster of major proportions over on the other side of the world and aid is flowing in from everywhere ... and where are we?"
The team, a group of up to 200 soldiers, medics and military engineers designed to fly to disaster zones around the world, was last dispatched to a Turkish earthquake site in 1999.
The Martin government was widely criticized this year for not sending the team to the Caribbean after a hurricane struck Jamaica and Haiti. Pierre Pettigrew, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, cited the cost as one reason for the decision not to send the team to help Haiti.
Dr. Bercuson said the government instead may be trying to avoid a potentially embarrassing problem with the military's ageing CC-130 Hercules transport planes. They are nearly 40 years old and more than half of the air force's fleet of 32 aircraft are under repair at any given time, according to internal defence documents.
"It would be a tremendous embarrassment if the DART team took off in its Hercules aircraft and had to turn back," Dr. Bercuson said.
It takes 26 separate Hercules flights to move the full team to a disaster area, and Dr. Bercuson said it is likely the team will be at its base in Kingston for at least the next few days.
"If they do go it will be an absolute triumph over adversity by the members of our military." |
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| MarkT |
another oversimplification...you're right, clearly we should just send the team over without any analysis or putting any thought whatsoever into co-operating with other nations to BEST deliver the relief that is required there :rolleyes:
Canada has already committed $4 million (if I remember right from a press conference?) to the relief effort...it's not like the gov't is doing NOTHING. I suspect that there's an "advance unit" for a reason?
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
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Earlier this week, Graham said none of the local governments involved had requested the unit, and that Canadian officials had been advised that sending DART was not necessary at this time. |
ie. that tells me that the unit was either explicitly offered, or that the gov't there has been made aware of it's availability.
great, even I am making assumptions now...how about we leave these decisions to the various gov'ts involved instead of jumping on the Liberals (despite your love of doing so)? |
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| Jayx1 |
| In other news, Paul Martin is planning yet another 10 day trade mission to China. This guy is worse than the governer general! |
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| ShadoWolf |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
another oversimplification...you're right, clearly we should just send the team over without any analysis or putting any thought whatsoever into co-operating with other nations to BEST deliver the relief that is required there :rolleyes:
Canada has already committed $4 million (if I remember right from a press conference?) to the relief effort...it's not like the gov't is doing NOTHING. I suspect that there's an "advance unit" for a reason?
ie. that tells me that the unit was either explicitly offered, or that the gov't there has been made aware of it's availability.
great, even I am making assumptions now...how about we leave these decisions to the various gov'ts involved instead of jumping on the Liberals (despite your love of doing so)? |
DART was created for precisly this sort of scenario. The Lieberals are not supporting that program and have cut back on its mission.
The real reason why DART can't go is that we don't have the airplanes to ship them there. Remember how we had to hitch a ride with the Americans to Afghanistan? |
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| che |
| what is a rocket surgeon?:conf: :conf: |
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| MarkT |
| quote: | Originally posted by ShadoWolf
DART was created for precisly this sort of scenario. The Lieberals are not supporting that program and have cut back on its mission.
The real reason why DART can't go is that we don't have the airplanes to ship them there. Remember how we had to hitch a ride with the Americans to Afghanistan? |
then isn't your real problem with our aging planes and helicopters and not with bureaucrats determining if/when DART is needed? |
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| Tordan |
| I heard on the news that they want to split DART up into units. But those plans are for the future. If only they get their act together and do that now, the water purification unit which is needed the most could have been deployed. |
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| MarkT |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
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Canada has already committed $4 million (if I remember right from a press conference?) to the relief effort...it's not like the gov't is doing NOTHING. I suspect that there's an "advance unit" for a reason?
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oops...+36 million this week...40 million committed. Those bad bad Liberals! ;) |
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| ShadoWolf |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
oops...+36 million this week...40 million committed. Those bad bad Liberals! ;) |
1. They were shamed into giving the money. The initial $1 million was a bloody joke.
2. The money won't go to saving any lives.
3. They could have deployed military units to actually save lives, but didn't.
4. Still no statement of condolences. In fact, no public statement by the PM yet.
http://www.liberal.ca/default_e.aspx
5. The immigration reform they mentioned is totally inappropriate, especially at this time. It's ethnic targeting of the worst kind, and designed to get votes for the Party. |
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