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Politically Incorrect

Oh no!!! - Not guns again!

by Arthur Weinreb

September 23, 2002

After the U.S. Senate passed legislation allowing airline pilots to carry guns, David Collenette, the squeamish Minister of Transport found the idea "disturbing." Collenette’s reaction comes as no surprise. Last year, when the U.S. refused to allow planes to land in Washington area airports unless they had armed sky marshals on board, the Minister said that a lot of Canadians would find that, well, disturbing. It doesn’t take too much to disturb our David. The Minister relented and we now have air marshals on some Canadian flights. And canadafreepress.com is happy to report that the number of Canadians killed aboard aircraft by armed law enforcement officers in the past year is, in round numbers--zero.

Collenette belongs to the anti-American left wing of the Liberal Party. Lacking the prime minister’s intellect to describe the United States as a country of greed and arrogance, the Transport Minister is reduced to employing a hockey analogy. He described the U.S. as a hockey bully, who, not having to face an opposing superpower, keeps their elbows up and bullies all the little guys, including the littlest guy from Shawinigan. To be fair, Collenette is probably not the only high ranking Liberal to bemoan the passing of the Soviet Union.

Collenette doesn’t act--he reacts. By failing to solve the problems of airline security in the post-September 11 world, he left it to the Americans to come up with solutions. His only contribution to airline security has been grabbing knitting needles from little old ladies and forcing airlines serving meals to use the "Collenette" knife (not the sharpest one in the drawer). Although armed pilots may seem like a radical idea, what is wrong with trusting someone with firearms who is trusted with thousands of passengers’ lives a year? Only those who feel that Canada is a safer country now that Saskatchewan farmers have to register their guns would be disturbed by armed pilots and thoughts of those pilots going postal in the first class cabin of an Air Canada flight from Ottawa to Toronto. What most Canadians would find disturbing is their plane being hijacked by radical Muslims and flown into buildings.

Even those small "l" liberals in the United States realize that the problem of airline safety has to be dealt with, perhaps because the American left, unlike the Canadian government, appreciates exactly what occurred on September 11, 2001. When Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator from New York, former First Lady, former co-president and the smartest woman in America was asked about armed pilots by NBC’s Katie Couric, she answered that it was not an ideal situation and that the best the solution would be to have the same type of security measures that El Al has. Clinton added that armed pilots are far better than having an aircraft shot down. Since Collenette and his cabinet colleagues have their collective heads in the sand about the dangers of terrorism, it probably hasn’t occurred to anyone since September 11 that shooting down planes might have to be considered in the future.

Collenette, in either pathetic seriousness or extremely weak humour, wondered if airline pilots were armed, would Via rail and subway drivers be next. He simply doesn’t get it.

The Transport Minister should go back to concentrating on his pet project — a choo choo link between downtown Toronto and the airport. And let the big boys and girls take care of airline safety.

Hopefully the Chrétien loyalist will get his desired plum patronage appointment in London. Perhaps he can pay attention to Tony Blair and learn how a real prime minister acts.

Arthur Weinreb is a lawyer and author and Associate Editor of Canadafreepress.com, he can be reached at: aweinreb@interlog.com



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