Bev admits to BEING the smoking gun

HT (Impolitical):  It's one of those holy shit moments people on both the right and left can only dream of.   Bev Oda admitted in the House of Commons today that she was the one who altered a document ordering that Kairos -- a coalition of faith-based aid groups -- not get a funding request for $7 million.

Let's see who Kairos is composed of -- the Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United, Quaker, Mennonite and Catholic churches.   That's pretty much every mainline Christian denomination in Canada.   Nice way of pissing off, oh, 65 percent of Canadians! (if one believes the estimates of the CIA.)

While our separation of church and state may not be as clearly defined as in some other democracies, we do enforce it -- but we also make allowance for the historical role the churches have played in providing social services even as they became nationalized.   However, the fact these churches have taken a particular collective stand on the Middle East conflict, Aboriginals, women's rights and climate change does not give the government the moral right to punish them in favour of religious groups that view things "their" way.   Legally they may, but at the expense of eviscerating pre-budgeted aid projects and leaving thousands of people in the developing world hungry or prone to the changes in climate we're causing -- not to mention, people who don't care about the Middle East at all?

First she screws up the CRTC (first by declaring that Bryan Adams wasn't a Canadian -- remember that, folks -- then by setting in process the route for all-Christian TV and radio stations and the damage they've done to the political arena) and by just those two acts, set it on the long course to its present irrelevant status.   Now this.   Ms Oda must resign, or Harper must fire her.   Better that than she to be found in contempt by her colleagues in Parliament, much as I relish that thought.

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