As Chester details the American response, providing timely aid on the ground when it's needed, one may wonder where Canada figures in. Well, we pledged $44 million, and we're sending 10 forensics experts from the RCMP to Thailand to help identify the bodies. Plus private donations, of course.
Read Flit's post if you want to know why there won't be much more help from Canada, despite the blather about sending a disaster response team. Bottom line? My country is pretty good at self-satisifed smugness and sanctimony, not so good at paying the price required to be useful when the chips are down. Not in Haiti, and not now.
Today it is hard to imagine that Canada provided 20% of the D-Day invasion force and the US and Britain 40% each. Canada's decline as a world power seems to be inextricably bound to the growth of its multiculturalism. It can be neither Gallic nor Anglo and so it becomes nothing.
What do you think, Joe?
It's a lot deeper than that, and what you're seeing is a symptom, not the problem.
I'm not sure you can blame the people of Canada. Last I checked, private donations had far outstripped what the government was doing.
Have a look to see which party has mostly governed this nation, with few interruptions, since the end of WW2 and you'll have an idea what the problem might be.
We can't afford to help much in cases like this because, after all, that money is already earmarked for friends of the Liberal party. I mean, come on, you have to have priorities. How would Liberals afford their vacation homes in cottage country if we turned off the taps?
Can't you guys send over some nice flannel shirts or something?
We wanted to send lots of beer to deal with the drinkable liquids problem. Oddly, the Muslims in Indonesia were kind of unenthused. The touques and earmuffs didn't exactly ring big bells in Sri Lanka either. There's just no gratitude....
To be fair guys, Canada is pulling its weight on a per capita basis. $44 million from an estimated 32 million people is actually slightly more generous from a per capita perspective than the United States' $350 million from approximately 295 million people. What I think you are seeing are the fiscal realities that a limited population base and smaller economy impose on the Canadians. On a related note, hats off to the Japanese. They've donated $500 million from a population base of just over 127 million people, making them more than 3 times as generous as America.
Australia doesn't have much in the way of Strategic Airlift either. OK, we're within Herc range, but Canada could have ferried out some of her Hercs too, we have spares and maintenance facilities right here.
So how did we get all that heavy, bulky stuff to Indonesia? We leased a few AN-124s from Volga-Dniepr, the same thing we did to carry our gear to Afghanistan and Iraq.
12 Trips would be adequate to deliver 600 tonnes plus. 1000 tonnes if the stuff is compact and heavy.
For that matter, unless the Canadian stuff is all outsize/oversize, you could use Commercial Air, even DHL.