Harper cements a laudable legacy in the North, with just a handful of glaring omissions

National Post ^ | August 26, 2014 | Michael Den Tandt

[Squawk 8888]

BAFFIN ISLAND — As Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads back to the office, concluding his ninth Arctic summer tour, his strategists and senior staff will be congratulating themselves on a job well done.

To be fair, they have some reasons to feel that way.

As such junkets go, this one went off more or less without a hitch. There were no pratfalls; no trips, slips, incidents or shoves. Apart from a single sign that nearly toppled onto the prime minister on the first morning, the visuals beamed back to newsrooms in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver have been positive for the Conservatives and for Mr. Harper personally.

These include the PM wading into a crowd of happy Inuit children in Arctic Bay; picturesquely bestriding the bow of a Canadian navy patrol boat, as it steamed through the Northwest Passage, the first such voyage by a sitting Canadian leader; and addressing Canadian soldiers here Tuesday, on the pristine banks of Frobisher Bay, as they carried out operation Nanook, their major northern summer exercise.

Thursday’s speech, unlike the more political ones earlier in this tour, was straight-up chest-pounding patriotism, no chaser. The PM waxed historical about the lost explorer Sir John Franklin, then hammered away at Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and the peril posed to civilized peoples by the Islamic State. This will be meat and drink to the Conservative base. It won’t go over so badly with swing voters, either.

And there are other pluses, from the Tory standpoint. The PM’s Franklin gambit has worked out rather well; In putting the resources of the government and his own political capital behind the search for the lost ships, Erebus and Terror, Mr. Harper has galvanized a coalition of interests and brought them in behind his government, as I wrote last time.

[Don W]

It looks like the Inuit Northern Rangers.

[Candor7]

This all looks positive to me. Am I being naive?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Nope. Not naive. Accurate as hell.

Reparations must be paid by industry in order to right the alleged historical injustice of removing the lands of natives from their disinterested, undefined grasp.

Historical justice is a liberal fascist myth. Its all about the money. Soon we will have a wealthy class of well heeled liberal natives who care zilch about their bretheren whom they will regard as low class scum.

Such are the liberal lessons of history.

Conservatives would make sure all had the opportunity to work, thats the best that could come out of these episodes of institutional industrial blackmail, an arcane type of judicially imposed extortion rather than evolutionary freedom..The liberals and NDP will create a wealthy class of native political elites.

Thats all we need, one more nationalistic ethnic group in Canada thinking themselves better than anyone else. We have enough of those already.Why unify Canada? The politicians find to their pleasure tthat we are much more maleable divided and therefore easy to conquer or buy off with a few trinkets.

[Praxeologue]

The Liberals and NDP are about keeping a dependent, left-voting class in the aboriginals. Private industry would be happy to give them, say, $1.00 per barrel and be done with it. That’s not what the Left wants. They want continued discord and dependency. What you are suggesting simply feeds their paranoia about the white devil who would force them to actually work for their bread.

[Candor7]

Putin means to heat things up in the Arctic. Harper hopefully will open up a few military bases there ASAP! See this:

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Putin says Russia must strengthen its economic, military position in Arctic
LAKE SELIGER, Russia Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:11am EDT

Aug 29 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow had to strengthen its position, economically and militarily, in the resource rich Arctic region, where other countries are vying for influence.

“Our interests are concentrated in the Arctic. And of course we should pay more attention to issues of development of the Arctic and the strengthening of our position (there),” Putin told a youth camp outside Moscow, enumerating military and economic plans for Russia’s Arctic.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/29/russia-putin-arctic-idINL5N0QZ2UL20140829