Vichcouver-Kingsway?

CourageIsThyName
CanforIsThyGame

A couple of days ago we suggested that the coming appeasement on softwood would make Stephen Harper into Neville Chamberlain amongst the lumberjacks who like to loiter down at the waterfront docks while singing old Monty Python songs.

But now that we think of it - especially given the way Little Stephen has been sucking up to Jean Charest these days, perhaps this appeasement/armistice in the face of a coming occupation has the whiff of the Vichy to it.

OTTAWA (Reuters) The provincial government of Ontario said on Wednesday it was "very upset" at a purported framework agreement for resolving the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber dispute.

Ontario Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay also contested the federal Canadian government's assertion that there was no deal yet. He referred to a briefing by the Canadian ambassador to the United States, Michael Wilson, the lead negotiator for Ottawa.

"I've just gotten off the phone with Washington, with our negotiating team there, after they've been briefed by Ambassador Michael Wilson, who basically told our people at noon today that there's a deal, and we're very upset with the deal that's there," Ramsay told CTV television.

He said the deal provided for quotas to be put on Canadian lumber exports to the United States, which he said would be divided unfairly among Canada's provinces.

"Part of this quota system that we're going to come out of this (with) has to be set fairly, and for Ontario it's not, because it's taking one of the worse years of Ontario's exports into the United States under a very punishing tariff regime under this dispute, and set that as our benchmark.

"And it's going to cost thousands and thousands of jobs to Ontario."

For those who dream of langorous bubble baths and face peels when they think 'Vichy', think again:

The Vichy government was the regime set up in France by Marshal Henri Pétain in July, 1940, subsequent to the Franco-German armistice of June 22.

Petain was by then 83 years old. He had been due for retirement before WW1.

Its effective control extended only to unoccupied France and its colonies.

The Third Republic was voted out of existence by a truncated parliament, and a new constitution established a corporate state.

Sound far fetched?

Maybe.

But don't forget that since the beginning we have won this lumber thing at every level, on every playing field, both in the courts and in the tribunals.

And now Little Stephen and his 'Man Of Courage' David Emerson (MP for Vichcouver-Kingsway) are giving it all away.

Which has us wondering - why, exactly?

Is it so they can suck up to the Masters of Destruction even more than they already have?

Is it to make sure that Corporations like Canfor get an immediate and massive cash injection, some of which can then be passed along to courageous former executives?

Is it to signal that the economic occupation has begun in earnest?

I guess we'll know that the answer is yes to all of the above when Richard B. Cheney reschedules his Katrina (and possibly threat of protestor)-interrupted visit to the private game farms/oil sands of Northern Alberta with Michael Walker and the rest of the NeanderconNorth delegation so that he can have a few pops, take a few shots at the les visages, and deliver us from evil into the waiting arms of Halliburton and the Carlyle Group.*

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*And don't forget the kinder, gentler Enron, KinderMorgan, that will pump the stuff straight out of Canuckistan thanks to the British Columbia government currently led by the doubly courageous Mr. Gordon Campbell.

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