Friday 12 September 2014

How much money has PM Harper spent searching for the Franklin expedition?

We were talking about this the other day. How much money has Prime Minister Harper spent searching for the Franklin expedition? It was partly funded by Parks Canada, who has had budget issues.

The $391.5 million allocated over five years will allow the agency to improve roadways, bridges and dams located in Canada’s 44 national parks and historic canals.
That may be just a drop in the bucket. Estimates from the Toronto Star based on Parks Canada reports said it could cost as much as $2.77 billion to complete all 'deferred' work. That means projects identified as required, but pushed back due to lack of funding.
Examples of deferred work include anything from $1,000 in maintenance for small monuments to $676.9 million required for the Trent-Severn Waterway, says The Star

Why the great search?

The Franklin discovery’s not about what, but where

While the two Franklin ships have already been designated as national historic sites no matter their location, the actual discovery of a ship would increase Canada’s chances of having UNESCO declare its location a World Heritage Site.
That declaration would strengthen this country’s claim to control of the Northwest Passage. As the waterway becomes increasingly open to shipping, that control becomes crucial to enforcing laws regarding environmental protection. 
PM Harper has a hidden agenda. He wants to establish Canadian sovereignty in the north, and he seems quite happy about it. Mansbridge isn't totally unbiased, as he went on one of the searches, and made a video,
Not only this, but PM Harper is silencing scientists, as well as giving them a party line to spew in interviews with media.

Dr. Pat Sutherland
He had Dr. Pat Sutherland fired. She was uncovering proof of Norse visitors, in a dig on Baffin Island.  June 2013 on National Geographic, she was featured.  European media was fascinated. She was employed by the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, now the Canadian Museum of History. and was summarily fired in a strange 3-day smear campaign, as she didn't fit in with his agenda of highlighting the war of 1812 and UK connections, rather than the Norse. It's something to do with Arctic sovereignty.

This is her project.
She has lost the data, all collected in files.
Dr Pat Sutherland spent years on Baffin Island, uncovering ground-breaking evidence that Norse 
explorers had been in the Arctic earlier and for longer than anyone had previously thought. Her research made headlines in scientific circles, and garnered media attention including a feature in the National Geographic and a documentary on CBC’s The Nature of Things.





baffinisland_640b


In the past few years, the federal government has cut funding to hundreds of research institutes and programs. Now some scientists have become unlikely radicals - denouncing what they call a politically-driven war on knowledge. (2013)

How the Harper Government Manipulates Canadian History

Stephane Dion – More than just a lesson in pretentiousness, this action is the mark of an appalling lack of respect for the historic role played by Thérèse Casgrain and other renowned champions of the women's emancipation movement in Quebec and the whole of Canada. This action is yet another manifestation of what historian Yves Frenette calls "the conscription of the Canadian past by the Harper government".


WWW.BRAMPTONGUARDIAN.COM
To Harper, finding Franklin ships as much about sovereignty as solving a mystery...

WWW.HUFFINGTONPOST.CA
One of Canada’s top biologists says he will not stop talking to the media after a government memo accused him of bias and speaking out of turn about the environmental impact of Alberta’s oilsands. Queen’s University professor Jo...

8 comments:

Karen said...

The things happening, or not happening, with Parks Canada makes me SICK. They have to toe the line and meet the agenda.

Nancy J said...

Dr Pat Sutherland, I truly hope she had a separate filing system somewhere else, and she can access all that data again, hidden agendas, they must be world-wide, and for what reason? Money?Power? Prestige? or a lift up the ladder of " This is who I am".I am sure one day some of the rungs will fall off and they will topple. Interesting, and thanks so much for sharing. Hugs,Jean.

Judy said...

Jenn, you asked where I took my mud photos. I don't know how much detail you want but here goes - You know the new bridge over the Carp River, the one between Stittsville and Kanata? About half a mile upstream, they had created a catchment basin to control flooding, way before I moved to Kanata. Now they are enlarging it, and adding bells and whistles, and making it impossible to walk around there during the week. All kinds of heavy equipment. But on weekends, I can walk there, and that is where I found that lot of mud, and the scooter, and some other construction things. If you want more detail, it was in the "roadway" they use beside Terry Fox, to keep the heavy equipment off Terry Fox itself. This will explain why you will not see those gorgeous images of the geese on the pond with the morning mist rising around them. The place is too noisy for the geese!

William Kendall said...

I don't know what bothers me more- the silencing of scientists, archivists, and statiticians, the tow the party line hyper-partisan attack philisophy, passing off temper tantrums as diplomacy, the narrow minded disregard for real history, the one track mind where natural resources are concerned, the disregard for consequences on the environment. And that's just the beginning with this man. And I say that as a conservative who can't vote Conservative.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
I am not au fait with the Canadian political picture - but am guessing it is not that different from politics anywhere in such matters... and this is a gripe I have with 'history' in that it is second only to statistics in its 'malleability'. YAM xx

Pearl said...

election can't come soon enough.

Red said...

From the time I was ten, I was fascinated by the Franklin expedition. I have read several books on it. However, this is just like Harper to cherry pick an incident to try and make himself look good. we need to get rid of this guy.

Jen said...

I don't know how I feel about his search for the ships, but someone fired for discovering history that government doesn't like is more than a little frightening. Wow.