The Shipping News

Paul Martin knows quite a lot about shipping, having been at the helm of Canada Steamship Lines for a few years. He gave up all control of the boat company to finally sit in the Captain’s chair of the Ship of State, but Paul Martin is now applying some of the tactics of his old CSL days in this parliament.

About half of the CSL fleet fly Flags of Convenience, that is, they are registered in countries whose tax laws, among other things, are more favourable to owners of ships. So although a number of Canadians work for CLS out of Montreal, many of the employees are working under different flags, which condone much lower wages and taxes. Any prudent millionaire knows how low wages contribute to the bottom line and, coupled with lower taxes, it means more shekels in the back pocket.

Using the Flags of Convenience (FoC’s) practice, Admiral Martin, that ancient mariner, has now bolstered his current fleet of MPs by allowing some of them to fly the NDP flag. In the current rough waters of parliament, the small NDP squadron with their orange flags are covering his rear flank. Using a wrinkled, but freshly printed authentic treasure map, Martin and Layton are now sailing through the books looking for hidden gold to finance their budget amendments.

Martin’s pirates have also tried to raid the ranks of the opposition by offering a FoC to a Conservative, who apparently refused to jump ship, possibly because the member in question was from the wrong gene pool and did not recognize this glorious opportunity. Then the Admiral’s First Mate was apparently taped offering a FoC or a posting as port-master in some foreign land in exchange for firing a salvo at the good ship Harper. But through a shipping agent by name of Dirk Peterson, the pirate king lured another member, apparently from a better gene pool, to jump ship and join the Liberal fleet.

Belinda Stronach, a privateer of some small reputation, was such a prize that Martin even offered her a ship of her own, passing over some of his loyal junior captains in the secret wardroom process. Normally in the shipping business a ship’s captain has worked aboard a vessel, learning the ways of the sea, the shifting tides, the places of shoals and shallow water. One does not normally put an inexperienced captain in charge of one of the largest battle cruisers in the fleet, but then perhaps billionaires are used to womanning their own yachts.

But wait a moment. Perhaps Belinda and the NDP members have obtained their Captains’ papers through the Boater’s Certification program! Under the auspices of another Liberal captain, the old salts who run Transport Canada have devised a system of certifying people as capable of running smaller boats (junior captains) like those noisy personal watercraft that are as annoying as listening to question period. However it now appears that Purser in the DoT flagship forgot to register all the captains who have these certificates.

Whether this small oversight was due to the emerging facts that these boater’s certificates could be had without completing the course let alone the questionnaire but for the price of a beer and pizza, begs the question about the seaworthiness of the ship of state (somewhat akin to our used submarines). It seems that a number of the agencies who were in charge of issuing the certificates were making tidy sums without doing the work.

That may remind some of the AdScam boondoggle, but surely it is not another Liberal party perk. Hard on the heels of the gun registry fiasco comes the boat registry mess. One begins to wonder about the capabilities of the junior officers who are labouring under the Liberal Captains. Mayhap it is yet another job for the Auditor General and her army of accountants to check up on the Admiral and his back-room boys.

As the Liberal Party becomes the Party of Convenience to all people, we may settle into a period of calm waters on parliament hill. Admiral Martin may be able to lead his fleet of less-than-watertight ships on a course that avoids the constant tacking to the left and right (sorry, port and starboard) and begin looking after the needs of all Canadians.

With the budget crisis behind him, he can ignore the cries from the lookout in the crow’s nest about fins circling in the water. Those are not sharks, only Bloc Dolphins looking for a few scraps from the galley. The Conservative sharks have sunk into the depths to wait for another day. And if they are waiting for an election after the Gomery report, if there is a report, that may have been just another desperate Liberal promise. In the meantime, we can only hope that the taxpayers working in the hold keep on bailing.