The Curious Case of BENJAMIN BUFFOON, Part Deux

Bishop ordered to recant Holocaust denial

Vatican acts to deal with global storm over Pope's effort to rehabilitate Richard Williamson

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined the outcry for some good common sense on this matter.

But let us pause for a moment and consider the Good Bishop and his life.

Food, clothing, lodging accounted for.

Never has to worry about a mortgage or a spat with the little woman/partner/significant other.

What is that creamy old saying?

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop?" Something like that.

So here you have this deeply insecure schmok who has rushed to the embrace of an immense pre-built structure called The Church.

Having no real matters to worry about, no real problems to solve and learn from, he can pass away the sunlit days with dreamy conjecture.

How evil are those Jews anyway?

Who really believes there were ovens and gas chambers? Come on! Really?

Which deacon should I bless this afternoon?

Did I miss matins again? Oh, my.

To truly help this sorry soul The Holy Father should do this.

Send the man away from the walls of the Church. Order him to a life of ordinary toil amongst the peasants and journeymen and kings of the realm.

Ask him to report back in, in say, 20 years.

Play bridge with your new Jewish friends.

Dance at a potlach. Bake bread, dig a ditch, solve a logarithm.

But mostly, be quiet.

Then, in 10, 000 words or less, tell us what you have learned.

We can hardly wait.

GET OFF THE RESERVE, BROTHER

"We have 350 families on a wait list for more housing. And we just don't have the money to build 350 houses."

This is the voice of Band Councillor Edward Starr of the Sandy Bay, Manitoba Indian reserve.

It is part of another dreadful story about death and fire and suicide and alcoholism and drug addiction on reserves.

But, for me, the crucial signal comes in this phrase, "We have 350 families on a wait list..."

Why? For what and for whom are you waiting?

The Great White Father to build you a house?

He hasn't built me a house.

I had to toil in the filthy corrupt marketplace to find the lucre to pay the down payment to sign for the long-term mortgage to buy my little postage stamp of independent home ownership.

Messy, I know.

Not ideal, for sure.

Not much room to swing a dog or cat or go fishing.

But that's life in the Big Smoke.

What most self-respecting people do is they study and work hard to get a house for their families. Reason being, so far we haven't noticed too many people just being given houses by anybody.

I appreciate that what I am suggesting here is way more than politically incorrect. It's darn near treason.

I am suggesting that the reserve system couldn't be more sick.

No one questions the dreadful, racist, exterminating, exclusionary policies and behaviours of several generations of white colonial rule in Canada.

All true. All shameful.

But please note.

Ethnics groups of every color, stripe and origin live and work in "the mainstream" while vividly maintaining their Irish Chinese Hindu Jewish Muslim Korean Russian roots and traditions.

The Indian Reserve was a bad idea 150 years ago and its a bad idea today.

It is a financial, moral, psychological sinkhole from which very little good can emerge.

End it.

Join the fray. Celebrate new strengths and old traditions right here on Canada Street.

Yah, I know. These are awful, incendiary ideas.

So be it.

Waiting for Godot will never be the answer.

$aving Fa$e

On Thursday, January 29th, wrote in this space about Gordon Campbell's favorite delusion, the vaunted beauty of the P-3 arrangement. (PPP Yourself)

We learn to day that The Highwayman himself, Kevin Falcon, has decided that Twinning the Port Mann Bridge is out ($1.75 Billion) and tearing the existing bridge down and Building a New One is in.

Cost $3.3 Billion.

Said.

Today.

Come on.

The new PPP Miracle on the Fraser isn't scheduled to open until 2013.

Which means, realistically the true and final cost will be more like $6 Billion.

As this nifty little plan will be written into law, it doesn't really matter whom we elect on May 12th, the fix is in. We, the citizens of this province, will be on the hook for this outrageous malfeasance of duty for decades to come.

This incompetence and dereliction of duty makes the Fast Ferries Fiasco into Playtime, by comparison.

For true insight into how disastrous and predictable this Port Mann Mess really is read Andre Picard's excellent story in today's Globe.

In this PPP, taxpayers are the ones who paid

A report by the Ontario Auditor General on the Brampton Civic Hospital project shows the pitfalls of this kind of financing

The article chronicles the usual trumpeting by a government of a public-private partnership, followed by the inevitable collapse on the part of the private consortium, followed quickly by the bail-out by the government left holding the bag.

Can you say, "Olympic Village" Boys & Girls?

Punch line to these horror stories? Moral?

Build civic projects with civic money and quit the bull.