Category: Good Stuff

Okay, I know some people are going to think that this is corny, but I don’t give a damn. Tim Hortons has finally opened up shop in Kandahar and our men and women on the ground are finally getting to enjoy a little taste of home. Yes, it was Boston creams and double-doubles at the double on Thursday. Maple dips, too.

Officials said that Thursday’s opening a “soft-opening” ahead of a formal ribbon-cutting dog and pony show set for Saturday, Canada Day. Previously, everybody said that the outlet wouldn’t open until then but I guess when a few hundred heavily armed Canucks want some Timbits, you give ’em to them.

“Big deal,” some might say; “it’s just a doughnut shop.”

No, it isn’t. When you’re thousands of miles away from your hearth and home, in a hostile land replete with bad guys who are trying to kill you, each and every little piece of home that you can lay your hands on is worth its weight in Klondike gold. The Yanks already had a Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut, but it just isn’t the same.

None of these really say “Canada” the way that Timmy’s does though, do they? And let’s face it, when you miss home, it’s the littlest things that gnaw away at you the most. Mom’s cooking, your favourite chair, your dog, your other half’s annoying habits, your bone-headed brother in law’s dumbass jokes… the list goes on and on. I could babble on about this until the Leafs win the Cup, but it’s probably better to let our soldiers speak to it themselves:

“I am so happy; I’ve been waiting five months for this place to get here. Now it is finally here. I’m ecstatic!” – Pte. Janice Magrath of Edmonton

“This is good for morale. It’s a bit of home, just having a bit of Canada here. It’s incredible.” – Warrant Officer Mark Pickford, 1PPCLI

“It is a really nice change of routine. It is something to look forward to when you come back in from the forward operating bases. They might need a drive-through though, eh?” – Master Cpl. Mike Schmidt

CWN has a great take on all this hubbub in their “Off the Record” section which you can see for yourself here. It’s well worth reading (I laughed my butt off the first time I read it).

An article in the Freeps today outlines how the OPP, in cooperation with the provincial coroner’s office, has launched a website profiling hundreds of cold cases going back decades in the hope that it may generate new leads in some of the province’s oldest unsolved cases. The Freeps article can be found here, and the RESOLVE Initiative’s site can be found here.

Well, at least no one can say that they’re surprised. A couple of hours ago, AG Sheila Fraser has produced her annual report to parliament and, just like we all expected, it was a doozy. Click on the AG’s photo to see some of CTV’s coverage.

The taxpayer’s favourite parliamentary ass-kicker found that the hand-wringing Grits’ little white elephant not only went tens of millions of dollars over budget in 2004/2005 (with the government lying to parliament and scrambling to hide the overruns), but that it is virtually impossible to see us getting anything at all in terms of value for our money. In 2004, when the CFC realized that its money sucking had balooned out of control yet again, officials were told to find “an accounting treatment that would, if possible, avoid having to record all the costs,” which everyone knows is Gritspeak for “cover our asses.”

Among some of the other skulduggeries that the AG found in the CFC were:

* $21.8 million gobbled up in 2004-2005 but not charged to the centre’s budget.

* Not only is the CFC’s new computer registry three years overdue and running at triple its estimated cost ($90 million and climbing so far), but there is no way to know if it’s actually doing anything.

* Nobody checks to see if the info that gun owners give is complete or even accurate.

* The volunteers that verify owners’ firearms don’t go through background checks and nobody audits their work.

* For 62% Of the people that had their licences yanked in Q3 of last year, the CFC has no goddamn idea where the hell their guns are or what happened to them.

Now all we need to do is wait to hear from the Tories just how they intend to put this Grit fiasco out of our misery. Stay tuned, folks.