(Courtesy NealeNews)
There is just so much to pull out of this Globe and Mail article (actually titled Debate delayed DART) that I suggest you read the whole thing. Here are assorted highlights (lowlights if you are the Government):
...Sources said Defence Department and military officials could have had an advance reconnaissance unit ready to depart for the ravaged area late on Dec. 27, but the government did not announce plans to send the unit until Dec. 29, amid debate over cost-effectiveness and uncertainty about the extent of the damage in the region.
The military had also laid the ground work for an eventual rollout of the full Disaster Assistance Response Team by securing the use of a much-needed Antonov 124 transport plane on Dec. 27, a reservation it lost as politicians and bureaucrats debated deployment.
Can someone explain to me why we have a DART unit if they are not equipped to actually fly anywhere? Furthermore, if a disaster struck a hard to get to (meaning, requiring a flight) Canadian location, say Vancouver Island, how would this unit get there?
...Government officials tried to explain yesterday that a lack of information from the area made it impossible to say accurately whether DART would be useful.
"Anyone who claims to have known at the time of the first few days of the breadth of the situation is not being truthful," an official with the Canadian International Development Agency said.
By late Dec. 28, some estimates were putting the death toll at 60,000.
Politicians and bureaucrats decided the next morning to send the reconnaissance unit, but not before its cost-effectiveness was debated at a meeting that day.
..."If you're going provide humanitarian relief, you're going to need humans, in part, to do it," a source said. "Canadians want to see their contributions actually working. It has to have a form to it and DART is the perfect tool for showing Canadians that what they want to see happen is happening."
