Isn't everything made in China these days? (Hat-tip NealeNews)
The next time you feel patriotic by wearing a Canadian flag lapel pin, you may want to check the back to see if it's stamped Made In China.
The federal Opposition is complaining that the Paul Martin government has outsourced production of the pins to China. "I think it's a scandal," Conservative critic Charlie Angus said Wednesday after recently discovering the China stamp on the back of a pin.
"We see our prime minister standing up and he's talking about Canadian values and he's talking about standing up to China on human rights," Angus noted.
"And (yet) we're outsourcing the fundamental symbol of what Canada is to a foreign country."
I admit that the optics on this aren't great but they hardly outsourced "the fundamental symbol of what Canada is". The outsourced the manufacturing of the symbol not the symbol itself. I won't give the government much grief over this one. But the NDP critic makes his case about as well as it can be made.
"The lapel pin was a Canadian invention. It was made for 35 years by Canadian workers before this government came along," Angus told the Commons.
"Disney's got the Mounties, they gave the Remembrance Day coin to Tim Hortons and now they're giving the flag to China," he said.
"They're selling off our cultural heritage like a bunch of roadside hucksters selling hub caps and velvet Elvis paintings."
Update: Corrected critic from Conservative to NDP. It was NDP MP Charlie Angus who brought this up.
Furthermore, Public Works did not go through MERX (their purchasing system) for this. So it looks like the government thought they had something to hide as well.
