blevkog

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has discarded the conclusions of Howard Sapers report on aboriginal incarceration as being without empirical evidence. To quote:

I find there is no empirical evidence of systemic discrimination against aboriginals in the corrections system," he said. "I visited personally a number of federal institutions and have spent time with aboriginals themselves individually and in groups in the institutions.

I can only come to one of two conclusions from statements like this; either he is simply lying and would like to shelve the report without regard, or he is a complete idiot. So he's visited a prison or two, big deal! When a minister of the Crown decides to drop in on your place of work to check up, the first instinct for all managers and supervisors is to clean the joint up and arrange for a nice show, so there is no question in my mind that what Mr. Day saw was what managers who like their jobs wanted him to see. Does he believe that his little drop in visit (or visits?) adequately disprove the statistics presented in Sapers report?

Since he is a politician, I would normally off-handedly assume that he is simply lying, but with a man who famously believes (believed?) that dinosaurs and man co-existed a la The Flinstones and that showing up to a press conference in a wet suit while running for Prime Minister was a good idea, complete idiocy should not be so blithely discounted.

Truly, comedy sometimes simply writes itself.

Posted by kevvyd on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 8:43 AM | Permalink