What's most unforgivable about MacKay's actions

I gave the following statement today (Dec. 7th) in the House of Commons. Statements must be a maximum of one minute in length.

Mr. Speaker,

The public contempt over the Defence Minister’s use of a search and rescue helicopter as a personal taxi …

And there is real contempt back home in Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker …

Not so much over the misuse of a government aircraft - that’s almost routine ...

Not even because the Defence Minister misled Parliament …

What’s most unforgivable about the minister’s embarrassing actions is that they take away from the real story …

That being the search and rescue response times of the Cormorants:

30 minutes during working hours; 2 hours during evenings and on weekends.

Can you imagine a fire department operating with one response time for the day, and another for the night?

The emergency response times of the Cougar helicopters that service the offshore oil industry will soon be 20 minutes around the clock.

I can tell you this, Mr. Speaker, the survival time of an offshore oil worker in the North Atlantic is the same as the survival time for a fishermen.

There should be one uniform search and rescue response for the offshore.

That’s where the contempt originates, Mr. Speaker.

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