Did Charest get something extra or did Harper forget to ask?

-
Jean Charest visited France today and received an offer of assistance in the evacuation of Lebanese-Canadians from President Chirac. Since Stephen Harper's last stop before Larnaca was Paris, how did this offer not take place then? While the offer is of course most welcome, how can this be diplomatically proper on the part of the French? The BQ must be doing handstands.

Meanwhile Dalton McGuinty was talking equalisation with Pat Binns. I wonder was it Ontario equalisation money that funded the new Quebec office in Munich...

Comments

Steve V said…
When I first heard of the offer, I immediately assumed it was related to Harper's visit. When I found out it was made to Charest, it made me wonder if Chirac was playing games with a humanitarian issue. I would like someone in the press to ask Harper if the offer came up during his meeting. Maybe it was simply a case of French nationals largely removed and now France has the capability to help us.
Thu Jul 20, 10:53:00 pm GMT-4
Mark Dowling said…
Steve

I hope that that is the case - unexpected spare capacity. If provincial leaders can get this kind of result maybe all of them should be touring Europe and the Middle East right now.
Fri Jul 21, 09:22:00 am GMT-4
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Your request could not be completed. Please try again in a few minutes."

-
When setting automatic replies (Out of Office) via Exchange 2013 OWA on behalf of another user, the message in the title can be displayed when saving the text. If you look at the System Event Log on the Exchange Server, you may see the following event ID 4: Current user: '" (domain)/(OU)/(OU)/(administrator) " on behalf of " (domain)/(OU)/(OU)/(User) "' Request for URL ( long URL follows ) failed with the following error: Microsoft.Exchange.Management.ControlPanel.RegionalSettingsNotConfiguredException: We couldn't process the request because the user ' (domain)/(OU)/(OU)/(User) ' hasn't signed in to Outlook Web App and selected a language and a time zone. Ask the user to do this, or, if you are a member of the built-in Organization Management or Help Desk role group, you can use Window PowerShell to select a language and time zone for them. Cancel the Automatic Replies dialog and switch to Settings, which will display a Time Zone selecti
Read more

Chirac gets it right on Lebanon troops?

-
When you have bloggers such as Far and Wide's Steve V and Sicilian Notes' Richard Waghorne , the former a raging critic of Israeli operations in Lebanon and the latter a largely uncritical supporter, agreeing on something you can't help feeling like the unlikely has happened - France is doing something right. They have both criticised France's reluctance to increase UNIFIL troop numbers beyond a fairly token 400, up from their current commitment of 200. France's reluctance is mirrored by the Germans who have offered naval anti-smuggling patrols and perhaps border security, the UK and Denmark who have also offered ships, the Italians who are ready to send 3,000 but not yet and the Irish who have earmarked 200 (which would bring them up to the legal maximum of about 850 overseas at any time due to the Liberia mission) but who are also holding back . The reason is that which I posted on some days ago (albeit having taken a second swing at it) - Resolution 1701 does
Read more

Remote Desktop Connection Manager - a boon for admins

-
I subscribe to a bunch of Microsoft blogs and one of them revealed a gem in the past month.  RDCMan, a tool which allows an admin to group together remote desktops, preset their username/password combos and connect to those groups with a right-click option, has been invaluable in my work lately which involves quickly jumping from server to server or from servers to a group of workstations.  The gorgeous thing about it is not merely a gallery of thumbnails of the connected sessions, but the ability to interact with the thumbnails with sufficiently accurate mouse clicks.  Heartily recommended. Here's the original post: Introducing Remote Desktop Connection Manager 2.2 (You had me at EHLO - the Microsoft Exchange Team blog)
Read more