Canada's Aging Second Hand Submarines

Today's poll question; Should the Liberals have bought Canada's 4 cold war era submarines from the British 13 years ago? Hindsight is starting to show that it was a colossally bad idea, as repeated problems and frequent repairs have wiped out the savings from buying the boats used. Would you rather we buy new subs or do you think that we don't need any at all? Canada has one of the world's largest coastlines and as such submarines can serve a useful purpose (like patrolling for smugglers). If there are more efficient and less costly means of performing this function, all options should be considered. The current sub fleet is close to its end anyway, so we are going to have to start slowly decommissioning them in the not so distant future. Perhaps we can buy fewer planes and a few more boats?

Evan Soloman was trying to float the idea today that there was a mysterious cover up regarding a training accident last summer, and that the government has been "misleading" Canadians. It was reported that there was an accident, but apparently we should have been told there was a big hole in the front of the boat. None of the sailors were seriously injured (two had minor bruising), the boat made it back to base on its own power and an inquiry was held into the incident (which is why Evan even had pictures to wave around for the camera). I'm not sure why they seem to think every detail regarding damage to our military equipment needs to be broadcast immediately to the entire world. How many other countries do that?

Evan was focusing in on the fact that the damaged sub was removed from the water at night to support his cover up conspiracy "under cover of darkness". Then later he had a military rep on the show who simply explained that it was done at 4am because they needed high tide to lift it onto the dry dock. Evan struggled to come to terms with the simple truth, and that the damage was structurally like "ripping the skin off your bumper", except that it is an expensive bumper. He had a very unhappy look on his face. It was almost funny to watch him conduct his interview while trying to compute the information, after he'd been pumping a cover up of a larger story for the first hour and a half of his show.

This is yet another example of the media breaking a story before they have completed their research. In the modern 24 hour news cycle and Twitter universe, journalists compete to be the first to break a story, and often do so before completing their due diligence. The bloggosphere and punditry class then go on to draw conclusions based on incomplete information. When they end up looking like idiots, they'll blame the government for not telling everyone every detail about everything immediately.