Standing on ceremony

There is something wrong with this picture. The caption reads:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is piped onboard HMCS Halifax on Thursday, July 5, 2007

Well, unless there has been a change in Canadian naval ceremonial or unless Harper suddenly became royalty, he is not entitled to be piped aboard a Canadian ship.

The tradition of "piping the side" in the navy goes back to the days when people were hoisted up over the side. In modern times, those who are actually entitled to be piped aboard are members of the Royal Family, Governors General, the captain of that ship, naval captains and admirals making official visits to the ship and foreign dignitaries on official calls to the ship.

The prime minister of Canada has never been entitled to this form of salute when coming into or leaving one of Her Majesty's Canadian Ships. He's not royalty, not the head of state, not a naval officer, not the head of the armed forces and he's not foreign.

This is busted protocol.

While we're at it. The announcement by Harper, made to sound like his government originated the plan to modernize the Halifax-class frigates, belies the fact that the project was given approval to start in April 2005 and is pretty much on track.

The Halifax-class modernization and frigate life extension program was authorized under the Liberal government of Paul Martin. All Harper is announcing is that the program will be going ahead as planned. It's a good program - but it's not Harper's.

Harper's speech was littered with other little bits of bullshit. He claimed that "fifteen frigates have been deployed to the Persian Gulf".

That's not accurate. Canada only has twelve frigates. There may have been fifteen deployments, but twelve frigates did them.

Stating that all the work would be done in Canada is nothing noteworthy. All twelve ships were built in Canada and we've been doing our own major refits for decades.

What still hasn't made it out of the Harper government is the defence review. Mind you, that was one of Harper's promises, not something the previous government had already done for him.

Photo: CP / Andrew Vaughan