The new Conservative government barred the media from military ceremonies Tuesday at a Trenton, Ontario, air base, where the coffins of four troops killed in Afghanistan arrived last weekend.
The government also has decided to fly Canadian flags at half-staff only on Remembrance Day, celebrated November 11, for military fatalities, not each time a soldier dies.
The moves set off debate this week in Parliament in Ottawa on whether the government’s actions are motivated by a desire to downplay bad news.
The government is trying to make this a question of privacy for families of the fallen — and has decided it’s legitimate to shut out an event from the whole nation. Harper will probably invoke his conversations with Bush’s God as the next rationale for censorship.
Just b/c no one is mentioning the halting of the flag lowering on Parliament Hill, I think it’s a good idea – we are, like it or not, at war – this means soldiers will die – possibly many of them – extending this (new) practice of lowering the flag to a possible future war on the scale of WW I or II, the flag would never be all the way up the mast – the government is right, the death of one soldier, however tragic, is not a national tragedy. As for press and cameras at the repatriation ceremonies, someone in gov’t poll the troops, and take their policy suggestion and do that – it is, in the end, their ceremony, even if they never see it.
joshua: funerals are not part of this discussion at all because we’ve never had the media at funerals and the article posted isn’t about funerals.
Tell you what. You joshua find any article covering this where it says that access to funerals is the issue and then that will prove me wrong. I’m sure you’ll spare the effort because you’re so concerned that you have to respond for other people.