Late today, Canada announced it would send 10,000 temporary shelters to Burma. That's great news.

The Conservatives, however, can't resist taking some partisan political jabs at those -- like the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Québecois -- who questioned the need to spend billions on four Boeing C-17 transport planes for our military. We'd always got our gear, aid, and soldiers to wherever they needed to go by renting rides from our allies or commercial operators and no one -- and I've asked often right up and down the chain of command -- has yet named an instance when Canadian assets were stranded because of the lack of a big jet plane. Those billions, others argued, were better spent on search-and-rescue aircraft or on new helicopters.

But the Conservatives were having none of that. They wanted the big Boeings and, by dang, they were going to get them. And, to their credit, they got them in record time, so far as a major Defence Department procurement project goes.

But really, do they need to lord it over their opponents while announcing what should be a wholly non-partisan initiative - sending aid to Burma?

Read the press release put out by the Canadian International Development Agency (Bev Oda, prop.) this afternoon. Can you sense the ALL-CAPS "told-you-so" attitude when CIDA points out that this aid is travelling to Burma via ONE of our FOUR C-17s?

Some excerpts for those too lazy to click through (and the ALL-CAPS part is from the original release):

...On Wednesday May 14, the shelter kits will be shipped from CFB Trenton to Bangkok via ONE OF the Department of National Defence's FOUR Globemaster C-17 aircraft. The International Red Cross Movement will then manage the shipment into the Rangoon region and distribute the shelter kits to people in need in the affected areas. "By using our C-17, Canada's Government is responding to the humanitarian emergency in Burma with a large shipment of emergency aid supplies," said Minister MacKay. "These supplies will bring much-needed relief to Burma in a timely fashion." ... ... On Wednesday May 14, 40 metric tonnes of emergency relief supplies will be moved from CIDA's emergency stockpile in Mississauga to CFB Trenton. They will then be loaded onto ONE OF THE Canadian military's FOUR C-17 Globemasters for airlift to Bangkok, Thailand where officials from the Canadian Government and the Red Cross Movement will receive them. . . .

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