Given my upbringing by the Quebec head of the IAMAW, I can’t say I’m overly fond of Air Canada.

But putting that aside, I do pity the poor bastards who are trying to walk the delicate line between safety and politics. Don’t they know that political correctness always trumps personal safety?

Over a decade ago I visited Winnipeg. Borrowing my host’s truck for a meander, I took a wrong turn and wound up in what appeared to be a Mexican shantytown, replete with lean-tos and outhouses, on a dirt road. I told my host about it later, and he not only gave me the height of shit, he forbade me from taking the truck again.

Injuns.

You know: Those people who hold an eternal grievance and refuse to do for themselves, and therefore overstretch available resources from the teat, finding them obviously lacking.

So now poor Air Canada has made the mistake of admitting their staff don’t feel safe in Injun-controlled parts of the ‘Peg, and want them moved elsewhere. Fools. Better to let your staff be killed by Canada’s poor Noble Savages than to protect them and look “raaaaacist.”

And by racist, I mean sane.

In a bulletin issued late last month, Air Canada informed its pilots and flight crew personnel that they would no longer be staying at the Radisson Hotel on Portage Avenue and Smith Street because of “questionable safety in the area.”

The airline’s decision has riled various Manitoba leaders, including Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz, who is demanding to know why Air Canada believes the city’s downtown is too dangerous for its crews during overnight layovers.

I understand that it’s the Mayor’s job to defend his city. I don’t begrudge him that. But common sense and personal safety come before sacred cows. Or squaws. Or whatever.

According to Stats Can (most recent stats I could find were 2010), the places with the highest crime are

NWT & Nunavut (both twice as high as other provinces), followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It’s clear what the Northwest Territories and Nunavut have in common, but for my American readers, Sask & Man are much the same.  Full of indigent and indolent Natives with no desire to jump on the Western job boom. And frankly, why should they? With the government paying for their liquor, there’s no incentive to work.

Canadian gift shops are jammed with bad native art, for which the government pays handsomely out of some sense of perceived guilt, and which wealthy elitists buy for the same reason. It’s pretty ugly, but it’s the most visible way which we are accommodating Native mediocrity in Canada. There are many others which our visitors aren’t privy to.

Down in the U.S., there’s a frustration with reparations, which after 160 years are pretty much invalid. There are no survivors of slavery, and all that’s left is a giant welfare system that perpetuates aggrieved black poverty. Canada’s Natives are much the same. Born with a chip on their shoulders, they hold their hands out until white liberal guilt kicks in and someone hands them that which is worked for by others.

Isn’t it time we quit giving into the game, gave up the racism of low expectations, and actually demanded something from our natives?

My own private holocaust