Lack of concern for fellow Canadians clear in Oshawa, oil woes

There was a time in our country when we did a better job of looking out for one another.

Looking out for one another was once a value Canadians elevated above their own politics.

For example, it was a federal Progressive Conservative government headed by Brian Mulroney that bailed out farmers to the tune of a billion dollars in 1986.

Yes, this bailout might have had something to do with the desperation of a provincial Progressive Conservative politician in Grant Devine demanding that money in an early morning phone call during Saskatchewan’s election campaign that year. (Or so we found out, courtesy of the rather thin walls of Kelvington’s Sportsman Inn and the serendipity of then- Starphoenix reporter Earl Fowler having a room located right next to Devine’s.)

But the point is, there was no huge hue and cry from the rest of the country complaining about western farmers getting federal money that they weren’t getting. There was actually empathy.

Similarly, when Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper agreed in 2009 to provide a bailout to Chrysler Group LLC and General Motors, we didn’t exactly hear protestations from anyone even though Canadian and Ontario taxpayers have, cumulatively, fallen about $3.5 billion from breaking even.

So it was more than a little disconcerting how quickly we heard the western/conservativeminded sneering over how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau better not be bailing out Oshawa autoworkers ahead of western oil companies.

No, this isn’t about Trudeau’s carbon tax. GMC is slashing 14,700 jobs in North America, including four factories in the U.S.

There again, it’s been equally insufferable for westerners to have to listen to the smirking tones from easterners/ liberalminded types when the conversation turns to the need for pipelines to expand oil markets and maintain oil sector jobs as they fill their own vehicles with Saudi oil.

Is this who we are right now? It’s not just a few federal politicians like Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, MP Michelle Rempel or Trudeau adviser Gerald Butts who get the tone wrong because they can’t see past their own partisanship.

Nor is this about western oil, the eastern auto industry or, for that matter, whether the newspaper industry should ever get another federal taxpayer bailout.

Bailouts were never a great solution at the best of times, and these are hardly the best of times. Rapid technological change would make it near impossible for a debt-plagued federal government to bail out troubled industries even if we could afford it.

What we are risking is the once-widespread and very Canadian notions of empathy and common decency. Partisanship may be stripping us of these core values forged out of the realities of living in a gigantic, sparse, cold land that largely produced raw materials — that delicate balance of collectivism and entrepreneurialism, so well expressed in places like Saskatchewan.

We are a large country becoming a small one because of regional political interests killing the notion of what it truly means to be Canadian.

It hasn’t just happened overnight with the Oshawa plant closures or the downturn in oil. We have been changing.

The Canadian notion of helping “have-nots” is being eroded by a sense of modern-day entitlement that’s somehow convincing us problems don’t exist if they happen to be beyond our own sightline.

Whether coming from the right or left or from east or west, we’re developing an alarming tendency to not only push our own political/regional beliefs first, but to discount the possibility the thoughts and needs of others just might be valid. And should we have a moment’s second-thought that is a selfish, wrong approach, we can always cocoon ourselves in our social media hole and be reassured by like-minded others that our narrow thinking is just fine.

We need to try and get back to where we once were. It should still be cool to care about the problems of others — even if they don’t share your area code or political belief.

Really, looking out for one another is downright Canadian.