Decide what kind of Canada you want
Re: A bad week to be Canadian, Nov. 22. Joseph Heath is correct in his opinion piece. We should be embarrassed and deeply ashamed as Canadians — and the list is long and growing:
For Rob Ford, for the PMO’s handling of the “Senate scandal,” for CIDA funding for women’s health that does not permit abortion even in the case of rape by soldiers/terrorists, and mandatory minimum sentences that defy common sense and that are filling our prisons.
For government muzzling of our scientists, for the daily reminders from “the top” to our hard-working civil servants that they need not actually think about their files, for a duplicitous government that trumpets “new” previously announced funding to support our troops, Canada’s Economic Action Plan, the Northern Strategy, First Nations people, etc., then lets Contribution Agreements and contracts sit unsigned in ministers’ offices.
For a government that has traded thoughtful diplomacy for pictures of the Queen in our embassies, that overtly supports one side of the Israeli/Palestinian question and thinks “taking my ball and going home” is as effective as the hard slogging of active engagement.
Mostly we should be ashamed, as I am now, for our smugness and for our passiveness as Canadians. I remember being in the Hotel Kathmandu in Nepal on the day the Iraq War started and how we derided the Americans for the foolish war and how deliriously happy I was when I met Americans on trek who were passing themselves off as Canadians.
You only have to travel the world to understand how relatively easy it is to be a Canadian and to live a good life — one built largely on the back of our abundant natural resources.
The truth is we are a passive, largely complacent (albeit decent) people.
But of course, not all Canadians are complacent. The Harper and Ford type governments have learned how to tap into and motivate the non-complacent — whether by virtue of their countries of origin, religious beliefs or their social and economic situations.
I am resolved to get involved in the next election — we need to actually think about and discuss what kind of a Canada we want and not simply wait it out and hope the next government doesn’t take us too far from the country and belief system that we were raised in and raised our children in over the last 70 years.
My hope is that more of us commit to do the same.
SUZANNE POTTER, Fitzroy Harbour