Our country is rapidly changing for the worst
“ After feeling for more than a century that being Canadian was a journey rather than a destination we have arrived at last. We have attained a state of delicious grace which allows us to appreciate that what’s important is not so much who we are but what we are — that sometimes a large nation can become a great one .” Peter C. Newman biographer and former editor of Maclean’s.
While celebrating and pondering Canada’s 143 years as a nation it is obvious that much has changed in the past 14 decades — both inside and outside our borders.
Throughout our history we have always had stable governance. We have super-abundant natural resources fresh water food sources and land. On the Human Development Index (a measure of well-being especially child welfare life expectancy literacy education and living standards) Canada is rated fourth after Norway Australia and Iceland.
Yet it’s interesting and sometimes perplexing that Canadians suffer a cultural complex — a combination of insecurity and feeling inferior. In his book The Canadians New York Times writer Andrew Malcolm said: “The only way to get a Canadian to praise his or her country is to announce you are an American and then criticize Canada unmercifully. Sometimes even that wouldn’t do it.”
Provided you’re not an aboriginal person Canadians live in one of the most blessed lands on Earth. But we can’t be too sanguine about our position in the world. There are challenges.
Our environmental record is shameful; our treatment both past and present of our native peoples is pitiful; our national police force the RCMP often bungles high-profile cases; we continue to throw away lives and money in the bewildering war in Afghanistan.
ENVIRONMENTAL FAILURE
Canada ranks 15th out of 17 peer countries and scores a ‘C’ grade on the Conference Board of Canada’s environmental performance report card. “Canada’s poor record in several areas — including climate change smog and waste generation — drags down its comparative performance.” Only Australia and the U.S. rank below Canada.
Although our vast country has abundant fresh water Canadians use twice as much water than most other countries in the report card with ony the U.S. ranking behind Canada.
Nick Burman president of Alberta’s Vision 2012 Association says that Canada is rapidly losing ground in the world’s eyes in terms of environmental stewardship. Even the U.S. is doing better than we are particularly California.
“Why is Canada handling the environment so poorly that other nations are starting to condemn us?” Burman asks. “Canada is handling the environment poorly because our political system is breaking down. The current party electoral system has become so confrontational that everything is politicized.”
“The environment is something we cannot afford to politicize. As of now most of our members of parliament talk a good line about the environment yet since the signing of the Kyoto Accord nothing really substantive has happened.”
Syncrude Canada was found guilty last week of environmental charges in the deaths of 1606 ducks found in massive tailings ponds which contain toxic oily bitumen. The deaths occurred because Syncrude deployed its bird-deterrence systems weeks late and had cut back on seasonal staff. Environmentalists and Alberta opposition parties are framing this as a failure of the provincial government which has cut its monitoring budget and has allowed the industry to regulate itself.
The oilsands have attracted much international attention with environmental groups saying Alberta’s regulations are too lax energy companies’ disclosure of information is too guarded and there’s a lack of monitoring of oilsands projects by governments and industry.
"Rhetoric from politicians and even some industry now acknowledges that tailings lakes are unacceptable but the problem continues to grow" says Simon Dyer oil sands director of the Pembina Institute an environmental think-tank. “We need enforcement of current rules and much stricter standards for new projects that would prohibit the creation of liquid tailings.”
In the 1970s former Venezuelan oil minister and OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo called oil “the devil’s excrement” and predicted “Ten years from now 20 years from now you will see: oil will bring us ruin.” The Gulf oil disaster and the deaths of the unsuspecting ducks are harbingers of our environmental future.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Of all prime ministers in recent Canadian history Lester B. Pearson (1963 to 1968) had the most profound impact on what Canada is today. He repeatedly resisted former U.S. president Lyndon Johnson’s demands to send Canadian combat troops to Vietnam and he introduced universal health care student loans and the Canada Pension Plan. As well he replaced the British-themed flag with today’s Maple Leaf flag.
Vilified in Alberta for the National Energy Plan Pierre Trudeau repatriated our Constitution from Great Britain and passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (he was also the only PM to ever institute the War Measures Act). Mulroney is infamous for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which Maude Barlow the Chair of the Council of Canadians says that American corporate challenges to Canada under NAFTA rules continue to threaten Canada’s sovereignty. “The Harper government should abrogate this flawed deal once and for all."
Harper our current prime minister often parroted G.W. Bush by ending his speeches with “God Bless Canada.” His broken promises are legion the most egregious being fixed election dates which he ignores and an elected Senate which he continues to pack with Conservative partisans.
With Harper pushing tough-on-crime legislation Don Head commissioner of Correctional Service Canada says “We’ve carefully examined this legislation and expect that as a result we will receive an increased number of approximately 3400 offenders over the next three years.”
Those numbers are not in step with the Supreme Court of Canada which in a 1999 judgment condemned prison as failing society pointing out that jail does little to deter crime is extremely costly and in fact may make ex-prisoners a greater danger to society.
"In recent years sentences of imprisonment in Canada have increased at an alarming rate" the ruling said. "If over-reliance on incarceration is a problem with the general population it is of much greater concern in the sentencing of aboriginal Canadians."
The reference to native peoples is due to the fact that a horrendous number of natives are sitting in Canada’s prisons.
CRIMES AGAINST CANADA’S ABORIGINAL PEOPLES
Despite being less than four per cent of Canada’s population aboriginals make up 19.6 per cent of the prison population plus 13.6 per cent of those on parole.
Outside prison natives don’t fare much better. “It is a black mark on Canada because we are one of the richest countries in the world yet have Third World living conditions right in our backyard” pointed out Phil Fontaine past national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
The atrocities Fontaine is speaking of are depicted in the following facts:
• One aboriginal child in eight is disabled double the rate of all Canadian children.
• Among First Nations children 43 per cent lack basic dental care.
• Overcrowding among First Nations’ families is double the rate of that for non-native families.
• Mould contaminates almost half of all First Nations households.
• Almost half of aboriginal children under 15 years old residing in urban areas live with a single parent.
• Approximately 100 First Nations communities must boil their drinking water.
• Some 40 per cent of Aboriginal children off of reserves live in poverty.
• The suicide rate among native youth is five to six times higher than the Canadian average.
Another sad chapter for Canada’s natives is the residential school system —130 schools for native children who were separated from families then sexually and physically abused (including torture) by their church caregivers. At the turn of the 20th century mortality rates at the schools in Western Canada were so high that five years after entry 35 to 60 per cent of students had died. Finally in 2008 the government apologized for the schools’ policies and set up a $1.9-billion compensation plan for victims.
MILITARY ADVENTURES
Until recently Canada has been widely recognized as a peacekeeping nation. During the 1956 Suez Crisis Canada took part in its first United Nations peacekeeping effort. That unwarlike approach has dramatically changed. “The Afghanistan campaign has not only been extremely expensive it has essentially abandoned Canada’s 50-year commitment to UN peacekeeping” Ottawa’s Rideau Institute points out in a 2008 report. “While low levels of peacekeeping spending may continue for some time the reorientation of the Canadian military is clear. For all intents and purposes DND (the Department of National Defence) spending on peacekeeping missions has stopped.”
Canada is involved in Afghanistan’s quagmire in large part to appease the U.S. because we declined to partake in the Iraq war. Our losses in Afghanistan are greater than those of any other country. Canada suffers 14.4 dead per 1000 soldiers compared to the U.K. at 9.8 NATO at 5.0 and the U.S. at 4.5. Those numbers are worse than the Soviets’ losses (12.5 per 1000) when they were there in the 1980s.
In June opposition to our being in Afghanistan reached its highest level ever — 59 per cent while support is at 37 per cent according to an Angus Reid poll. As such the Harper government has polarized Canadians. Nearly half of Canadians 48 per cent believe it was a mistake to send military forces to Afghanistan and 34 per cent think it was not. The majority 57 per cent of Canadians also think that the Harper government has not been providing enough information on the war. The war is costing Canadian taxpayers $214 million per month with an estimated total cost of $28.4 billion by the end of 2011.
Khalil Nouri a co-founder of New World Strategies Coalition Inc. an Afghan think-tank for non-military solution studies in Afghanistan says the West is caught in a tribal civil war. “If there is no shift away from the paradigm of Muslim radicalism certainly a re-emergence of the old bitter civil war between the two powerful Pashtun tribal groups that was fought over three centuries ago will explode upon us today” he says.
THE RCMP IS BROKEN
For almost a century the RCMP had earned a respectable international reputation — until they bungled the investigation of the Air India bombing of 1985 (the largest mass murder in Canadian history) then gave false information to U.S. authorities to help send Mahar Arar to Syria (where he was tortured in 2002) and in 2007 tasered Robert Dziekanski to death — then later lied about the incident.
In the Dziekanski case four trained Mounties were needed to subdue a passive Dziekanski (armed with an office stapler) including using a knee on his neck to hold him down. Dziekanski’s last recorded words (in Polish) were “Why?” An undisclosed financial settlement was recently reached with his mother.
Arar was flying home from Tunis and was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 after the RCMP had improperly given information to U.S. authorities resulting in Arar a Canadian citizen being secretly flown to Syria where he was imprisoned for 10 months and tortured into signing a false confession of having links to terrorists.
The day before he resigned on December 7 2006 RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli apologized to Arar. At the same time he informed the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that his earlier testimony about the Arar case was “inaccurate.” The Canadian government settled with Arar costing taxpayers $10 million.
WHAT’S NEXT?
What lies ahead for Canada? Just over a century ago prime minister Sir Wilfred Laurier predicted that “the 20th century belongs to Canada.”
Being Canadian in the 21st century means learning to assert ourselves as a mature and independent nation. Since Confederation we have sold the control of much of our land and resources to large companies. The Foreign Investment Review Agency was formed by Trudeau in 1973 to counter criticism that foreign business domination was harmful to Canada. After Mulroney became prime minister in 1984 his government dismantled FIRA and proceeded to champion NAFTA.
Foreign business control has become a threat to Canadian sovereignty. Just in the last decade the country has lost:
• Molson Breweries one of the oldest companies in Canada which merged with U.S.-based Coors in 2005
• Dofasco Canada’s largest steelmaker which was acquired by Luxembourg-based Arcelo in 2006.
• Hudson’s Bay Company Canada’s largest and oldest retailer which was sold to U.S. investor Jerry Zucker in 2006.
Business effects are economic but Canadian culture is becoming a wraith. For decades Canadians turned their TVs on to Walt Disney Sesame Street and U.S. action flicks.
If Canada is to survive the 21st century as an independent nation Canadians must find effective ways to become masters of our own house in a globalized neighbourhood. That may be the greatest challenge for generations to come.
