I am frustrated with our situation in Canada. We have stood tall and acted like a leader in the past century, and we seemed determined to ensure this never happens again.
Once upon a time - We were dynamic when we fought against human rights abuses. We were among those who sought to find means to keep the peace rather than just picking sides in international conflict. We were pioneers in environmentalism. We strove to create an international legal system to ensure nationalism would not be a protection from justice. We acted boldly in many ways to bring about solutions to the social issues which effect every person around the world.
That said, we were not always as effective in practice as we were in principle. Our treatment of native Canadians was and is shameful, even as we advocated universal rights. We polluted and abused our natural wealth at home while we endorsed and ratified environmental initiatives abroad. We imposed marshal law and forcibly stifled separatists in Quebec while publicly supporting the rights of others to assert their own independence abroad. We were not saints or even consistent in our morality. But, at least, we did address what was right even when we could not live up to those ideals.
That is a Canada which is gone. Today, our government cannot back out of environmental treaties we once spear-headed fast enough. We are even abandoning global projects to monitor environmental degradation. We are disabling our very sovereignty to ally ourselves with some of the worst abusers of the environment, human rights and international law. We do nothing as international crimes, war crimes and atrocities are committed. In the present economic 'crisis' we are rewarding those who created the situation with tax dollars while doing nothing to ensure it doesn't happen again. I wouldn't be surprised if we were to pull our support for the ICC, International Criminal Court, start producing landmines and endorse child labour any day now. I know many in government wish to reinstate capital punishment (state sanctioned murder). The situation is dire, and no-one would suggest we are leaders anymore - unless it was, perhaps, that we are leaders in the movement against social responsibility and good governance.
How did we get here? What could be done to turn this desperate situation around? Are we to become a second-rate nation which digs in its heels and resists the moral, political and environmental initiates of other nations? Or, can we once more push with other bold leaders to create a better and brighter future for the whole world? Not surprising, I think, the answers can be found at home.
We must become leaders, not as in the past, with motions and initiatives on the floor of the UN, but with bold steps to improve things in Canada. We must lead by example if we wish to regain our now tarnished credibility. We must move decisively to protect the environment, and in so doing we prepare ourselves for the future by ensuring our continued resource availability - we cannot afford to 'manage' our remaining environmental wealth the same way we did the east coast fisheries. Nor can we afford to allow industry to destroy whole eco-systems to access commodities for their own short term gain. Our national economy will not benefit by raping the earth - a brief industrial high can't justify an eternity of poisoned land, water and sky, stripped of all value. We must make 'sustainability' a primary social value while it is still possible.
We must find ways to ensure the human value and dignity of every person in Canada. We must establish a just system for resolving our long term injustices and that should be a template for resolving all future conflicts. Native claims must be resolved fairly, I believe that in most cases if we accept the treaties then resolution would be easy. I cannot understand how legally binding contracts between our government and native tribes can be so hard to figure out by our politicians. Likewise, Quebec sovereignty must be addressed once and for all - and the massive systematic bribes to Quebec must cease. French-Canadians cannot be treated as special while other cultural demographics are ignored. Ideally, these resolutions could then be applied anywhere to any people having been 'proven' by our bold initiative. Rather than by writing international laws and cajoling other nations to ratify and comply with them, we could do these things, because they are right, and encourage others to follow our lead.
And we must once again stand up in the UN, flawed as it may be, and oppose any violence, state sponsored and not. We must oppose human rights violations no matter where they occur. We must support every environmental protection, and work ceaselessly to accomplish them both at home and abroad. We should support universal workers rights and boycott trade with any nation which will not protect its workers. We must call out hypocrisy everywhere it is found. Our military allies and economic partners cannot be spared criticism lest our voice be known to be false, selfish and worst hypocritical. We cannot support military action outside the UN, ie. NATO except where it is in the concrete defense of allies by military threat (no more proxy wars; Bosnia, Afghanistan etc.). We must work to legitimize the UN by working tirelessly to end the 'veto' held by the (first) five nations who threaten the world with nuclear destruction. We must do everything we can to end the military threat posed by nuclear weapons, especially by those nations with the largest stockpiles. The choices we need to make are easy. If we always side with justice, equality and peace internationally, and strive wholeheartedly to achieve these values at home in Canada we cannot be anything but be a great nation.
We cannot let war profiteers, mega-corps and industrial polluters determine our national destiny for their own gain any more. We must work to make Canada once again a real democracy.
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