New reality no good
Email
Print
Letter to Editor
Share
Editor:
War in Afghanistan. War on cannabis. Inactivity in the environmental and aboriginal files, failing to reduce carbon and consumption, get justice for Natives. Failure of our foreign service to protect our nationals, citizens like Khadr or prisoners in Africa unable to get help from Canada’s embassies. Failure of government to bring home our citizens in U.S. jails on death row, or to protect Marc Emery from extradition (for a crime that brought him only a $2000 fine in this, his home nation). Visible lack of sympathy for claimants to asylum here by U.S. war resisters. Failure to support the national day-care program nearly instituted by former P.M. Martin. Defunding the arts, as in the CBC or Quebec.
This is a quick checklist from my memory of illiberal and narrow-minded action and policy by the Harperite Conservatives. All of it goes against a tradition of more tolerant policy under previous Canadian governments, whether led by Mulroney or Chretien. All of it quite suggestive that Harper, once an Ontario boy/ young man, is now thoroughly imbued with Tex-Albertan mentalities and attitudes. And so, here is my question: Since he gets healthy numbers of votes, particularly west of Ontario, or in rural parts, is Harper the new face of Canadian political norms? Is his party our new middle?... since Canadians are noted as a nation for being moderate, centrist, compromising.
It bugs me when my allies on the liberal and socialist side of politics speak as if Harper’s power is from some illegitimate source. He gets elected, folks. A lot of Canadians like what he stands for. It might be regionalism – in which case I’m out of sympathy with my West-rural home, more with my Ontario roots. It might be generational – the baby boomers like me (and our parents) put small-l liberalism in power since Pearson and Trudeau, but now the next generations, X,Y and generation Bust, are putting Harper conservatism in power. Or, some global zeitgeist now says, patriotism and capitalism are best. Sixties youth radicalism was to the Left, now it’s to the Right. I’m open to theories. Help me out.
I don’t like the new reality; I’d like to turn back the clock. I’m an old curmudgeon. As the Beatles sang (in the song She said, she said): “When I was a boy, everything was right...”
Charles Jeanes
v2
