My Canada

Stephen Harper said we wouldn't recognize Canada when he was through with it. I believe him. Already there have been many significant changes in public policy. Our reputation in the world has been badly damaged on several fronts, including environmentally, diplomatically, and in terms of human rights.

Now, while I still remember what it was like, I am going to note down some elements of my ideal Canada. I am not suggesting that this was actually Canada in some bygone golden age. It is simply what I envision for our future. A checklist of goals to aim for.

• My Canada has universal health care. However rich or poor, you are entitled to the same care. Our health care professionals work as teams, addressing the whole person rather than an illness or injury. No one ever has to choose between getting medical help for their child and feeding the family or paying the rent. The health care system is populated by compassionate people who have not only embraced a calling to help others, but also embody acceptance of people, regardless of age, race, sexual orientation, fashion sense, income or taste in music. And treat all, even those they may not agree with personally, with the same level of concern and empathy as they would like to receive themselves, if the situation were reversed. Nurse practitioners play a key role in the delivery of care. A substantial and widespread network of mid-wives relieve some of the burden from the primary care hospital system. Having sufficient numbers of qualified mid-wives in every region, backed up by the availability of EMS response in the unusual event that it should be needed, would greatly lessen the beds taken up by people who really have nothing wrong with them. Childbirth is a very natural process and we have medicalized it even in very normal and low-risk pregnancies, and that needs to be reversed. An extensive home-care network also alleviates some of the pressure on hospitals and allows people to receive care in their own homes wherever possible.

• My Canada focuses programs on prevention of youth crime, and rehabilitation, far above policies to incarcerate and punish. Far too many people are in jail who should not be there. Granted, people who hurt others need to be taken out of mainstream society to protect us all. Violent crime is one kind of case. Perpetrators of violent crime may (probably do) suffer from some form of mental illness, anything from impulse control to psychopathy. They need to be treated (if possible). People who do not engage in violent crime should have a different path. I am not saying there should not be repercussions or consequences, but jail seems a very poor use of resources. Community service, counselling, intervention in substance abuse issues, improving educational levels so they can get a job... these are things that make sense to me. Mentally well people do not steal because they enjoy it. These are often acts of desperation. Providing young people with role models and programs to keep them occupied and supervised is far more cost-effective than incarceration. Drug possession and use are not criminal behaviours. If the police could burst into your home and search it and throw you in jail for having a bottle of scotch, most people would say there is something terribly wrong with the system. But that can happen if you have a baggie of weed. And yet, dope smokers are far less likely to get into fights or do property damage than drunk people. Dope smokers are more likely to listen to music and smile a lot. Addiction to hard drugs (e.g. Cocaine, crack, crystal meth, heroine, Oxycontin, etc.) is a health issue, not a legal one. Tweakers should be in a system offering support, care, access to rehabilitation programs...not the criminal justice system. If soft drugs like marijuana and hashish were marketed through government outlets like alcohol is, the black market would dry up, the government would net huge tax revenues, and the justice system would have a heavy case load lifted saving millions of dollars. If addicts had access to methadone programs, support, counselling, and life skills education, much of the organized crime market for those drugs would dry up as well. It is not an airy-fairy idea. It is pragmatism. A lot of things are very interconnected. Children being raised by parents who do not have parenting skills because their own parents did not have parenting skills – it goes back to education. People who get into bad situations because they have no money management or other life skills. People who get into trouble because they lack the education to get a job. People who need mental health intervention but slip through the cracks. Kids who have nothing productive to do and no supervision because their parent (or parents) work all the time. Social and economic problems are at the root of a lot of people getting into trouble with the law. Mental illness or substance addiction account for much of the rest. As a society, we must develop ways to address these matters. Throwing people in jail is like putting a band-aid on a hemorrhaging artery. Keeping them in jail longer does nothing but give them time to become harder and more adept at crime. Other cultures (other than our British/European based system of retributive justice) have ways of dealing with offenders that are far more effective. First Nations peoples, African cultures, and others have processes based on reconciliation and reintegration as opposed to incarceration. And it makes a lot of sense. Help offenders understand how their behaviour has hurt others. Help them get to a point of wanting to make amends and change their behaviour. Makes more sense to me than warehousing them with a big population of similarly damaged individuals.

• My Canada is a peace-keeping nation, not a military power. We have a good, albeit small, military. For decades since the Second World War we earned an international reputation as peace-keepers and providers of humanitarian aid. A Canadian flag on your backpack assured you of much better treatment anywhere in the world than would be afforded to our neighbours to the south. The world liked us. We were the good guys. Canada wasn't about world domination, like the superpowers (the USA, the former Soviet Union, and Communist China). We were about peace, making sure people were decent to one another. Some may feel that is a wussy stance. They may long for a country that flexes its military muscles on the world stage, shows off its machismo, tells other countries what to do, or else. Peace-keeping is a difficult, dangerous job. It's not all about hugging villagers and singing Kumbaya. Our peace-keepers have been engaged in combat many times in defence of civilians and to enforce treaties and cease-fires. And it is far more useful than bombing a society back into the stone age. Recent conflicts seem far more concerned about keeping the oil fields of the Middle East open and friendly to the West, than improving the lives of the citizens of those countries. Yes, yes, there was 9-11, and everyone froze in terror, for a moment. And then decided someone had to be seen to pay. Someone had to be punished. Some suggested that attacking Iraq and Afghanistan would prevent Muslim extremists from attacking again. I think I have to save the rest of this thought for another rant, as I risk going off topic. There are reasons people in that part of the world hate the West. A lot of them have little to do with religion. Bombing the hell out of their countries and killing their people has not made them like us any better. I will leave it at that, to be continued in a piece about international policy. Our government is keen on getting F-35 fighter jets. To defend our country, they say. F-35s that do not have operational capability in extreme cold. So, ok, we only want to defend the southernmost part of our country? I suggest that the F-35s are for attack rather than defence purposes. And that is not something my Canada would do.

• My Canada is inclusive. We are not the US. They have a “melting pot” south of the border. Immigrants and people with various cultural backgrounds are encouraged to assimilate. To become American. We have a mosaic that celebrates our differences. It is a great analogy. If you take all the colours of the rainbow (representing different cultures, religions, sexualities and abilities) and mix them all together, you get a sludgy putty-brown. If you allow them to be distinct, retaining their characteristics, you can create a beautiful picture. So my ideal Canada is a country that does not discriminate based on skin colour, or accent, or age, or gender, or ability, or economic circumstance. We have an amazing charter of rights and freedoms that applies equally to all Canadians. It is a model to the world. It is designed to prevent whomever is in government at the time to enact laws that would institutionally discriminate against anyone. It protects us against the sort of oppression that is rife in some other parts of the world. The current administration is clearly not fond of the Charter, refusing to appropriately acknowledge the 30^th anniversary of the signing of the Charter this past April, opting instead to make a huge fuss over the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

• My Canada cares about and protects the environment. We have vast expanses of wilderness, a huge percentage of the world's fresh water, and an Aboriginal community which has traditionally been very tied to the land, both physically and spiritually. We should be world leaders in conservation of resources and in the development of alternative energy. We should not be focused on the profits gained by extracting dirty fuels, destroying forests and commercializing our water. In my mind, that is a very stupid and short-term view. We need a paradigm shift in our society. Until we make the leap and refocus on alternative energies and lifestyles that are environmentally friendly, nothing will change for the better. Solar energy works. I am typing this now on a laptop powered by the sun. The government needs to take a leadership role in supporting the conversion to solar energy across the country. It is expensive to set up, although it is becoming more affordable. People need incentives to make the move to a different energy source. But I believe if the political will was there, it could happen. Millions of dollars are used to support the oil industry. Through tax breaks and subsidies we support multinational companies that rake in billions in profits every year. Why are we not channelling some of this money into helping people heat and power their homes using sunlight? It would be so much better for the environment. It would reduce air pollution and reduce the need for mines and refineries and pipelines and oil tankers that destroy forests and pollute waterways and put many species of wildlife in danger. It is so obvious that this is a better, more sustainable way to go. What keeps this from happening? Well, Big Oil would not be able to make profits from it. As Canadians and as citizens of Planet Earth, do we want to make the oil barons richer? Or do we want to protect our environment for our children and our grandchildren?

• My Canada respects and values seniors. These are the people who raised us, taught us, looked after us when we were sick, and who built the society we live in today. As we age we tend to encounter more health issues. We reach a point where we cannot work as we once did. But we still need to live in comfort and dignity. In the old days, families looked after their seniors. But people are living longer now. Men and women are in the workforce and have enough difficulty organizing childcare, never mind having the time to look after Grandma who wanders, or Grandpa who needs medication on a set schedule and can't remember to take it. People move around for work, either travelling often, or having to uproot and move to other cities, leaving older family behind. Many seniors, especially women (who generally live longer and may not have the same pensions built up as men), live in poverty. We have this image of the happy retirees going on cruises and driving the RVs down to Arizona for the winter. And this is true of some. But a lot of seniors have to keep working well into their 70s because they never made enough in their working lives to be able to save much. And if they can no longer work, things can get very desperate indeed. In my Canada, no old people have to live on cat food. I do realize that the post-war baby boom created a bulge in our demographic and the upkeep of this group as they age now falls on the shoulders of a much smaller segment. Our birth rates have declined dramatically since the late 1960s due to a number of factors that I will address in another rant. But Canada is a wealthy country. If we realigned our priorities, looked carefully at where the money is going, I believe there would be no need for anyone to languish in poverty. Experts say the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security program are adequately funded into the future. Our government has decided, in spite of this, to raise the age of eligibility to 67. Old Age Security, in particular, is a top-up intended to address the needs of the poorest seniors. So, by directing these changes to this program, the government is, in effect, attacking one of the most vulnerable sectors of citizens in our country. This is not my vision of Canada.

• My Canada celebrates and encourages the arts. We are an incredibly creative and talented people. Music, theatre, dance, art, crafts, literature, film... The role of arts in a society is multi-fold. Art delights the senses. Art stimulates the mind. Art educates. Art provides commentary on a society. Art highlights injustices. Art preserves a culture. Art is very threatening to governments who are not acting in the best interests of the people. Look at regimes who use repression to control a populace. The artists in those countries are among the most victimized because they have voices that speak truth. They have eloquence and insight and can command the attention of the people. Artists are persecuted, suppressed and controlled. Look at Ai Wai Wai in China for a contemporary example. A government that governs wisely and benevolently has nothing to fear from art. Art is also an economic force, although that is often overlooked. The publishing industry, the film industry, the music industry are big employers. There are the main characters, the ones you see on stage, on book covers, on screen, but there are so many more behind the scenes that rely on these industries for income. Caterers, sound and lighting technicians, promoters, publicists, editors, costume designers, cleaning staff...the list goes on and on. Arts and music festivals bring tourist dollars to communities. Travelling art presentations bring our culture to the world. In my ideal Canada, artists are respected and appreciated and supported. They are recognized as relevant and critical to a well-rounded society.

• In my Canada, animals are protected. There needs to be strong sanctions against cruelty to animals. Both in our homes and in the food stream. Life is sacred and should be respected. Even animals destined for the table deserve to live their lives with dignity and free of pain. I won't try to suggest that we should all be vegetarian (although we should – we'd be healthier and our food supply would not be nearly so hard on the planet) but even those animals whose lives will be sacrificed to feed our society have a right to be treated humanely and have room to run around and be a cow or a pig or a chicken. Chickens packed tightly in crates with their beaks cut off so they don't damage each other and become unsaleable, cattle and pigs tortured by sadists in the slaughterhouses, pigs in breeding crates who have no room to get up or turn around... These are practices that should be outlawed. Yes, it will make meat more expensive if producers are forced to treat their livestock better. The average North American has pounds of red meat rotting in their colon. We could do with less meat in our diets anyway. (disclosure time: I am vegetarian, mostly – I eat fish occasionally – and I'm pretty much vegan during my summers in the woods. I don't mean to sound preachy about eating meat. But if people are going to kill animals and eat them, they should be concerned about how those animals live before they wind up on the shelves in the grocery store). As for our companion animals, there are so many practices that need to be changed. Legislation and education are essential. Prong collars should be banned. Animal welfare officers should have far more power to intervene if animals are abused or neglected. Spaying and neutering of dogs and cats should be automatic, not something to debate. People getting a pet should have to prove they understand the needs of that animal and are able to provide them adequately. Heart stick euthanasia should be banned. Animals shelters should be funded so they don't have to cull animals regularly. People who abuse animals should be dealt with in much the same way as people who abuse children. After all, it is not a big leap between beating the dog and beating the child. Positive reinforcement is so much more effective in training a dog than punishment. Same goes for children. People need to be educated to not touch either an animal or a child with violence or anger. They need to be educated about meeting the emotional and physical needs of their particular pets. For example, working dogs (like huskies and collies) are very unhappy in even the nicest run if they are in there all day without adequate stimulation.

• In my Canada, education is universal and effectively prepares children for life. A child attending school should be able to expect the same quality of education regardless of their family's socio-economic situation or where they live. The norm is for more affluent school boards to be able to attract the best teachers and acquire the best classroom aids and technologies, while schools in less affluent areas make do with less, much less in some cases. Parent councils in more affluent areas have the skills and resources to fund-raise effectively to buy the latest gadgets and enrichments for their children's schools. This creates an imbalance in opportunities as the children leave the school system. The child from the affluent, well-equipped school has far more doors open to them than the child from a less equipped school. Even familiarity with current technology creates an advantage for the affluent child. And children know what kind of school they are going to. Children in First Nations communities are beginning to petition the government for basic repairs to their school buildings. This should not even be an issue in a country as privileged as Canada. That baseline of having school plumbing that works and roofs that don't leak should have been reached decades ago. The vast disparity that exists between the wealthy school with LED panels and internet and every child has a laptop or iPad and there is a well-stocked library, and those schools where the school building itself is almost unusable because of structural problems is deeply troubling and perpetuates the chasm between the haves and have-nots in our country. This needs to be resolved, and quickly. Also, children attending the disadvantaged schools may have a sense of inferiority or lack of confidence directly related to that school experience. Beyond that, our educational system should include mandatory instruction in life-skills, including managing finances, parenting, basic home and auto maintenance, food preparation and nutrition, time management, and media intelligence. Our children need to learn how to look after themselves, look after their homes and their money and their children when they have them. Some will learn these things from their families, but many do not. We face an obesity epidemic in North America and some of that is due to the loss of cooking skills. A manager at Safeway told me once, when I was asking for a now unusual ingredient (arrowroot, if you're curious), “no one cooks anymore. They reheat or combine things that are ready made for them. So we don't carry that anymore.” We would be so much healthier if we all knew how to prepare a meal from raw ingredients. It is actually less expensive to eat that way as well, and if you check the sodium content in prepared foods you would likely be shocked (just try to grocery shop for a week and buy nothing with a sodium content over 200 mg, I dare you) . People are in so much debt these days. Our parents or grand parents lived through the Depression and they knew the value of a dollar. They believed in not spending money they didn't have. They knew how to save and budget for big purchases. They valued having a “nest-egg” or a “rainy-day fund” for emergencies. They did things for themselves rather than outsourcing everything. They knew how to fix a sticking door, paint a room, replace the washer in a tap, change the oil in their car, rather than paying someone to do that for them. We have lost that as a society. A lot of our social problems can be traced back to a combination of poor parenting, limited future expectations and opportunities, a lack of personal and domestic maintenance habits, weak or non-existent financial management skills, and mental health issues. Many of these could be addressed through improving our school system. Science and math and English and French and social studies are critically important. So are art and music and phys. ed. Educators and administrators complain they do not have the time to teach the core curriculum, or the funds to continue what they consider fringe programs, like art, music and gym. The education system needs a realignment. School used to run from 9 AM to 4 PM, five days a week. The school day seems to have got shorter, often ending at 3 or 3:30. This is compensated for by piling on a lot of homework, especially in the higher grades. Kids need to have time to be kids. If each of the 5 core classes adds a half hour to an hour of homework after school, kids have no time for anything else. Add in a sport or creative endeavour, and all their time is programmed. Just like adults, they burn out and don't want to do it anymore. If I was designing curriculum, students would study Science, Math, English, French, Social Studies, Life Skills (probably presented in 6 week modules through the year and content-appropriate to the child's age), Art, Music and Gym. That's 9 subjects. With a 6-hour school day (9 to 4 with an hour off for lunch), that's 30 one-hour classes a week. That is at least 3 hours a week devoted to each of the 9 subject areas with three hours left over for special projects or events each week. The key is to make all those hours learning hours. Because our children are so exposed to the fast paced information stream of television and the internet, teachers need to learn how to engage children and make learning something they want to do. This would necessitate making classes smaller, allowing for more tailoring of lessons to the aptitudes and interests of the students. Making classes smaller would also enhance the student-teacher relationship and better enable teachers to identify concerns about mental health and other social issues and connect children with resources before issues become pronounced through highly inappropriate behaviour. There are still teachers out there who feel students should sit quietly, hour after hour, and learn what is written on the board by rote. They need to rethink their teaching styles to get the outcomes that our children and our society needs. Yes, it takes more effort and creativity than lecturing and jotting things on an overhead projector. But hey, it is their job. Which leads to the point that our teachers and early childhood caregivers should be paid better and compensated in other ways as well. Educating the next generation has to be a valued and rewarding profession. We can't expect to attract the brightest and the best by paying them less than cashiers at a grocery store. We need creative, intelligent, compassionate, and inspired teachers to bring out the best in our children. We need to make teaching a profession to aspire to. Like being a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. If we want our children to achieve great things in developing our country, we need to make sure those adults who spend the most time with them during the day are exemplary themselves. And certainly, some are already. Many are adequate. Some are not acceptable, but are still allowed to teach our children because they have the degree and the school needs a teacher. The bar needs to be higher. The role is just too important to allow mediocre teachers to shape the future of our country.

• My Canada speaks out for what is right and moral on the world stage. My Canada would be spearheading rather than blocking the banning of trade of dangerous substances like asbestos. My Canada would speak out about human rights abuses, even those committed by Israel. My Canada would put people ahead of profit, both at home and abroad.

• My Canada, as a wealthy country, provides support and aid to the less fortunate on the planet because they are less fortunate, not because there are trade advantages. And such aid is developed through consultation with the people to be helped, not consultation with natural resource companies operating in the area.

• My Canada is on the front lines of providing disaster relief when it is needed, wherever it is needed.

• My Canada comes to the aid and defence of its citizens anywhere in the world, regardless of their ethnic and cultural heritage, religion or sexual orientation.

• My Canada does not engage in exploitation of the vulnerable. My Canada does not expect foreign workers to work for less pay, and with fewer benefits than Canadians. Because that's wrong.

• My Canada is a peaceful, egalitarian country that respects life and encourages its children to achieve their potential. That values all of its citizens and appreciates and protects its beautiful environment.

• My Canada would reject a government whose actions do not reflect who we are as a people.

This has been a bit longer rant than most. If you have made it this far, maybe I have made you think a bit. Maybe you have some response to what you have read here. There is a comments section below. Bring it.