Wednesday 4 March 2020

The Difference Between Being Canadian and Being Con - A Reply to Andrew Scheer

Jean Cretien was a Prime Minister of Canada. Something you will never be. Do you know why? I bet you don't. It's because the majority of Canadians are smart enough to see through the hate and fear-mongering from the likes of you. Most Canadians are progressive thinkers.
Most Canadians feel no animousity towards their fellow humans over sexual orientation, skin colour, religion, economic status... Most Canadians, in fact, actually care about people we have never even met. 
We are happy to pay taxes if it means a kid on the other side of the country gets life-saving treatment their family couldn't afford without our universal health care. We are outraged when people are discriminated against because of race, creed, colour, gender, orientation. 
We care. We want the most vulnerable in our society to succeed. We want to help make that happen. We want to make true reconciliation happen. We want to move away from fossil fuels so we can protect the environment. 
We want everyone's children to be fed and cared for and to receive an excellent secular education. We believe in science, compassion, empathy, and sharing. Our "family values" don't involve building walls, they are about making bigger tables. 
We believe in a woman's right to self-determination about her own body. We believe in everyone's right to choose how they die when confronted with intolerable circumstances. 
We want evolution taught in schools, and we think kids should go to schools where they can interact with children from different backgrounds so they can learn how to understand and accept and embrace diversity, because that is how the world is. 
Most Canadians realise that immigrants are entrepreneurs and major job creators. The bogey-man you and Harper and the CPC tried to create out of people fleeing for their lives doesn't have any traction with us. We see through you. 
"Barbaric cultural practices"? Please. Disproportionately carding black youth is a barbaric cultural practice. Writing anti-semetic slogans on synagogues and spitting on women in hijabs are barbaric cultural practices. But they are not mainstream Canadian practices. 
Your party, the CPC, wants to change Canada by making everything straighter and whiter and meaner. And you call yourselves Christians as though that was some sort of password to obscure what your goals are. 
You want "law and order" and stiffer sentencing, more punishment, calling it making communities safer. But all the research shows that does not make communities safer. Addressing underlying issues makes communities safer. 
Locking people up for longer and in worse conditions makes communities less safe. It creates a criminal underclass. It dehumanizes people, makes them dangerous. The US model is the very last model anyone should be looking to emulate. 
And that is in everything: education, health care, justice, election rules, environmental policy, international relations... Everything. And yet, your party, the CPC, seems to want to drag Canada into being a USA mini-me. We don't want it. 
You aren't really a westerner. You aren't really an insurance agent. You aren't really (based on the weird way the leadership vote was handled) the leader of the CPC. You aren't even 100% Canadian. And your party does not understand how Canadians feel. Not at all. 
How dare you claim to speak for any but the minority base that supports your party? Shouldn't you be out house-hunting? It takes time to find the right place, you know. Especially when you have to find somewhere with so many bedrooms. 

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