CKNW Editorial
for October 9, 2000

We have a great deal to be thankful for today but our thanks ought to be tempered with the thought that if we’re to be just as grateful on Thanksgivings to come, we must take stock.

According to the United Nations we live in the best country on earth. I’m sure we do although one wonders if anyone in the United Nations has ever spent a winter in Moose Jaw. Not that I have, but one of my best friends hails from there and he tells the story of leaving home for the first time in January and arriving at the CN station in Vancouver to a typical Vancouver rainy day. "I thought I’d died and gone to heaven", he told me, "it was the first time in my life I’d ever seen rain in January."

But we have serious signs of strain. And probably the most serious sign of all is that we don’t see them very clearly. We have a hard time projecting the path we’re on into the times of our children and grandchildren. In failing to do this we place their inheritance in grave danger.

It’s not that we haven’t tried, it’s simply that we haven’t succeeded. There is no doubt that there is a passion in the land to be Canadian but, by whose definition? Western separatists, for the most part, don’t want to separate but seek attention to problems by those who refuse to see them.

Let me tell you what I see down the road unless we take some serious action.

A look at British Columbia shows you that in many ways we’re like an African state created not because of natural boundaries and an indigenous population but for better administration by colonial masters. Our mountains and rivers – indeed our islands – run north-south not east-west. Our history has been an effort to fight nature because we didn’t want to be ruled by Washington.

But there have been changes. Now out trade patterns are almost exclusively to the south or the west – not with the rest of Canada. When we meet our trading partners be it socially or in conference, we meet Americans and Asians. Now if we had geographical connection to the rest of Canada and if we shared demographic affinity, this might not count for so much. The problem is that Canada has not become a "melting pot" – and I’m not saying we should have – so that we are political attached to peoples, many of whom are profoundly different from us. This puts a terrific strain on the political bonds that bind us. Of course there are cultural bonds but what other country in the world spends so much money telling itself that it is truly united? And what other country has to have huge communications bureaucracies forcing upon citizens there versions of what is Canadian an rejecting what is not, while all the time running a national television network that relies upon foreign productions to keep its fiscal head above water?

The danger is see is not one of revolution. Frankly, I don’t think Canadians have a long enough attention span let alone the revolutionary zeal to take to the streets for anything. No … my fear is that we will proceed down the same path that splits couples apart. Lack of communication and understanding of problems. The insistence of one partner to dominate the other. Loss of interests in common. Irritants never addressed until they become fatal flaws. And disinterest amounting to boredom. As Churchill put it, we seem adamant only for drift. Let’s make it through one more bad government … let’s weather one more crisis … let’s pretend that if we fight the forces of evil once and win, that those forces will disappear forevermore.

This is what troubles me most about the Liberal party to which I feel naturally attracted on social concerns. They of all parties over the years have had the opportunity to develop policy that takes into account the entire nation, not just the two regions from which they derive their power. It’s not that they haven’t tried but they have conspicuously failed and they’ve failed because they’ve allowed parliament to fall into disuse as a body for the exchange of views, to become a rubber stamp for policies designed in the Prime Minister’s office. Vast regions of the country are not heard from in the corridors of power except occasionally, as an election looms, and even then only by patronizingly little pats on the head with assurances that all will be well when Daddy gets voted back into office. The power of the Member of Parliament, especially from outer regions, is virtually nil. The power of the Prime Minister’s office is overwhelming. We show no willingness to change.

So, on this day on which we express thanks for the special bounties bestowed upon us it’s also time to reflect and ask whether our children and grandchildren will, in 25 years time, have the same, or indeed, any reason to celebrate.