CKNW Editorial
for February 16, 2001

I have received considerable mail about the two young Canadians who, at a gathering of the "Team Canada" signing ceremony in Beijing, protested China’s annexation of Tibet more than 50 years ago. Most of it was annoyed at the protesters with one coming from a member of the Canadian "team" who thought it inappropriate. When then law student, now lawyer, Craig Jones was jumped on by the police for holding up cloth signs that read "Free Speech" and "democracy" I got a similar reaction.

We are, in this country, candy-assed … we love peace order and good government and hate anyone whose behaviour is in the slightest unsettling.

These two incidents have two common factors – neither posed the slightest threat to anyone’s safety or well being and each of them was calculated to give a message to a dictatorial regime. I should add a third factor, I suppose – each carried a non violent message.

Kate Wozno and Sam Price, two University students, feel strongly that when China took over Tibet about 50 years ago that it was wrong to do so … that Tibet was a sovereign country that had been wrongly annexed. They also feel that since then the Chinese have practiced cultural genocide. They are scarcely alone in these feelings and in fact the protest has taken on world wide proportions.

If you wanted to get some publicity for this cause where better than at a function involving Canadian bureaucrats and politicians who had come to China to do some business deals. Isn’t it a fair question to ask these stuffed shirts what moral right they had to sign business deals with a country that suppressed a nation as it wiped out that nation’s culture?

Inappropriate, as the bureaucrat claimed?

Hell no, nothing could have been more appropriate or more timely. If I were one of the protesters I would take the boos I got from delegates and the badmouthing I got from the Canadian Embassy as high praise indeed.

In light of our feelings about protest, is it any wonder that we’re governed so badly? The National Post is doing a series about how our government isn’t working. If I might be a bit immodest they could have done as well by excerpting my second book, Canada: Is Anyone Listening? and printing it instead.

Of course parliament isn’t working. Since the days of Pierre Trudeau the Liberals, who honestly think that the country is in grave danger if they are not governing, have systematically emasculated the Member of Parliament. Even the Commons Committee – hell, especially the Commons Committee – which is supposed to be the vehicle whereby MPs hold the government accountable under a system where the government is supposed to be responsible to the Commons, is toothless.

But what have we done about it?

Until recently nothing. In fact the Eastern media, which ought to know better, has played along with the system even making believe that there really are debates in the House of Commons.

The disintegration of Parliament, almost but not completely done by the Liberals, hasn’t brought any penalty with it. Far from punishing the Liberals we consistently return them to power … even in BC nearly 30% vote Liberal.

We don’t even penalize the Liberals when they parachute nice safe candidates like Sophie Leung and Stephen Owen into our constituencies. We just go along and do what we’re told like good little boys and girls.

It’s in our psyche. The self vision Canadians have is of the lone RCMP constable escorting Sitting Bull and 10,000 Indians across the border. Long before we thought of a Charter of Rights our motto was "peace, order and good government" which, decoded means for God’s sake don’t ever make any waves. Be polite and deferential to authority. If you protest, always make sure that it’s within the confines accepted by the ruling establishment.

I’m not a violent man – I hate violence. Yet it’s interesting to note that Canadians have never fought for their rights. I understand the huge sacrifices made in the two World Wars and Korea but that was fighting for rights in a more general way than I’m speaking of here. We’ve never seen the flames of battle as most democracies have seen, flames in which the freedoms enjoyed were tempered.

We don’t need a civil war or blood in the streets. But what we do need is a general awakening to the grim trouble within our midst and the guts to stand up and be counted. When you consider that the House of Commons is little more democratic than the Polish parliament under communism and that we raise not a finger of protest … and when you consider that we dump all over any young person who stands up for a principle … it’s little wonder that establishment rags like the National Post finally come out of their torpor long enough to ask some questions.

We shouldn’t have to be told what’s wrong with our system. It’s as obvious as a cow in a tea room. We should be proud of young people like Kate Wozno, Sam Price and Craig Jones and indeed all the young protesters at APEC. And if we’re too lazy to do it ourselves we ought to pray that the generation from which these protesters have emerged will take up as their major cause the bringing of democratic government not just to Indonesia and China, but to Canada as well.