The article is from last month, but The Economist’s take on Canadian values is even more relevant in the wake of the US elections.
Short version: We must cherish the values that we have, even if, as The Economist puts it, “in its lonely defence of liberal values, Canada seems downright heroic”.
I have been worried now for many years that the world will end this period of peace and prosperity with another bang, like the one that happened in 1914.
I am not alone with my concerns. I just read an excellent article, written back in July, that argues the same. Indeed, like me, the author considers it an inevitable cycle of history.
As I said in the wake of Trump’s victory, I am in my 50s and I have no children, so I have much less at stake than most. I can afford to be a spectator. Still, I desperately hope that when the world goes bonkers, Canada manages to stay out of it. Is it even possible, in this globalized era? Isn’t Canada just too great a prize, with its abundant land and natural resources? I hope never to find out. But on this day, the eve of the 98th anniversary of the Armistice at the conclusion of The War to End All Wars, I think it is the right question to ask.
I didn’t vote this Tuesday… I am not an American citizen.
Instead, I voted last year.
I voted for a government that promised to help refugees.
I voted for a government that was promoting diversity and minority rights.
I voted for a government that promised to listen to its scientists, rather than muzzling them.
Will they deliver on all their promises before their term is up? Of course not. But the fundamental message remains: it is a government that embraced good over evil; humanity over fear; decency over hate.
Tonight, I am more grateful than ever to be a citizen of Canada.
The CRTC told me that it is the cable companies’ fault. The cable company told me that it is the provincial emergency agency that makes the decision. The provincial agency, on its Web site, tells me that these alerts are at the discretion of the television channel.
But the reality is that they are interrupting all channels, as well as recorded programs, with pointless messages: some are tests, some are amber alerts from half a continent away (yes, Ontario is a huge province.)
If they did this to the public airwaves, that might be forgivable. But they are messing with a privately owned service for which I am paying good money. Serious money, as anyone can attest who is paying for a cable subscription nowadays.
I am uploading this video to YouTube because I hope to use it to bring attention to this blatant abuse, all in the name of the public good, of course. Alerts such as this that completely hijack all channels for a whole minute should be reserved for genuine, imminent, major emergencies such as a tornado, flash flood, military or terrorist attack. They should not be tested recklessly, and they should not be used excessively for events that do not meet the criteria that define a serious, imminent, life threatening emergency that actually affects the region in which the alert is shown.
I wonder if a clever lawyer might find a way to sue the government for illegally appropriating private property.
In the fourth volume of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy”, we learn that just before the Earth was about to be destroyed by the Vogons to make way for a new interstellar bypass, the whales left. They left behind a simple parting message: “So long and thanks for all the fish.”
Which makes me feel rather alarmed now that I am learning that hundreds of North Atlantic right whales went missing. I hope it’s not a bad sign.
Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada (and a bunch of other countries that I care a great deal less about as I don’t happen to live there) was born 90 years ago today.
She is my favoritest Queen. May she enjoy many more happy birthdays in good health.
Today is a remarkable day. I spent more than the usual amount of time peeking at either CBC Newsworld or CNN, and I have yet to see the face of a certain American real estate magnate turned reality TV show host turned politician; not that I particularly miss the sight of his toupee.
The reason why Mr. Trump didn’t appear on screen is the multitude of other things happening.
For us here in Canada, the most consequential news are the federal budget, the first by Justin Trudeau’s recently formed liberal government. As promised, it’s a budget about spending and spending some more; the projected deficits are huge. The premise of this budget is that deficit spending is necessary in order to help the stagnant economy.
News of the budget were almost dwarfed by news of the death of Toronto’s larger-than-life former major, Rob Ford. Rob Ford was intensely disliked as a politician, but I think few people wished him to die a miserable death from a rare form of cancer. As Ford himself said, his tenure as major, for better or for worse, will be remembered.
Then there is, of course, that terrible series of coordinated attacks in Belgium, with dozens dead. In addition to an impotent, and likely excessive response by inept authorities (I just saw that the airport in Brussels will be shut for three days), it will also likely trigger a new wave of islamophobia, xenophobia. A message that, thankfully, has few followers in Canada, as splendidly evidenced by the negative response in Quebec to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s visit, which is coming to its conclusion.
What was supposed to be the big news of the day is the end of another politician’s trip abroad, namely Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba… but the CNN anchors broadcasting from Havana are talking mostly about the Brussels attacks and their aftermath.
The other big news of the day was supposed to be the “winner-take-all” Arizona caucus… but with all the other stuff going on, I have not yet heard this mentioned on CNN or CBC Newsworld today. Thus, no Donald Trump on my television screen either.
All this news makes me wonder if The Globe and Mail tomorrow might end up being published with not one but maybe three consecutive cover pages.
Recently, it was proudly announced that Canada now has a state-of-the-art emergency preparedness system, with the participation of major telecommunication companies like Bell or Rogers.
The problem… well, here is an example of the problem:
This is what was on my television screen a little earlier this afternoon, in place of CNN, for something like a full minute or so.
And not just in place of CNN. In place of every channel. Even if I was trying to watch a recorded show on the PVR.
What’s wrong with it, you ask? Well, I live in Ottawa. That is more than 400 kilometers from Toronto, and the last time I checked, a 1997 Toyota Camry is not a hypersonic jet aircraft.
But even if the abduction happened next door… I don’t mean to be heartless, but this kind of dramatic alert is something I would expect to see if World War 3 was imminent, or if my city (not Toronto!) was about to be hit by an F5 hurricane. Not in case of a domestic abduction (which, in the vast majority of cases, is just a family member like an estranged father, taking a child without permission.)
The last time this happened, I wrote to the CRTC, who told me that it’s not their responsibility (even though they were the ones who mandated it!) but that of provincial agencies and the telecommunication companies that implement the system.
Today, I wrote to Rogers. I do not expect a meaningful reply*.
As if I didn’t already have enough incentives to cut the cable.
*Update: A day after I sent my e-mail complaint to Rogers, a gentleman by the name of Aaron called me from the “President’s office”. He very patiently listened to me as we discussed not just the emergency alert system but also other issues related to the digital transition, the cost and limited choice of decoder equipment, and other topics. We spent more than 20 minutes on the phone. I still don’t expect anything meaningful to happen, but I appreciated it that my complaint was taken somewhat seriously.
Yesterday, I went to see my barber. When I found the shop open, I was delighted that he kept his promise: he planned to retire at the end of last year, but on my last visit, he told me that he’d be keeping the shop open for a while longer. (Yes, it’s been that long since my last haircut. I don’t like haircuts, but when even my wife notices that I am beginning to look like Albert Einstein, I remind myself that you first have to match Einstein’s output as a physicist before you’re allowed to look like him.)
When I entered the shop, I noticed that it was under renovation. But the sign said that it was open! In fact, it was a brand new electronic sign that advertised the business hours. I didn’t see a soul in sight so I hollered, “hello?” and a young, brown-skinned man soon emerged. He assured me that the shop was indeed open for business, so I made the requisite leap in logic and realized that Michel, the old barber, must have retired after all. I asked the young man if he was going to be my new barber.
Soon, I learned a little bit about Paulos the barber. He came to Canada from Ethiopia about five years ago with his brother. Since then, they managed to sponsor several family members. Paulos is a lean, tall 41-year old man, though he looks much younger. He told me that he found the shop advertised on Kijiji and decided to go for it. He told me of his plans to hire 2-3 additional barbers, and create a much more welcoming shop with Wi-Fi and a coffee machine. I took a closer look at his hours: He is keeping the shop open, for now all by himself, from 9 AM until 8 PM every weekday, and until 6 PM on Saturdays.
Meanwhile, Paulos finished my haircut. When I asked him how much I owe, he told me that it’s whatever I used to pay Michel. So I paid the same amount, with tip, that I used to pay.
As I left the barber shop, I was shaking my head. Damn immigrants, I thought. They have the audacity to come to this country in search of a better life. And the cheek! Never mind making a living, working extra long hours, they actually plan to create jobs! How dare they.
And the cultural rift. It is hard to find a pair of countries more culturally different than Ethiopia and Canada. Yet he has the chutzpah to do this… finding his place in Canadian society, taking over a business from a retiring French Canadian gentleman and daring to be successful.
What a horrible thing that these immigrants are doing. What hubris… instead of being on welfare and being a burden on society, they dare to make this country better, enrich it with their hard work, contribute to its colorful multiculturalism. It is absolutely intolerable. Just what is this place coming to?
Our long-serving Member of Parliament, Mauril Bélanger, was the recipient of an unprecedented honor today: He was named honorary Speaker of the House.
Unfortunately, we could not hear Mr. Bélanger speak. That is because he is suffering from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease (its most famous sufferer alive is the physicist Stephen Hawking), which is rapidly progressing; since his initial diagnosis last fall, he lost the ability to speak, so it was his iPad that was speaking for him.
The illness also ended his dream of becoming Speaker of the House, which explains the honor that has been bestowed on him today.
I have a lot of respect for Mr. Bélanger. Over the years, I wrote to him a few times with my concerns, and on more than one occasion I received a personal response, either in the form of a latter or, in one case, in the form of a telephone call. In short, Mr. Bélanger appeared to take the idea of representing his constituents very seriously.
He may have lost the ability to speak but he has not yet lost all his mobility. Although he needed some help, he was able to walk into the Chamber on his own two feet.
It was a moving moment, and I am glad I caught it on the CBC. Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.
I always wondered what it must have been like to live through the rise of fascism in Europe, especially in the early days. Most didn’t recognize the danger. Many applauded. A few were concerned, but they were seen as panicmongerers or worse, maybe as communists, Bolshevik collaborators, traitors.
And now I am beginning to understand what it must have been like to be one of those Cassandra-like souls.
The far right in Europe is applauding. “Si j’étais américain, je voterais Donald TRUMP,” tweets Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far right National Front party. “I hope Donald Trump will be the next US President,” chimes in his colleague from Holland, Geert Wilders, who founded the Party of Freedom. People in my country of birth, Hungary, who cheered their prime minister when he erected a razor wire fence along the country’s southern border to keep refugees out, now feel vindicated when they hear Trump talk about a wall along the US Mexico border.
Trump wants to “make America great again” by undermining fundamental constitutional guarantees such as the First Amendment, and by reintroducing torture into America’s arsenal. He is proposing to keep Muslims out and even suggested that Muslims should be registered (just one step short of having them wear visual identification… yellow stars of David, anyone?)
Where will this end? Just how far will the world go this time?
Lest we forget, in the 19th century, Germany was the center of European civilization. The center of culture, music, and science. The country that gave us Gauss, Beethoven, Einstein, Kant or Goethe. Perhaps the most important lesson of Germany is that none of it matters: A horror regime backed by populism and the ideology of fear and hate can arise anywhere.
We have lived mostly in peace since 1945. And those of us lucky enough to have been born in Europe or North America, in unprecedented freedom and prosperity. There are no guarantees that this will last forever. History has not come to an end; we are living it.
And every time I see Trump on CNN, ever time I watch Trump give another election speech, I shudder. Is this it? Is this how Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and others rose to power? Especially Hitler… who, let’s not forget, was Germany’s democratically elected and appointed leader when he assumed the chancellorship on January 30, 1933.
And lest we forget, most of those who supported these horrific regimes denied that they were supporting hate or racism. In fact, they probably rejected any such insinuation indignantly. They weren’t racists… they are trying to defend their nation! Protect its values! They were the smart ones who recognized an existential threat to their culture and way of life; others, who failed to see the coming end of civilization every time they saw a Jewish child were naive fools.
I don’t usually engage in overused comparisons with the Nazis and fascists. But this time, I think the concerns are warranted. Our world is no longer following a path towards greater freedom and more respect for human rights. Walls and fences are being erected everywhere. States once famous for their liberalism are cracking down in the name of fighting terrorism. Europe, which once celebrated the vanishing of internal borders, is in the process of rebuilding them. And the really scary part is… this is what the people want. These measures are popular. Politicians who go against the tide, like Angela Merkel, who promised that Germany would accept as many refugees as it can, are embattled. The nationalist right is rising everywhere. Canada bucked the trend for now, but who knows what happens if Mr. Trudeau loses the next election and the Conservatives return with a vengeance, as the left remains divided.
Know what? I hope I am wrong. I hope I have succumbed to hype and that my views are detached from reality. I hope that Trump doesn’t get elected, or that if he does, he will turn out to be just another crooked and pragmatic politician, one who keeps few of his election promises and one who is more interested in getting re-elected than in plunging the world into some abyss.
Unfortunately, if I am right, it will be too late.
I’ve never been happier that my wife and I were not blessed with children. As we are getting older, we have less and less to worry about. As we have less at stake, we can more and more afford to be just spectators, watching a spectacular train wreck.
It’s not like there’s anything we can do about it.
Here is a message to the citizens of the United States from the “Canada Party”.
What can I say. If Trump becomes president, being way ahead may not be a bad idea.
The historical parallels are inescapable.
Three quarters of a century ago, the governments of the United States and Canada, in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, declared their own citizens of Japanese descent a threat to national security. This was demanded by a vengeful citizenry who could not tell the difference between the militant government of Tokyo and loyal Americans and Canadians of Japanese descent: they saw “slanty-eyed traitors” everywhere.
As a result, one of the worst atrocities in North American history took place, depriving several ten thousand Canadians and over a hundred thousand Americans of basic rights, and herding them into places that, while more civilized than their counterparts in the Third Reich or the Japanese Empire, were nonetheless concentration camps. Their internment ended in the United States in the wake of a Supreme Court decision in early 1945; in Canada, it lasted until 1949.
In the wake of the Paris attacks, many European citizens wish to follow the same road. They blame the attacks on an open immigration policy. They blame all Muslims immigrants and call those who support them “traitors”. In this case, the determining factor is not race but religion, but it amounts to the same thing: Discrimination against millions for the crimes committed by a few.
You would think that the so-called “civilized world” is better than this. But all it takes is one heinous attack for the old formulas of racism and xenophobia to surface. We are no better than our ancestors.
This is what the ISIS bastards fail to realize by the way. They think they shock us with their snuff films on YouTube. Just as the Japanese generations ago, they will realize too late that when it comes to wholesale murder, we may be the biggest bastards after all.
Oops! The DeLorean time machine has been recalled by Transport Canada.
The recall has since been canceled though. Apparently, Doc Brown was good on his word.
Or could it be that upper management at Transport Canada (or whichever department was responsible for this recall notice) decided that a sense of humor is incompatible with the Department’s mission?
The victory of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party last night was stunning, and defied statistical predictions.
The CBC’s poll tracker, last updated the day before the election, predicted a liberal minority government falling far short of parliamentary majority. The also provided a likely minimum-maximum range and a more extreme worst case/best case prediction:
The interesting thing is that the actual result for the Liberals came up just one seat short of the best case prediction:
And the election map reveals another thing: It appears that Canada now has its own Jesusland (albeit with colors reversed). Indeed, the Conservative Party only had solid results in Jesusland Canada and in the land of Ford Nation.
This, then, is one of Mr. Trudeau’s tasks: to show to people living in these blue ridings that he can indeed be the prime minister of all Canadians.
Once again, a Trudeau has been elected as Prime Minister of Canada. And not only is this the first time since 1925 that a third party leapfrogged ahead to win, but the Liberals won with a resounding majority, too.
I feel sorry for Tom Mulcair and the NDP. They had such high hopes! At one point during the campaign, even a majority NDP government was within sight.
I don’t feel sorry to see Mr. Harper go, even though it means that I can now retire catsforharper.ca.
Well, a new era dawns. Now let’s see what Mr. Trudeau does about Bill C-51, about the CBC, about two-tier citizenship, about the voting rights of expatriates, about the TPP, about Canadian scientists, about the long-form census, about Canada Post, about the handling of refugees, and about a whole host of other issues that were the reason why I was so hoping to see a change in government. I have high hopes. I hope sincerely that Mr. Trudeau will not disappoint us.
Even as I hope that the wheels are indeed falling off Mr. Harper’s election bus, I am trying to do my part by listing more of the Harper government’s shenanigans on catsforharper.ca.
The idea is simple. Harper likes cats. He should have more time to play with cats. And he should atone for his political sins by adopting lots of shelter cats.
The site is growing, by the way; I still have a ways to go through my list of political sins so new topics are added daily, sometimes several times a day.
I am disappointed, however, with my Canadian friends: So few of you registered and “voted” on catsforharper.ca! I honestly hoped it would be more popular. But then, there is still time… 8 more days until Election Day. And I hope most sincerely that after October 19, I can safely retire the site, as Mr. Harper will no longer be in a position to do any more political damage.
The latest edition of The Globe and Mail‘s Report on Business magazine has a lengthy article discussing the economic performance of the Harper government. Short version: spin matters more than actual performance. Thus the Liberals lost the election in 2006 despite having one of the best economic track records in Canada’s history, while until recently, Mr. Harper has been able to portray himself as the savior of the Canadian economy despite the fact that its actual performance is the worst, at the very least, since the end of WW2.
To stress their point about propaganda and a bad economy, the print edition of the article had a wonderful illustration, depicting Mr. Harper in the classic pose of Joseph Stalin. For some reason, this picture didn’t appear to have found its way to the online edition, but never mind, that’s what scanners are for.
Of course, Harper’s economy is just one of the topics that I have written about in my Cats for Harper blog; sadly, disappointingly few people bothered to register, never mind vote. Hey, my liberal-minded friends! Get off your… tushies and start awarding the cats!
I don’t think I ever did this before: putting an election campaign video in my blog. But I am truly disgusted by the Conservative Party’s negative advertising campaign (those “not ready” ads about Justin Trudeau). So here is the Liberal response:
Finally, here is the Justin Trudeau that we have been waiting for… I just hope he can be like this more often.
I was once a conservative voter. I voted for the Progressive Conservative party even when virtually no-one else did. I even voted for Kim Campbell back when the PC party was reduced to two seats in Parliament in an historic defeat.
But that was then. Today, we have a party that is conservative in name only: its label has been hijacked by right-wing radicals. The political sins of this government are innumerable, and I wonder if there are enough cats in the world for Mr. Harper (a cat lover) to adopt as a form atonement.
In the past few elections, I voted Liberal. I actually like our MP, Mauril Bélanger, and I was reasonably comfortable with the Liberal Party’s center-right stance.
On the other hand, I was quite disappointed with Mr. Trudeau’s stance on C-51 and his general lack of charisma. The NDP’s Mr. Mulcair, on the other hand, is quite charismatic, and to the extent that I followed it, his performance as Leader of the Opposition was impressive.
So, I hesitate. Liberal or NDP? I am also inclined to vote “strategically”, as I consider both these parties far preferable to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But I’d still like to know what I am voting for.
Which is why, when the link showed up in my Facebook feed, I decided to complete a questionnaire by isidewith.com, only to find out that both the Liberal Party and the NDP are a close match for my political views:
So far so good, but the rest of this list of parties alarms me. A 75% match with the Green Party I can live with, but the Communists, at 70%? What’s wrong with me (or this survey)? If anything, I’d have thought that my views are more Libertarian, but there I only got a 44% match. As for the Conservatives though, the 7% match does not surprise me: as I said above, this party is conservative in name only.
Meanwhile, even as I mull over the pros and cons of voting Liberal vs. NDP, I continue dreaming about a center-right party that favors rational thinking over ideology…