The Great White North and The Great Black Lie

Move over Santa Claus and Superman, Prime Minster Harper is coming to reclaim the land you have been squatting on all these decades, nay centuries. It is, after all part of the Great White North and it plays well to the domestic audience – reassertion of dominance over the land of ice and snow, home of the Inuit, last great frontier. In actuality it should be called land of the melting ice  in the process of revealing hidden riches and treasures.

We are busy sending our armed forces and patrol ships up to the Arctic to make our presence known. We are working hand in hand with Americans to map the seabed in order to bolster our claims of ownership. Inuit symbols are almost synonymous with the coming Winter Olympics. In short, we are celebrating and claiming all that is Arctic. It is ironic that at the precise moment when  Prime Minister Harper is hell bent on flexing his clearly non-steroid assisted muscles in some chest-thumping display of Neanderthal ownership over this largely uninhabited land, is precisely when the very survival of this land is most threatened by Mr. Harper’s policies. Is it ironic or intentional?  Does Mr. Harper dismiss the science of climate change outwardly because inwardly he covets that very change and the contingent benefits he perceives, ie. energy?

The more dismal side of this coin for me lies not in the embarrassment that we should be feeling as Canadians when so many other countries walked out of the recent climate change conference in disgust due to Canada’s stated policy that Kyoto is fit for no more than the trash can, but rather in the fact that Harper’s popularity coincidentally seems to be soaring here at home. Is the word Canadian becoming synonymous with ostrich? Does our Prime Minister flap his gums and subsequently we stick our heads further in the sands of ignorance? When the polar bears, walruses and seals have almost died out will Canadians event lament their passing or will they be blinded by the dollar signs our current government dangles in their eyes emanating from future pay-off of potential oil discovery in the north and current earnings of the dirty tar sands?

It used to be that Mr Harper’s resistance to taking climate change science seriously came off as a puerile tit for tat policy. His resistance to respecting the obligations Canada had accepted in signing the Kyoto Accord was couched in the language of the school yard; if the United States and China aren’t doing anything then why should we? But the United States and China are doing things, big things and it is putting Canada to shame. David Suzuki echoes my sentiments exactly when he says that Harper’s failure to acknowledge that climate change is a serious issue, ” is so humiliating to me as a Canadian, because I have always been very proud of Canada as a country that took international obligations seriously.” China and America are leaving Canada in the dust- and that will be more than figurative if we don’t reverse the trend of the melting polar cap.

It’s easy enough to pass the buck, to blame the Harper government but I blame the people of this country who more and more are losing sight of what we are all about. The people keep electing this government but, unfortunately, the world and, more specifically, the Great White North will have to live with its CO² emitting consequences. A friend of mine once told my grandmother, when she was visiting from England and complained there were ice cubes in her gin and tonic, that “ice is what made this country great”. We all laughed at the time but in retrospect no truer words could be spoken. It’s time we recognized it and if we are unable to force Harper to the same conclusion then replace his government with one that does demonstrate that appreciation. It has to be done immediately before polar bears and igloos are a distant memory. As Stephen Colbert said, “Due to global warming Iceland will soon be changing its name to Landland”.

Why I'm Almost Bald - Not!

Oh Mr Harper you must be running your super-soft hands through that helmet hair of yours in smug, cat-that-lapped-the-cream fulfillment right about now having heard the latest Eckos poll results. You must be polishing those manicured fingernails on your lapels even as I am typing this. Well, Mr. Harper, would you like to know what I am doing? I have just finished attempting to pull my hair out upon hearing the poll news, but my hair is far too stubborn in its quest to both annoy and humiliate me – hell bent on stacking up bad hair day after bad hair day. Then I jumped up and down in a puerile temper tantrum, smashed my fists on my simulated down pillow and yelled at my ever-so-innocent kitty who then scampered off to hide under the dining room table (which had already become bored with my ranting). Having exerted myself beyond my usual exercise I am now panting from exhaustion – so I hope you will forgive me if my rant proceeds in fits and starts. Such have the latest poll numbers upset my little horse and buggy. You have managed to pull ahead of the Liberal party by 7 percentage points. Are you proud of yourself Mr. Harper? You have bucked the trend. Our neighbours to the south have found their centrist and liberal strength once again and yet, here, in Canada, we have headed in a decidedly right wing direction. In the United States people like Rove, Cheney and O’Reilly are more often than not the butt of jokes these days and yet here we swoon in admiration when faced with their very tactics. When everyone else is going left we are going...I don’t know... towards Never-Never land?

You have achieved this growth in support, Mr. Harper, despite the fact that your government abandoned a Canadian citizen in Kenya because your minions thought her lips and glasses didn’t resemble her passport photo – it’s a good thing they don’t have to look at my mug first thing in the morning as a means of verifying my identity for they might resign on the spot. Your minions went on to suggest that Suaad Hagi should be trying harder to prove her Canadian identity – as though a passport, bank card, work reference, a receipt from a Toronto dry-cleaner, a son in Canada, fingerprints and offer of DNA aren’t effort enough. Okay, she messed up, she neglected to have a maple leaf tattooed on her right butt cheek before she went to visit her sick mother in Kenya. What was the real problem, Mr. Harper? Not white enough, not Christian enough or just not Canadian enough for you? I guess the people of Ontario, who represent the reason for your rising star on the poll stage, think you handled that well. Maybe they should try a few days in a Kenyan jail before drawing their conclusions.

I would imagine that Ontarians must have applauded your handling of the Abousfian Abdelrazik case, since you showed so much humanity and independence of thinking. It was totally understandable that you couldn’t issue Mr. Abdelrazik a passport, even though he had been cleared of any terrorist ties, simply because the U.N. still had him on a no-fly list. After all we pick and choose what U.N. directives we choose to abide by don’t we? For instance we (meaning you) ignored the U.N. Human Rights Council and reasserted our "case-by-case" approach to seeking clemency for Canadians facing execution in foreign countries. That U.N. directive just didn’t apply to us did it? But, woe to the man whose name appears on a U.N. no-fly list (probably put there at your suggestion) because then we salute and honour the edicts of the U.N. It is fitting that Mr. Abdelrazik is now suing you for $27 million, the only thing that sticks in my craw is that the cost of defending the action will not come out of your own personal pocket but will be paid by tax dollars. Let me just say that I, as a bred-in-the-bone Canadian, will be sitting in my snug, middle class home cheering for this man who has been so wronged by his own country. Clearly, though, an increasing number of the people of Ontario salute you in this righteous fight. A fight against a man who was innocent of all charges, a man you gleefully sent to Sudanese torture chambers and then, righteously, obstructed returning to Canada for 6 long years. Was he not white enough? Was he not Christian enough? Or just not Canadian enough for the likes of you Mr. Harper and Mr. Cannon? Or did he also forget his maple leaf tattoo?

And, of course, we all support you in your refusal to ask for the repatriation of Omar Khadr. A child soldier against whom the evidence is blatantly shaky – or at least what evidence we have been hallowed enough to see. But we know it’s not really Omar Khadr you have a problem with, it’s his family. I mean really, who’s to say that the son shouldn’t pay for the sins of the father after all? His family has expressed views contrary to what most Canadians believe and for that we have rightly abandoned this child soldier - just because the Geneva Convention says he’s a child soldier doesn’t mean we have to honour it. We can only be expected to honour the Geneva Convention when it applies to our own soldiers, right? And yes, we continue to proclaim our undying adherence to freedom of speech, as long as you’re white, Christian and just right of centre. If you are a Khadr family member your freedom of speech is no more than a bedevilling attempt to propagate terrorism.

People of Ontario and Canada, please remember that sometimes elections aren’t just about economics. Sometimes they are about the very soul of your nation. The Conservative party, at its heart, is still the Reform party a blatantly biased, right wing political entity that sneers at the goals of international equality and freedom, despises domestic redistribution of resources and wealth and believes in autocratic control of a very small central power base that dictates policy to an uninformed, uneducated populace. They are counting on us to be uninformed, malleable and uneducated – don’t let them manipulate you...let me!

Oh but I think I have discerned the true reason for your resurgent numbers in this province, Mr Harper. It wasn’t when your Finance Minister, Mr. Flaherty, told Toronto to ”fuck off”. It wasn’t when you refused to extend equality to the unemployed of Ontario through Employment Benefits reform. It didn’t happen when you refused to put us on totally equal footing with every other province on equalization payments. No, no, no! You rocketed to the enviable position of poll leader because you attended a Tim Horton’s promotional event in Ontario instead of attending climate change negotiations. We do love our Tim Horton’s! And anyone who eats at Tim Horton’s is fine by us! (Oh please Mr. Ignatieff, I am begging you, couldn’t you just have a muffin there soon?)