What's Wrong With Canada?

I often ask myself this question and I keep coming to the same answer. The biggest problem with Canada is Canadians themselves, or more specifically their attitude. Pulling a file out of the large virtual filing cabinet of issues I follow, I select one that's close to home. It regards the unwanted mall and sound barrier issue I discussed last month. At one meeting, neighbours cautioned my family not to upset the bureaucrats because they were "trying to help us." My father being a retired civil engineer and myself a political scientist & quasi-journalist, we knew better. Civil servants filibuster and have little interest in improving the lives of people they serve. They're mostly brain dead robots serving a higher power who can't be bothered with a bunch of nobodies trying to get money out of them. The remark from one of my neighbours came after my father pushed one of the bureaucrats into answering a vital question they had been dodging. Don't upset them. That was a moment of epiphany for myself. It confirmed something that I had suspected for some time. The problem with Canada is that Canadians refuse to rock the proverbial boat. You can decrease their quality of life, you can take away their rights, you can undermine democracy, but still they will stand there unwilling or uninterested. It's a dictator's dream come true.

The million dollar question is why do Canadians behave this way. It's certainly in stark contrast to our neighbour to the south. Americans get riled up over things at the drop of a hat. It's guaranteed somebody, somewhere in the US is protesting something. A lot of that comes from Americans having a vary different heritage from us. When the Thirteen Colonies suffered gross democratic abuses at the hands of the British Empire, they rebelled. America fought for their independence, we asked nicely and even then we weren't truly free of Britain until the 1980s. Canada was built by the loyalists who did not want to rebel for one reason or another. We're quite satisfied with the status quo regardless of whether we're being subject to abuse or not. This way of thinking has opened us up to gross abuses. I already discussed the increasing number of immigrants who only come here to collect our social services. We don't speak out against them for fear of offending people. Meanwhile they offend ever other immigrant who can here and struggled to make a life for themselves. It's not just them. Powerful NGOs, various special interest groups, land developers, large corporations, drug dealers and petty criminals, con artists, labour unions. They all want a slice of the pie and they take it regardless of who's toes they step on. We do nothing to stop them because we simply do not like confrontation.

The government itself is probably the biggest abuser of them all. The politicians themselves are unwitting pawns in the game that is entirely controlled by fat cat bureaucrats who sit around and freely and openly abuse and neglect the public interest for one reason or another. Over the years, they've been handed a considerable amount of power and obtained golden idol status. Every criticism slides off them as if they were all coated with Teflon. Take the Walkerton incident for example. When water engineer Stan Cabel neglected his duties of making sure the town's water had enough chlorine in it, an e. coli outbreak resulted causing several deaths. In a logical world, Cabel would have been fired at the vary least, though I would have gone as far as to charge him with criminal negligence. Through union trickery and politicking, the blame somehow went directly to Mike Harris for not properly funding the civil service. Despite willfully falling asleep at the switch and killing several people in the process, Cabel walked away a hero and the public ate up the rhetoric like Oprah on a baked ham. Pretty much every other scandal involving the bureaucracy has received a similar outcome and it effects all levels of government. The Toronto Catholic School Board, eHealth, the human rights commissions, the Sponsorship Scandal, or just being mouthed off to at the MTO licensing office. I know someone who works at a receptionist at one of the municipalities. She has actually be verbally assaulted by bureaucrats for putting their phone calls through to them. It happens on an almost daily basis. (incidentally, I believe voice mail and Microsoft Solitaire to be the most important inventions in bureaucrat history) Despite abusing a fellow employee and refusing to do their jobs, they receive vary little recourse if any. Usually the latter. These are the same bureaucrats who I've been fighting with over the mall. The public knows this behaviour is wrong but they don't do anything about it for fear of upsetting the goldenboy image. After all they are just trying to help us, right? So says my neighbour. This is allowed to go on because people don't fight it. Our apathy is destroying this country.

Am I being cynical when I describe Canadians as a bunch of lazy idiots living in fear of rocking the boat? It's hard not to be when that is all one sees. Even the media is just as guilty of this; choosing to focus on petty issues while virtually ignoring discussion on the major ones. If it wasn't for amateur bloggers, many of these issues would never see the light of day. The vast majority of protests one sees here are the big, corrupt stakeholders or new Canadians fighting for some issue back in their old country that no longer affects them. It's vary easy to become jaded. However, I would be more than thrilled to be surprised. I was quite surprised in fact when Canadians came out in force against the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition late last year. That is probably the only time I've seen Canadians react so strongly to an issue. The problem is it being an isolated case when it should be the norm. Canadians need to wake up and stop being so fearful of challenging authority. For God's sake it only takes 10 minutes out of your day to pick up a newspaper or watch the evening news to inform yourself. It only takes 10 minutes out of your day once every three or four years to vote. Write letters to representatives, start your own blog, get out and protest. Get with the program and stop letting the government and corrupt organizations walk all over you. Canada is our country. Let's start acting like we care.