Canada is a complacent country. A large land mass with a small population, rich resources and natural defences, we have a bad habit of congratulating ourselves on the sagacity of our good fortune.
It’s been that way as far back as I can remember, with one major interruption when Quebec tried — over an extended period — to split the country apart, alerting nine startled provinces that the 10th didn’t share their self-satisfaction. But that’s faded with time and circumstances, allowing us to drift once again into a kind of quiet self-regard, content in the many assurances we offer ourselves about our decency, civility, tolerance and devotion to diversity. There’s lots of evidence that, as a country, we’re not nearly as virtuous as we like to think, and we certainly don’t share our advantages beyond our borders to the extent we pretend, but it’s always easy to let those facts slide, especially given how frequently we’re been ruled by a party devoted to endlessly reasserting the myths we like to believe.
The events of the past three weeks — and for two years of pandemic before that — may have shaken that easy contentment. The Canada on display since March 2020 has hardly reflected the one we like to imagine. Institutions that don’t work, hospitals that are overwhelmed, a venerated health-care system that can’t cope, police forces that can’t keep order, borders that can’t be kept open.
Leadership that has failed on so many fronts in so many instances. Experts who lack expertise, appointees who aren’t up to the job, talking heads who can’t keep their story straight or their advice consistent. A governing class seemingly dedicated more to division and disparagement than pragmatism or co-operation. In sum it’s produced an anger that is palpable and not anywhere like the placid and polite Canadian profile. For a long time now Canada has been neither peaceable, orderly or well governed.
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See Also:
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(2) NDP MPs should think twice about voting for Emergencies Act
(3) Elections Canada to investigate 205,000 uncounted ballots in last election
(4) Trudeau government’s energy motto should be “unfair, unrealistic and uneven”
(5) Exposed: Trudeau’s Loyalty To World Economic Forum Turns Canada To Chaos
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