We need to talk about my country

I was reasonably proud to by Canadian, growing up. It’s not in my nature to be a great waver of flags, but I understood Canada’s small but not insignificant place in the world. I knew, learning about the Montreal massacre and the advent of gun control at school; watching the broadcast of Pierre Trudeau saying that there was no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, that the country I called home by pure accident of birth was one whose values mirrored my own.

Too often, I find myself asking how so much can have changed in such a short time.

It was two months ago that I shared this post on instagram. It had been a particularly upsetting day in the news and I found myself wondering, as I so often do, why I still live in Canada. It doesn’t make sense to live in a place you’ve given up on, and if I’m honest, that is how I feel; like the nation that my family emigrated to with hope for a better life is so irreparably damaged that it is beyond saving. A number of Canadians thanked me for sharing my thoughts, saying they felt the same, while a number of friends from other countries were surprised to hear me speak so negatively about a country that is still perceived as a kind of paradise in the outside world. I have far more to say than can fit in an instagram caption, but I have hesitated for eight weeks because when you write about politics, you can’t just share your opinions; you need to back them up with facts. And for many years now I have avoided facts, knowing that when I face them, my despair can only deepen.

The facts are simple, but shocking. Stephen Harper assumed the office of prime minister in 2006, just before I turned 21. In the nine years since, voter turnout for federal elections has hit an all time low, with just 61.4% taking the time to vote in the last election. I suspect that the other 38.6% of Canadians abstain not out of pure apathy, at least, not all of them. Many of them must feel the futility of it even more acutely than I do each time I cast a ballot, not for a candidate I believe in, because there are none of those, but for any candidate who will take a vote away from the Conservative majority.

The same people who abstain from voting evidently abstain from answering Ipsos-Reid polls, because despite all of the events of the past nine years, 48% of Canadians still believe the government is working well and 38% still believe that Stephen Harper is the best choice for Prime Minister.

I strongly disagree. Stephen Harper has twice shut down the government for months at a time – parliament was prorogued for the first time in Canadian history from December 4, 2008 – January 26, 2009; it was prorogued again the same year, on December 30, and only reopened in March 2010. In 2011, his government was the first in the history of the Commonwealth to lose a no-confidence vote and be found to be in contempt of parliament. They have obliterated most environmental laws in the country and limited scientists’ ability to speak to the press, effectively silencing almost all debate on environmental issues. In fact, Mr. Harper is very particular about controlling all public information, insisting that he be allowed to choose which members of the national media are allowed to ask him questions at press conferences, which means that although he is elected by the people, to represent the people, he seems to have determined that he knows better than those people what they really need to know about how their country operates. Just last month, Stephen Harper’s government passed Bill C-51 through the senate, a piece of legislation that is alleged to counteract terrorism but that in fact criminalizes the expression of thoughts on the subject of terrorism. If you share an opinion of potential resolutions to controversial conflicts in the world, even in private conversation, you can now be convicted of a terrorist offence, regardless of your intentions. The same is true of speaking about terrorism in a setting of academic debate. And if you want to protest against any of the spurious actions of Stephen Harper’s government – drilling in the oil sands comes to mind, as do aboriginal rights, which continue to be undermined – be sure that the protest organizers have their paperwork in order. Anyone who protests without a permit can now be subject to government surveillance… or even arrest.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Funding for social programs has been slashed year after year. Health care is failing, with wait times for specialist consultations, diagnostic testing and treatment sometimes extending for eighteen months to two years. Military intervention in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine are given priority over issues at home – in 2012, twenty-three years into the twenty-five years that it was supposed to take to eradicate child poverty in the country, the percentage of children living in poverty in Canada had increased by nearly four points. Oh, and abortion, that essential right that women were legally granted in 1969? The current government continues to suggest that they want to repeal that law, standing against women’s rights at home and abroad.

There is an election scheduled for this October. But the fact is – and I think this fact is what bothers me most of all – that I doubt it will bring the change that we so desperately need. I don’t know how to be part of a meaningful solution to a political problem of this depth and magnitude. I don’t believe that any of the candidates running in the election will inspire me, or anyone else, to want to be part of the solution. The country that I grew up in exists in name only – the values that I was taught to believe we shared have slowly and insidiously been worn away by an flowing tide of greed and political corruption. Why don’t we swim against it? I don’t know. Maybe because we’re so used to hearing about how life is so much worse in other places. And it’s certainly true that no country is perfect, but the fact is, bad slides down towards worse far more often than it fights it way up towards good. We shouldn’t settle for bad just because we haven’t yet hit rock bottom. I don’t have the solution. I have more questions than I will ever have answers and often all I can think to do is pack my bags, starting over somewhere else. What a tragedy, that country that for so many was a place to start over with hope for a better future, can feel so hopeless.