Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Note to Trudeau - no government will ever fully reflect your values

I know how Justin Trudeau feels. What I don't understand is his reaction.

That's essentially how I responded to several readers who made excuses for the Liberal MP and chastised his critics after Trudeau mused on a Radio-Canada interview on Feb. 12 that he might consider helping Quebec to separate from Canada if the federal Conservatives pass too much legislation he disagrees with.

"I always say," said the Quebec MP, "that if, at a given time, I believed that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper, and that we were going against abortion, that we were going against gay marriage, that we were moving backwards in 10,000 different ways, maybe I would think of wanting to make Quebec a country."

Trudeau's statements were widely criticized by many pundits, politicians, professors and other Canadians, including myself, for their dishonesty and inaccuracy, as well as Trudeau's inherent narcissism and immaturity to believe that unless the policies of a particular government do not perfectly reflect his own, then a reasonable option includes the destruction of Canada.

What Trudeau clearly finds difficult to understand is huge swaths of Canadians didn't vote for his vision of Canada, which resulted in the majority win of Stephen Harper's Conservatives in May.

I, too, remember a time when the federal government did not reflect my values.

I recall shedding bitter tears in April 1998, when then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien cut short his official trip to Cuba to force his entire Liberal caucus to vote against fairly compensating Canadians infected with hepatitis C by the government-regulated blood system.

I had interviewed several people - now dead - who were infected with the deadly liver disease and they were utterly devastated by the vote.

Chretien whipped his vote, vowing to kick any Liberal MP out of caucus who voted against his unfair compensation deal. They believed him too; after all, he kicked John Nunziata out of the Liberal caucus for protesting Chretien's broken promise of eliminating the GST.

In Chretien's deal, any Canadian who contracted hepatitis C from Jan. 1, 1986 to July 1, 1990, through tainted blood or blood products would be compensated. If a person was infected one day too early or one day too late, they were left to die with no compensation to help them and their family cope with their debilitating disease.

Tainted blood killed thousands of Canadians and infected 22,000 with hep-C.

Not helping all of the victims of our tainted blood system didn't reflect my values at all. It seemed as though my Canada had been hijacked and replaced. It was as though Chretien tore a page out of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's book of effective leadership, forcing Liberal MPs to vote against their conscience on an issue that was not a confidence vote. Surely, accountability, justice and compassion are Canadian values, but they were shamefully missing that day with tragic consequences for tens of thousands of Canadians.

I felt utter dismay and sorrow, but it never occurred to me that I should work toward the goal of Alberta separating from the rest of Canada.

Remember Peppergate, also known as the APEC scandal of 1997? Numerous official documents showed that under orders sent directly from Chretien's office, the RCMP trampled on the rights of lawfully protesting Canadians to protect the feelings of visiting Indonesian dictator Suharto. What's more, Chretien allowed Suharto's bodyguards to carry concealed weapons into the country, which violated Canadian law.

I also didn't feel that my Canada was represented when Chretien was seen being chummy with Zimbabwe's murderous dictator, Robert Mugabe, at an international conference. It turned my stomach. Again, I felt deep shame, but Canada is so much bigger than any one man, government or policy document.

After the Sept. 2, 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 off the coast of Nova Scotia, Chretien's office decreed that the Sept. 9 memorial service held near Peggy's Cove for the 229 people who perished aboard that doomed flight could not include any Christian scripture or prayers, even though most of the victims were apparently Christian. Similar dictates were not made to the other religious leaders who offered prayers that day. That policy was deeply troubling to me and many other Canadians.

Because Chretien broke so many of his election promises - like scrapping the GST and tearing up NAFTA - he felt the need in 1993 to tear up the Mulroney government's deal to buy 50 Agusta-Westland EH-101 helicopters to replace our Labradors and Sea Kings.

Pulling out of that deal cost taxpayers more than $500 million in contract penalties, and the Canadian aerospace industry a conservative $1 billion in lost business. Worse still, in 1998, six airmen were killed when their 32-year-old Labrador helicopter crashed near Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula owing to mechanical failure, something one of the men predicted in his journal, discovered after his death. To make this whole sordid debacle even more upsetting, ministers in Chretien's government refused to fly in the Labradors and Sea Kings, because they were too dangerous.

Currently, there are policy platforms of the ruling Conservatives that I disagree with, particularly parts of the government's omnibus crime bill. I will do what I can within my limited capacity to actualize some positive change, but it wouldn't occur to me to consider forming my own country within Canada to better reflect my values.

So, yes, Justin, I understand how it feels to have a government that doesn't reflect my views or values on most things. But no matter how bad it got, I never dreamed of destabilizing Canada by giving succour to separatists.

Original Article
Source: calgary herald
Author: Licia Corbella

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