35 Comments

Wow Dan, this really got at the heart of it. As a fellow Canadian, a Metis, and whose work is centered on Indigenous economic Reconciliation, it hits home. In fact, I am blown away by the stark cause-and-presumed-effect you have laid out here and just how silly we do seem in throwing around big-boy terms without serious consideration to what they mean or what we might then be expected to do about it.

Our hero’s are few and far - fewer and farther these days - and our population so few that our leaders seem tangible, touchable. Their proximity makes them seem more human than the mega-personalities that rule other Nations and are responsible for their ills. I wonder if that contributes to our unwillingness to hold our own to account -commensurate with the charges we’ve convicted them of. If that’s the case, it should stand as a warning to some of our more ‘Superstar’ seeking leaders, fly not too close to the sun as you’ll surpass the protective orbit of us commoners.

This piece has sparked no small amount of inner-turmoil. Much to think on, sit with, and reconcile within. Thanks for this heavy bit of accountability. We only grow by doing hard things.

Expand full comment

This is excellent, sad, and true. As to matters foreign rather than domestic as a possible excuse, ask what domestic infrastructure has been built post COVID to prevent spread of the next pandemic? What newly designed hospitals and seniors homes have been built? What new medical and nursing schools? LNG to tidewater to assist Europe against Russia? Opiate crisis? Drinking water on reserves? Anyone? Bueller? Canadians are not serious on any issues at present, foreign or domestic. Our per capita GDP is a disgrace. Our Confederation is at risk from insensible ideologues of the left and right. With respect to the politicians, if you want better than demand better and the mudslinging ends when it ends with each of us. Play the puck not the man. Debate policies and judge on achievements not annouceables.

Expand full comment
author

Amen, brother.

Expand full comment

As one whose politics lean strongly toward the progressive side, I've no choice but to completely agree. Although I am appalled at the Official Opposition's populist hate/rage farming and habitual misinforming of the public, if not outright lying, there does seem to be the semblance of this to their criticisms: the government is shallow and totally lacks seriousness.

DON'T COME AT ME....I know only too well, that the opposition is no better. In fact, if they were to form government, there is ample evidence they would be considerably worse. And of course they are projecting, this is a group as unserious as any political party I have ever seen (like their kindred to the south,) in my 5+ decades of observation.

And, yet. Part of me thinks the popularity the utterly charmless and critically dishonest Poilievre is now experiencing, is a result of Canadians being somehow on to the fact of our collective and literal unseriousness.

The ironies, and horrors, abound.

Expand full comment
author

I entirely agree. Sadly, I think that while the unseriousness of discourse in the political class can be faulted for many reason, it's not undemocratic. Canadians, on the whole, have no interest in foreign affairs because we take our peace and prosperity for granted. When politicians deliver preening demonstration of high-minded morality, but don't back it with the slightest substance, they are giving the audience what (most of) it wants.

Expand full comment

Could not agree more. We’ve been waiting for a grown up to enter the room and he is not it.

Expand full comment

It won't be getting any better! The Green Party have lowered their voting age to 14, the new PM of France of is 34. As the human population ages more and more, we're seeing younger and younger "politicians", USA excepted!

Me, I think politicians should be between 30 and 80, and Premiers should be between 50 and 65.

Expand full comment

Good points. I’m also seeking some maturity along with age, to no avail lately

Expand full comment

Well, to be fair, "maturity" is another word that may be as debatable as "genocide"! :)

Expand full comment

Nailed it.

Expand full comment

Terrific article. I can't believe how the word genocide gets tossed around these days.

Expand full comment

I think it's clear as crystal. Our words mean just what we want them to mean and nothing more. And we can do it in two languages which frequently means they can mean the opposite thing at the same time, or half the room not knowing what's being told to the other half and the person delivering those words not speaking at least one of the languages which adds in plausible deniability, depending on how you might define that.

Expand full comment

Ron, you write, "... Our words mean just what we want them to mean ..."

The corollary to that is, "When I read/hear your words, I can/will understand those words to mean what I wish them to mean, no matter what you really meant."

My point is that not only is the way we use language is imprecise - because we are too lazy to try to be precise - but we are too damned lazy to try to understand with precision. Foolish, lazy us!

We Canadians are a sloppy, imprecise tribe and the world is very much to be commended for not giving us any serious (or any, really) consideration at all.

Were I fifty years younger (I am now in my seventies) I would look very hard for a country to which to emigrate, one where I could expect serious people to think serious things about serious issues. Clearly, that country is not Canada and has not been Canada for many decades.

Expand full comment

I find human behaviour somewhat paradoxical -- our social being will "go with the flow" yet our rational being will analyze.

Thus, the situation arises where prominent people can lead a popular sentiment without affirmation until/unless they are confronted by a rebuttal. Hence, spectacles like unanimous agreement among MPs that residential schools were genocidal. We'd probably be cancelled if we suggested otherwise in public.

There are many rebutters but, unfortunately, they don't have the necessary visibility to redirect the flow. Our "journalists" or their media have let us down. Why don't we have something like a Jon Stewart's Daily Show lampooning idiocy on national television immediately after the suppertime news? If people are prompted to think about issues, they will.

Expand full comment
Jan 17·edited Jan 17

"We'd probably be cancelled if we suggested otherwise in public". That thought crossed my mind as well.

Expand full comment

As it happens, yesterday I listened to linguistics professor and NYT columnist John McWhorter, one of the guests on Bari Weiss's "Honestly" podcast of Jan. 4. Asked for his predictions for words that would be prominent in 2024, he said that the definition of "genocide" would be frequently discussed in traditional and social media.

Expand full comment

Bari Weiss has gone back to her old identarian ways that got her booted from NYT

Expand full comment

There's an old Toothpaste for dinner comic from 20 years ago that goes like this: "Hey Dad, why is it so many actors go into politics? "it's basically the same job, but they don't have to wait 6 months for their royalties." https://i0.wp.com/www.grunchbox.com/tpfd/reg/2008/actors-in-politics.gif

Edit: my initial reason for commenting was that they should use the Cannes scale for measuring the length of the standing ovation.

Expand full comment

Canada has not been an international role model for a few decades.

Canada's credibility first took a beating on the international scene when Canadians deleted the definition of sex.

Canada's international cred has especially gone down in the last three years, with one of the most authoritarian bigoted responses to a virus the world has seen, only to be outdone by a couple of island states.

We're a sad sorry excuse for a "democratic" country these days, and a huge number of new immigrants, many from the old Eastern Block, chose to get the hell out!

Expand full comment

All painfully true. Canadians have become complacent. My father fought in WWII and was proud to be a Canadian soldier. It is sad that today, we are viewed as smug and unimportant.

Expand full comment

and literally an example of how NOT to behave as a nation. But that was to be expected from a leader who aimed for "post national".

Expand full comment

We've never been taken entirely seriously- that's the problem. We were a group of British and French colonies that banded together to protect ourselves against the bad old United States. And we borrowed things that "worked" from them to solve our problems: our shameful treatment of our Indigenous people has echoes in the conduct of other British colonies like Australia and New Zealand, which were just as bad, if not worse, with their Indigenous people.

We had to go to Britain to get them to approve us being a nation in 1867, and to completely separate ourselves legally from them in the 1980s. No armed uprisings for us....

Expand full comment

We don't have leaders who have the vision and balls to look beyond their own interests

Expand full comment

Great piece. But if you say the ultimate goal for our politicians is power and votes and work backwards then this is good and effective politics. It's sad but we live in a social media ADD age full of and encouraging moral dilettantes. It would take selfless leaders to push us out of this. At the educational level, at the corporate level, in

Expand full comment

no bodies found at residential schools

Expand full comment