| Dear Sheila Copps, Heritage Minister and Prime Ministerial hopeful:
Now is the time to find Canada’s bonds. Prairie conservatives and you, Canada’s second-last liberal hope, must lay down our pet projects and make a common pledge. In the pursuit of the Canadian identity, I will stop my legal campaign to eliminate our national parks if you promise again to eliminate the damnable Great Swindle Tax.
I will always believe our national parks are nothing more than government-subsidized weed factories designed to make the lives of neighbouring farmers even more difficult. You will die thinking the separated-at-birth twins – the federal government and the Liberal party – made this country what it is today.
Not since the aftermath of the First World War has our nation faced such defining moments. For decades, our great worries were the occasional trade dispute, commodity prices, the state of Canadian hockey and what happened to all that cod. All of a sudden we start showing up nightly on the world’s television sets as either the second home to the latest plague or as Brutus to America’s Caesar.
A nation’s soul is often branded or broken in such crucibles. Canada’s soul will be sold or leased depending on how the capital depreciation worked out for the customer. I watch our reaction to recent events, and I see a nation with the heart of a self-absorbed economic man – interested only in what each event means to our pocketbooks.
These visions of self-interest come to me each day in the news. Our intrepid journalists, on their predictable search for the national or local angle on every news story, always end up talking about the story’s economic impact on Canadians. It is our only local angle.
Nine have died from our modern plague. While the lead stories continue to report the basic facts – numbers of dead and infected – the rest of the media gnaws on two old wounds: our failing health care system and what being a nation of lepers will mean to our economy.
On another front, your lame-duck boss’s peace gambit has offended the self-appointed judge, jury and executioner of world affairs. Jean Chrétien’s stance on the Iraqi police action might help keep the country together by influencing the pacifist Québécois during their April 14 provincial election, but you wouldn’t know it by the rest of Canada’s reaction. All that matters to the rest of us is that Chretien’s domestic political ploy is creating an economic backlash south of the border.
Some folks will say Georgie Bush’s mismanagement of the U.S. recession will hurt Canada more than our dove-like nature, but I’m not going to argue macroeconomics. For me, the whole issue points to Canadians being a bunch of economic henny pennies. I realize we aren’t alone in this – I’m just disappointed that our deflated loonie is the most unifying symbol of our multi-cultural nation.
Our great multi-cultural experiment created a nation whose only common bond is maintaining or upgrading our work-to-spend lifestyle. Who could have guessed that our one cultural thread would produce a nation of compact-car-driving, doughnut-eating bargain-hunters?
Here in Alberta, our practical nature makes us eventually turn away from complaining to search for answers, and the current crisis puts a beautiful answer in our grasp.
The world is worried about our contagion, while the U.S. wants us to regret our failed loyalty. Plugging the brain drain would fix both problems and build a nation to boot. If folks don’t want us, maybe we better stay home, watch the hockey playoffs and try to create a nation, not just an economy.
All you have to do is turn our borders into an IQ lobster trap. You can get in and get the bait, but then you have to stay. Folks might struggle a bit at first, but they should adjust once they realize the rest of the world doesn’t want them anyway.
There are so many wins in this I can’t keep count. We save health care by keeping all our doctors and nurses. We will once again rule the world at hockey – although we won’t actually be able to play anyone. Our economy will flourish with all these brilliant minds working for Canadian companies instead foreign ones. There’s no end to the advantages of being an international pariah.
Yours in international solitude,
Buzz Angus
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