Tag: Politics

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Tooth and Social Consequences

Last Monday I had the unpleasant sensation of breaking a tooth. I certainly wasn’t expecting to spit out a quarter of a molar when biting into a rice krispie square, but there was nothing for it. I had to see a dentist.

By good fortune I was able to get the problem resolved quickly. Dr. Patel at the Fredericton Dental Clinic was able to see me the next day, and a slot for the extraction surgery opened up the day after that. By Wednesday afternoon, I was minus a shattered molar, and today I’m well on the way to recovery.

By greater fortune — or more precisely, through the grace of our society — I wasn’t bankrupted by the process. In fact, this emergency wasn’t a financial emergency at all; merely an inconvenience.

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How I Vote

This past weekend, advance polls in our Federal election opened across the country. With COVID still a risk, I decided to take advantage of the smaller lines for the advance polls to cast my vote.

This election, perhaps more than any election I’ve voted in, had me in a bind. I’ve considered myself in recent years to be a Progressive in my thinking and, consequentially, in my voting habits. But, between the Progressive parties on the ballot, and the Conservative alternatives, I found myself worried that my vote might be useless, or worse help deliver a result that could be dangerous for Canada. How to make sure my vote counted?

In recent years, I’ve taken to asking myself two questions that have helped me navigate that dilemma:

  1. Which Party has a chance of actually forming a government – majority or minority?
  2. Which Party’s platform has a good chance of making things better for all Canadians, and of preparing Canada for the challenges to come – at least, as I see them?

If the answers to those questions delivered the same answer, then I’d know who to vote for.

Of course, a Party could form a government, and could promise many things… but not deliver on those promises for some reason. But then I realized that, if a governing Party doesn’t fulfil its promises, than the overall situation for Canada doesn’t change exactly (though the window for solving some problems – like mitigating climate change – does shrink somewhat, when a Party chooses to do nothing or to do as little as possible to solve a problem or fulfil a promise). So, really, a Party can only be good or bad for Canada if it actually follows through on the promises.

That last is a distinction we need to remember. The British Tories, for example, followed through on their promise to take Britain out of the European Union – and now their nation is in growing crisis; the resultant lack of workers and access to markets is slowly wrecking the British economy, and hampering Britain’s ability to deal with COVID-19. We must always remember that just because a given Party thinks their promise will Make Things Better, that it doesn’t necessarily mean that their promise will actually do what they think or say it will, if and when it is realized.

Which is why, when all is said and done, despite my own misgivings, I cast my vote for the Liberals. They have the means to form a government, and while their platform does not go far enough to aid the poor, tax the rich, combat climate change, combat systemic racism, and a myriad other problems, they will do better than the other party that can realistically form a government, to wit the Conservatives. The Conservatives’ promises, in my opinion, either do less than the Liberals, or do nothing at all to address the real problems our nation faces.

(And what of the parties that promise to do more than the Liberals? The NDP, despite having what I think of as a better platform, simply doesn’t have the numbers to be more than holding the balance of power in a minority government – which is the role they held prior to the election, and one where they did quite well in keeping the Liberals honest. As for the Greens – sadly, they never did a good enough job of selling their dreams to Canadians, and the recent racially-charged infighting between the party and its leader has done them no favours. I’d be surprised if the Greens remain a party of note after this election, honestly.)

Of course, my vote doesn’t mean that the Liberals will win the election – we could still see a Conservative government, or perhaps the NDP might surprise us and get a surprise surge on election day. But the above process allowed me to deliver a vote I could live with, and that’s what matters to me right now.

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Coming to Terms With Who We Are

A few years ago, I wrote a Canada Day post that reflected a little on our nation’s shortcomings and hoped we could move past them. In light of the revelations over the past year, I’ve come to realize that post was written from a perspective of privileged naivete.

As I write this, the nation is reeling from the discovery of three sites of unmarked and/or mass graves, each site corresponding to a site where a Residential School once stood. Each site filled with the bodies of Indigenous children who died at those “schools” as part of the genocide the governments of the day waged against the First Nations people within our borders. Right now, the tally stands at over 1,000 children buried at these sites. Now that there’s an active push to examine the Residential School sites across the country, that number can only be expected to rise.

In between the discoveries, other examples of the deeply rooted and systemic racism within Canada have revealed themselves. In early June, a man in London, Ontario, took a vehicle and ran over a Muslim family, killing all but one nine year old child. A former intelligence officer has recently spoken out on systemic racism and harassment within CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency. Another report records several racist incidents at one of Canada’s busiest border crossings. The first black leader of a federal political party – Annamie Paul of the Greens – is under fire from her own party, and faces a no-confidence vote.

My post in 2018 operated under the assumption that Canada was not, at heart, a racist country; we had our flaws, true, but we just needed to work at them. But now, faced with the mounting evidence, it is time to come to terms with who we are. Who we really are.

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The Ugly Feeling of “Anything Can Happen”

When the news about the Trumpist assault on the U.S. Capitol reached me, I had already figured I’d received my quota of bad news for the day. Our province, which only yesterday had to be pushed back into Orange level restrictions to contain a surge in COVID cases, had had its worst day yet, with 31 reported infections (we had 27 the day before, and 17 the day before that). I knew in passing there was a mob of Trumpists in Washington, but I figured they wouldn’t amount to much.

Then, on the bus ride home from work, I watched my twitter feed explode with the news. Trumpists fighting police. Trumpists in the Capitol building. Trumpists on the House Floor. An American flag removed and a Trump flag hung in its place. People evacuated, one person killed. The word “insurrection” came up more than a few times to describe it, even as official media continued to call it a “protest”.

Insurrection. All too accurate a label for what happened.

As I write this, the insurrection has been put down. American FBI went in and cleared out the Capitol building. The U.S. Congress is reconvening to finish the business the insurrection interrupted. The National Guard is on its way to help secure the city, if it isn’t there already. But there’s a general sense in official news and on Twitter that America crossed a line today.

It all feels surreal to me, in a way. I suppose most Big Moments in History feel that way, when you’re viewing it at a remove. Adding to the surreal feeling is the sick certainty that, regardless of the procedure the Americans will be following, for the next two weeks, nobody truly knows what will happen. Insurrectionists occupied the U.S. Capitol building. In the two weeks before Trump is officially removed as President (assuming this day’s events don’t hasten his departure), who knows what else they might try? Who knows what Trump might do in an attempt to hold on to his fading power – he certainly encouraged this insurrection before and during the event in question.

I mentioned elsewhere my belief – founded in the events of the past four years – that Trump is America’s most evil and most incompetent president in living memory. He needs to leave power, and he’s made it clear – repeatedly – that he won’t leave quietly. And, to be clear, he will leave power – not willingly, not quietly, but he will; the law leaves him no other option. But he’s moved himself and his followers outside the law; and for the first time, I fear the damage he can still do in the two weeks he has left. I can only pray we are not witnessing the beginning of a civil war.