Six Birthday Wishes For Canada

Canada needs to look beyond the day-to-day grind, get past the politics of pettiness, and see the big picture.

A resolution for Canada on its birthday? How about: that the first time in a long time, we as a country decide to stand for something.

Nations are like the people who inhabit them: it’s easy to get so immersed in the day-to-day grind of life that you lose sight of the big picture: where you are, and especially where you want to go. In some parts of the world, this is difficult to avoid: life is so hardscrabble and exhausting that neither such countries, nor their people are able to look beyond just eking out a living.

In Canada, we have the incredible luxury of not being so constrained. However, it takes real leadership – and vision – to allow us to take advantage of this.

Quick now, answer me this: what do each of our major political parties stand for? Not much immediately comes to mind, does it? I suppose the Conservatives might be said to stand for lower taxes and being “tough on crime.” The problem is, those aren’t policies; they’re bumper stickers: “I voted Conservative, and all I got were these lousy platitudes.”

As for the Liberals, what they embody is even less clear. As best one can tell, the case they’ve been putting forward for electing them is simply that they’re not the Conservatives. That may be pithy, but it’s not particularly compelling – though, in fairness, recent developments indicate that this mindset may be changing.

Ironically, it is the two “other” federal parties that are most clearly defined. The NDP may not have moved with the times, but at least people have an idea of what they stand for. As for the Bloc, you can’t say they don’t have a clear vision of what they want.

Ultimately though, it is fair to say that no one on the political scene is laying out a grand vision or aspiration for what our country should be, as it enters its 144th year. We’ve gone from Trudeau’s Just Society to the current view that, well, it’s just society. It’s telling that the current clarion call to the nation is apparently: “Let’s spend a little less, and put more people in prison.”

The problem is that endless political sniping, perpetual anger, and scarcely disguised contempt don’t make for much of a platform, and hardly represent any kind of vision for the country.

Imagine what our society would be like if the Canadian people, and not just our politicians, acted this way. We would look at our neighbours with a bitter, jealous eye and think to ourselves that they have too much, instead of looking around and seeing those who have too little. Thankfully, this is not who we are as a country. It is not who we have been. And it is certainly not what we should settle for becoming. We need to stand for something more than this, and if that sounds too naïve, then we should bear in mind that we have done it before.

We have stood for tolerance. We have stood for diversity. We have been an honest broker on the international stage, working behind the scenes on the great issues of the day. During the apartheid era in South Africa, Canada eventually became one of the leading nations championing the international sanctions which helped to bring about change. In doing so, we left foot-dragging world powers like the U.S. and the U.K. far behind – and, lest we forget, it was a Conservative Prime Minister who led us in that direction.

These days, we don’t seem to have any causes that similarly galvanize the public. Perhaps that’s because there’s a feeling that the hard work has already been done here in Canada. Certainly, as a country we have done about as well as any nation on the planet. The sorry spectacle of last weekend’s G20 protests and crackdown aside, we can generally say that most of the time, our country has it gotten it right. The real danger then is in becoming indifferent; when one is comfortable, it’s too easy to just drift through, living day by day and giving no thought to the big picture.

Currently, we lack the sort of leadership to prevent this. Rather than being challenged to look outward and beyond the immediate, we are encouraged to think small, to be myopic. People are not being inspired to think about what kind of society we want this country to be; instead, we’re given the sense that the wolves are at the door, and that we must defend what we have. The only problem is that the people we’re defending ourselves from can only be each other.

This sort of thinking, which could be described as the politics of pettiness, can only take us so far. It can take a man to the leadership of his party, it can elect a party to government, but it can never lead a nation to greatness.

So for a resolution this year, Canada should resolve to stand for something more. Better yet, we should resolve to be great, and we should stand for no less. We have done it before, and although it wasn’t any easier then, the nation was better for it. We can do it again.