2000-10-02 || 1.18p

a few thoughts, I guess...

My Father remembers Pierre Laporte's state funeral. He remembers the snipers on the rooftops around the Basilique Notre-Dame, the soldiers patrolling with their Sten guns and FNs. He remembers the tension in the air as people milled around, trying to get in to see the casket of that rarest of things: A Canadian politician killed by terrorists.

It was a different time. My mother and her friends were stopped by soldiers every week, some were arrested for nothing, A tank sat outside a friend's house for days, while troops jogged up and down the street, and eventually, no more bombs went off. The FLQ killed no more politicians, and British diplomat James Cross (who was kidnapped at the same time as Pierre Laporte) was freed.

To-morrow, another State funeral will be played out in the same basilica, for the man who sent those troops into Montreal a generation ago. This time, there will be no snipers or armoured cars, but there will be enough crowds. Crowds I will have to fight through in order to get my sorry arse to work.

But there is a question that remains in my mind-- Was Canada a just society during the October Crisis? The War Measures Act that was enacted suspends civil liberties throughout the affected area for the duration of the its mandate. The FLQ had been setting off bombs since 1963, and had stepped up to the next level, that of assassinations and kidnappings. They had a hit list of major Canadian figures and buildings, both within and outside Qu�bec. Does that make it okay for a government to suspend civil liberties? I think the answer lies in what a government or its officers will do with expanded powers. Canada has traditionally been a generally just society. There have been glaring exceptions to this rule, of course, as anyone who got pepper-sprayed by Mounties while demonstrating at a Chr�tien-sanctioned event can attest, but we have generally architected a system based on a culturally diverse model, in sharp contrast to the melting pot model traditionally used to characterise our bigger neighbour to the south. We have never had as segregated a society as our American friends used to have, and civil unrest in Canada tends to peter out fast.

But what is happening in this nation to-day is an unjustness of a quieter sort: the Canadian Prime Minister enjoys more power over his nation than does any other G8 leader. The PM can (and does) use his caucus as no more than a rubber stamp for any new policies he can think up. A perfect example is the relatively minor events surrounding Canada Customs' logo. Chr�tien decided to remove the Crown from the coat of arms when he re-structured the agency, over the protests of 81% of the agency's workers, who signed a petition asking for the Crown's re-instatement on their badges.

Small issue, right? Wrong. The majority of the Canadians affected said 'no,' and the PM's officer forced the change through anyway. This is the act of a leader deaf to the cries of his people. As was the pepper-spraying of protesters at the summit in British Columbia. Those protesters were angry that Mr Chr�tien had allowed known despots to attend the summit, even though it is against Canadian law to allow known despots entry into the country for any reason at all.

Traditional China had a sign for when it was time to overthrow their leaders. If the Yellow River overflowed, it was a symbol that the current government had lost the Mandate of Heaven through corruption and unjustness. As such, it was the duty of the Chinese people to rise up and remove whoever was in the throne at the time. It just so happens that whenever the Yellow overflowed, it was because corruption in the government had made it impossible for the Emperor to pay to keep the river within its banks, so the cycle worked out for the best.

In Canada, we have no such concrete sign. There is no river that threatens to take out villages and farms when the government becomes unjust, but the theory remains: When a society becomes unjust through despotism, it becomes the duty of that society's common people to remove those in power, preferably via a no-confidence vote.

In a just society, every person has the right to speak, and if the majority of them agree, they can sway the policies of their country. In a dictatorship, the leader makes his decisions based upon his own desires and enacts them over the heads of his people whether they like it or not.

Generally, Canada has been a just society. There are laws to protect minorities and women, though they are not perfect. There is a system of socialised medicine, though it is in retreat. There is a Prime Minister who is doing his best to even the score by being as iron-handed as he can get away with. There is a hard-campaigning Christian who commands a brand-new party looks as though he will be the next leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, and who has a problem with same-sex marriages and the like.

I think the pepper-sprayed British Columbian or the Customs Canada worker might look about at the changing political landscape and agree that, in some ways, Canada was more just during the War Measures Act in 1970 than is true to-day.



||Gods save the Queen,
||cf

back || forth

older shite

One last little note... - 09.21.2006

de-stressing, biking and terrorism - 06.06.2006

Mildly stressed... - 05.29.2006

More crime stupidity - 05.28.2006

Scary stuff - 05.25.2006



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