Your Apres-Canada Day Post

Oh, God ... Canada ... :

A new poll suggests the vast majority of Canadians are proud of their home and native land, but our sense of national pride is lower than it was a few years ago.

Polling firm Leger surveyed 1,607 people last weekend, asking how they're feeling about being Canadian ahead of Canada Day. The firm posed similar questions to a group of 1,003 Americans ahead of the Fourth of July.

The results suggest the vast majority of us — 76 per cent — would call ourselves proud Canadians.

But 45 per cent of people who did the survey said they were feeling less proud than they did five years ago in 2019. Leger said that's up 16 percentage points from 2021, when they posed the same question.

Respondents were asked to choose from a list of things that make them most proud to be Canadian. The country's natural beauty topped the list, followed by universal health care, freedom and equality, a peaceful and safe society and multiculturalism.

Just one in five said their fellow Canadians made them feel proud.

 

The answers given are the stock ones usually found on tourist pamphlets. 

Our healthcare system is not universal. We don't have the freedoms nor the equality oft-repeated (look no further than property rights, self-defense, free speech, access to information, the ability to remove our government, the right to refuse taxation ... ). Crime in Canada is growing and ethnic and sectarian violence that used to be banes elsewhere are what we now call Tuesday.

What is there to be proud of?

A limp-wristed, cowardly son of a former prime minister who fails to inspire the people he clearly despises?  Is it his unwillingness or his lackeys' to accept that even formerly politically safe seats are no longer secure? 

What about his refusal to adhere to even basic protocol and etiquette and listen to his own cabinet and party?:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing calls from two Chrétien-era Liberal cabinet ministers to step down as party leader, with the former MPs pointing to this week’s midtown Toronto by-election defeat as further evidence of a strong desire for change among Canadian voters.

** 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office declined to comment Sunday on a letter signed by several MPs calling for an immediate in-person national caucus meeting to discuss the party’s surprising by-election loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s.

A small group of MPs sent the letter to Liberal caucus chair Brenda Shanahan on Friday requesting the immediate meeting to discuss what they call the “extremely concerning” by-election results.

“This was a race the Liberal Party of Canada should not have lost. Our government has a strong legacy of achievement since 2015. The Liberal brand and our values resonate with Canadians,” states the letter penned by Calgary MP George Chahal, who did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.

The letter said many Canadians who have backed the Liberal Party are no longer supportive and have tuned out. It also said the voters in the Toronto by-election sent a clear message.

“If we claim to be listening, then our public responses are disconnected from reality,” it said.

**

“If we’re not trying to address it, it will fester,” Guilbeault mused into his wireless headphones, loudly enough for me to hear without moving a muscle. “So this conversation will need to happen whether we want (it) to or not.”

The conversation, as he phrased it on a subsequent call in French, is the same one every political pundit in Canada is having this week: Should Justin Trudeau stay or should he go?

Over the course of three phone calls, it became clear Guilbeault was feeling around for who might be most likely to call for Trudeau’s departure. “I’ve been asked by PMO (the Prime Minister’s Office) to make some calls and talk to people and report back,” he said on one of those calls.

To date, a ragtag crew of mostly-retired politicians — ex-MPs Wayne Easter and John Manley, former B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark, as well as the environment minister’s predecessor Catherine McKenna — have all urged Trudeau to go. No sitting MP has yet made such a demand.

That may change.

From his meetings, Guilbeault gleaned, “people are in shock. It’s not just in the 416, or in Ontario, it’s across the country.” Some are “tanné,” he said — a particularly Quebecois word, a mix of tired and annoyed — whereas others are just “stressed.”

**

Let me get this straight. Liberal Minister was unknowingly sitting next to a columnist on a train - was talking trash about Justin Trudeau needing to go and now he’s like “it was taken out of context”

These people will literally sink with the ship. https://t.co/GzX5asGbdK

— Jennifer Elle (@jenniferelle_) June 28, 2024

 

Oh! I know!

It's the partisan and sectarian politicians who care only about their own tribes:

Then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan instructed Canadian special forces to rescue about 225 Afghan Sikhs after the Taliban takeover in August, 2021, in an operation that three military sources say took resources away from getting Canadian citizens and Afghans linked to Canada on final evacuation flights out of Kabul.

Mr. Sajjan also relayed location information and other details about the Sikhs to the military as special operation forces worked to meet up with the group. The information was passed to him from a Canadian Sikh group that was in contact with these Afghan Sikhs.

Military sources who were in Ottawa and on the ground in Kabul painted a picture of the final chaotic, dangerous and desperate hours as evacuation flights were ending and Canada and other Western countries scrambled to get their citizens safely out of Afghanistan by the U.S. withdrawal deadline at the end of August.

The sources said Afghan Sikhs were not considered an operational priority for the Canadian military as they had no link to Canada. Mr. Sajjan’s intervention, the sources say, impacted the rescue of Canadians and other Afghans on Canada’s priority list. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the three sources because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

**

Just four out of 10 Canadians think the deal between the Liberals and the NDP to keep the Trudeau government in power has been a good thing, with even 40 per cent of New Democrats unconvinced of the value of the agreement, a new poll suggests.

Nothing says "proud to be Canadian" like ethnic division:

Auditors rate a federal program to promote hiring of Black employees as a failure. It was launched following 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau join demonstrators in kneeling outside Parliament: ‘There is little evidence of increased career opportunities for equity seeking groups.’

** 

The Canadian government has launched a new interactive online map pinpointing the location of residential schools, and experts say it will help in the search for unmarked or forgotten graves of children forced to go to the institutions.

 

(Sidebar: yes, but where are the bodies? Does history say?)

Is our source of pride in that we cast off our veterans when they no longer defend us so ably? What of others?

Where the Neanderthals succeeded, we decidedly failed?

Wait - I have it!

It's how we letter our political "betters" waste our money:

A New Democrat member of Parliament has paid back a portion of the thousands of dollars she spent on a Christmastime trip for herself and her family that was paid for with public money.

The federal New Democrats said Manitoba MP Niki Ashton reimbursed the House of Commons administration for $2,900, part of the more than $17,000 in costs she incurred during a Christmas Day trip to Quebec City followed by a visit to Montreal.

Public expenses show Ashton, her husband and two children flew from her northern Manitoba riding to Ottawa on Dec. 21, 2022.

This pride we are meant to have is rooted in utter fictions, not on achievements or in the verifiable ideals of a nation-state.

We are a cardboard cut-out of an actual country, one that won't rest on laurels of our past because that would mean we would be reminded of what we did right and how we all let it go wrong.