Right in the centre - Canada Day a good time to take stock

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Published on Thursday, June 30, 2016

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Today, Canada Day is a great day to be a Canadian. People who were born here may not appreciate Canada as much as or in the same way as someone who moved here. Canada, for all its faults, is a really good place to live. We need to “stand on guard” for Canada as it may continue to grow even greater.

Or it could go downhill. History proves that countries rise and fall on the efforts and directions taken by its citizens.

Let’s look at some nation defining factors.

A quick check of statistics shows that gun deaths in the States are indeed a significant cause of death. A check for Canada did not seem to turn up accurate stats. For what it’s worth, Wikipedia says:

Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and injuries annually. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013,  there were a total of 33,636 deaths due to firearms.

In 2011, the most recent year that I could find stats for, there were 730,000 baby deaths by abortion in the United States. In 2011 there were 33,000 highway traffic deaths in the United States. 

Death is death and we need to do all we can to lower death rates. If we truly believe what we say, that is that people are our greatest resource, our greatest strength, then we need to look at every way possible to reduce our death rates, regardless of cause. No one truly believes that people are disposable, but it’s hard to tell when you look at a nation’s vital statistics.

Looking at Canada would likely show some different ratios. Likely, our gun deaths are at a lower proportion than in the United States. However, the point is that reducing death losses should take a higher priority on our time and effort than have shown in the past.

Canada is quite good at protecting human rights. It’s also really good at pretending to protect human rights. We spend a lot of time segmenting our efforts. We built a beautiful Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg all the while, within the very shadow of that edifice, human rights are being trampled every day. We spend a lot of time arguing about things such as gay pride parades when we should be talking about and doing something about human rights across the whole spectrum. I believe in human rights. What I don’t believe in is segmenting and compartmentalizing our human rights efforts. Parades and museums don’t cut it as long as we have communities in Manitoba without clean water, without proper education facilities, without proper law enforcement.

We should all be upset about murdered and missing indigenous women. It’s a huge problem in Canada and in Manitoba. However, we need to be aware that, unlike what some media and activists would have us believe, the whole problem doesn’t rest only with white men. They are to blame for a share of the issue, but a lot of the problem rests with some violent indigenous men (and women). It rests with drugs, alcohol, poverty, terrible living conditions and sometimes just plain stupidity. There’s lots of blame to go around.

Governments need to face up to their share of blame. In Manitoba, the NDP government spent 17 years telling us how bad things were under the Conservatives and wasted a lot of time and energy blaming instead of solving. Now, the Conservatives can prove them wrong. On the other hand, the Liberals are in power in Ottawa and they can step up and make things better by leadership and, in some cases, direct intervention. The First Nations leadership also bear some responsibility. Over the past 40 years, they have turned down many offers to modernize First Nations governance. They have also failed to make their case to the general public when government regulations have been downright harmful.

I think that, for now, the Manitoba government is on the right track by having open discussions with all groups and trying to deal with real issues. Time will tell if progress can be made.

If we get better living conditions, if we reduce untimely death from all causes, if we get human rights extended and enhanced for everyone, then we will make progress. Canada Day is a good day to evaluate where we are at. We’ll see what we can measure on July 1 in succeeding years.