Dark clouds are gathering over this year’s celebration of Canada Day.
The 154th anniversary of the founding of our country comes three weeks after. . .
a Muslim family was run down on a Sunday evening stroll in London. A month after the remains of 215 Indigenous children were discovered buried at a residential school near Kamloops. A week after the graves of 751 more Indigenous children were found in Saskatchewan. Four-and-a-half years after six Muslim men were gunned down while worshiping in their mosque in Quebec. Just over three decades after 14 women were murdered at a college in Montreal. Ten months after the death of Joyce Echaquan in a Quebec hospital. As we consider how to celebrate Canada Day 2021, hundreds of cases of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls remain unsolved.
It would be easy to think that none of these tragedies has anything to do with us. They happened somewhere else, at some other time, on someone else’s watch. They have nothing to do with here or now or us.
If that’s what we think, then perhaps there really is not much to celebrate.
What would be worth celebrating is a Canada that is determined to be a safe place for everyone who lives here. A place where we are all equal under the law. Where there is no acceptance of discrimination on the basis of religion, language, ethnicity, gender or any other differentiating characteristics. No second-class citizens. No less-than-worthy people.
Usually with tragic consequences, history occasionally produces a political figure who rises to power by convincing their followers that there are less-than-worthy people who deserve to be treated as second-class citizens, often on the argument that the preservation of ethnic purity makes it justifiable to suspend the human rights of this or that minority.
We need look no further than our own province to see that the electoral viability of successive governments seems to depend on their willingness to discriminate against religious and linguistic minorities. Presumably with an eye on the votes at stake in Quebec, no federal voices have had much to say about it.
Any indication from a government that it is willing to treat any minority this way must be seen as a threat to all minorities and anyone wishing to live in a safe and peaceful society. By lending legitimacy to the notion that some members of our society have fewer rights than others, state-sponsored discrimination will almost certainly be taken by the angriest elements of society as permission to treat the disfavoured minorities as sub-human and unleash hostility that puts lives in danger.
On the other hand, a country that made respect for the human rights of all its people not just a lofty ambition but a lived reality would free its population from the fears of injustice and tyranny that haunt so many in the world. It would enable its residents to raise their families in peace. It would be a beacon of hope on a troubled planet. The anniversary of the creation of such a place would be well worth celebrating.
It is not enough, however, that these ideas are written into national constitutions and U.N. charters. They have meaning only when we all put them into practice every day. That means not engaging in the easy put-down, nor accepting it from others. It means stepping up to defend the rights of everyone, however different they may be, and demanding our politicians do the same. It means resisting anyone who would pit one segment of society against another for their own political gain.
This is an idea that has long been part of our future. We need to make it part of our now. That takes work, by all of us everywhere. It has nothing to do with being politically correct. It is entirely about having the humility to see that none of us is any better than the next person, or more entitled to the opportunity to live a decent life by virtue of our skin colour, faith, gender or the language we speak.
It is simply about being respectful of our fellow human beings.
If the measure of a civilization is how it treats its most vulnerable members, then Canada is by no means the worst. While that might not be cause for celebration, a Canada that is a truly safe home for every single one of us would be.
Charles Dickson
