Liberalism - Canada's Greatest Sin

Progressive conservatives on the right, socialists on the left, and liberals in the middle – all these have played vital roles in building quite a nation.  Taking stock, we are the oldest continuous federalist democracy in the world; we belong to the prestigious G8/G20; we are successfully multicultural, peaceful and rich.  With all that going for us over decades, how did we mess up so badly with our own aboriginal people?  And to rub salt in the wound, how could we possibly justify our refusal to vote for aboriginal rights recently at the United Nations?  When the Metis veterans launched a lawsuit against the federal government (under Jean Chretien), for its negligence in failing to ensure Metis veterans were afforded the same benefits and allowances other veterans had received, it only enforced what has become Canada’s national shame.  These were Metis veterans that fought on D-Day, and as of this present moment, they are still being denied.For all our success internationally, many, even in the most remote lands, wonder why it is that our indigenous people suffer under such a load in this land.  With a population of over 30 million, and with thousands seeking to immigrate to Canada each year in pursuit of a better life, how is it that we tolerated, and at times enforced, a kind of racism that is neither subtle nor just?There is no need to go over the numbers here.  The challenges faced by the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people in Canada dwarf even the obstacles facing new immigrants.  We know of the past, and though the Harper government apologized for the residential school fiasco, the problems are still there and nothing has improved.  Aboriginals largely remain in poverty, poor health, and substance abuse.  They experience great difficulty, and at time intolerance, in their bid for higher education.  Aboriginal youth between 15-24 are twice as likely to be unemployed, and the jobless rate for aboriginals together is twice the Canadian average.While there has been some improvement in certain areas in the last decade, the overall condition has remained stagnant – and largely ignored.  When some 400-500 aboriginal women have gone missing and are presumed dead, and it raises barely a ripple in the country, we gain a clearer understanding that whatever it will take to improve the situation has not found its determination in either the Canadian people or their recurrent governments.Aboriginals themselves from across Canada had asked for a transparent and purposeful process to address the shortcomings.  In 2005, that process began, when Paul Martin’s government signed a long-term plan supported by the federal government, all provinces and the three territories, and the 600 aboriginal bands across the country.  More than the money it provided, it laid out a path, a lengthy and detailed journey, whereby Canadians and the aboriginal people could begin the process of reconciliation and recovery.  When Stephen Harper cancelled that Kelowna Accord, trust was broken and history was never redeemed.The sheer neglect and injustices enforced on our aboriginal people are the by-products of Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and Conservative federal regimes.  While governments were so busy concentrating on GDP, debt, investments, lower taxes, free trade and globalization, aboriginal Canadians received precious little in the way of benefits.  And for all our recent hoopla about stimulus funding, nary a thought has been extended to our original inhabitants.  This is as tragic as it is normal – perhaps even because of that normality.  As John Ralston Saul has poignantly put it:  “There is no intellectual, ethical or emotional engagement with what their place might be at the core of our civilization.  At best, we manage a pro forma phrase about Aboriginals as one of our founding peoples.  We don’t ask ourselves whether sympathy and guilt are appropriate reactions.”This is a cancer as deep and as long as our history, and it should be an abiding shame.  But it’s not – at least not enough to do anything about it.For all of liberalism’s successes, this has not been one of them, and we must own up to it.  As should Conservatives.  It has been the most hopeless of all causes.  For liberalism to have any moral underpinnings in the future of this country, it must undo the immorality of the past.  It will require perhaps the hardest work we as liberals have ever addressed.But we are not alone.  As one respondent to this blog has noted:

I am a liberal , Westerner, a proud Canadian, and a citizen of a Metis aboriginal community.  I believe that the spirit of liberalism must find creative, imaginative, intuitive, ethical, and common sense ways to imagine this relationship. We have been obsessed with using reason to “solve” these problems without taking the time to create opportunities for aggressive, messy, open dialogue and debate by ’disinterested’ citizens. This is the only way we can avoid the tyranny of ideology, the idea that there is a certainty or inevitableness in our political or economic or legal solutions.  We have been so tangled up in false ideologies that fall prey to moralism or absolute thinking.”

The commenter and his people are the guides we require if we want to be serious about liberal values.  We can’t heal ourselves until we heal this historic and collective sin.