"The Past is Prologue"

I spent a lot of time at events this weekend and heard repeatedly of various disappointments people felt over losing the Security Council bid.  It was sad and it's clear that the world now views us in a different fashion than previous.  Whatever the reasons, or whatever the damage, we have to put forward a different face to the world.  We still have the capacity to do that.  Here are some statistics for us to consider:

• Canada’s internationalism – 20 percent of our population (6,186,950) were born abroad – according to 2006 census for Statistics Canada
• 2.5 million study, work or retire abroad
• 50 million Canadian visits abroad each year
• two-thirds of Canadians feel a personal connection to some other country
• Four in ten Canadians donate to organizations that work abroad ($7.3 billion annually)
• One in five Canadians has given financial assistance to family or others they know abroad ($20 billion annually) – dwarfs our meagre official government aid budget of $5 billion.

Despite what we hear from those offering the spin that Canadians aren't too bent out of shape at losing the Security Council endorsement, these figures tell us that we are still an international people; it's just our governments that fail to grasp that fact. Our first Canadian-born Governor General, Vincent Massey, quoted Shakespeare's Tempest when referring to Canadian history:  "The past is prologue."  If that's true, then there's still a lot for us to accomplish ... and we can. Here's an example.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W2hQv_9Yb0&fs=1&hl=en_US]