Lost

Not every all-candidates debate is the same, but last night's was somewhat typical in that a good representation of keen observers gathered to press all of the aspiring MPs on policy issues. Held in a local library and hosted by the group Our Votes Count, the questions were indeed varied - everything from the environment to how to bring about a more creative Canada.Yet everyone there appeared a little nonplussed, like something wasn't right. The look on their faces told me they were troubled by the direction in which the country was headed and so I changed my two-minute opening in an attempt to capture that mood. I spoke of what we no longer possessed that we did a mere five years ago.

• we lost the Conservative candidate. Again, she didn't appear, in what has become a growing pattern for many government candidates across the country. Those present took offence at the absence. Something has clearly been lost in our democracy when the party that runs the government prompts its candidates to refuse to face the public.
• we lost our influence in the world. Everyone in the room sensed this, likely highlighted by our loss of the Security Council seat at the United Nations. We are no longer the honest broker. In our attempt to join the "big boys" like Britain and the U.S. as a military player, we somehow misplaced our moral compass. We now pick sides, leaving many of the developing nations of the globe wondering whatever became of the country that had captured the essence of international peace and governance. We wondered about that last night too.
• we lost our will to tackle poverty. While six provinces and two territories have moved ahead with their own poverty reduction strategies, the feds looked on in benign distraction as the gap between the rich and poor widened over the course of the last half-decade and child and aboriginal poverty picked up momentum once again.
• we lost Africa. How do you do that? How do you lose a continent from your moral map? But we have. Once a focus of some of our best humanitarian and peaceful instincts, we shifted away from that great land in pursuit of more wealth-making opportunities. We cut a number of African nations from our long-term development list and moved our self-interested efforts to market potential in the Americas. The world has never viewed us quite the same since and neither did the audience last night.
• we lost Kyoto, and with it the will to finally get our environmental footprint down to a sustainable level. This development has given Canada perhaps its greatest international black eye. We've lost the language of Kyoto and the will to seriously tackle climate change.
• we lost upwards of 500 aboriginal women who just went missing and are presumed murdered or dead. This has been repeatedly brought up in the House, with opposition parties and citizen action groups calling for a commission to study the phenomenon - all to no avail. For the government, these women are not only lost but forgotten; but not in the minds of the people present last evening.
• we lost our fiscal health. Five years ago there was a $12 billion dollar surplus and a low debt load. Now it's a $50-billion dollar deficit and $200 billion more added to the debt. Add to that the roughly $50 billion to be added by fighter jets and super-prisons and you get the sense there's a hole in our national wallet.
• we lost the equality of women. We're heading in the wrong direction on this, beginning when the Conservative government took out the word "equality" from the Charter of the Status of Women.
• we lost the green technology jobs of tomorrow. Five years ago we were all crowing that this was the key part of the new production economy of the future. We have now lost that opportunity, as other developed nations take the lead.
• and in the end we lost Parliament. No longer the people's House, it has fallen into disrepair and is no longer functional because it is led by a government that won't respect proper institutional input  or parliamentary order and accountability. And so it dissolved. Previously it lay empty because the PM prorogued it in the midst of a recession. Now its stands empty again because the government chosen to lead it actually disdains and has contempt for it.

So, yes, the people present last night all appeared a little lost, as were the candidates from the various parties. In a world changing more rapidly than at any other time in human history, the loss of a national compass not only puts us in the international backwater but also at risk.