Repeat After Me: Canada is NOT a Racist Country

"It is a time to pull people together. But it is the time to listen, it is a time to learn what injustices continue despite progress over years and decades. But it is the time for us as Canadians to recognize that we have our challenges, that Black Canadians and racialized Canadians face discrimination as a lived reality every single day."
"When it comes to being an ally, I have made serious mistakes in the past, mistakes which I deeply regret and continue to learn from… I'm not perfect, but not being perfect is not a free pass to not do the right thing."
"I know that for so many people listening right now, the last thing you want to hear is another speech on racism from a white politician."
"We will work with the black community across this country as we have to respond to their priorities. There is a lot to do in Canada and we will do it in partnership with them."
"Over the past few days, we’ve seen horrific reports of police violence against Black men and women south of the border, but these are not isolated incidents and elsewhere problems. Prejudice, discrimination and violence is a lived reality for far too many people."
"My job as a Canadian prime minister is to stand up for Canadians, to stand up for our interests to stand up for our values.That is what I have done from the very beginning."
Prime Minister JustinTrudeau  

"We have to recognize that our system is not perfect in Canada. Yes, there's a few idiot racists hanging around but Canada is not a racist country and most Canadians are not racist. And our system, that always needs to be improved, is not systemically racist."
"Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes and because of the occupation of my parents?" 
"Should I have been mocked for all that? No, of course not. But are Canadians largely and in majority racist? No, we are not."
"We celebrate our diversity around the world and for the prime minister to insinuate — and it is an insinuation — that our system is systemically racist is wrong."
Stockwell Day, former Conservative Cabinet Minister

Former Conservative cabinet minister Stockwell Day has stepped away from two high profile business positions and as a commentator for CBC News Network's Power & Politics after denying that systemic racism exists in Canada during an appearance on Tuesday's show. (Michelle Bellefontaine/CBC)

Stockwell Day, long a fixture on the Canadian political scene, an Albertan, and a former Cabinet Minister in Conservative-led governments, is not naive and he is honest, but he tripped himself up when he spoke on a CBC Power & Politics panel, equating his experience as a child outside the mainstream who was bullied and mocked because he was different, to the experience of racism. His 'difference' was not that of a visible minority, or someone of an ethnic group that had always suffered prejudice, but the trauma experienced as a child remained with him as an adult, of being rejected by others because in some ways he was not like others.

In that sense, his comparison was accurate; he was mocked and rejected for being an 'outsider' from the mainstream. And those are the feelings that a Jewish child or a Black child lives with when they've encountered racist attitudes from others around them in the larger society. This man was responding to the prime minister's assertion the day before that systemic racism is institutionalized in Canada. Stockwell Day was quite correct in rejecting that contentious assertion and the prime minister was absolutely wrong in stating that Canada is a racist country.

There is present and there will always be present, those in any society who subscribe to the idea that some members of society are inferior to the mainstream society -- anywhere on the globe. Bias and prejudice permeates society, some societies far more than others, but it is always there. It is part and parcel of the human condition that some are viewed as less worthy than others and presumed unsavoury character traits linked to ethnicity, culture, race are held to a negative context to support a bigot's view of those considered to be a poorer version of humanity than they are.

Most Canadians wouldn't dream of demeaning someone of Asian, Black, or Jewish ancestry. We are, after all, and always have been a nation comprised largely of immigrant stock, joining the indigenous First Nations on this land. Human nature ordains that we look upon others unlike us with suspicion, but our intelligence informs us that we are not different than anyone else, and familiarity ensures by and large that we become comfortable with that reality. Yes, there will always be those whose social nurturing has been averse to the presence of those of exotic origin in North America; anywhere but Western Europe.

Justin Trudeau, the great lecturer on justice, equality and opportunity for all is the scion of position, wealth and celebrity, yet with all his privileges he wasn't above mocking people of colour when on a number of occasions as an adult, he painstakingly posed as Black, to gain a few cheap laughs. He most certainly has an ingrained, perhaps inbred problem with racism personally, and he has erred in ascribing his attitude to the great general population of a country of 37 million people, a huge percentage of whom are of varied ethnic stock. 

Canadians have elected people of colour to represent them at various levels of government, from municipal, to provincial to federal. There are elected Members of Parliament to reflect most ethnic groups that have emigrated from their home countries to become Canadian citizens and they represent all Canadians. Canadians with names that clearly reflect cultures far from those of European origin fill every walk of life, of profession in academia, science, medicine and art in this country. 

But the outcry from some segments of the Canadian public -- particularly from Black Canadians at this time of protest -- over Mr.Day's clumsy but heartfelt effort to defend Canada as a non-racist country, while at the same time commiserating with the Black community over overt incidents of anti-Black racism has gone a step too far. He has been involuntarily released from professional associations which, intimidated, wish to distance themselves from someone tainted with the accusation of, at best, lack of sympathy for the plight of visible minorities, to the worst interpretation; racism himself. And he is neither.

The lashback has forced him to apologize humbly for an offense he may have given to those who believe, and want to believe, and insist that we all believe, that Canada is a racist country whose population needs to indulge in meek introspection, committing to turn ourselves inside out and upside down asking for forgiveness from those who believe their presence is under-appreciated. A nudge in that direction is not entirely wasted, but the degree to which condemnation rests on 'white privilege' is in itself racist.

And when Stockwell Day was asked by the show's host, Vassy Kapelos: "It's difficult to be able to assert that there isn't racism as a white person, right?", Day responded in complete honesty that among his Canadian friends, relatives and adversaries most people are not racist, though he also said that Canadians would do well to develop more sensitivity about "hurting or insulting people", for he was hurt and insulted and that hurt and insult remained with him his entire life. Like the tender skin a Jew is born with that becomes increasingly thicker. 

 

Humanity's Death Toll

"Along the way, the Crusaders massacred. To take but one example, the Rhineland Massacres of 1096 are remembered to this day as some of the most horrific examples of anti-Semitic violence prior to the Holocaust. (Why go to the Holy Land to fight nonbelievers, many wondered, when they live right among us?) The Jewish communities of Cologne, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz were decimated. There were more than 5,000 victims."
"And that was only one example. Tens of thousands of people (both soldiers and civilians) were killed in the conquest of Jerusalem. The Crusaders themselves suffered; historians estimate that only one in 20 survived to even reach the Holy Land. It is estimated that 1.7 million people died in total."
Jay Michaelson, The Washington Post

"For centuries people were burned at the stake, stretched to death or otherwise tortured for failing to be Roman Catholic. But, if research released by the Vatican is right, the Inquisition was not as bad as one might think."
"According to the documents from Vatican archives relating to the trials of Jews, Muslims, Cathars, witches, scientists and other non-Catholics in Europe between the 13th and the 19th centuries, the number actually killed or tortured into confession during the Inquisition was far fewer than previously thought."
"Estimates of the number killed by the Spanish Inquisition, which Sixtus IV authorised in a papal bull in 1478, have ranged from 30,000 to 300,000. Some historians are convinced that millions died.
But according to Professor Agostino Borromeo, a historian of Catholicism at the Sapienza University in Rome and curator of the 783-page volume released yesterday, only 1% of the 125,000 people tried by church tribunals as suspected heretics in Spain were executed."
Sophie Arie, The Guardian 

"In August, 1947, when, after three hundred years in India, the British finally left, the subcontinent was partitioned into two independent nation states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Immediately, there began one of the greatest migrations in human history, as millions of Muslims trekked to West and East Pakistan (the latter now known as Bangladesh) while millions of Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction. Many hundreds of thousands never made it.Across the Indian subcontinent, communities that had coexisted for almost a millennium attacked each other in a terrifying outbreak of sectarian violence, with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other—a mutual genocide as unexpected as it was unprecedented. In Punjab and Bengal—provinces abutting India’s borders with West and East Pakistan, respectively—the carnage was especially intense, with massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and savage sexual violence. Some seventy-five thousand women were raped, and many of them were then disfigured or dismembered."
William Dalrymple, The New Yorker

Partition displaced fifteen million people and killed more than a million.

Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White / LIFE Picture Collection / Getty

"What follow are the current best estimates of civilians and disarmed soldiers killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators."
"These estimates are calculated from wartime reports generated by those who implemented Nazi population policy, and postwar demographic studies on population loss during World War II."
Jews: up to 6 million
Soviet civilians: around 7 million (including 1.3 Soviet Jewish civilians, who are included in the 6 million figure for Jews)
Soviet prisoners of war: around 3 million (including about 50,000 Jewish soldiers)
Non-Jewish Polish civilians: around 1.8 million (including between 50,000 and 100,000 members of the Polish elites)
Serb civilians (on the territory of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina): 312,000
People with disabilities living in institutions: up to 250,000
Roma (Gypsies): 196,000–220,000
Jehovah's Witnesses: around 1,900
Repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials: at least 70,000
German political opponents and resistance activists in Axis-occupied territory: undetermined
Homosexuals: hundreds, possibly thousands (possibly also counted in part under the 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials noted above) 
Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

People of conscience and of good will as the saying has it, are always hopeful that a better way can be found in a social order, a political will, to bind diverse peoples together in one great heap of good-natured humanity, content to live together in peace and maintain friendly relations. At the same time the issue of parts of humanity living in dire poverty while others live in luxurious ease is another part of the parcel of inequity meant to be addressed by those who see themselves responding to a higher calling of rescuing humanity from itself.

There are so many ways in which humanity has veered into social, religious, political persecution bordering on lunacy, with countless victims to account for. Ideologies, secular and religious, have taken their toll down through the ages as one segment of the world preys on the other, determined that it is they who are privileged and have the status that allows them to command how they will, leaving the 'other' whatever remains. What could seem more promising to society than a way of life called socialism? Where goods are apportioned equally to all, irrespective of their attributes?

Of course, that this premise of equal rights in a socialist ideal deftly sidesteps what nature has wrought in devising the psyche and character of mankind is treated as irrelevant. In whose mind she invested various traits, the most compelling of which was the instinct of survival; not just a primal urge of supreme necessity for humankind, but of all that exists, but it is uniquely humankind that was gifted with the mental and physical dexterity to achieve that survival at all costs, beyond what any other creature or living thing could muster.

So how have we done? Well, basically, territorial imperative, tribal entitlements, religious conviction and other forms of formal, institutionalized interventions have caused more grievous harm than what nature herself could ever devise on her own initiative, though truth is, the blueprint for those living things in which she invested the instinct for survival was her initiative. In the West, we look back on the era of Communism and sneer at the pathetic failure it was as a mechanism to even the playing field for the common man.

And wonder how it was that the most creative, enterprising and intelligent minds of the West viewed the Russian experiment with favour, seeing much in Marxist theory that impressed and motivated them to support it though rarely to the extent that they were prepared to surrender their own liberal democratic, capitalistic lifestyles. And it's truly strange how people even now who should know better, excoriate the Soviets for the horrible toll their determined manipulation of humanity into subjugated vassals of 'equality' causing the deaths of millions in the process, forget how other ideologies had similar escapades to their credit.

"The Soviets had imperial ambitions. It began with the subjugated nations of the internal empire -- Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic nations, the central Asian republics -- and expanded to the enslaved nations of Europe, imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. Further afield, communists in Africa, Asia and Latin America had ready support from Moscow. Today, people will die in Venezuela because of what Lenin wrought."
"The death toll [of the Communist era under Stalin] was staggering, measured in the tens of millions, to which a vast catalogue of torture, imprisonment, displacement and exile must be added."
Father Raymond de Souza, National Post

Since then there has been Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, the Sudanese government's victimization of Darfurians, the Rwandan genocide, and the Syrian Shiite cleansing of Syrian Sunnis, while before those were Ottoman Turkey's genocidal slaughter of the Armenians. We needn't even get into the viral ideology of racism, and the victimization of African Blacks by Arab slave traders as Black Africans were rounded up, shipped out of Africa and those that survived enslaved so that Europe and North America could commercially thrive on the backs of their labour.

Wars there have been aplenty in the history of humankind. Wars that took place in antiquity as one empire after another -- the Mongols, the Romans --  had their moment in time sweeping through the globe, along with two wars to end all wars, The First and the Second World Wars. When humankind went out of its way to prove that it was incapable of existing without conflict because of irritations national leaders wouldn't ignore and couldn't ignore when the compelling psychopathy of conquest overwhelmed some of them.

As a race, we think about what we've done. And in remembering we pause. To recall the events and those who were sacrificed to the all-too-human drive to secure for oneself advantages denied the other. Securing our honour by refusing to become a victim. And honouring those who were victims. We play solemn music, recite pledges, hear dignitaries gravely speak on our behalf in those chastening hours of remembrance. We lay wreaths, and remember those who died on distant battlefields.

Intractable Depression

"One of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders encountered by primary care physicians in Canada [hard-to-treat depression]."
"These findings emphasize the persistence of depressive symptoms in a large proportion of patients with MDD [major depressive disorder]."
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry -- new Canadian study

"Every time there is a tragedy in the public domain it causes people to revisit an ongoing story -- and that is that depression has an enormous impact on the lives of Canadians."
"It kills a substantial number of Canadians every year."
Dr. Sidney Kennedy, professor of psychiatry, University of Toronto

Dr. Kennedy, who holds the Arthur Summer-Rotenberg chair in suicide studies at University of Toronto is the lead author in a study reviewing the high rates of severely depressed patients who don't respond to the protocols of common treatments. This increases their risk of developing crippling depression. It is the kind of depression linked to the death by suicide of American actor-comic Robin Williams who was plagued for many years by his own bouts of MDD.

Roughly 11-percent of Canadians meet medical criteria for major depressions at some time in their lives. Many depressed people may think about taking their own lives, but most don't follow through on the impulse. In treatment-resistant depression people are afflicted with repeated incidents of what appears like paralyzing depression. And they report a large incidence of side effects from the use of antidepressants, ranging from dizziness, confusion, tremors, rapid heartbeat, weight gain and sexual dysfunction.

Not entirely surprising since there are always side-effects of some kind, from mild to threatening with the use of drugs, and the knock-on effect (iatrogenic effect) often results in having to treat symptoms caused by an initial drug intake with other, remediating drugs. In the study that Dr. Kennedy and his colleagues undertook, patients who exhibited no, or minimal improvement in their symptoms after two or more trials with different classes of antidepressants over a minimum of six weeks were considered to be treatment-resistant.

"Once you get to that level of severity you're at greater risk of recurrences, you're at greater risk of medical complications and the risk of suicide is increased", advised Dr. Kennedy. Of 1,212 patients in which 135 family doctors across Canada participated, reviewing charts from ten of their last consecutive patients treated for major depression for each doctor, 263 of the total fell into the classification of treatment-resistant.

Those identified as treatment-resistant tended to be identified as older (50s), likelier on long-term disability, more prone to report signs of substance abuse, and anxiety, and tending to be on multiple drugs including anti-psychotics. They also tended to be overweight or obese. Dr. Kennedy recommended that doctors seeing patients with treatment resistant depression should make an effort to screen for other diagnoses such as bi-polar disorder.

Free Will Judgement and Justice

"Here we have a situation where the act was considered dangerous by the jury -- that's obvious. But there was no ill will at all -- no alcohol, no speeding, no race. In a case like this, the instructions that the judge gave (to the jury) are a little bit unjust for a citizen in this situation."
"What I'm saying is that the instructions judges are obliged to give on criminal negligence can't suit a case like this. What the jury is asked is: Consider the act; if it is dangerous, objectively, then you may infer there was a crime."
"What I'm saying is, the fact that (Perreault) had to give these instructions brings me to the conclusion that, in this field, Canadian law failed."
"She is in shock. What do you expect? Already, to have caused the deaths of two people, you know, it's really something. And the verdict just confirmed that it was criminal. She's pretty emotional right now."
Marc Labelle, defence lawyer, Montreal

Peter McCabe / The Gazette    Emma Czornobaj, 25, has been convicted of criminal negligence and dangerous driving causing two deaths after she stopped her car on a highway to avoid hitting a family of ducks.

Emma Czornobaj, 25, opted for trial by jury. She hoped that a jury of her peers would find it possible to empathize with her instinct to stop her vehicle on a busy highway when she saw a troop of seven ducklings, hoping to move them out of harm's way. She parked at the roadside, putting on her flashers, and set out to rescue the ducks.

Two motorcycles were headed her way, a woman driving her own motorcycle, her husband driving his, and their daughter riding behind her father whose motorcycle was going well above 115 kph. Andre Roy, 50, and his 16-year-old daughter Jessie slammed into the back of Ms. Czornobaj's parked vehicle. They died.

It took the jury four days of deliberation to return their verdicts of guilty on two counts each of criminal negligence causing death, carrying a maximum life sentence, and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death for which the maximum sentence is 14 years in prison. It took but a moment of an ill-judged split-second decision to leave a car on a highway to snuff out the lives of two people.

Ill considered, reckless, highly unintelligent, that decision by a young woman who had several years of driving experience. Her deep-seated consideration of the plight of seven vulnerable ducks erasing any semblance of common sense as a responsible driver on a public highway. Most people instinctively swerve to avoid hitting an animal on a highway.

Many people, driving on sideroads or rural country roads are known to stop their vehicles to move a turtle, a snake, shoo away other vulnerable animals. On major highways the toll of wildlife is obvious, with the highway littered with dead animals. A distressing sight to many people, and many more are just indifferent; it's the way things are.

All it took was a few seconds from when Emma Czornobaj parked her car -- left it to walk along the side of the road intending to pack those ducklings into her vehicle -- to cause the death of two people. Her own plight is one that is desperately sad. She is responsible for an accident that killed two human beings in her zeal to save seven ducklings from possibly coming to harm.

Does she deserve to spend considerable time in prison for her stupid split-second decision? The jury delivered the verdict. The judge will deliver the sentence.

Emma Czornabaj can hope that Superior Court Justice Eliane Perrault will make a statement that she will never forget, in delivering her sentence. In the spirit of both justice and humanity perhaps she will see her way clear to imposing a discretionary sentence of community service and a lifetime ban on driving.

Fit To Govern?

"Canadians are tired of Mr. Harper and the negative, cynical approach to politics. Canadians are tired of the politics of fear and division. But they don't just want a different government, they want a better government."
Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

Justin Trudeau gets his picture taken with an unknown person at the State Funeral for Jim Flaherty that took place at St. James Cathedral on Wednesday, April 16, 2014 in Toronto. (Veronica Henri/QMI Agency)

Justin Trudeau was born in 1971, the eldest son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Margaret Sinclair Trudeau. Born to privilege, he appears to see no reason why he cannot coast to success on  his father's reputation as a controversial and storied prime minister of Canada. He inherited the Trudeau name and his father's Party loyalty and the Liberal Party of Canada is enchanted and enthralled with the prospect of finding their way out of their endless wandering in the desert that their own political apathy, record of corruption and public disinterest placed them in.

A succession of failed wannabe Liberal Party leaders whose personas failed to electrify the electorate into once again rewarding the Liberal Party with its much-deserved governing status; a party which had long since convinced itself that it represented the primary Canadian political culture; left the party in the dungeon of despairing dashed hopes. Enter the dauphin with abundant dark hair, a 100-watt smile and self-confidence to spare. He views himself as the party's saviour and the party views him as their longed-for Messiah.

His qualifications for the position that he feels is owed him and the party feels will lead them back to governance of the country are meagre, but no matter, a spell has been cast over those who look for someone for whom they can vote for with unmuted enthusiasm. Youth, vigour, decisiveness and smiles win the day any day, any time of day. His friends recall their McGill University days with the Trudeau scion, when lazy conversation turned lightly on their friend one day becoming prime minister. Friends do tend to encouragement of friends.

Justin Trudeau prepared himself for his journey to Parliament Hill and his assured destiny as prime minister by receiving a bachelor's degree in English at McGill, and a Bachelor's degree in teaching at University of British Columbia. And there, at a private boys' school in Vancouver, he taught drama. A primary requisite for any politician who hopes to succeed; a thespian grounding. He also became a motivational speaker, his name, his presence helping him to garner fat fees he was reluctant to leave behind even while banking his salary as a Member of Parliament.

But before that he sat on the board of the Katimavik youth volunteer program. And in 2003, with a close friend who is now also his chief adviser in the office of the leader of the Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau paddled along the south Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories to demonstrate just how much he is his father's son. And what a perfect photo op that made, for his admirers and supporters and political allies to ohhh and ahhh over the perfectly photogenic family. Reporters and photographers just somehow managing to be present to document the extraordinary event.


Justin along with family (wife Sophie, 4 year old daughter Ella-Grace and 5 year old son Xavier) joined Nahanni Neil Hartling and son Lars on a morning canoe this week through Miles Canyon.

Justin Trudeau's occasional lapses from script have been revealing with respect to what lingers in his head and the kind of impact what lingers has on his understanding of the world at large and its critical trouble-spots. Leading him to make puzzling statements that don't do too much to emphasize his monumental creative thinking and general intelligence, both of which have been kept well hidden from those curious about what precisely he feels he can bring to the office he craves other than heritage, looks, cute kids and concern for the Canadian middle class.

Under Justin Trudeau there are no longer Liberals in the Senate of Canada. Under Justin Trudeau, there will be no debate over the right to abortion with no guidelines, in Canada. Under Justin Trudeau, one must understand where terrorists are coming from in sympathy with what they have experienced to motivate them to terror. Under Justin Trudeau, China's government is admirable. Under Justin Trudeau, Ukraine's burgeoning conflict has at its genesis a bit of light humour.

Fit to govern?