The week in commentary: Making plans for Canada's next 150 years
Immigrants face high unemployment rates, and many oil patch workers are still out of work
Canada's 150th is being marketed as a time to celebrate our young and angsty nation, but for many, the date has a different message: it's time to grow up.
As Chris Selley writes in the National Post, "politicians should be judged on deeds, not words," and the same goes for the countries they lead. The title of being a progressive leader must be earned, not simply repeated, and after 150 years there's yet work to be done.
Canada's immigrants face high unemployment rates, and many oil patch workers are still out of work. The UN has told Canada that its treatment of Indigenous peoples is atrocious, yet we keep failing to meaningfully improve living conditions on reserves. In many ways, we still disregard the environment.
How many salmon are there in the Fraser River?
Writing for the Ottawa Citizen, Madeline Ashby says in the next 150 years, we must make sure to treat the environment with care and trepidation. The carbon tax has been shown to work in terms of lowering emissions, without strangling the economy, both abroad (Sweden) and at home (B.C.), but it continues to face staunch opposition across Canada.
"Regardless of one's individual feelings about the threat of climate change, it's hard to argue that learning how to save more energy and developing technologies to do the same is a bad thing," Ashby writes.
"By ignoring the development of green energy technologies, Canada is leaving money on the table and stifling job creation in communities that once depended on manufacturing."
While questioning how government implementation will work in practice, Chris Windeyer says it more bluntly in the Yukon News:
"Some people seem to think carbon pricing will lead to economic doom (it won't). Some are incensed that government would implement any policy that would encourage them to change their behaviour, as through it's their God-given right to idle their F250 outside Independent for a half an hour, even when it's not -30."
It would do us good to remember that disregarding the environment is part of Canadian heritage. In his final column for the Globe and Mail, Mark Hume reminds us of the legacy we left in B.C.
"Nobody alive today has ever seen a run of 50 million salmon in the Fraser. It once had that. Now, the average is about 4 million," he writes. "Sea otters are coming back, but after 200 years, they still haven't fully recovered. Across B.C., 754 species are listed as being extirpated, endangered or threatened. And the pace of development is increasing."
"If we don't break the pattern of exploitation that's been followed for two centuries, the damage will be immense."
Poor vision on immigration
We need to stop looking at Canadian immigration through rose-coloured glasses. Canada fancies itself a nation of equality and opportunity, in that it accepts new citizens based on skill, merit and need. Yet migrant workers miss out on the Canadian dream. Despite performing the labour we are unwilling to do ourselves, there is no path to citizenship for them. Worse still, there is little oversight of the conditions they face when coming here.
As Metro columnist Vicky Mochama points out, "They are required to pay into Employment Insurance; however, they are not eligible to receive EI. When farm workers are laid off at the end of each season, they do not receive any of EI's benefits or even a refund."
While the plight of migrant workers is largely ignored, the visibility of Muslims living in Canada is amplified. Canadians overestimate how many Muslims are living in Canada (17 per cent of the population imagined, three per cent in reality), and that misinformation is taken advantage of by fear-mongering politicians, writes Amira Elghawaby for the Globe and Mail.
"So in a post-truth, fake-news environment, can we rely on people's perceptions to shape public policy? After all, governments – if they are truly democratic – must listen to the views of their citizenry. Various levels of government often say they aspire to consultative models of governance."
As fears of security and radicalization spread nationally and globally, we would do well to come up with solutions. The problem, after all, is not going away. Also for the Globe and Mail, Sheema Khan writes about the importance of speaking to families, friends, and communities of people radicalized in Canada.
Of the many stakeholders in the problem, she writes, youth "have the energy, the passion and the will; what they lack, however, is a seat at the table with federal policy makers to help devise a comprehensive prevention strategy."
This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.
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