HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2008-04-24, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Be a ‘Shepherd’
Here’s a want ad you don’t often come
across:FOR SALE: One tropical
island in the Bahamas, 184 kilometres
long by two kilometres wide, situated 80
kilometres east of Nassau. Terms: 99-year
lease. Price: One dollar.
This is not a late April Fool’s joke. The
island of Eleuthera was actually available to a
select Canadian buyer for the above-
mentioned terms back in 1985.
The prospective purchaser? Quebec.
The province’s then-Minister of Tourism
under René Lévesque had painstakingly
hammered out a tentative deal with the prime
minister of the Bahamas. Quebec would
assume ownership of Eleuthera for the
princely outlay of one loonie – and a promise
to ‘hire local labour’ where possible.
Catches, tricks or loopholes? None.
Naturellement, the Quebec cabinet turned
the deal down.
Well, that’s Quebec for ya, is it not?
Perverse. Masochistic. Ever on the lookout for
a new and different way to shaft itself with the
short end of the hockey stick.
Man, you give the rest of Canada an
opportunity to bag a brand new, tropical
paradise and we’d be all over it like sun tan oil
on a bald guy’s head, right?
Wrong. Ottawa had its chance to adopt a
tropical paradise. Not just one island either –
two whole chains of them.
Back in 1987, a delegation of politicians
from the Turks and Caicos Islands in the
Caribbean actually visited Ottawa, hats in
hand, openly seeking a shotgun marriage.
They wanted us to take them in, people!
They begged to become part of Canada. They
would bring to us 30 surf-massaged islands
festooned with bedazzling sand beaches,
seductively undulating palm trees and a few
thousand hard-working, friendly, Christian,
English-speaking natives.
We would offer political stability,
hemispheric solidarity with another British
Commonwealth entity, the protection of our
armed forces (we could commandeer two
submarines from the West Edmonton mall, if
necessary)….
Oh yeah – and every year around the
beginning of November, an invasion of
approximately 30 million sun-starved,
fishbelly-white fellow-citizen tourists.
A no-brainer, right? Thirty tropical islands?
Our nation’s very own West Indian resort
destination?
William Seward paid $7,000,000 to buy
Alaska from Russia back in 1867. That
worked out pretty well. We were being offered
a tropical archipelago with in-house lobster –
no icebergs, glaciers or black flies – for free!
And our learned leaders passed.
Incredibly, this was not the first time. Away
back in 1917, Prime Minister Robert Borden
proposed we annex the Turks and Caicos
outright. His own government nixed the
idea.
In 1974, a brilliant, forward thinking
Ontario NDP Member of Parliament by the
name of Max Saltsman introduced a bill
proposing consolidation of the islands under
the Canadian flag. His colleagues yawned and
slumbered on.
Even as late as 2004, MP Peter Goldring,
representing the federal Tories, hopped a jet to
the islands to explore the idea first hand. He
went, he saw, he presented his findings to a
government committee. And then, nothing.
Once again, a golden opportunity sank like a
harpooned beluga.
The nabobs of negativism who scuttle the
idea every time it bobs up have all
kinds of nervous Nellie, quintessentially
Canadian reasons. We’d have to amend
the Canadian constitution they say. It might
offend other provinces and make them
jealous, they claim. Besides, it’s economically
risky.
I say: Are You Nuts?
So what if we have to amend the
constitution? We did it for Newfoundland in
’49; we do it for Quebec about every six
months.
Other provincial noses will be out of joint?
Here’s a thought: Get Over It.
Economically risky? Canadians leave
behind billions of loonies each winter in the
Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, Hawaii
and the so-called Sunshine States. How bad
could it be if we spent all that money
in a place that collects and pays Canadian
taxes?
Do the hacks, troughers and bench warmers
of Ottawa not realize that the political regime
that actually succeeds in bringing to Canada a
new piece of real estate where it never snows
would be immortalized in poetic verse,
adulatory prose and on the ten o’clock news
for the Rest of Time?
Leonard Cohen would write a song about
you. k d lang would sing it.
Stephen, Stéphane, Jack – could you just for
once pull together on this one thing? For the
greater Canadian good?
Gilles Duceppe? You could come on board
too. We’ve already seen you in a hair net.
You’d be a knockout in a grass skirt.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Tropical Canada? Why not?
Premier Dalton McGuinty has
acknowledged he has mild concern at
China’s abuse of human rights as
grudgingly as if his teeth were being extracted.
Some of his party’s former MPPs must be
turning over in their graves.
The Liberal premier concealed as long as he
could his economic development minister’s
plan to visit China, and a Chinese leader’s plan
to visit him here, while many around the world
were protesting against that country’s harsh
treatment, including murders of demonstrators
in Tibet.
McGuinty in both cases was anxious to
protect trade and when opposition parties
argued this was no justification for being silent
on abuse, said the province takes its cue from
the federal government and, if it decided it
would be inappropriate for his minister to go,
he would consider it.
Eventually, through a spokesman –
McGuinty could not utter such words – the
premier was bold enough to say Ontario, as a
longstanding friend of China, expressed
concern at the situation in Tibet and
encouraged both parties to engage in
meaningful dialogue, an exercise in avoiding
taking sides.
Liberals in the legislature two decades ago
would have been offended, because they
fought hard to set up a system through which
the province would speak up regularly against
abuse in other countries.
The majority Progressive Conservatives,
New Democrats and Liberals, in an unusual
burst of unanimity, declared a province had
not only a right, but a duty to speak against
abuse abroad.
This started when New Democrat James
Renwick moved that the legislature find a
mechanism through which it could express
concern at political killings, imprisonment,
terror and torture overseas.
The MPPs were concerned about Biafra,
where so many were killed it was called
genocide, other African countries including
South Africa, where blacks were brutally
repressed under apartheid; much of
the Soviet bloc, which allowed little freedom
to speak and jailed and killed many who did,
and large parts of Central and South
America, where military regimes tortured and
killed.
The MPPs suggested the select committee
on the province’s Ombudsman, who
investigates complaints against government
here, should look for a mechanism.
This committee of all parties consulted the
United Nations, Amnesty International and
other experts and concluded the legislature
had an obligation to speak up and could have
some effect, because repressive governments
sometimes listen when more voices are raised.
The committee, because of its experience in
investigating government in Ontario,
recommended designating itself to
consider abuse abroad and recommend
when and how the legislature should
speak up.
But the government was headed by premier
William Davis, whose only interest in far-
flung places was sunning at his condo in
Florida and would not protest at abuse abroad
unless it would win him votes, particularly of
those who had fled Communist-dominated
east Europe.
Davis had his party refuse to welcome
Soviet trade delegates sitting watching the
legislature, deplored martial law in Poland
and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and
once rushed back from his cottage, his
supreme sacrifice, to greet a dissident
who overcame many obstacles to flee Soviet
rule.
Davis would not want a committee of the
legislature urging Ontario join a world-wide
boycott and stop buying products from South
Africa and it was left to a later Liberal
government to answer that call.
Nor would Davis want himself embarrassed
by a committee quibbling with a long
procession of bloodthirsty dictators, such as
Indonesia’s Suharto, (his full name) to whom
he gave warm welcomes.
Davis refused to permit the MPPs’proposal,
and a subsequent resolution by Renwick the
Ombudsman committee be given power to
speak up, to come to a vote, denying Ontario
politicians the freedom of expression he
argued countries behind the Iron Curtain
should allow.
A brave attempt to make Ontario’s voice
heard on abuse abroad therefore never came to
fruition and premiers of all three parties,
New Democrat Bob Rae, Conservative Mike
Harris and McGuinty have since visited
China, one of the most notorious abusers,
without making any real attempt to raise
concerns.
Ontario is marching backwards.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
He has been in this dark place a long
time. Alone from the beginning he has
found his comfort in hiding away from
the rest. His world is insular; even on crowded
streets he walks it alone.
Until one day the loneliness claims too much
and he exacts his revenge on a place that taught
him too early that life can sometimes be too
hard to bear.
This youth exists and has existed at many
schools. He is the shy one, the quiet one, the
unique one. Early on his classmates saw and
understood; he was different. No one knows
what exactly, but there is something about him
that separates him and many are irritated by it.
He becomes a target for their schoolyard
pranks, for their venomous words. Their
unkindness feeds his insecurities exacerbating
the singularity which, though not his fault, had
unknowingly made him stand out in the first
place.
This kind of alienation is a sad reality for
many kids. In its worst-case history it has been
the background story for names like Barry
Loukaitis, Evan Ramsey, Luke Woodman, Jeff
Weise, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, whose
frustration turned to violence.
Blessedly, these tragic cases are the
exception. However, while most children who
have been ostracized and bullied make it to the
other side and adulthood relatively unscathed,
they carry some scars. Varying degrees of the
insecurities, frustrations and unresolved anger
can stay with them through life.
An incident reported in our paper last week,
raised the issue of bullying. And the reality is
that while policies are in place, while programs
are ongoing, there has always been, and will
always be circumstances unknown and out of
reach.
Bullying is a fact of life in schoolyards. And
it isn’t just about physical abuse or name
calling. It includes less obvious behaviour like
spreading rumours, pointing out physical
handicaps, racist taunts, exclusion and
humiliation.
But only part of the responsibility for dealing
with bullies lies with the school. Parents need to
take responsibility as well. If you find out your
child is hurting another child don’t defend him.
Explain how bullying makes his victims feel
and get a reason for his negative behaviour.
Experts say that a child bullies because they
are unable to express their own unhappiness or
may even be a target themselves. Often it’s the
over-indulged child accustomed to getting their
own way, typically through bad behaviour.
Bullies ironically often feel inadequate, have
low self-esteem, or can’t show their feelings.
While bullies may appear to have a lot of
friends, they are often not well-liked. The group
that surrounds them does so to avoid becoming
victims themselves. Bullies are not cool.
On the other hand, David Shepherd and
Travis Price of Nova Scotia are very cool.
Hearing that a Grade 9 student at their school
had been harassed for wearing a pink shirt on
his first day the two Grade 12 students decided
enough was enough. They went to a nearby
discount store and bought 50 pink shirts then e-
mailed classmates to get them on board.
Hundreds of students showed up in their own
pink clothes to support them as well and bullies
quieted.
“If you can get more people against them …
to show that we’re not going to put up with it
and support each other, then they’re not as big a
group as they think are,” Shepherd said.
Encourage your child when they see bullying,
to be a ‘Shepherd’ (or Price) and lead by good
example.
Ontario retreats on human rights