Canadians are Complacent and Naïve – This is Why Our Country is Failing
It’s time to put “Nice Canadian” to bed. The era of the good ole’ hockey game, Tim Hortons drinking, hi-di-ho neighbor attitude must go. It no longer serves us and has likely put us in this position in the first place. Seen as a virtue by many, particularly those who pride themselves on a manufactured image of Canadiana, it is a hinderance to our growth as a community and country as we stand on the battleground for individual freedom and collective sovereignty.
All we must do is witness the faithless rhetoric and immature bickering in the House of Commons to see how pathetic and weak our country has become. Our political leaders are lukewarm at best and feed us watered down pablum to satiate an ignorant and desperate Canadian audience. This kind of behavior would not fly, never mind be taken seriously, in many other nations. I roll my eyes and wonder how stupid can Canadians be to buy into this garbage? Is this some kind of joke I’m not quite catching onto like every terrible one-liner on Corner Gas?
In comparison to a single United States member of congress, the whole of the Canadian parliament fails to impress on any level. I literally grit my teeth at the embarrassing image that Canada projects as a nation at every turn. I feel alien in this country sometimes and cannot quite reconcile my identity as a Canadian citizen. I feel like a pariah in a foreign land, a feeling I have had since I was a child. But my alienation allows me to look at things like an outsider with an acute level of observation. It also deters me from falling in line and acceding to the crowd and culture of my country, which can create blind spots.
Canadians are complacent and naïve. This is why our country is failing. We think someone else is going to do the job for us. We rely far too much on Americans as our savior. They have their own set of challenges. No one is coming to save us. We must save ourselves.
Canada is diverse (Yes, I said “diverse”) and we must take advantage of this. This was demonstrated in the Trucker Convoy when thousands of every color, class, and creed showed up to support individual freedom. Why did we stop there? Do we fear the sacrifice that is required to take responsibility for our freedoms? Are we failing to trust each other’s intentions? Are we secretly hiding our lack of respect for our differences?
Canadians must face the reality of who we are and take a good look in the mirror at our weaknesses and strengths to create a vision for our future as a country. We have spent too long assuming instead of asking, giggling like a naïve schoolgirl instead of asserting ourselves with a clever wit, and watching “the game” instead of studying our opponents. We are walking around with a big fat “L” on our forehead yet wonder why the spitballs keep flying at our heads.
We must have faith in our collective strength as a community. We are resilient and strong. How else could we withstand a -25C protest in the coldest months of the Canadian year. Most Americans would pack up and go home in the first hour. We are better than we think.
We must be willing to support each other and support grass roots movements through social awareness, physical effort, and financial investment. There is no room for Canadian elitism and the cliquey vibes that many Canadians with any sort of assumed social status perpetuate at every opportunity - must be an inferiority complex. This creates an air of division and arrogance that deters those who are willing to sacrifice without the bluster of ego predominating. If we exclude people or create social barriers in our volunteer groups and conferences, we risk failure or repeat the same mistakes of other elitist and exclusive groups.
Canadians are notorious for tiptoeing around each other and not saying what we mean. We must be transparent with our feet planted firmly in the ground if we expect others to follow and champion our efforts. Strong leaders don’t hesitate, they put the cards on the table and hope for the best.
We lack real community because we hold each other at arms length. Canadians pride themselves on tolerance yet judge from behind the curtain. We are both self-deprecating and critical of outsiders that we perceive as a threat instead an ally, a remnant of our country’s British colonial influence. It is a weakness we must overcome if we are to gain any independence at all as a sovereign nation.
Canadians can be insular in their thinking and miss opportunities to observe what works in other countries. Many of us look at the world from a pedestal, much like the British, with a fabricated idea of what Canada is and who we are as a people, yet we barely have an identity at all, other than the lies we tell ourselves about some campy fictional Canada that doesn’t actually exist in reality. This is precisely why we are ripe for the taking. If we don’t stand for something, we fall for anything. A country without a firm identity and strong convictions is a vulnerable state, and that is precisely the position we have found ourselves.
Seek and we shall find. We must behave like pioneers of a republic and less like British subjects, a lesson we can learn from the Americans, or we will never be free.