Wow!

 

This is getting serious.

Exit Wexit

Canadian election results by riding.

I think the current upwelling of talk of “Wexit” in Alberta and Saskatchewan is undignified and does nothing to impress Central Canada.

After all, in the normal course of things, there is likely to be a new election in two years, the Conservatives are likely to win, and at least some of the policies that are so damaging to the energy sector are likely to be reversed.

So it makes sense to break up the country, with all the emotional and economic dislocation that would cause, instead of just waiting for two years?

Some might argue that a change in government is not enough; that these problems are endemic. They keep returning. But the problems that cannot be reversed by a change in federal government largely won’t be reversed because they are beyond the control of the federal government—opposition to pipelines from Quebec, or the US, or BC, or aboriginal groups. Separating from Canada will only make these problems worse; the red tape grows exponentially, and Alberta’s electoral leverage is gone.

Time is on Alberta’s side: western Canada is growing in population faster than the east. Over time, Alberta’s, Saskatchewan’s, and oil-bearing BC’s financial and electoral voices will get louder. Why would you quit just before you get promoted to the executive suite?

So it really all looks, from this corner of Central Canada, like a tantrum. I say that as a sometime Alberta resident. For the record, I support pipelines in all directions.

Nations split because of major cultural differences; most Albertans are first or second generation migrants from further east. If the situation really were intolerable for them, they have the easy option of moving back.

Or nations split because of some grave moral principle, like slavery. Does waiting a few years for a new pipeline really fit the bill? Realistically, oil or gas not sold today is not lost; it remains in the ground to be sold tomorrow. Possibly at a higher price.

Forget “Wexit.” That is a quitter’s game. It’s time to storm the battlements instead.

By All Means, Let's Have More Aboriginal History

Saskatchewan Education Minister Bronwyn Eyre (Government of Saskatchewan photo)

Bronwyn Eyre, Saskatchewan's Education Minister, is facing heat for supposedly saying in the legislature that she fears there is too much aboriginal history in the school history curriculum. There is currently a petition circulating demanding her resignation. At last count, it had over 2000 signatures.

Eyre was especially troubled, she said later in a reporters' scrum, by a French assignment brought home by her son, which asked him to contrast traditional understanding of the Earth among First Nations with traditional understandings among Western Europeans. First Nations, it suggested, felt a sense of responsibility towards Mother Earth. Europeans, by contrast, saw the Earth as of only economic value.

Troublingly, Eyre's actual speech does not seem to be posted anywhere online—including at her own site—which means we must take the media's word for what she said. Which is often not reliable.

The quote I keep seeing, however, is that Eyre said “there has come to be at once too much wholesale infusion into the curriculum, and at the same time, too many attempts to mandate material into it both from the inside and by outside groups.”

If this is the essence of what she said, she is certainly right. There is something gravely wrong with the fact that her comments are controversial.

We ought to keep politics out of the school curriculum. We ought not to have a French assignment that obliges us to accept as truth some assertion that is itself debatable, and actively debated in the wider society. That is child abuse and attempted mind control. It is antithetical to education. It is the sort of thing I myself, as a teacher, find too common, and profoundly offensive.

It would be fine to have a French assignment that dealt with an issue of the day; it would be fine to have a French assignment that asked students to compare and contrast European and First Nations views of the environment. It is not okay to have a French assignment that, in doing so, tells the students what they are supposed to think those views are. The more so since in the assignment given, the information presented as indisputable fact is false.

The issue has been twisted by special interest groups into the Minister supposedly saying we should have less aboriginal history in the schools. If she did say this, however, it is not in the quote always given. That looks more like a plea that we have more actual aboriginal history in the schools, rather than just assertions snuck in to other subjects.

If there were more aboriginal history in the schools, it might not be happy news for present-day First Nations lobbyists. It is probably the last thing they really want. History is based on written sources, and the written sources we have pretty systematically contradict the claims of the aboriginal lobby.

It would be instructive for many, for example, to actually read the texts of the treaties agreed to and signed. They bear no relation to the current First Nations claims. It would be instructive to read the accounts by early explorers and missionaries of the environmental practices of the First Nations. They were the very reverse of solicitous towards the natural environment. They were profligate and wasteful, to European eyes.

Western European civilization is historically almost unique in seeing the natural environment as something of intrinsic value, and under our care.

By all means, let's have more aboriginal history.

Religion Teaches You to Be Moral

This new study shows the growing cultural divide in Canada. The divide is between the conventionally churchgoing and the secular majority. Their views are dramatically different on several matters.


Most tellingly, there is a clear statistical link between being religiously observant and considering the well-being of others: if you want good people, you want religion. Accordingly, it really ought to be part of the business of government to encourage religion. It is harmful to the common good to elevate atheism and secularism to some sort of religious parity or supremacy. Government ought to be “Defender of the Faith”; just not any one particular faith.


The survey also shows Canada has its own version of a selfish “bi-coastal elite.” The residents of Saskatchewan, Canada’s geographical heartland, are the best, most compassionate Canadians, and Quebeckers are the most selfish, followed by BC and Alberta.


It is interesting and surprising that Ontarians fare rather well. I think that's the small-town influence. I have long thought that even Ontario's biggest cities tend to be small towns at heart. Canada’s legendary “niceness” is an artifact of this peculiar Ontario small-town culture. It is one of our best features.


Unfortunately, again illustrating the cultural divide, the story and even its headline are half hogwash. It arbitrarily declares left-wing political positions more “compassionate.” Only on those spurious grounds does it find "that compassion has its limits."


It notes, for example, as a lack of compassion, that the religious are less inclined to say we need more social acceptance than we have of homosexuality.

“There should not be greater social acceptance of people who are LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer);”

Consider, if you will, the improbable possibility that homosexual behaviour actually leads to a greater risk of illness. Because, in fact, it does. Is it compassionate to go beyond quiet acceptance, as we have, to aggressive promotion, as we have? Consider the improbable possibility that homosexual and “transgender” behaviour leads statistically to devastating unhappiness, and a high likelihood of future suicide. Because, in fact, it does. How compassionate is it, then, to promote it? Suppose you also believe that is is sinful, as all the world’s major religions and moral codes have taught for millennia, so that indulging in it risks an eternity of suffering? How compassionate is it then to promote it?


The religious, the study notes, want Canada to accept fewer immigrants.

“Canada should accept fewer immigrants and refugees”

Note here an obvious fudge. The Post is making no distinction between immigrants and refugees; the difference is huge in moral terms. Legitimate refugees are indeed a moral issue. Regular immigrants are not. Opposing more immigration may be a concern that new immigrants in too great numbers can damage the social fabric—to everyone’s detriment, including the new immigrants. They might also, after all, not share your deep moral concerns. If you have fewer morals, you worry less about this. Worrying more about it comes with having stronger morals.

"They would be uncomfortable if a child planned to marry someone from a different cultural or religious background"

This confirms that the concern among the religious about immigration has nothing to do with lack of compassion, and is about protecting morals and social order. Sharing the same religious background within the family is essential, if religion is the centrepiece of your life. It hs nothing to do with lack of compassion towards members of the other religion.


Note again a sneaky fudge: the Post is not distinguishing between culture and religion. These are different issues.

"Preserving life is more important than people’s freedom to choose on issues like abortion and doctor-assisted death."

More fine fudge. What the Post means, absent the euphemism, is that preserving life is more important to the religious than is allowing unrestricted abortion and euthanasia. I’m sure this must come as a shock to many. Either abortion or euthanasia are in fact, contrary to this phrasing, radical restrictions on the freedom to choose. The subject of either abortion or euthanasia loses their freedom to choose anything at all, ever again, from that moment on. Preserving life is also preserving the freedom to choose.


Is it kind to encourage people to kill themselves? I think that is debatable. Is it kind to encourage people to kill others? I think there can be no debate.


Kindness, compassion, and concern for others would seem to be entirely on the one side.

The National Post would seem to be on the other.