My Canada

When the next election in Canada comes, I shall vote for whoever in my area is most able to beat out the Conservative incumbent.

My Canada is going away, and it makes me very, very sad.

My Canada is the country that invented peacekeeping, and did more of it around the world than any other nation. Now it does not.

My Canada is the country where every citizen held the right to vote. Did you know that in some jurisdictions civil servants didn't used to be able to vote? Judges couldn't vote, nor could prisoners or people with mental disabilities, as recently as 1982.

This was all changed because...why the hell not? Did you know that people in all of these categories pretty much vote in the same patterns as everybody else?

Even if all the people in jail managed to vote as a single block, they make up only 0.12 percent of the population.

So we fixed it, because not to do so would be denying people a basic right of citizenship. It would be as evil as the denial of voting rights for First Nations People in earlier years.

That basic decency is now starting to ebb the other way. Our government has decided to deny voting rights to expatriate Canadians who have lived abroad for more than five years. What is the point?

This takes away a right from approximately a million Canadian citizens, even though only about 6000 of them vote in any given election. Why deny them this basic right? Is the government scared that none of them will vote Conservative, and they are expecting the election to be so close that 6000 votes could swing it?

Perhaps 23 years of universal suffrage is more than we deserve.

In my Canada that the only way citizenship could be revoked is if a naturalized Canadian were convicted of fraud on their citizenship application. In my Canada, if you were born Canadian there was no way for your citizenship to be taken away at all.

There is “anti-terrorism” legislation recently passed permitting the government to revoke the citizenship of Canadians convicted of certain crimes. It can be done to any naturalized Canadian (born elsewhere), or to any Canadian who holds dual citizenship, or to any Canadian who would be automatically eligible for citizenship in another country upon application.

My friend Bernie was born in Canada, and holds only Canadian citizenship. However, as Germany will automatically grant him citizenship should he so desire as his parents were from Germany, his Canadian citizenship could be taken away under the current legislation.

So could my wife's citizenship, as she is in exactly the same situation.

My Canada was lead by a Prime Minister who served at the pleasure of Parliament. Our votes went to all the members of Parliament, and that is where the power sat.

Since the current PM has been in office, the power of the Prime Minister's Office has been steadily increasing, at the expense of Parliament. This is the opposite of what has made Canada a wonderful country. We used to limit the whims of a single man.

My Canada was a leader in environmental protection, rather than one that denied climate change; one that chooses to seek solutions, rather than supporting short-term corporate profiteering. Our government now does everything it can to muffle the voice of Science in this matter.

I want a return to environmental responsibility, universal suffrage, rule by parliament, irrevocable citizenship, and to being a nation of peacekeepers.

I do not call for a change, but for a return to what we were.

I want my Canada back.