Understanding our own great country...

Folks in Central and Eastern Canada don't really understand, or want to understand, Western Canada.

I was sitting across the table from an old friend the other day in Saskatoon and he started talking about the need for a new deal for Saskatchewan and Alberta. This proud Canadian has simply had enough of the condescension, the arrogance, the unfair rules and bad policies emanating from Ottawa and supported by voters in Ontario and Quebec.

He’s not ready to go full separatist yet, but says something needs to change.

“It’s real,” he said of the growing sentiment. “I’m hearing from more and more people, including some who wouldn’t have gone near the separatist nutters but who think things need to change.”

This sentiment is something most people in the Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto triangle don’t get. They are not only dismissive of the idea that there are a growing number of Canadians who are fed up with Canada as is, they are also dismissive of the idea that there is anything to be fixed.

“We bought them a pipeline!” is a constant refrain I hear from such people back East.

Well, that’s not the point and it never should have gotten to the point that we needed to buy Trans Mountain. If it weren’t for horrible federal policies and the conscious decision not to enforce the laws to clear protesters and get the pipeline built, we never would have needed to buy it.

We have columnists and commentators like Andrew Coyne of the Globe and Mail and CBC fame referring to Albertans as malcontents and Premier Danielle Smith as a traitor. That’s one way to drive people into the separatist movement, insult them and their leaders because they don’t meet your downtown Toronto, elitist standards.

There has long been a small separatist movement in both Alberta and Saskatchewan. Now though, a growing number of people believe that Canada, as currently constituted, no longer works. We won’t counter the ideas driving this movement by ridiculing the very legitimate grievances of those two provinces.

We need more people to get out of their central Canadian bubble and travel the country to try and understand different parts of it. That doesn’t mean heading to Stampede and partying it up with a bunch of people from Toronto before boarding a plane to head back East again.

Idiots and the Canadian flag...

Between the column from Gary Mason at the Globe and a story at CTV, you’d think the Canadian flag was a toxic symbol in need of rehabilitation. Both pieces talk about how the flag was tainted by the Freedom Convoy which took over downtown Ottawa.

“This Canada Day, we reclaimed our flag,” reads the headline on Mason’s column.

The Globe’s Western Canadian bloviator, sorry columnist, is completely over the top about the Convoy usurping the. flag and damaging patriotism.

“For a long time after, whenever you saw a truck going down the street bearing a Canadian flag, you likely thought: Freedom Convoy lover. Many of us were afraid to hang a flag outside our home on Canada Day for fear of being associated with the bunch who had occupied our capital and tried to bully our government.”

What a pile of crap. Same with the piece from CTV.

Canada’s left has long been ashamed of our country, our flag, and any expressions of patriotism.

In June 2020, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald printed a Canadian flag in their edition just before Canada Day. Bizarrely, they printed a trigger warning along with the flag, you know, just in case someone living in Canada has bad feelings about our national flag.

“We understand the flag doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, however, we hope our readers recognize their ability to play a role in shaping Canada’s future is a freedom worth acknowledging,” the newspaper said on their front page.

That was long before the Convoy rolled into Ottawa.

Justin Trudeau at various times described Canada as a genocidal state, a country with no core identity, the first post national state. His government, like his father’s before him, worked hard to erase national symbols people might find pride in.

All through this time, you could go to any sporting event in Canada and hear the national anthem sung loudly and proudly by average Canadians. Canadians would take pride in their flag, in their country, in our heritage despite what the political elites might say or do.

Perhaps people like Justin Trudeau and Gary Mason didn't like our flag or our country very much. But for average Canadians, they didn’t need to see Donald Trump elected in Washington to decide that Canada was good country and something to be proud of after all.

Bob Vylan is a vile musical act...

I’d never heard of the punk rock duo. Bob Vylan until they became a news story over death chants. At the Glastonbury festival in the U.K. the band’s lead singer started a chant of “Death, death to the IDF.”

The crowd of concertgoers joined in chanting it back to him.

There were other hateful chants like “From the river to the sea” and the like, but calling for death should be a bridge too far even for a strident free speecher. I know people here in Canada who have served proudly in the IDF, he just put a target on their backs.

Same with the many American Jews who have served in the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces.

With Bob Vylan scheduled to tour Canada and the United States this fall, pressure mounted to block them.

So it wasn’t shocking when Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau said that the department “has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants. Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

I agree, foreigners who lead crowds in death chants shouldn’t be welcomed in Canada. So, you would think that this would mean the Canadian government would do the same.

My Sun colleague Bryan Passafiume inquired and found out that the answer is no, or at least not yet.

Let’s hope this is just a mistake over the Canada Day holiday and is rectified.