Six Birthday Wishes For Canada

Canada doesn't need anything new. What it needs is the civic engagement it has lost.

I've been twisting my mind like a pretzel – not those rock hard minis you buy by the bag, but those huge doughy ones – trying to figure out what present to buy this country of ours for its 143th birthday. We're already the ninth most “successful” economy in the world. And hey, we're already so rich in farmland, minerals, fresh water, and timber, are we not?

Well, actually we have never done a national resource inventory, so frankly I have no idea if that “resource” thing is indeed true. But I am confident that once the cod come back we've got one hell of a list – they are coming back, right? Of course they are! Besides who needs all that other stuff when we are the kings of the tar sands?

Already we've scraped every living thing off the surface of a Florida-sized chunk of Alberta – leaving behind a parched, poisoned, but profitable legacy. By the way, are you interested in some gulf coast shorefront property? Just asking.

But I digress. Back to figuring out what to buy a country that has so much. How about cash? Nah, the Bank of Canada is practically giving that stuff away these days. “It's the loonie fire sale everything must go! Sure, the house you're buying costs a mint, but luckily that's exactly where your mortgage money is coming from!”

Maybe I'm on the wrong track here. Maybe Canada doesn't need more “stuff.” So let's try something a little different. What I would like to give Canadians – and frankly I'm afraid to admit this since it's really a re-gifting sort of thing – is the power and privilege that comes with “citizenship.”

Somewhere around the early 1980s we stopped being citizens and became simply “taxpayers.” Each and every one of us has been reduced to our utility as an economic unit – a line item known by our Latin assignation “per capita.” Our rights and obligations have been reduced to a miserly flip of the wallet just to pay someone else's tab, like the government’s – as if our “governments” are composed of Canadians other than ourselves. Think here of freeloaders and folks who just aren't trying hard enough – single mothers and elderly women come to mind. Citizens are stakeholders at best, and special interests – not mine of course – at worst.

In the last 30 years we have taken the gift of citizenship, engagement, and community building and tossed it into the farthest recesses of our Canadian heart. Now we are all in it ... alone.

So here's what I'll do: I'll dust off that old chestnut of civic engagement, give it a bit of loving care and offer it to anyone in this beautiful country who wants it back.

We are more than the sum of our economic parts. We are neighbours and fellow travellers with the right to decent communities, real sustainable jobs, and fresh air and water. We have the ability to reach out to the world as a model for peacemaking, resource stewardship, and progressive values that can become a centre for excellence in the new world that is being formed around us.

So, on our 143th birthday, in this impossible place we call home, I say happy birthday and bon anniversaire to all my fellow citizens and may we have many, many more.