What Happened to Canada?

Monday 30 January 2012

by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed

Police confront protesters outside 2010's G-20 meeting in Toronto, Canada, June 25, 2010. (Photo: G20 Protest Photos)

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This

is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

more http://www.truth-out.org/what-happened-canada/1327935024

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Permalink Reply by Lawrence Edward Calcutt on January 31, 2012 at 10:03am

Whatever happened to Canada, happened while we were asleep and unaware as to what is happening and was about to happen because of our lack of knowledge of what is happening in the world around us. To be truthfull its the same thing that happened to the United States of America and for the very same reasons. Sorry to say this but we in Canada are going down the same road as that traveled by the Americans in the last 40 years. Pity because Canada was such a great country but when we tried to emulate the Americans we only took on the same attributes and problems and sins. I want to weep for both countries but am afraid it will just be a waste of tears.

Maybe we should never have taken their land and lives in the first place. What right did we have to justify it.

Permalink Reply by vernon dodge on January 31, 2012 at 10:39am

Well a lot that Lawrence says is true,but it can change and I hope it does for the reputation of being a peaceful nation,like the reputation that we once had in the UN, that could be lost forever. The good part of the politics here is that,we don't have to wait every four years to make changes in the government leadership as in the Good ole US of A. Stephen Harper is something else all right,most of us know that,and I don't think he'll last much longer.The Liberal Party is a mixed bag,they just voted 80% in favour of legalizing mary jane;So my point is, It's not yet over,Canada can change their way of doing business quickly with a change in the leadership,a lot of people are discouraged by Stephen Harper,it's not only him in the liberal party.But you are right in James, when you say that you've seen the Storm Troopers,looking like the same thugs that you have in the states.You should have seen the action in Quebec during the G8 summit here,the small city of Quebec was a war zone.The tear gas was even in our houses,you couldn't get away from it,I have some great photo's of it. Also here in Quebec the cops are particularly tough,they ran the Hells Angels out of the province,and not exactly by the standards of the law either;Where else has this been done,the cops are a gang here.SO DON"T COUNT CANADA OUT YET!

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