Who We Are

From the Introduction

WHY THIS BOOK?

This book is about Canada, about who I am and who we are. It is about who we have become. Canada seems to have lost its sense of self. In the last number of years, the sense of who we thought we were has been shaken. We need to take stock and commit to being the best we are capable of being—as a people, as a nation.

This book is an argument for our future, the future of our children, and the future of our grandchildren and generations beyond. It is about how diminished democracy undermines our best hope to avoid the worsening climate crisis, which threatens human civilization itself.

It is a book about how we can make a difference, about how we can and must take back our country and steer a course to benefit the many and not primarily to advantage the few. It is an argument for change. In this sense, it is a vision.

My vision is not drawn from any tract or ideology, but comes from paying attention throughout six decades of living. My perspective was formed through decades of bearing witness to the ways in which bad public policy causes the innocent to suffer and how good public policy can transform societies. My vision comes from an unusually political childhood, an activist upbringing, and a deep love of democracy. It comes from knowing that working together changes the world. It comes from a single mom’s sense for problem-solving. It comes from being a member of parliament who understands that my “boss” is the people who elected me, not some backroom of political operatives.

Over my lifetime, I have witnessed the rise of corporate power and the shrinking of the public sphere, the commodification of everything and the dumbing down of society, and the degradation of every ounce of sacred creation, right down to our genetic material, into feedstock for the corporatist enterprise. As economist David Korten once put it, “This is no longer a clash between ‘isms’… It is the choice between Life and Money.”

When the rapacious behaviour of transnationals is supported or ignored by government, we are endangered. When the positive and transformational power of corporate leadership is engaged for the public good, we are inspired.

I look back through time, through historical and political periods connected to my childhood, through the stories of my elders. This word-of-mouth link leaves me feeling connected to times before my birth, times like the Great Depression, the Second World War, the American Civil War, and even the American Revolution. My family remembers its history. I grew up in the United States, and three of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. As a teenager, I moved to Canada and absorbed Canada’s history, rewiring my brain to a Loyalist tradition.

My view of our role in the world is influenced by both my early years in the United States and my adult life in Canada, where I came to know and love my country with the intensity often found in new Canadians.