Canadians, finally, may be living in a just society
While I remain a bit skeptical, I have to say that on the whole I think the author is correct. The decisive defeat of the far-right (at least from a Canadian POV) Wildrose Party in the provincial elections in uber-conservative Alberta last week reinforces this assessment.
What this says to me is that cultural narratives about who "we" are can change relatively quickly, and sometimes in very positive directions. It is my deepest wish to see such a shift take hold in the USA, as well as other nations that are beginning to exhibit drifts towards the authoritarian, exclusionary right.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Canadians+finally+living+just+society/6539782/story.html
Canadians, finally, may be living in a just society
Across this country, from coast to coast to coast, there is now a nearly unanimous view that the old, divisive, angry debates about matters of individual faith and morals are over. And we're not going back there. Not any time soon, probably not ever.
Last fall, Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak was poised to depose the weary, idea-bereft Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty in a rout - or so the polls suggested. Then Hudak made his campaign about ethnicity - pitting native-born Canadians (mainly of European origin) against immigrants (mainly of Asian, South Asian or African origin), referring to the latter as "foreigners." The strategy derailed Hudak's campaign. It was eerily reminiscent of the gaffe made by Hudak's predecessor, John Tory, in 2007, when he went to the mat for more public funding of separate religious schools. Ontarians turned thumbs down on that for the same reason: It smacked of discrimination.
In Parliament last week, Conservative backbench MP Stephen Wood-worth caused a furor with a motion to strike a committee to consider when a human life, for purposes of the Criminal Code, begins. If life is determined to begin before birth, of course, then abortion de facto becomes illegal. Woodworth's motion has no chance of success: All four major federal par-ties are united against him. And this is the truly astonishing thing: Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gordon O'Connor, the Conservative whip, denounced his motion.
For anyone who remembers the highly charged debates of the '80s, and '90s, and even those in the first decade of this century, this is truly remarkable.
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