Silly Little Country

Where we have Arrived

George Jonas has a nice witty column in response to the question of what one single thing he would like to change about Canada. He warms up slowly, and then focuses on our insane statism and instinct to regulate (everything).

For me, regarding much of this as originally having come to a peak in the Trudeau days, I love this line:

Thirty years after prime minister Trudeau declared that the state had no business in the bedrooms of the nation, we must tell the state about our love lives to register a hunting rifle.

Agreeing with me about the head of state as well, he describes some of this silliness of the last thirty years:

Being unfair to women ought to have been easy to remedy: we could have started being fair to them. Instead, we tried fixing the problem by being unfair to men. Enchanted with 'equality,' we decided to treat vice and virtue equally, at least in the case of spouses, and brought in no-fault divorce.

We embraced reverse discrimination as self-righteously as we once embraced discrimination. The best thing I can say for the result is that it improved the looks of our governors-general, if not necessarily their reading skills.

The saddest truth is in this passage:

In the old days we had no Charter. Now we do. What we no longer have is rights and freedoms.

Today we have commissions of social engineering, called 'human rights commissions.' They're to guard us against human rights, such as free speech. Or imprudent speech, like saying Merry Christmas in mixed company.

And I agree with him from close personal experience about what a great job we have done with our medical system:

Once you needed money to see a doctor. Today you don't. What you need is time. Patience. Pull. Or enough money to go to the United States.

The saddest fact is that in a bureaucratically determined system like ours pull creates far greater inequality than money ever has in a price system.

Do not fail to read the first part, pointing out that there were many things wrong with the Canada he arrived in, from a much worse place. And do not fail to read the end, about whether he wants to roll it all back.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:51 PM