Canadians voted to move our country forward, if you believe what PM Stephen Harper says after the election on Oct. 14. He’s back in the big chair, running the show. I don’t know if he has any close friends who tell it like it is – those kinds of friends are good to have around you now and then. Just in case he doesn’t, let me volunteer (if not to be a friend, then at least to tell it like it is).

Stephen (I’m guessing you don’t like “Steve” or “Stevie”), seriously man, the fact is a heck of a lot of Canadians didn’t even bother to vote, and the ones that did were not voting to “move our country forward”. I think you need a little help interpreting the results, so here goes.

A lot of voters would have voted Liberal, except for a few things:
1. They’re still mad about the sponsorship scandal, and figure there’s probably more dirty laundry that we may never even get to see. Let’s just say the Liberals’ trust account is still in the red.
2. Mr. Dion is not so good in the English, which is what more of us speak more of. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s another little tick in the “no, not them again, at least not yet” box.
3. We don’t really know if they have much of a plan, except more of what they did before, which kind of reminds us again of how some of us are sore about point #1.
4. They were a wimpy self-serving opposition, complaining about everything Mr. Harper was doing (I won’t mention his party, because it seems to be his show alone) but choking it down, confidence vote after confidence vote, because they knew they couldn’t win an election. So thanks for standing up for…yourselves, Liberals.

More voters went to the NDP:
1. Because they still are mad at the Liberals and couldn’t face voting Conservative.

Voters went to the Bloc:
1. Parce que je me souviens

Voters went to the Green Party:
1. Because it’s a privilege and a responsibility to vote, and you’re not going to vote Liberal, yet (see above), Conservative (carbon schmarbon), NDP (saving that vote for the Liberals one day), and the Bloc (most of us don’t live in Quebec), so who else you gonna vote for?

So PM Harper, that’s how I see it. Too bad your government has the bench strength of the Maple Leafs during flu season. Guess you’ll have to keep doing it all yourself. It must be hard work keeping the wingiest of your party’s wingnuts muzzled, but hopefully you’ll still have some time left to do something meaningful for us (no, dropping the GST to 5% doesn’t count). And for Christmas, if you’re feeling generous, I’d like clean air, safe food, funding for clean energy projects and research, and finally, commit .7% of the GDP to aid for the world’s poorest nations. It’s the right thing to do, which hopefully means it’s the Canadian thing to do.

Because they’ve just pulled off the biggest theft in history, in broad daylight, that’s why. It must feel great giving away other people’s money to people who went and blew all the money they’d been given to look after previously. I seem to remember a story as a kid about the ant and the cricket, you know, how the ant scrimped and saved while the cricket lived for the day? Well, the crickets won this round, because the ants are going to pay.

Don’t think I don’t support some kind of bailout – it has to happen, absolutely. Most of the money in our economy doesn’t come from the mint. New money is mostly created as debt. Every time someone sits down and signs for a loan, a few keystrokes later, that money has been created. But if banks won’t even lend to each other, no one wants to be on the hook to create new debt if they can’t count on anyone to cover it. And in our society, no credit means no nothing. If you had to pay cash, starting tomorrow, for everything, could you do it? Me neither. Add to that the idea that your cash could become worth less each day, too, and see how that feels. So we take the hit now because the pain will be a lot worse if we don’t.

I think the main thing that really kills most of us about this whole mess is the fact that in the end, very few individuals will be held accountable. I expect the FBI and whoever else can investigate all they want, and the fact is most of the people who created the mess weren’t breaking the law. It’s just that things got deregulated to a point where they could get away with this kind of precarious banking and investing. And they got big bonuses when it worked out and a taxpayer-funded bailout when it didn’t. No consequences, really. You broke your bike? Sugar daddy here will just have to buy you a new one, because heaven forbid you should have to walk around like the rest of us.

The headline worried me: “Bank slashes rates as markets crash”. Slashes? Crashes? Like, the Bank of Canada suddenly, unexpectedly dropped the prime lending rate by a full percent? Like, my RRSP mutual funds have tanked? Um, no, turns out the Bank of Canada cut the rate by the usual increment when they change the rate up or down—a quarter of 1%. Oh, so that’s a “slash”? OK, so the USA cut their rate by .75. That is approaching “slasher” territory in my view. But a cautious .25 is barely newsworthy, let alone justifies the worrisome headline. As for the crash, well, the main Canadian index was actually up today, but whatever.

Are we really so saturated with information that a simple .25 cut story needs to be presented as a five-alarm fire? Well, not everyone reported it that way. In fact, for some BC pundits, it was almost good news.

Now, I don’t know how I can explain this without sounding like a flake; maybe I’ll just have to sound like a flake. But here it is—if we all believe the markets are going to crash and economic woe is heading our way like a runaway train, well, guess what—that’s what we’ll get. I am not advocating ignoring financial realities, of course, but I am saying we need to think for ourselves and dig a little deeper, because if we just read the first slash and crash article and took it at face value, we’d probably be looking for some rope and an exposed rafter right about now. If we all believe that we can muddle through together and find ways to create a sustainable future, I think that’s exactly what will happen. We can choose what we want to focus on, if we can just filter the media hype down a couple of levels.

Is the US economy in trouble? Depends who you ask; sort of like climate change, in that respect. My view, based on my financial experience as someone who has a mortgage and knows how to balance a chequebook, is that you can’t take on huge debt, run a deficit, and keep spending money, forever. You just can’t. The people you borrow the money from are eventually going to say no more. Let’s just say whoever wins the presidency in November is going to need more than a few energy-efficient light bulbs in the White House to find some black ink on the national balance sheet.

Why is Canada worth saving?

Before you can determine whether something is valuable, you have to understand what it is. In the case of Canada, it’s whatever we want to make of it. And that is at once the beauty and the challenge of the Canadian confederation. So many countries are based on history, race, ethnicity. But Canada, like the United States of America, is a new country, the New World.

For many of us, our definition of Canada is often a list of how we are different than the USA, and indeed there are a lot of notable differences despite the many similarities. And if a country is partly a country because of its history, then a review of Canadian history and American history quickly reveals that we are a different country. Canadian attitudes, the “Canadian approach”, are not always a faithful copy of the American.

Canada is a grand social experiment. We have responded to challenges at home and abroad in innovative ways, from unemployment insurance to peacekeeping. We are not always fair–witness our record on everything from aboriginal issues to internment of Japanese-Canadians in World War 2–but there is something about us that wants to be fair, that wants to do the right thing. We don’t always respect each other and we have our share of racism. But the majority of us do not accept these faults as being acceptable. We want to do better. We want to embrace other cultures, not assimilate. We want to understand, because from understanding we can breed respect, and respect for others is respect for ourselves.

Canada is shaped by our climate and our environment. We have our rugged individualists, but our cold winters have also fostered a cooperative approach born of necessity. Sometimes you just need help, and when the temperature dips to 40 below, that can be one of those times!

What would the world be like without Canada? I suspect it would be a little more confrontational, and dare I say it, a little more boring. You don’t need examples from me, you can think about it yourself–a world without Canada. What would we have instead? A bigger USA? A bunch of colonies? The world’s biggest wilderness park, or how about one gigantic clearcut and strip mine?

Why is Canada respected internationally? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we don’t have the population to squander our young people engaging in wars that have no meaning, or that we don’t have the firepower to dictate terms to anyone. We negotiate. We compromise. We like to win, but we like to get along. We can have different points of view but still be friends. It wasn’t Canada that gave rise to the phrase “might is right”.

We have a way of doing things. We have a way of saying things. We have a way of laughing at ourselves and the world that can only come from the perspective of a Canadian. I was not born here. But I am a Canadian. I believe in many of the values that Canadian society stands for, and I believe that we are blessed to live in a country that offers us so much opportunity, so many good friends and fellow citizens. It is our country, and we can evolve our society into anything we want.

Well-meaning politicians have sometimes failed to act in our best interests, and the signs are all around us that governments are less able than ever to represent the will of the people. Their hands are tied by trade agreements and laws, willingly engaged, that limit sovereign control of our affairs, and diminish democracy. O Canada, who will stand on guard for thee?

Are we a noble nation? We can be. Are we a nation of mutts? Not at all. Anyone can be a Canadian, but it requires more than residency. It requires a desire to treat others fairly, to appreciate nature, and to lend a hand.