Teach Your Children Well
What Kind of Canada Are We Building?
Surrey, Abbotsford, immigration, land, belonging — and the questions we seem afraid to ask
Trigger warning: suicide, forced marriage, homelessness, addiction, violence and exploitation.
There are some conversations in Canada that immediately become impossible.
Mention immigration, and someone accuses you of racism.
Mention Indigenous rights, and someone tells you to stop living in the past.
Mention housing, and someone says population growth has nothing to do with it.
Mention temporary foreign workers, and someone tells you that we desperately need workers.
Mention crime in Surrey, and suddenly the conversation becomes about ethnicity.
But these subjects are connected.
Not because one group is responsible for everything.
They are connected because they all involve the same fundamental questions:
Who has power? Who benefits? Who is vulnerable? Who gets to belong? And what kind of country are we actually building?
Let's start with the land.
Abbotsford's Sumas Prairie is an extraordinary example of what humans can do to a landscape — and what can happen when nature eventually reminds us that it was there first.
Sumas Lake was drained and transformed into farmland.
What had been a lake became productive agricultural land.
For generations, people built lives and businesses there.
But the lake bottom never stopped being a lake bottom.
Then came the devastating 2021 floods.
Suddenly, the history underneath the farms mattered again.
And climate change means we have to think even harder about these landscapes.
Surrey has its own complicated relationship with water, floodplains, drainage and development.
This is not simply a story about immigrants buying land.
It is a story about land, colonial transformation, development, wealth, infrastructure and who gets to make decisions about the places where people live.
And this is where I think Canada needs a much bigger conversation.
Because we have spent generations transforming landscapes, moving water, building roads, draining wetlands, subdividing farmland and expanding cities.
Then we act surprised when nature sends us a bill.
And then there is Surrey.
I have watched Surrey change dramatically.
I've watched the population change.
I've watched businesses change.
I've watched housing prices explode.
I've watched people struggle to find somewhere to live.
And I've watched the opioid crisis change the streets.
I have personally witnessed something I will never forget: seeing what appeared to be a person lying motionless on the ground while people walked past.
It didn't matter to me what colour that person's skin was.
It was a human being.
And that is what the overdose crisis has done to us.
It has made death on the street something people can become accustomed to seeing.
That should terrify us.
And now Surrey is also dealing with something I don't remember being part of everyday life decades ago:
extortion.
Businesses being threatened.
Families being frightened.
Money being demanded.
Police investigating organized criminal activity.
This is not an immigration story.
It is a crime and power story.
And if criminal networks are exploiting particular communities, those communities deserve protection — not suspicion.
But I have questions about immigration too.
Not because I hate immigrants.
Quite the opposite.
I have known Indo-Canadians for decades.
I worked alongside East Indian people in the 1980s and 1990s.
I berry-picked with people.
I worked in factories.
I worked in homes doing home support.
I made friendships.
I watched families work incredibly hard.
I watched parents sacrifice for their children.
I watched children grow up Canadian.
So I am not interested in pretending that an entire community is one thing.
It isn't.
But I am interested in asking questions.
Because immigration changes a country.
And Canada has changed enormously.
We have brought in international students.
Temporary foreign workers.
New permanent residents.
Refugees.
Families.
Professionals.
Entrepreneurs.
People escaping war.
People looking for economic opportunity.
People simply wanting a better life.
Those are all different stories.
And they shouldn't be thrown into one bucket.
But the government has created systems around all of them.
And systems can be abused.
Temporary foreign workers can be vulnerable to exploitation.
International students can be vulnerable to predatory recruitment and financial pressure.
Employers can benefit from workers who have fewer choices.
Housing markets can become overwhelmed.
Schools and infrastructure can struggle to keep pace.
And Canadians who are already struggling can feel as though they are being pushed further and further back in the line.
We should be able to talk about that without hating anyone.
Last year, I experienced something that really made me think.
I took a paid job-search course for people 55+ because I was struggling to get work.
One of the women there was from India.
She told me that her family had educated their children in Canada.
The children eventually got jobs with major American companies such as Amazon and Google.
The parents remained in Canada because travelling back to India was simply too far.
And I remember thinking:
Wow.
The children were educated here.
They built careers here.
Then they went to the United States.
The parents stayed here.
And I was sitting in a classroom trying to figure out how to get a job.
I wasn't angry at those children.
Why would I be?
They succeeded.
Good for them.
Every parent wants their children to succeed.
But it made me ask a bigger question:
What exactly is Canada's role in this system?
Are we building a country?
Or are we becoming an enormous economic platform where people come to study, work, build wealth and move wherever the best opportunities happen to be?
Because those aren't necessarily the same thing.
And then there is the question of belonging.
I've had conversations with Indo-Canadians who have told me that they might eventually return to India.
I remember one Uber driver explaining that when his children grow up, perhaps they will go back.
He talked about the shootings and violence there.
His point was essentially:
You hear about all the shootings? That's what it's like there.
And I understood what he meant.
People make complicated choices.
They can love India and Canada.
They can belong to both.
They can miss home while building a life somewhere else.
There is nothing wrong with that.
But it made me wonder:
What does it mean to belong to a country?
Is Canada simply a safe place to raise your children?
A place to get an education?
A place to buy property?
A place to build a business?
A place to escape violence?
A place to accumulate wealth?
Or is it a place where we actually have a responsibility to one another?
And this is where I want to talk to the women.
I remember hearing about aunties choosing husbands.
I remember hearing about family money being pooled.
I remember stories of women being expected to follow traditions they didn't necessarily choose.
And I remember a television interview that stayed with me.
A mother was struggling because her daughter, who had been born in Canada, wanted to dress differently, speak differently and live more like other Canadian young people.
The grandmother was giving the mother a hard time for not enforcing the old traditions.
And the husband said something that struck me:
“There is only a problem if you think there is a problem.”
Maybe.
But sometimes there really is a problem.
I remember a high-school classmate in the Fraser Valley who died by suicide in the early 1980s.
I remember it being in a bathtub.
I also remember that shortly beforehand she had been forced into a marriage with someone she did not love.
I cannot know everything that contributed to her death.
I wasn't inside her life.
But I remember the circumstances as I understood them.
And I cannot simply call that “culture” and walk away.
Because culture is not sacred when it causes suffering.
And that isn't an accusation against Indian culture.
It is a question we should ask about every culture, including my own.
Colonialism is complicated too.
India experienced British colonial rule.
Canada was built through European colonialism.
Indigenous peoples here experienced dispossession, residential schools, forced assimilation, land theft and the destruction of political and cultural systems.
Colonialism was also profoundly patriarchal.
It involved controlling land.
Controlling labour.
Controlling families.
Controlling women.
Controlling inheritance.
Controlling who had authority.
So I find it fascinating when people who have personally inherited the consequences of colonialism arrive somewhere else and sometimes reproduce hierarchical ideas about who should have power over whom.
That can happen.
Being oppressed in one historical context does not automatically make someone incapable of oppressing another person.
We are all capable of carrying things forward without realizing it.
That's why the conversation has to be bigger than ethnicity.
And then there is caste.
Caste is not the same thing as race.
It has its own history and structures.
But the basic question is universal:
Should a person's birth determine their worth?
Should family background determine whom they can marry?
Should someone's inherited social position determine their opportunities?
Should certain people be considered above or below others?
If the answer is no, then we have to be willing to challenge those ideas wherever they appear.
And that includes Canada.
But we also have to be careful not to stereotype every Indian Canadian as carrying caste prejudice.
Many people reject it.
Many people actively challenge it.
Many families have changed dramatically across generations.
That is exactly why we need the conversation.
And now we come back to Canada.
I have been unhoused.
I have struggled with government programs.
I have struggled to find work.
I have watched people fall through systems that were supposed to help them.
And I look around and see enormous changes happening at the same time.
Population growth.
Immigration.
Housing pressure.
Temporary foreign workers.
International students.
Land development.
Climate change.
Organized crime.
The opioid crisis.
Growing inequality.
Indigenous rights.
And a political system that seems increasingly incapable of talking about all of these things together.
We keep separating them.
But ordinary people don't experience their lives in separate policy categories.
Housing affects employment.
Employment affects immigration.
Immigration affects population growth.
Population growth affects infrastructure.
Infrastructure affects housing.
Housing affects homelessness.
Poverty creates vulnerability.
Vulnerability creates opportunities for exploitation.
And underneath all of it is land.
Who owns it?
Who controls it?
Who can afford it?
Who was here first?
Who gets displaced?
Who profits?
Who gets protected?
Who gets forgotten?
So this isn't “Go back to India.”
I don't want that.
I don't want anyone to go anywhere.
I want people to participate.
I want people to build lives here.
I want immigrants to succeed.
I want refugees to be safe.
I want temporary foreign workers protected from exploitation.
I want international students to receive the education they were promised.
I want Canadian-born children of immigrants to have enormous opportunities.
And I want Indigenous peoples to have their rights recognized.
I want women to be free to choose their lives.
I want workers to be protected.
I want older Canadians to matter.
I want people who are homeless to have homes.
I want people dying from addiction to be treated as human beings.
I want businesses to be able to operate without being extorted.
I want communities to feel safe.
And I want the government to stop pretending that population growth automatically equals prosperity.
Because here's the question I keep coming back to:
If you came to Canada because you wanted a better life, what kind of Canada do you want to leave to your children?
Not just financially.
Not just academically.
Not just professionally.
Morally.
What do you want them to believe about women?
About Indigenous people?
About workers?
About immigrants who came after them?
About people who are poor?
About people who don't have the same social connections?
About caste?
About power?
About land?
About privilege?
About responsibility?
And if Canada gave your family opportunities, what responsibility do you believe comes with those opportunities?
Because Canada cannot simply be a place where everyone competes for the biggest piece of the pie.
We have to decide what kind of pie we are baking.
And who gets a seat at the table.
We cannot build a country entirely around economic growth while ignoring the human beings who are being crushed underneath it.
We cannot talk about reconciliation while treating Indigenous rights as an inconvenience.
We cannot celebrate immigration while ignoring exploitation.
We cannot celebrate international education while ignoring students who are financially devastated.
We cannot recruit temporary workers while allowing vulnerability to become a business model.
We cannot celebrate billion-dollar land development while people sleep outside.
And we cannot tell women that something is “just tradition” when that tradition removes their freedom.
This isn't about Indian people.
It isn't about white people.
It isn't about immigrants.
It isn't about Canadian-born people.
It is about something much harder:
What happens when all of us bring our histories, our beliefs, our traumas, our ambitions and our ideas about power into the same country?
And whether we have the courage to examine them.
Because perhaps becoming Canadian isn't about erasing where you came from.
Perhaps it is about deciding, together,
what we refuse to carry forward.
And what kind of country we want to build instead.
