What Kind of Canada Are We Building?
There is another part of this conversation I haven't talked about.
I grew up in the Fraser Valley, and I remember a high-school classmate dying 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 claim to know everything that was happening inside her life. I wasn't there. I don't know what ultimately led to her death.
But I remember it.
And when I hear women talk about being pressured into marriages, family expectations and having their choices controlled, I can't simply dismiss those things as “cultural differences.”
Sometimes a tradition has a human cost.
And then there is something I experienced much more recently.
Last year, I took a paid job-search course for people 55+.
I was there because I was struggling to get work.
One woman from India told me that her family had educated their children here. Those children eventually got jobs at companies like Amazon and Google in the United States.
The parents remained living in Canada because they were too far away from India.
And I remember thinking:
Wait.
Canada educated the children.
Canada helped provide the environment in which they built their careers.
The children then went to the United States for those high-paying jobs.
And the parents remained here.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a room of people over 55 trying to figure out how to get a job.
I'm not angry that those children succeeded.
Good for them.
I'm not angry that parents want their children to have better lives.
Of course they do.
But I am asking a much bigger question:
What is Canada becoming?
And perhaps the most important question:
What kind of country do we want to live in?
Because immigration isn't the enemy.
Immigrants aren't the enemy.
Indian people aren't the enemy.
Refugees aren't the enemy.
The problem is when governments create systems that can benefit some people while leaving others increasingly vulnerable — and then tell us we aren't allowed to question it.
We need housing.
We need decent jobs.
We need healthcare.
We need functioning schools.
We need workers to be protected from exploitation.
We need international students to receive the education they were promised.
We need temporary foreign workers protected from abuse.
We need older Canadians to have a realistic chance of finding work.
And we need Indigenous rights to be respected.
All of these things can be true at the same time.
And to the Indo-Canadian families I have known over the decades, I would ask:
You came here.
You wanted opportunity.
You wanted education for your children.
You wanted a better future.
What kind of Canada do you want your children to inherit?
If your daughter is born here, should she have the freedom to choose whom she loves?
Should she control her own money?
Should she be able to reject a marriage she doesn't want?
Should your sons grow up understanding that women are their equals?
And if your children succeed here, should they also understand the history of the land they succeeded on — including Canada's colonial history and the rights of Indigenous peoples?
These aren't anti-immigrant questions.
They're citizenship questions.
They're questions about reciprocity.
They're questions about what we bring with us, what we leave behind, and what we choose to teach our children.
Because becoming Canadian shouldn't require abandoning your culture.
But preserving culture should never require preserving oppression.
And that applies to every culture — including mine.
Because I'm tired of watching Canada become a place where everyone is told to compete for scraps while governments congratulate themselves on growth.
Canada cannot simply be a pipeline of people, students, workers, taxpayers and consumers.
It has to be a country.
A country where people belong.
A country where workers have rights.
A country where women have choices.
A country where Indigenous rights matter.
A country where older people aren't disposable.
A country where housing isn't a luxury.
A country where success isn't measured only by how many people we can bring in or how much economic activity we can generate.
Because right now, sometimes it feels like Canada is giving us the middle finger.
When did we stop asking what kind of country we were actually building?
No comments:
Post a Comment