For any Canadian who appreciates the critical importance of the historical record and good contemporary information about our society, the article Vanishing Canada in the Sept. 28 issue of Maclean’s magazine should be required reading.
The Harper government’s destruction of our collective past, of social, historical, scientific, environmental, and economic documentation and statistics is horrifying. This sort of ‘disappearing’ is the act of people intent on control through ignorance. If there is no evidence or verifiable facts on which to base legislation, policies, financial decisions and changes in regulations — the fox simply walks into the henhouse and picks off what he (sic) wants. The real fox is FAR more innocent, though, as all it wants is a meal, not control over all other foxes and hens.
The article also documents the meddling of the Harper government in what information is allowed to be publicized here or abroad and in the professional and personal lives of people who produce such material. International anger has followed some of the more outrageous of such meddling and, as one prominent American scientist said, “They (the Canadian government) don’t have a compass.”
Even diehard Conservatives should be worried by this wholesale destruction of our collective past. Nobody is exempt from the effects of a systematic lack of knowledge however one may think one is, being on the side of the right (in both senses). This is the work of people who value nothing but their own version of reality and care for nobody but those who are useful to them. Read this article, and weep for Canada.
Eva Durance
Penticton