'Oh Canada!'

CAERS SUBSTACK ARTICLE #71

‘Oh Canada!’

CAERS Substack Article #71

(My last article for now)

As I have said in previous articles, all change involves loss and all loss involves pain or the risk of pain, so change is not always desired. There are times when change is tragic and unwelcome, and it is difficult to see any silver lining in the cloud because it seems like all loss and no gain. However, I have been surprised and awed throughout my career by the ability of humans to rise like Phoenix from the ashes following so many of life’s heartaches. I think that we are able to do that because we have the capacity to see the dimmest glimmer of hope in the bleakest of situations. It has its origins in the powerful life force within each of us, and probably accounts for the spiritual longing that undergirds most religions. When we look beyond our own story to see the grander story that is our planet and our universe, we see that change is inevitable. In other words, when the idea of change seems too daunting, it can be helpful to reframe it with a different lens. If we allow ourselves, we can see change not so much as a loss as it is a transition, a universal phenomenon, and when we do that, we find the resiliency to carry on despite our fear or pain.

I recently returned from a trip outside of Canada, something I have not done for many years because of the various pandemic restrictions. In doing so, I viewed our country with a different lens than I had grown accustomed to using, and here are some of my observations.

Canada is a relatively young country and by international standards our history has been comparatively uneventful. We have not experienced major revolutions like France and Russia. We have not been invaded repeatedly as has Poland. We have not been in the centre of turf wars the way the Middle East has been for millennia. Nor have we had a civil war as divisive as that of our closest neighbour and ally, the USA.

So, we are a most fortunate people, we Canadians. In many respects we have had it pretty easy living in a such a beautiful and varied environment. We have been blessed with rich natural resources and have been able to avail ourselves of them with little interference from the rest of the world. Given our relative isolation with few natural borders despite our immense size, the risk of invasion is small, so we can go about our daily lives with little worry. From almost every perspective, we live a charmed existence.

But like the child who grows up with a silver spoon in its mouth, life may have been too comfortable for us. We are often blissfully unaware of injustices in the rest of the world, or even at home. Our naïveté tricks us into ignoring the existence of corruption and even evil that has always been, and still is, present among us. We may have grown passive and far too trusting. We tend to follow blindly and not question; at times we can be too polite (or even politically correct). Our ability to think critically has grown weak through disuse. There is such abundance that it easily distracts us from major issues right in front of our collective nose.

If you disagree, then ask yourself the following:

How could provincial and federal governments have ignored the public emergency protocols already in place when the pandemic hit, and why did we allow that to happen?

Why did we allow the authorities to mishandle the care of our most vulnerable? And how did we tolerate letting government officials dictate to our elderly that they must stay isolated from their families for almost two years in order to be ‘safe’ without getting their consent to do so?

Why did we obey when they told us to lockdown and terrify our highly impressionable children, the one segment of the population that did not get sick from COVID?

How could we have blindly capitulated to orders not to be with one another for funerals, or worship together, or attend weddings, or celebrate major holiday together as though we could not be trusted to be sensible?

Why did we permit small businesses to be closed for safety reasons when large corporate retail stores servicing hundreds or thousands of customers daily were allowed to stay open?

Why were we not incensed when no elected representatives, including our prime minister, had the courtesy, in what is supposed to be a democracy, to at least meet and dialogue with peaceful truckers rather than freeze their bank accounts and tear gas them instead?

How could we sanction the firing of pregnant health care workers, who had laboured so diligently early in the pandemic, simply because they preferred not to expose their unborn child to an experimental gene-base injection? And then not even allow them to prove immunity through blood tests instead, something most would have acquired given their exposure to COVID while taking care of us?

Why did we not question the lack of Active Surveillance when the government mandated experimental vaccines? Why did we not demand Active Surveillance for every measure instituted during the pandemic so as to avoid doing more harm than good?

We Canadians need to be careful. Humans have done terrible things to one another for eons and that propensity has not disappeared, and will not do so any time soon. Pain is inevitable, and we in Canada are not exempt as much as we might like to think. If we allow ourselves to be distracted and mesmerized by our good fortune a little too much or for a little too long, we might find ourselves waking up one day facing the same level of pain that most areas of the world have experienced many, many times during their history. We are not immune.

It is time to put down our latte’s and put on our ‘big boy pants’ and face the fact that all is not right with our country. There has been too much narrative spinning and too little truth-telling. Too much secrecy and too little transparency. Too much fear and too little critical thinking. Too many top-down decrees and too little bottom-up input. Too many short-sighted, narrow- minded interventions and too little long-range, big picture planning.

A good start would be to recognize that there have been a host of irregularities perpetrated during the pandemic. These have been extensions of a culture given to naïvely buying into simplistic solutions for complex problems cunningly provided by ‘experts’ and largely unaccountable political leaders. It is time for us to get our heads out of the sand and ask good questions and expect good, honest answers from people we pay exceptionally well to be transparent. Any time a population behaves as we have for very long, those in authority take advantage and things tend to go off the rails in a hurry.

What kind of country do we want to leave our children and grandchildren? One where we passively watch elected and unelected officials panic and do whatever they please without us at least asking questions, demanding to stay informed and requesting justification for extreme measures, including ones inflicted on our children? That is what we have done during this pandemic and that is a recipe for disaster.

If we cannot muster the intelligence, integrity and courage to speak up for our own benefit, then let’s at least do so for our future generations. There isn’t a moment to waste.

J. Barry Engelhardt MD (retired) MHSc (bioethics)

CAERS Health Intake Facilitator

Thank you to those who have supported CAERS through reading my series of Substack articles the last seven months!