Looking Deep Within

These days, for various reasons, it is growing increasingly difficult for us, as Canadians, to feel smug about ourselves. There are the bleak indictments in the form of unmarked graves, attacks on Muslims, and people living in fear of such attacks.

What is to be done? In my previous post, entitled How Does Canada Atone? I posted some letters to the editor, one of which struck The Mound as especially useful. He wrote,

Of the options presented by these writers I prefer bringing this to our young people through our schools. We have a lot of miserable people in this country who will resent whatever is done, much as BLM triggered pushback in the US. So, let's not leave it to parents or social media or TV. Let's take this directly to our young people because it is, no matter how dismissive some can be, an important part of our history.

I replied,

I completely agree, Mound. Unlike the U.S., where some crazed right-wingers equate teaching about slavery to teaching kids "to hate America," I think educational initiatives will not only be welcomed, but also provide a necessary antidote to national ignorance, whether willful or otherwise.

By chance, Edward Keenan, The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, wrote a very insightful piece that bears directly on this issue. The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, lays racism at the feet of the Democrats, and refuses to acknowledge that his country is racist.

“Today, the Democratic party has doubled down on this shameful history by replacing the racism of the past with the racism of critical race theory. They continue to think of race as the primary means of judging a person’s character,” McCarthy said, expressing his support for removing statues of Confederate leaders from the Capitol.

“America is not a racist country,” he said. “It was wrong when it was the segregated lunch counters of Jim Crow, and it was wrong when it was the segregated classrooms of critical race theory.”

Keenan found much to fault with McCarthy's 'logic'.

[T]he academic concept of critical race theory he invoked does not teach that race is a means of judging a person’s character, and does not segregate classrooms — it is a lens for understanding racism as a set of systemic legal structures that persist in U.S. society.

However, as usual, American the right-wing media, mainly Fox, are perverting it so as to stir up even more animus than already exists in that beleaguered country. 

The backlash over critical race theory may be real, fed by over 1,300 Fox News mentions in 3.5 months and leading to outraged protests at school board meetings across the country. But the concept of critical race theory being depicted in these attacks bears little relationship to the academic theory. Quickly put: critical race theory is primarily a graduate-school-level concept that has been around for about four decades and was obscure until conservative activists ramped up anger about it. Actual critical race theory basically says that racism is ingrained in U.S. society and institutions. It is not taught in elementary or high schools, or even often in undergraduate university classes.

And it sounds like the fact of systemic racism will not be taught in U.S. schools anytime soon. There has been 

a wave of bills in Republican states governing what can and cannot be taught in history classes to schoolchildren and even to university students.

Teaching the history of racism in the United States as something that infected the structures of government, not just in slavery but in many other ways that persisted through much of the 20th century, and that persist today, is, they say, unfair to white children who might be taught to be ashamed. What’s more, they say it is, in the words of the Trump administration when he was in the White House, “anti-American”; unpatriotic.

In that denial comes a crucial difference in the Canadian response to revelations of racism here, as we ask

whether patriotism and celebrations of national pride can coexist with a recognition of deeply shameful episodes in a country’s history. The discovery of mass unmarked graves filled with the bodies of Indigenous children on the sites of residential schools has made vivid to many Canadians the evil that those schools represented throughout most of Canada’s history as a country — from their founding in the 1800s right up until the 1990s when the last of the institutions was closed.

Following along from Washington, I’ve seen both in news media and on social media, how reflecting on this has led to waves of people calling to cancel Canada Day celebrations this year. You don’t shoot off fireworks to celebrate your country while people are mourning the deaths of their children who were killed by your country’s government, is the gist of the sentiment I’ve seen.

The recent revelations have prompted a response of humility in the majority of Canadians. The next, absolutely necessary step is to make sure that our school curricula reflect not just the pride of Canadian accomplishments, but also the shame of widespread injustice and evil. 

I believe we do have the national character to reach that step.

 

 

How Does Canada Atone?

I have a practical suggestion to partly address the title's question, but I'll leave it for a future post. Today, some letter-writers from the print edition of the Toronto Star offer their views:

All the groups that have been victimized by threats, abuse, violence and death as a result of ignorant hate are sick and tired of hearing the false apologies. They are false because we know the politicians are pressured by the constituents to say something. They need the votes. Other groups may speak up because they feel compelled by general social actions.

But what matters is the real action taken. And there is usually no action. Some protests, some memorials, possible reparations.

The recent horrific findings of Indigenous burials is unspeakable. How these families were treated is abhorrent. The action we need is education. We need to get the education into the schools, teach all our youth from the very start. We need to develop our history lessons to include so much of this real history. English class should include reading lists that focus on books about so many of these tragedies. Every student should have to select two or three books in a term from different cultural tragedies, to read, reflect on and review.

Young people need to understand how others have been targeted and how easy it could be for anyone to be a target.

Corinne Broder, Collingwood, Ont.

We have a national monument, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, to honour those who fell in battle but whose bodies were not identified or recovered.

There should be a national monument to the unknown children from the residential schools who died while attending these schools — children who were abused while living and whose bodies were so callously discarded in death.

It won’t change the past, but it will be an eternal reminder of the sacrifice imposed on their families and the children.

Greg Narbey, Toronto

Like many, I am saddened to read about Indigenous children who died in Canada’s residential school system. Fixing this failure in our history will take action, time and resolve from all Canadians.

I propose our federal legislators designate a Reconciliation Day on our calendar, like Remembrance Day observed on Nov. 11, to remember and honour those Indigenous children who perished in residential schools.

On Reconciliation Day, our nation pauses from its day-to-day functions.

Canadians come together as one inclusive people in public gatherings, to learn and show respect for Indigenous people and their time-honoured culture.

Constantine Argiropoulos, Toronto

The tragedy of the residential school system and the racism endemic in our history and culture has created enormous harm, grief, and loss to Indigenous families.

This perfidy stains our national identity and our souls.

I’d like to see a National Day, or a National Week, of mourning, to pay tribute to these children and their families. Why are flags not at half-mast?

I want to see these enormous losses, this enormous injustice, recognized, finally, in the hope that it would have some meaning for Indigenous families.

I would like to see this national acknowledgment followed quickly by meaningful government action on the promises of many years.

Marcia Cannell, Richmond Hill

Confronting Our Past: Gabor Mate Speaks

Like many blogs, mine is largely informed by the thoughts of others. To be sure, I try to make it my practice to shape and filter things through my own perspective and commentary, but on this Canada Day I reproduce in its entirety a piece by Gabor Mate in which he talks about confronting our deeply troubled past.

For Canadians to be truly strong and free, we must come to terms with our grim past

I was 13 in 1957 when, along with nearly 38,000 fellow Hungarians, refugees from a brutal Stalinist dictatorship, my family and I were welcomed with open arms by Canada. The North really seemed true and strong and free. What I didn’t know and what no one was speaking of was that in the same year, even as we were adjusting to life in British Columbia, not far from where I lived a 4-year-old First Nation child had a pin stuck in her tongue on her first day at residential school.

Her crime had been to speak her Native language in the classroom. For an hour this little girl could not put her tongue back in her mouth for fear of cutting her lips. Soon after, years of sexual abuse began. By age 9 the child was an alcoholic and later became dependent on opiates to soothe her pain. We met at a healing ceremony not long ago. Now a grandmother and years sober, she grieves to see her grandchildren suffer the throes of addiction. For her there was no true North, strong and free. Nor is there yet.

There is also no free North for the 30 per cent of Canada’s jail population that is of First Nations origin, six times their proportion in the general population. The nature of trauma being multi-generational, parents transmit their wounds and dysfunctions onto their children. Barring some healing, violence, illness and addictions follow. Very little in Canadian culture has encouraged the necessary collective healing, and there is much to inhibit it.

The depth of our capacity for denial is well-nigh unfathomable. The recently “discovered” makeshift graves near residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan are too-perfect metaphors for the truths so many of us have buried deep out of sight, mind, and heart. I use quote marks because such atrocities have long been well-known lore in Indigenous communities and etched in the historical record.

In a recent survey two thirds of Canadians owned that they knew little or nothing about the residential schools. This bespeaks not individual ill will, deliberate unawareness, or necessarily, bigotry, but systemic and structural denial on a vast scale. Any colonial system must continue to obscure he history of the Indigenous people whose people it murdered, whose culture it nearly extirpated and whose lands and resources it continues to crave. Hence the litany of broken promises to our First Nations by politicians of all hues. We have apologized to our Japanese citizens for depriving them of their property during World War II, a case of legalized larceny; but though we have apologized, too, for the residential school system, we have not yet begun to acknowledge the despoliation of Native resources because we have not yet stopped practicing it.

Emotionally, it is difficult for human beings, individually and even more so in groups, to have their cherished identities questioned. Facing the brutal realities of our history challenges mainstream Canadian self-concepts of kindness, fairness, and humanity. It can feel threatening to open oneself to disillusionment. Waking up to how things are may be extremely painful.

Painful, and mandatory. No society can understand itself nor collectively heal itself without looking at its shadow side. The shedding of illusions, though scary, is a move toward personal and collective healing. There are encouraging signs that the recent dreadful revelations will wake us up to what we, as a country, have wrought. It’s not a matter of guilt but of responsibility to ourselves, to one another, and to the generations to follow. If we are to have meaningful Canada Days in the future we have to come to terms with our past, and with its ongoing resonances in the present in the form of institutional racism in all aspects of society, from the educational system to policing, from health care through the legal apparatus to the realms of economy and politics.

The freshly identified graves of little innocents can jog us into the genuine strength and freedom that honesty bestows and healing demands. We face the challenge and the opportunity of building a North strong enough to face what’s true, and freer for it. We will be amazed, too, when we open ourselves to being informed by the transformative power of the wisdom traditions, healing practices, Earth consciousness and cultural resilience that helped First Nations peoples survive and surmount the unspeakable.

The bestselling author of four books translated into nearly thirty languages, Gabor Maté is a retired Vancouver physician and a member of the Order of Canada. His next work, The Myth Of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, will be published in 2022.

Something Torrid This Way Comes

Unless you have been living under a rock (or more likely, the cool of your basement), you will know about the weather catastrophe occurring in the West, and, to a slightly lesser degree, in the East. People are dying at an unprecedented rate from the heat, and it is only going to get worse. As well, infrastructure that was built to cooler Canadian standards is buckling.

None of this bodes well for our future. To get a real sense of how dire things are, I would suggest you watch the following video from the beginning. If pressed for time, start at the five-minute mark and watch the two reports that ensue. 

At this late stage of things, the only real hope we have is in fortifying our infrastructure from the horrors to come, as the second of the two reports makes clear.

About That Critical Thinking Thing

Now that the internet has made everybody experts on everything, just a small, sobering reminder: expertise and critical thinking are not things you readily acquire.

But Is There A Will?

I was reading Owen's blog yesterday, in which he cites Robin Sears' view that, as Britain did during WW11, Canada needs to build back better post-pandemic. 

I am a skeptic as to the prospects of that happening. Here is the comment I made:

What I notice most about our current federal government, Owen, is their almost endless capacity for saying the right things, but the enacting of these aspirations seems mired in inertia. Any chance of 'building back better' would surely require a change in the taxation regime, but I don't hold my breath about that one. I read recently, for example, that despite large infusions of cash, the CRA has not prosecuted even one large tax evader, although they have called in a couple of them for 'a good talking to.'

I went back to the article and decided it merits further examination. It offers a devastating indictment, not only of the agency, but, implicitly, the government ethos it is reflecting.

Data from the Canada Revenue Agency shows its recent efforts to combat tax evasion by the super-rich have resulted in zero prosecutions or convictions.

In response to a question tabled in Parliament by NDP MP Matthew Green, the CRA said it referred 44 cases on individuals whose net worth topped $50 million to its criminal investigations program since 2015.

Only two of those cases proceeded to federal prosecutors, with no charges laid afterward.

The lack of prosecutions follows more than 6,770 audits of ultra-wealthy Canadians over the past six years.

It also comes amid a roughly 3,000 per cent increase in spending on the agency’s high-net-worth compliance program between 2015 and 2019 due to a beefed-up workforce, according to an October report from the parliamentary budget officer.

I believe, as does Matthew Green, that there are free passes for the rich, and severe penalties for the rest of us:

“The CRA is not pursuing Canada’s largest and most egregious tax cheats. And yet for a small mom-and-pop shop, if you don’t pay your taxes long enough — two or three years — then they will absolutely go in and garnish your wages … because they know you don’t have the ability to take it to court,“ he said.

To be fair, there is some validity in the claim that the wealthy have all manner of resources to try to thwart the CRA. Says National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier,

“The super-wealthy are able to pay for super lawyers, super tax specialists. They can do everything to get out of paying their fair share.”

Increasingly, those individuals are going to court when audited in order to withhold documents, with about 3,000 “complex” cases now ongoing, the minister said.

However, the fact that other jurisdictions have been quite successful in their pursuits of the rich suggests that  Lebouthillier's explanation holds only limited water.

And it appears that Canada prefers a less costly, gentler, more accommodating strategy: 

Settlements are much more common than criminal prosecutions, saving investigators time and money, said Kevin Comeau, author of a 2019 C.D. Howe report on money laundering.

“The problem with that is that you don’t have on the public record that these persons did not comply with the tax law. And therefore you don’t have that public shaming and you don’t have that warning to other tax cheats out there,” he said.

But the problem will not go away, and needs to be addressed as quickly and as tenaciously as possible:

… critics say the vast troves of wealth that remain untouchable to government authorities reveal the need to tighten tax rules as well as hunt down cheats.

“In former times we didn’t see tax avoidance as a crime,“ said Brigitte Unger, professor of economics at Utrecht University whose book, ”Combating Fiscal Fraud and Empowering Regulators,“ was published in March.

“But now we see the public sector needs money, and this is effectively stealing money from public coffers, and should be treated as such.” 

As I said at the start of this post, I, for one, will not be holding my breath awaiting remediation from a government that is far, far too cozy with the moneyed class. 

School Daze

To really understand the mindset of educational institutions today, you have to appreciate one fact: despite nonstop rhetoric to the contrary, they are inherently conservative and risk-averse. Some might even call them reactionary.

While I will get to the main basis for my post in a moment, a personal anecdote perhaps helps to illustrate this pernicious reality. Yesterday, I was talking to a neighbour across the street who retired from high-school teaching last November. A graduation ceremony was recently held in the school's parking lot for teachers, students and their parents, but she was told by a superintendent not to attend, as she is no longer a staff member. The administrator feared that "some parents might complain."

While it has been true for some years that administrators and boards have become hypersensitive to public opinion, the trend has accelerated, in my view, because teachers who advance beyond the classroom today tend to be what a friend calls "the resume-polishers," desperate to prove that they are "team players" as they climb the career ladder.

Simply put, their personal ambitions trump educational principles. They follow orders without question, and do everything in their power to avoid 'dirt' in their package.

And that is not good for society.

Shree Paradkar illustrates this fact as she writes about the craven treatment of Javier Davila by the Toronto District School Board:

Last month, after the equity educator was repeatedly attacked by a Toronto Sun columnist, and a pro-Israel advocacy group called for him to be fired, the Toronto District School Board placed him under investigation and an indefinite suspension. The action ignited an uproar from teachers, principals and other staff who framed it as an “all lives matter” approach by the board that has put a question mark on its stated commitment to anti-oppression.

Davila declined to comment to the Star. But in a Medium blog where he describes his work, he said he has received hundreds of emails over the years from teachers, principals and even directors of other school boards who asked permission to use his resources.

An educator for 16 years, Davila's job in part consists of sharing resources on matters including anti-colonialism, anti-racism and police abolition.

In recent months, he has sent bulletins on topics such as the Land Back movement, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and responses to the murder of Asian sex workers in Atlanta.

The board was so enthusiastic about his work that it directed people to his website if they weekly communications from him.

All that enthusiasm suddenly evaporated after the latest violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

Davila shared two resources for teachers, one on May 16, the other on May 19.

Within days, a Toronto Sun columnist wrote not one or two but three pugilistic columns castigating Davila for being anti-Israeli.

Indeed, much of the Jewish community is in an uproar. B'nai Brith is calling both for a full apology from the board and the termination of Davila, adding that "... no one who distributes anti-Semitic propaganda like this should work for a school board in Canada.” 

All of which has board officials quaking in their collective boots.

“During this time, the staff member will be on home assignment. We are also in the process of removing this staff member’s current and previous group mailings/newsletters from TDSB email inboxes,” a spokesperson told media.

“Home assignment” means being put on ice, cut off from his workplace and not allowed to contact his colleagues.

The board also took down the page on its website that directed educators to Davila’s newsletter.

So how are people reacting to this?

Retired TDSB educator Tim McCaskell says where formerly this might have earned a low-key talking to,

"... the board is so risk-averse now it doesn’t take much to send it into a tailspin,” he said.

 The Israeli lobby’s position was that criticizing Israel could foster anti-Semitism. Today it posits that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitism. “The conceptual framework has shifted,” he said. “Could you imagine organizing a conference on human rights in Palestine?”

Others are rallying in support of Davila:

There are no instances of anti-Semitic content within the resources,” reads a petition titled “Oppression and Censorship have no place in our schools.” It is signed by nearly 5,000 people and includes the support of unions such as CUPE and CUPW.

A group of more than 80 teachers calling themselves “concerned educators” and identified only by their initials and the name of their schools told the school board and trustees they were perturbed by the term “anti-Israel racism,” saying it would have the same effect of shutting down conversations on anti-oppression as would labelling critiques of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people as “anti-Canadian.”

Jewish educators, parents and community members began another petition in support of Davila. “The resources that Mr. Davila shared were in no way anti-Semitic, and we’re concerned that this investigation will put a chill on TDSB staff who may fear discussing this issue or possibly other issues that are perceived as controversial,” they wrote. “As Jewish parents, we refuse the notion that Palestinian human rights are somehow oppositional to our own — in fact, the opposite is true.”

Meanwhile, the board is engaged in a surveillance protocol that would do justice to a police state.

… staff said their social media accounts were being monitored and “likes” on pro-Palestinian material meant a private conversation with immediate superiors.

“We are increasingly disturbed by the policing, criticism and silencing that some of us are experiencing when we name and create space to discuss such human rights violations,” a group of about 50 TDSB principals told the board in an open letter they signed as “anonymous for fear of reprisals.”

A school principal who was one of the letter writers confirmed to the Star they were given a talking-to by a senior board official as well as a trustee of a ward that is neither from where the principal works nor lives.

All of this leaves me angry and disgusted, but not surprised, for the reason I cited at the beginning of this post. But the final word goes to an anonymous TDSB staffer:

“People are nervous,” said the TDSB staffer. “For a lot of educators looking at Javier, we’re thinking if this is a white-passing dude who is being targeted this way, imagine if it was us.

“All of us are very afraid.”