I would imagine that from reading this series it could be assumed that I must be some miserable ungrateful wretch. Well...not exactly. I have said before and I am saying it again. I like living in Canada. This country is better than a lot of the current global options. I am not going to say it's the best country in the world. That is a very subjective assessment, particularly popular among those who have never gone outside of this country. It is also more likely to be said by the comfortably housed and incomed. The growing population of poor and low-income Canadians might have a rather different perspective to offer. And those of us who were born here and have felt stranded in lives of poverty and limited opportunity (there are more Canadians of this stripe than one would like to assume) are more likely to feel betrayed by Canada.
Canada is notorious for not loving its own people. This country bends over backwards to cater to immigrants, but for those of us who were born here? And no, I am neither xenophobic nor anti-immigrant and the rest of you please don't bore me with your go-get-a-job bullshit. I have worked bloody hard all my life and now I am pulling twelve glorious bucks an hour less than five years from retirement. I do feel grateful for living in BC Housing, but my gratitude goes to God. Canada, under Paul Martin and Jean Chretien, dismantled our national housing program. Had something been available sooner, when I was needing it, I need never have suffered from homelessness. Had this country done more to invest in a secure social safety net, I need never have experienced such grinding poverty as to have to subsist on weeds picked in the back yard of the dilapidated farmhouse I was renting. Had this country done more to invest in education I would have been able to make it all the way through university and a better paying job. Had this country done more to invest in employment I (and many others) need never have languished in the humiliation of being stranded for all of my working life in low wage employment. Had counselling supports and intervention been available to me when I was needing them at the tender age of eighteen, kicked out of both my parents' homes because my father hated everything about me and my mother was trying to escape from her violent alcoholic boyfriend I would not have wasted so many years of my youth floundering and struggling to survive. Had there been mental health supports available in the Seventies, perhaps my childhood onset PTSD might have been caught and treated with supports in place to help me get into university or vocational training and land decent employment.
Canada does sweet fuck all for it's most vulnerable, the working poor, those struggling with undiagnosed psychiatric disorders, those who qualify neither for welfare nor disability but still need extra support. I couldn't even get help for much needed dental care and had to suffer years of near crippling toothaches since my low wage employment didn't cover dental treatment and neither did, nor does, our public health care system.
My life, the quality of my life are much better now, but only because of certain too little too late interventions. If this country really cared a rat's ass about its own people, these supports would have been there for me, and for many others, years ago.
I might stop voting. I really do not feel like part of this country. I have no reason to. This doesn't mean that I'm not grateful for what I have. I am very grateful. To God. I have all that I need now. And I enjoy my life. I simply don't care sweet fuck about being Canadian.
As this country has treated me like garbage I owe Canada nothing in return.
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