4 ~ Wednesday, July 24, 1991 - North Shore News

Canadian or
Yankee? that
is the question

I DON’T buy inte the grading system that places Japan as
the number one country, with Canada a mere second. As
anybody who has visited Japan will tell you, things are

very, very crowded over there.

No matter where the yen stands
in relation to the Canadian dollar,
and no matter how wonderful the
buying power of the individual
consumer, having the vast bulk of
the second-largest country in the
world around you has to be far
more enjoyable — as a life expe-
rience — than being squeezed on
every side.

I don’t feel ‘‘superior’’ to the
Japanese. | am just absolutely
certain that I am having a superi-
or experience of life.

We are all prisoners of our
societies. But how could the expe-
rience of being in a smaller cage
possibly be better than the experi-
ence of a bigger cage?

A Japanese might answer that a
small, magnificent cage is better
than a huge, grubby one.

A product of my soil, however
cranky at its authoritarian struc-
ture I may be, I would have to
reply:

If Canada is somchow able to
preserve its cultural diversity, its
health care system, its sovereignty
and its generally liberal political
traditions, while at the same time
coming to terms with native rights
and salvaging its ecosystem, it will
look better and better as the years
pass.

My 12-year-old son, Will, often
says to me: ‘‘Let’s move to L.A.,
Dad, or at least Hawaii.’’

My wife mutters about it too.
But then, her own mother was an
American who married a Cana-
dian. How loyal, and to whom,
can she be? Damn Yankee half-
breed!

Up until just a week ago, my
wife thought she had a right to
dual citizenship.

She applied to be an American
citizen, not particularly because
she was eager to move south of
the border, but because we are
both so outraged with the taxation
system in Canada.

Well, it’s not just that.

The more I know about the way
our parliamentary democracy
works, the less I admire it. It is all
very well to cite the British system
with its traditional brakes on
overweening personal ambition as
the wonderful model upon which
our system is based, but the truth
is that Canada’s political system is
a hybrid, uniquely corrupted.

Nothing quite like it exists any-
where in the world. Under the
guise of a liberal democracy, we
allow our prime minister to
assume nearly dictatorial powers
for a four-year quasi-Reich.

Let us not be fooled by the
need for the prime minister to
control his cabinet and caucus in
order to retain power. All we are
talking about, at best, is oligar-
chica! totalitarianism — rule by an
elite group, as opposed to just one
man.

Without the built-in check that

Bob |
Hunter |

STRICTLY PERSONAL

allowed the United Kingdom's
Tories (whether wisely or not) to
remove Maggie Thatcher, the Ca-
nadian system leaves our prime
minister as the most entrenched
national leader in any of the
Western industrial countries, ex-
cept France's Francois Mitterand.

Mitterand can go seven years
without review, and even then, it
is merely a review by his cronies.

Mulroney must still face the
electorate after four years. That is
about the only good thing I have
to say about the system that sup-
ports him in office.

He has exploited a niche that
gives him: awesome centralized
powers, the same niche exploited
by Trudeau before him.

As it turns out, my wife's bid to
go through U.S. Immigration
channels to acquire official dual
American-Canadian citizenship
failed. It was a technicality: the
rules were changed the year after
she was born, so her younger
sisters can apply, but she and her
older sister can’t.

Our son shrugged and said the
Canadian thing: ‘‘Oh, well.””

My wife, being part Yank, said:
“That’s unfair.”

I said the other true Canuck
thing: ‘‘Think you're gonna do
anything about it?’’

And that was the end of the
discussion.

E didn’t feel bad at all, actuatly.

I hadn’t really wanted to move
to the ’States anyway.

Truth to tell, I didn’t even want
the option. If you have an option
you might sooner or jater have to
make a decision.

Of course, we are always free to
try to move to the ’States, dual-
citizenship or not.

Here, I discovered, is a good
way to figure out the value of
your Canadianness.

Forget whining about Quebec.
Think about what it would mean
to become an American.

More on this to come.

Coast Guard moves to WV

THE CANADIAN Coast Guard
has moved into a new facility on
the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans’ site at 4160 Marine Dr. in
West Vancouver.

The coast guard lost its Kit-
silano base in a July 7 fire.

Coast guard spokesman Rod
Nelson said the coast guard has
been offered use of the West

Vancouver facility for up to two
years. He added that he does not
know where the coast guard will
set up a permanent location.

Two coast guard vessels, the
Osprey, a 12.4-metre rescue boat,
and the Swift, an cight-metre
vessel, will tie up at the West
Vancouver site.

A third vessel, the Teal, was
lost in the fire.

mn

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