After an extended absence I am now writing from my hometown of Moncton, New Brunswick, where Iíve laid down my laptop for a couple of months. Little has changed here since I left last year ñ Moncton is still a small, bilingual, blue-collar town with more funky cafes and bohemian artists than a city its size would normally merit. While this maritime town is no hotbed of political activity, people here know when theyíre being screwed ñ and theyíre being screwed.
Yesterday morning, as I absorbed an early morning caffeine fix, I overhead a conversation between two women sitting at an adjacent table in my usual Main Street cafÈ. The local news ragís headlines had them particularly inflamed, and rightfully so.
ìThey keep on squeezing us more and more,î one complained, referring to an article on how Paul Martinís recent federal budget continues the Canadian trend ñ some may call it an elite sport ñ of jacking up personal income tax while cutting corporate taxes and doling out wads in corporate welfare.
ìYeahÖ first they shrink our paycheques, and now theyíre asking us to pay even more. How are we supposed to live like this?î Power, of the electrical sort, is what sheís being milked for, along with the rest of the province who must ensure a ten percent rate hike at the hands of NB Power, the biggest jump in 15 years.
Meanwhile, teachers in the province, some of the lowest paid in the country, are prepared to strike, and the Conservative provincial government doesnít seem to care. Next door in Quebec, over 200,000 university and college students were on strike and on the streets yesterday, protesting a recent $103 million in cuts from provincial bursary programmes.
All that being said, what do I conclude? Canada is screwed up. Having been abroad so long, focusing on problems in the ìdeveloping worldî, I seem to have forgotten how arcane my own society can be, and the reality has smacked me in the face fast and hard. Not that the ills of Canadian society can be easily compared with the hardships of abject poverty in Armenia, or the brutality of military occupation in Palestine. But as Canukistanis we have to acknowledge our own problems, and, as the students in Quebec are demonstrating (no pun intended), do something about them. Besides, so many struggles across the world are interconnected, their roots tracing back to the same arrogant actors, imperialist policies, and that wretched worldview I fondly refer to as market fundamentalism.
Thereís a lot of work to be done at home… and itís time to get back to it.