Assertive Canadians? Who knew?
I’ve never been overly political.
And I’ve never posted someone else’s video here. (Or mine for that matter, but that’s not surprising seeng as though I’ve never made one.) I don’t know who is responsible for this video. Whoever it is, thank you.
And I usually try to be funny here. Once in a while I’m even successful at that. Somewhat. Well, maybe a little. But this definitely isn’t funny. It’s serious.
However, I thought this was worth posting for the few Canadians who drop by here.
Categorised as: Canada
Well you and I have chatted about this over at Slings and Arrows. It’s compelling stuff. I’m impressed that you ran it. And I have to laugh (not in a funny ha-ha way) because when the associated Facebook site first started it had about 1500 fans and reporters were sniggering that this was no way to have any grass roots impact. Well, now the site’s approaching 150,000 and and those reporters are laughing out of the other side of their faces. The video indicates there’ll be over 30 demonstrations across the country January 23rd. That’s a statement. Harper shouldn’t have taken Canadians for granted. Democracy means something to us. As John Lennon said “power to the people, right on”.
nonamedufus: To be honest, I didn’t think we Canadians had it in us. Oh, that Facebook group: I just checked, it’s now at 158,868 members and every time I refresh the screen it’s a few higher. John Lennon also sang, “You say you want a revolution.”
And the CBC is reporting that more than 100 professors have signed a letter condemning the shutting down of parliament. That story has more than 1,000 comments on the CBC site.
This thing seems to have legs.
If you can dispose of this guy, may I suggest you take on our president and commissar as well? Good luck with the “overthrow”.
RedRaider: If you compare your president to our prime minister, you have a truly great president. He’s not the god that many had painted him as before he took the oath of office, so naturally he is seen to have failed relative to the expectations. However, if the alternative is our current prime minister, you should definitely be thankful you have President Obama.
One thing that you have to understand is that in our parliamentary system the prime minister has much more power (in terms to the affairs of state of the country, obviously not in world affairs) than does your president. One of the powers that our prime minister has is the ability to shut down parliament when it is not going his way (He has to the Governor General to do shut down parliament, but because the Governor General is an appointed position, not an elected position, it is unlikely that she–it’s currently a she–would refuse that request. By the way, the Governor General is the representative of the monarch of England, who is the official head of state, but not the head of government, of Canada. The Governor General is appointed by the government of Canada.)
The Canadian constitution says that parliament can’t go more than a year without sitting, but apart from that the prime minister has the power to shut down parliament if it gets troublesome. That’s what our prime minister has done. Some democracy, eh?
Hey, how about you Canucks give George Bush a job? He ran out of things to destroy down here and Obama is carrying the tradition just fine.
I am reminded of a George Jonas poem that often makes me long to leave this nation of miserable fucks for some place more hopeful and clean.
A piece of that poem is here: http://multiculturalcanada.ca/cdm_item/mcc/11947/100/300
Thanks for the video. I plan to link to it on Uncommon Sense and Writes the Wrongs this evening. I have a lot of eh-types who visit regularly and have nothing better to do than stand up for their rights.
Doctor Faustroll: I’m sorry to say that George Bush would feel at home with our current government. More than feel at home, he would greatly appreciate how our current prime minister, Stephen Harper, is able to run roughshod over our democratic institutions. Harper finds parliament an inconvenient and has said very close to that in a television interview.
I have nothing to do with that video. I found it, thought it was incredible and important, so I posted it. Thanks for linking to it. Canada needs the support.
I’m curious how did the demonstrations turn out on january 23rd?
Shame it wasn’t reported in the Belgian press… but these days you can’t trust politicians nor the media…
Tom: How were the rallies? It depends on who you ask. I was at the Toronto rally. It completely filled and slightly overflowed Dundas Square in downtown Toronto. If you’re not familiar that won’t mean anything to you. I’m not good at estimating crowd sizes, but I’ve seen estimates of from 3,000 to 10,000. Reality is probably somewhere between those two numbers. The crowd made a good showing as it marched through some streets downtown.
The most frequent estimate I’ve seen for the rally on Parliament Hill is 3,500. A few dozen other cities around Canada held rallies none were as big as Toronto or Ottawa (not surprising because Toronto is by far Canada’s largest city and Ottawa is certainly not a puny city and it has the symbolism of being the nation’s capital) with numbers in most other cities ranging from a couple dozen to a few hundred.
The smallest rally I’ve heard of was an expat in Oman who posted photos of her holding protest signs there.
Thanks Joel! So glad there are still people that take action when needed.