Note: This speech is the work of WO2 Peter Ksiazek. If you would like to reprint it please contact the Author.
Having reserched Canada's past in my high school career, and in the past few months, I have come to the conclusion that Canada's future as a whole is limited unless we can make a few changes. The constant desire for Quebec to seperate along with other factors, including the evergrowing influence of American culture will erode at the will and desire for Canadians to remain together. This has been evidenced by the constant demand for more control over health care, education, immigration and telecommunication by the provinces.
After viewing the resent Avro-Arrow Mini-series on CBC and listening to the various commentaries, one historian's comments caught me as being extremly significant. "Ever since the Arrow Affair we have become more and more like a colony of the U.S." This statement sums of the entire "Canadian Struggle" the struggle that will determine the future of this country. We spent millions of dollars, and also many lives during the two World Wars in order to gain independance from England, and then we threw it all away by canceling a program that had the potential to unite the entire country and spread Canadian injunity and engineering to the rest of the world. Some might think that this has no significance for our future, but our past dictates who we are, and who we are dictates the future.
Unless we can unite all the people in this country for a common good, and try to create a media system that is uniquely Canadian, Canada will split apart piece by piece. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, created for this purpose has recently been under the budget cutting axe, as are all provincial and federal programs. Yet large sums of monet can be spent on"Unity Promotions", sending Flags to every family in Canada. Do not get me wrong, I completly agree with patriatism, but this money could have been spent much more effectivly by the CBC and other media companies to stop the proliferation of the United States of America's media companies. Gabriel Morand stated that "Whoever controls the metaphors of society controls that society." and thereby that society's future. "Whoever controls the present controls the past, whoever controls the past controls the future", George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both of these passages were made in context to the communist revolutions and uprisings at the time of their lives. However, they can be applied to our present situation. Television has become the most important media source, a close secound is the internet. Control of these mediums is then of paramount importance. If the United States continues to control what we see, we will become more and more like them, and lose our uniqueness.
The Honourable Sheila Copp's program for Unity was focused on Patriatism. By giving out flags she believed that we would simply flock to the Maple Leaf, however, a strong patriatism requires a sense of pride or accomplishment. In the last ten years their has been little for Canadians to feel pride in, our debt has resin, our income has fallen, many Canadian companies have gone bankrupt while huge multi-national banks have posted record profits, most of these companies are located in the United States.
The future is dependant on the present anything we do now will affect the eventual outcome of ourselves and our country. Canada could have an unlimited future, as an industrial country with the most technologically advanced industry, and a high standard of living. In order for use to realize such a future certain conditions must be met. A large number of these are being met today. However, such setbacks like the Arrow Affair, American small dish television, and other industrial and cultural setbacks will slow Canada's growth to a world economic powerhouse, or stop it altogether.
The solutions to these problems will not be easy, as the resent and ongoing Quebec question has shown. Canada has the economic potential of a man, but the industrial size of a boy. We have all the natural and human resources to become a great economic power. The efficient uses of these resources is what is required for us to become great. The efficient use of resources requires us to be united as a people. We must be Canadian first, then Ukranian, or Japanese, of Albertan, or Quebecois. The unity rally held in Montreal, Quebec prior to the last Quebec referendum is a perfect example of this feeling. People from all over the country went to Montreal to show all Quebecers that Canada includes the french language and culture.
Canada as a country is at a crossroads much as the Cuban Missile Crisis was a pivotal point in the Cold War, so will be the next ten years for Canada. These are the years that will determine wheather we will grow to an economic powerhouse, or continue our present situation as a relativly small economic country compared to our neighbors to the south. The future will be limited unless we can create a sense of pride in our country and what it stands for.
One thing that I found surprising was the fact that very few people know that our country's motto is:"Ad Mari Usque Ad Mari""From Sea to Shining Sea" If we do not know about our country, how can we expect to improve it?