Well said

By all means, today should be a day to celebrate Canada. But James Travers offers a needed reminder that pride in our country should also involve working to improve it, rather than resting on our laurels:

Still, there is a real and pressing danger. We are at risk of impaling ourselves on our own indifference.

For decades now the going has been so good and easy that Canadians are forgetting that citizenship is a participatory sport. Together we are ignoring that nations built brick-by-brick fall piece-by-piece.

Strange and counter-intuitive as it seems, that deconstruction is most difficult to spot here in the capital. Tens of thousands will crowd to Parliament Hill on Canada Day without realizing that the towering Gothic symbols of our political freedoms are figuratively, as well as literally, crumbling.

What began with Pierre Trudeau’s steady erosion of accountability has become under Stephen Harper a handful of democratic dust. Autocracy best describes the between-elections reality of a prime minister, surrounded by fawning whisperers, ruling behind closed doors.

No party or leader bears the full burden of blame. All since Trudeau share responsibility for the result. Confused by Big Man presidential politics and understandably disappointed in the poisonous results, voters stay away from federal elections in droves.

A legacy that shabby would be a shame if that’s left by a generation bequeathed so much. Sadly, we are also abandoning our garbage. For our own comfort and convenience we are dumping on the future fiscal, social and environmental deficits.
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Today is the moment to wallow in the joy and privilege of being Canadian. It’s also a day to remember that those pleasures come wrapped in duties.

To abandon those responsibilities is to foolishly assume that there will be as much to swell the hearts of our children and their children.