John McCain is a United States senator who has run for president twice and lost twice. When he started his first presidential quest in September of 1999, he said something that has always stuck with me. He said, “America doesn’t owe me anything.”
It was his way of saying that he was dedicated to the idea of serving his country without expecting anything in return.
I’m thinking about those words again these days. Not as an American, of course, but as a Canadian. Is it true that, “Canada doesn’t owe me anything?”
Canada is a concept. Our planet has been divided by human beings into things we call countries. Canada is inanimate. It can no more owe me something than a mountain can owe me something or a doorknob can owe me something. What we really mean when we ask the question is, “Does the government of Canada owe me anything?”
Apparently it does. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says so.
The Charter says that as a Canadian I have fundamental freedoms. It says I have the freedom of conscience and the freedom of peaceful assembly, among others.
It says I have democratic freedoms, like the right to vote.
It says I have mobility rights; I can leave the country and can come back any time, and I can live and work anywhere I like.
And I also have the right to life, liberty, and security of the person.
These are all fine words. But to have real meaning, Canada owes it to me to see that I can exercise these freedoms. Every one of them.
Imagine the outrage if you were told you couldn’t travel to a foreign land and then come home.
Or if you were told you couldn’t vote, or you couldn’t go to your church, synagogue, temple, or mosque this week.
No one would stand for it.
But several times this year, Canadians in Toronto have been denied their right to peaceful assembly, and their right to life, liberty, and security.
A woman was shot and killed as she left a bowling alley with her family.
A woman was shot and killed while she was sitting with friends inside a car.
A man was shot and killed downtown, just walking along the street, after a night with friends.
A man was shot in the back and killed as he walked to his car.
The episodes happen so frequently they begin to blur in our minds. And we move on.
But sometimes it’s harder to move on.
When 10 people are killed by the driver of a van on Yonge St. in North York, and when a man kills two people with a gun on the Danforth, we are paralyzed for a time. These are moments that crystallize just how fragile life really is. And we want our government to live up to its most basic promise — to be the guarantor of life, liberty, and security.
We all understand that government cannot guard us from every peril. Some things in life are truly freak accidents, and though they may be tragic, they are probably unavoidable.
But the murder of innocent people is not unavoidable. It is intolerable. If we ever decide that it is tolerable, that it’s simply part of life in a big city and there’s not really much anyone can do about it, then we will have surrendered our civility.
Canada is all of us. I am Canada. And you are Canada. We live together and abide by rules of behaviour that give each of us a fair chance to lead a good life. When we get the feeling that basic agreement is being violated, we are right to demand that our representatives fix it.
That’s what Canada owes us.
Mark Bulgutch is the former senior executive producer of CBC News. He teaches journalism at Ryerson university and is the author of That’s Why I’m a Journalist.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/07/29/what-are-we-owed-life-liberty-and-security.html
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