Shawnigan - Nov. 11, 2014, Remembrance Day - a time to ponder what all these soldiers, our brothers and sisters fought and gave up their lives for and believed in.
We must remember also what the thousands of people from all countries and walks of life died for during our struggle for confederation.These people died for a belief, a desire to be free of tyranny and to live in a country free of dictators and ruled in a democratic manner. They all fought and died for those beliefs.During our involvement in two world wars our Canadians picked up the gauntlet and fought and died to preserve the values we hold so dear, and to preserve the values of our new country.I shudder today to see what we have become. Our democratic system is in shambles, manipulated into a dictatorship driven by big business and greed. News media publish sensationalized stories based on governmental agendas and refuse to follow stories of government misconducts.We elect and pay good money for members of parliament who are to represent our regional needs, express in parliament what we need in our areas, what is important to us. Once these elected representatives reach Ottawa a party leader (prime minister) muscles these representatives to his agenda and they lose the principle of their election.Once well-debated government decisions are now done in secret and only theneeds of big business are recognized and considered by one man running our government. This is not democracy! Our privacy and security from our own governmental agencies is no more. Our prime minister writes new laws to circumvent Supreme Court decisions that do not coincide with his agendas. He labels groups speaking out for us on important issues groups of interest not working in the best interests of our country (in his opinion). In some cases sends the tax department after these groups and threatens their position as a non-profit organizations. Truly we have become the enemy!Recently a tragic killing of a soldier at our war memorial was sensationalized to promote an agenda of Mr. Harper to throw millions of dollars of our tax money into a war promoted by the Americans. We are not looking after our Afghanistan war veterans and giving them the care they need, so why are we sending more of our troops to war before looking after these men and women first?Canada has always been a peacemaker and we are sending care supplies to wartorn areas; if we cannot look after those who were prepared to die to preserve our way of life then why send more and involve our men and women only to shame ourselves when they come home needing our support?Our country is naked now because of our actions of allowing our government to become a dictatorship. The constant day-to-day cancellations of environmental laws, protection laws for our rivers and lakes and coastlines is disgraceful. Ourfishing industries have been threatened by scienceproven threats but all government scientists and their records are gone now by order of our dictator; trade agreements done in secret waving all our judicial systems and environmental safeguards are signed and committed to for 30 years. Our personal safety and protection is gone in the militarization of our police and deterioration of our courts.It is now time for us to remember that we as Canadians have a history of fighting for our values and freedoms. It is time to stop being complacent and time to stand up and make our politicians hear us. Bring back our democracy; push our elected members of parliament, whether federal of provincial, to stand up for us and the reasons we elected them, not capitulate to a party leader.Canada is our land, our home and we need once again to fight for it.Larry Woodruff Shawnigan