Dear Uncle Bruce
Dear Uncle Bruce –
What’s the matter with Canadians anyway? Just a couple of months ago David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Pamela Anderson, Tegan and Sara, Judy Rebick and hundreds of other leading thinkers and organizations like Idle No More, CUPE and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, launched their Leap Manifesto. Timed to inform and impact our federal election campaigns, this far seeing manifesto challenged every one of us to do our bit to fundamentally transform the way we live along more egalitarian and compassionate lines. As they say in the document’s brilliantly prescient preamble:
“We could live in a country powered entirely by truly just renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors. Many more people could have higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.”
It sounds like Heaven on Earth to me. And now here we are with less than two weeks to go until Election Day and nobody – but nobody – is talking about the Leap initiative at all and at their website a measly 26,000 Canadians have signed on as supporters. Last Saturday that brave and tireless David Suzuki sent out one more of his heartfelt Tweets to his many followers: “It’s time we talked about a future when we can live with less and be happier.”
Why aren’t we listening to this wise elder who knows so much about how the world works? What’s the matter with people? Don’t they care? - Sincerely, Daring to Imagine a Better World
Dear Daring to Imagine a Better World –
Ah, I take my hat off to you. It can’t be easy navigating your way through life while carrying such a monstrous load of credulity and fairy dust. This particular platform for sweeping economic and social reform reminds me a little of that mythical Chinese village I used to hear about where everybody earns their living by taking in their neighbour’s laundry.
I might start to listen to David Suzuki when David Suzuki starts to listen to David Suzuki. I’ll know he means what he says when he offers up one or two of his three British Columbia homes valued at well over ten million dollars for use as a recycling depot . . . or when he donates his extensive Nelson Island property holdings (co-owned by an evil oil company, by the way) to the Greater Nelson Needle Exchange and Methadone Clinic . . . or when he stops jetting to far flung sites to lecture the world about the dangers of burning fossil fuels.
Pamela Anderson on the other hand – her I’d listen to any time she wants to drop over to my house with a well-thumbed copy of the Leap Manifesto and a bottle of chardonnay. – UB