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Preston Manning was recently quoted in the Calgary Sun talking about the regional alienation problems that await whoever wins our current federal election. That’s putting it mildly, given the breadth of divisions we’re facing in Canada right now.

Philippe Fournier wrote in Macleans about the divide between urban and rural voters. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh spoke to the CBC about his goal to change Quebecers’ views about visible minorities, even as he was confronted in Montreal by a man who told him to cut off his turban. Andrew Leach wrote on Twitter about just how complicated and difficult the climate change issue is, particularly with the workers who still depend on resource development for their livelihoods. Tanya Talaga wrote for the Toronto Star that settler
Canadians should remember just what’s at stake for Indigenous people in this election.

The debate over energy development is one example. On the one hand are people, Indigenous and settler, who depend on hunting, fishing, farming or tourism, and who’ve been repeatedly harmed by everything from mercury dumping to oil spills. The literally toxic effects it’s had on their livelihoods have led them to oppose further oil and gas development. On the other hand, oil and gas employs thousands of people, as we continue to depend on it for everything from heating to transportation. Different peoples’ livelihoods are at stake, regardless of the options we pursue.

While visible minority people like Singh face harassment and racism for the ‘crime’ of wearing religious symbols or having dark skin, people born in Canada wonder how immigration affects the country’s shared values and histories. They feel that if they voice their concerns, they’ll be attacked as racists even if they’re only concerned about things like what our common languages should be.

As for the issues Indigenous people face, they’ve had to deal with everything from the impacts of residential schools to being over-targeted for child welfare to murder to the federal government constantly appealing the courts’ ordering it to compensate them for everything non-Indigenous society’s put them through over the years. Meanwhile, many settler Canadians might wonder what the implications are of recognizing Indigenous rights and the darker sides of Canadian history. Does it become wrong to feel anything positive about Canada or its history?

With all the challenges our next prime minister will have to face, I don’t envy whoever wins the election. These aren’t even the only issues Canada still has to deal with. Canada’s internal economy is still hampered by internal trade barriers; racist alt-right violence still threatens immigrants and visible minorities; the federal tax code is still a mess; income inequality is still a serious problem; our veterans are still mistreated; and there’s no end in sight to the deficits.

John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier are two of our greatest prime ministers. They faced huge challenges and accomplished great things. That said, if Macdonald or Laurier were alive today, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hesitated to take the job again.

   

Call people who were born here, whose families have been here for generations, as "settlers" and the conversation dies right there on the spot.

   

Stopped reading right there.


(Insert suggestion the OP should perform a rude biologically difficult activity here.)

   

I have to agree with you, because settler is being used in same derogatory fashion as 'Indian'.

It should be indigenous and non-indigenous if people really want to be politically correct.

   

Trying to touch your nose to your elbow in the presence of strangers?

   

Oh fuck, move to a small northern town and half your friends and relatives will think you're a "settler".
Kamloops, Kelowns, even Lethbridge FFS.
The Italian relatives thought my Dad was a "settler" when he moved all the way out to Burnaby in 1960. A Scottish aunt wrote my ex and told her she thought we were so brave to move here among the 'wild Indians' in Prince George.
In 30 years here only TWO of my circle of friends in the lower mainland have ever ventured up to visit, only ONE of my cousins.

   

So, are you saying the science of settlers is settled?

   

When you gotta drive 2 hours or more to a specialist or even to buy men's work boots or a franchised burger, even you feel like a goddam settler.
Or get hosed $75 a month for 6 Mb Internet with a 200GB cap...

   

Scheer and Trudeau aren’t that different. My life isn’t going to change very much either way. However, if Bernier had won the Tory leadership contest, we really would be facing a stark and divisive choice.

   

*cough*David Orchard*cough*

   

I guess with all the old divisions still racking the country we really didn't need any of the new divisions that Trudeau has carefully cultivated in order to hold power. Maybe it was an inner need for him, to out-do his own father in sowing as much discord as he possibly could. It's certainly not coincidental that a Trudeau has been at the helm when the worse moments in national unity have happened.

But that's the Laurentian Consensus for you. I doubt they'd notice it very much but outside of that Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal axis, which now includes Vancouver, dealing with the power-brokers of the Central Canadian machine is like dealing with the Borg from Star Trek. All the really need to complete that image to most of the rest of the country is to have their very own Locutus come forth and openly state "why do you resist us? we're only trying to improve your quality of life!", even though those "improvements" that have been forced on us since the days of Saint Pierre have been belied by actual history to be a myth, if not an outright crock of bullshit.

   

There was quite the discussion of a Wexit at work today. A lot of people are concerned about the prospect of an NDP/Liberal coalition here in Calgary.

   

I am not trying to down play this but the article focuses on race relations. What other Deep Divisions is the next PM facing?

   

What should the term for non-Native Canadians be, then? The term 'Canadian' doesn't necessarily work by itself, not when there are many Indigenous people who also consider themselves Canadians.

And 'settler', as I understand it, can refer to those whose families have been here for a long time, since our ancestors settled here. It doesn't diminish our right to live here or imply we should be shipped back to Europe, Asia or wherever.

Note that I don't wholly agree with advocates of the term 'settler' who say it shouldn't be extended to people of colour like blacks. How do you distinguish between those POC whose ancestors came over as slaves and those who came here of their own free will? The only way a guy like me could tell is to ask those black people personal questions that are none of my damn business. And what about people of mixed ancestry?



That's what comes with having only a 500 word limit. I write these things for my local paper, and the editors are pretty strict about those limits. I can't always touch on everything I'd like to.

If you click on Philippe Fournier's article above, you'll see an example of the division between urban and rural voters. Here's a piece by Martin Regg Cohn in the Toronto Star about the division between supporters of less and more resource development. And of course, there's also division between people who want more and less immigration.



Yeah, but where would a 'Wexit' get us? We'd be even less likely to get any pipelines built, and everything people were saying the ROC should do to 'get tough' with Quebec 20+ years ago-including us Albertans-would be applied just as easily too.



I swear by and at Pierre Trudeau in the same sentence. I've said it to some of the Franco-Quebecois I've met over the years, and I've said it to other Albertans-if I'd ever had the chance, I would have given Pierre a military salute with one hand in appreciation of all the things he did right, and a Salmon Arm salute with the other hand for all the things he fucked up.

The thing that really sets off a lot of people in Alberta is the goddamn condescension directed at us not just by the likes of Pierre Trudeau, but by some modern leftists and environmentalists who seem to portray us as either inbred hicks too stupid to know our cowboy hats from our six-shooters, or Captain Planet villains who wake up every morning twirling our Snidely Whiplash moustaches and then gather to plot about how we're going to rape the planet while eating puppies for breakfast.

Yes, you can criticize us for not saving our oil royalty money wisely-and Albertans like bootlegga and myself have done just that-, and I hate how some of us were insufferable assholes in the good times, but apparently all the money we pay into equalization and the money that workers who come from other parts of the country send back home don't count for anything. Not to mention that we've got forward-thinking companies that are actively trying to reduce their environmental impact, or that even somebody like Preston Manning is getting grief from the likes of Ezra Levant over his concerns about oil and gas development.

I hear what the people concerned about spills and the impact on hunting or fishing say, but then I hear what the people who make their livings off the oilsands are saying too. It's one of the things I'm racking my brains over trying to figure out a solution to...

...but I hate myself for not being able to.

   

I learned how to do divisions in school, including long divisions, but I don't remember deep divisions.

I wonder what the remainder will be when the next PM calculates this division... or does he/she have to calculate fractions?

   

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