Oh Canada!

As I head back toward the Canadian Border after a 6-month snowbird absence I ruminate about the country of my birth. It may be one of the best places on earth to live but no one would attempt to claim that it is perfect and under the Harper Government that just got kicked from office it took on an alarmingly ill-natured menacing tone. Whether or not the new Trudeau Government is up to the job or just fronted by a pretty face is yet to be seen.

Events have shown that home-grown terrorist incidents can happen anywhere and pointing the blame at foreign organizations is beside the point. What's important is how we treat people and making sure our society does not alienate and marginalize its citizens.

Nowhere is this sense of dissatisfaction more acutely felt than in our Native Communities. Beset by poor crowded housing, lack of sanitation and clean drinking water; most reserves are depressing places to visit, who would want to live there? Think of places such as Hobema, the murder capital of Canada. Or Attawapiskat, in the news because eleven of its young people attempted suicide in one night. The sense of futility this speaks to is chilling. Our jails incarcerate a disproportionate number of our aboriginal population.

The greatness of any nation is demonstrated by the manner in which it treats its most vulnerable and weakest citizens. In this regard it is ironic that our soldiers should become the subject of discussion—aren't they the toughest? Well all of us are mortal and the best of us only human. Whether or not we should be sending our troops to places such as Afghanistan and Iraq is topic for another discussion but having done so we have a moral responsibility to look after them when they return. My pacifist nature would question the efficacy of training young men to kill and elite forces to perform inhuman acts but having done so we have an obligation to rehabilitate the men and woman we have so trained when they return from the field of battle.

Incidents on military bases grab headlines. It's a sobering fact that today more soldiers die by their own hands than due to enemy fire and these statistics fail to grab the news. Call it shell shock, battle fatigue or the current catch phrase Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the fact remains that not all injuries are physical. When politicians and generals wage war they seldom budget for the costs of taking care of veterans with a further 60-year life expectancy. A military cash strapped to supply adequate weaponry and transports tends to neglect veterans affairs and Canada's recently deposed Minister of Veterans affairs was worse than an embarrassment. With seventeen thousand files to be administered by less than twenty the agency is swamped. Making an amputee prove his disability yearly speaks to a ponderous bureaucracy.

Soldiers are taught to tough it out and elite soldiers such as Navy Seals are conditioned to continue fighting even while their bodies are dying. But we ignore at our peril the fact that even the toughest soldier has his breaking point. And just as lost limbs cannot grow back some mental and spiritual injuries are beyond recovery.