I refuse to celebrate Canada Day (July 1st)–as a matter of principle. While I recognize Canada as one of the better countries to live in, this relative evaluation doesn’t justify the gross injustices caused by the policies of our three levels of government.
Two years ago I began experiencing severe chronic hip pain due to osteo-arthritis, but the lineup for hip surgery was two years in Calgary–thanks to Canada’s socialist health-care system. When the pain became unbearable, and my other hip began deteriorating, I went out of province to have the surgery at great expense and inconvenience. In the meantime I came across a technique offered in the private sector that not only rehabilitated my other hip, but could have prevented my surgery had my government-paid doctors known about it. But there is no incentive under socialism for the doctors to keep abreast of new developments.
Another nightmare was trying to find a decent education for our kids in our dumbed-down education system. Not only were they severely bored and not acquiring adequate knowledge and thinking skills, they were getting brainwashed with socialism, moral relativism, environmentalism and multiculturalism. After a few school switches, I decided to park my career and home-school for a few years. In addition to the loss of income for those years, we are now paying over ten thousand after-tax dollars per child per year to private schools–yet still forced to fund public education.
Another nightmare was trying to start a small business in a nearby city. In addition to all the useless red tape, two malevolent municipal government employees tried to maliciously block us with made-up regulations. Although we eventually were proven to be in compliance with the real regulations, it ended up costing us many thousands of dollars and many wasted days.
The root cause of these and other assaults by governments on my well being and happiness is government interference in the free market. I’m sure many Canadians have experienced as bad or worse, but unlike most Canadians I was an outspoken critic of Canada’s socialist policies long before being hammered by them. I had made it my business to study history and philosophy, including politics, in order to understand the proper functions of government. I wrote extensively on the inherent destructiveness of socialist medicine, public education, government red tape, and other manifestations of collectivism and statism.
The many Canadians who passively accept such destructive policies deserve to be hammered by them, but I don’t. I will not celebrate Canada Day in 2006 or thereafter until our governments stop treating us like serfs and start protecting our individual rights–which is the only proper function of government.
