Where were we?

"Canada's back -- not because of new rhetoric or electoral promises, but because we are rebuilding our capabilities"

Stephen Harper before the Council on Foreign Affairs this week

Am I the only one wondering just where exactly Stephen Harper thinks we were? Apparently, Canada’s been sitting on the sidelines, contributing nothing, rendered obscure and irrelevant lo these many years waiting for the Canadian Moses, Stephen Harper to lead us out of the wilderness. That’s the message that Stephen Harper takes abroad. That’s the impression that is left on the minds of foreign leaders, businessmen, dignitaries, and international media. That’s the message that those same people take back to their own countries, if they are foolish enough to believe it.

The truth of the matter is that Canada was never gone. Throughout the past 20 years, and indeed since 1867, Canada’s contributions to the world, in all sorts of fields, have been nothing short of amazing when one considers our size and relative youth. For anyone to deny this simply makes no sense. For our Prime Minister to say that we’ve been absent from the world stage, or even worse that we’ve neglected to carry our weight on a global scale is staggering, and offensive. The fact that he takes this message around the world is absolutely disgusting.

We were never gone. I was going to put together a brief list of Canadian accomplishments over the past 20 years, but then I remembered that there’s no such thing as a brief list of Canadian accomplishments. The truth is this: Canada takes a back seat to no one. Never has, never will. In war and in peace, Canada has always been on the side of good, and has always been on the front lines. Not a week goes by, that we don’t read about Canadian research that is having a tremendous global impact, whether in medicine, electronics, the environment, you name it.

We continue to be a shining example to other nations, many of them new democracies. We aren’t perfect, not by a mile, but we constantly try to improve as a nation, as a place for people to live. We settle our disputes peacefully and according to the rule of law. That’s why people are desperate to move here. If Canada was somehow missing, as Stephen Harper likes to tell people, well the message never got to the tens of thousands of new Canadians that have come to Canada in the last decade alone.

On the international stage, we have done what we have always done: tried to lead by example, and to bring opposing sides together peacefully. Our soldiers have been around the world helping to keep the peace, oftentimes trying to invent it. While we haven’t always succeeded, there can be no question that Canada has always offered whatever it could, wherever it was needed.

This is not meant to be an exercise in patriotic chest thumping. Rather, it’s an expression of shock and disgust at our Prime Minister, the man who is supposed to represent us. His comments this week about Canada being ‘back’ were lies plain and simple, told to inflate his own reputation, but told at the expense of the country’s he’s supposed to lead. I’m used to politicians telling lies to suit their narrative, but to do so at the expense of Canada’s reputation is reprehensible. For those lies to be told by our Prime Minister, at an international forum no less is beyond the pale. And the worst part is that he speaks not as Stephen Harper, politician, but as Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. He represents us on the international stage, and his words are supposed to represent us as well.

Allow me to say this: Stephen Harper does not represent me, and I am absolutely disgusted at his cheap lies. Canada is not back. Canada was never gone.