It is an old-fashioned view of leadership, but it is still valid. You have to have vision. Without it, where are you going? A leader understands people and shares with them views of what is to come. A leader understands detail and shares the steps to the future. A leader also shares the pain and the glory of this future.
In recent years, Canada has been bereft of leadership. We have been substituting political populism for vision. Conservatives have been relying on the political ranting of the right. Liberals have been caught in the trap of trying to win over soft conservatives with right-wing solutions. The new democrats have been trying to reinvent a modern socialism. The greens have made the mistake of putting environmentalism ahead of a political future. Canada’s collective strength has been left in the grasping hands of the provinces.
But the question is what do Canadians want their country to be in the near future, maybe 20 to 30 years from now. I think the first thing they want to be is masters in their own house. We must shake the vestiges of colonialism that have smothered our ability to be the people we want to be and the people we believe ourselves to be.
We cannot be the true partners to our friends to the south if we persist in being the junior member of the relationship. We cannot work on equal footing with the European Union if we wear the trappings of a vassal of an out-dated British empire. We must show a strong face to our trading partners in Asia.
Canada cannot continue as a cauldron half full of the peoples it needs to build and defend our changing country. We need to further accelerate the welcoming of people from the crowded nations of the world and offer them a new future as Canadians. Our land can offer millions more of us a wonderful life. Our aboriginal peoples must choose between a full life as Canadians or an existence in isolation from the main stream. We know that a foot on each of two paths does not lead us anywhere.
We must address our political structures and rebalance the provinces from the colonial past. Multiple languages were never the problem but tribalism is a threat to our nation.
The rest of the world will only respect our country if we respect ourselves. We need to build our future with pride.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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