Canada's #1! Canada's #1! As Long As You're A Hetero White Dude! As Long As You're A Hetero White Dude!

Alright, let's get down to it. While reading my morning news on the CBC I came across one of those "it's so fucking great to live here!" pieces that the news so often runs, designed to promote nationalism and ignorance simultaneously. Before I start the rant, why do I fucking read news off the CBC so often? It only pisses me off, then sends me scurrying across the web to other news sites to find objective views (often with more information) on the same stories. Why do I never learn? I guess I'd have less to write about? I don't know. Fuck it.

Anyways, there's tons of reasons why Canada is a kick ass place to live, and if you can't see that, well I guess you're as dumb as a couch! And for all you couch-dumb cretins out there, someone's compiled a survey to help you out! Not that Canada's actual place on the survey is mentioned, nor where one can view the whole survey, but who cares, right? I mean, nearly four out of five Canadians are satisfied with their lives! Nearly four out of five! What the fuck does that mean? And why haven't I met any of these people? They must live in the nice houses on the other side of town. What an abstract way to define something so very complex. It's hard for me to imagine the average Canadian woman (whomever that is) saying she's "satisfied" with her life. What with being a member of an oppressed class, oftentimes within an already oppressed class, while the resources available to her AS an oppressed class are being slowly (or not so slowly) taken away.

The "average" Canadian households' income is $27,015 as of 2008! That's in US dollars, too! Whoopee! But, what nobody mentions is that as of 2010, the average Canadian household debt is $96,000. And that's in Canadian dollars. Which lately are at parity or worth more than the ol' greenback.

Nearly 72% of Canadians aged 15-64 have a paid job (rather than an unpaid one? I know lots of Canadians that have both, but that's just until housewifery and motherhood becomes paid work, any day now...). But, I know that this is skewing the truth too. Lots of those jobs are paying wages that put Canadian citizens, most often women below the poverty line. Do you know what it takes to be an office clerk/receptionist these days? I do. It takes all of the skills to be an office clerk/receptionist such as data entry, phone etiquette, etc, as well as the skills of an accountant, as well as usually a babysitter for your dudely, oblivious boss, as well as oftentimes being tri-fucking-lingual, and having super-double-secret clearance, all for minimum wage! Whoop-dee-doo! And that is for fields in which women predominate, due to the fact that men devalue them, simply because they allow women to work in them. Therefore, these jobs are undervalued in terms of pay and respect and given to women who already makes less money than men, even though wage disparity is apparently illegal. What the fuck.

And it goes on. Blah blah blah we work 40 hours less per year. That's a whole week. 87% of Canadians have a high school or equivalency diploma, which gets you nothing out in the real world. Life expectancy is 80.7 years, one whole fucking YEAR above average! The level of PM10, which can damage... your lungs.... is... what? Our air is better? By a little? Huh?

This is bullshit, and you know it. Perhaps it has something to do with our lax laws on bribery? It's hard for me to read that list and think somebody's not on the take. And with Stephen Harper off to spread more lies about how good things are at home, it's up to us here in the middle of this shit not to be fooled by what the government puts out there to placate us. Remember, to all those that say "It could be worse, you could be in Libya/Syria/Congo/Detroit.", we could also be in Iceland or Sweden or elsewhere, where things are better. The fact that certain things are worse elsewhere should not stop us from trying to improve things here. Passivity doesn't foster change.

Also, in other news, it's now your own responsibility to find your missing children. I'm not saying the website in and of itself is a bad thing, but if you're going to acknowledge that the resources the police have are limited, shouldn't fixing that be a priority? Or am I off base here? No, I didn't think so. I just hate that when a child goes missing, more often than not, it seems that the family of said child has to be more active in the search then the police do to have any kind of justice, closure or hope of finding their child ever again. The system is broken. My heart goes out to any family that has ever lost a child, only to be told that "there's nothing more the police can do at this point."

Final note of the post: I've started reading Letters From A War Zone, by Andrea Dworkin. I don't know why it's taken me so long. She was a brilliant writer, and a brilliant human being. I'm sad that I am only now able to read her words and see her brilliance post-mortum. I am sadder now than ever at the fact she is no longer with us. I feel the world has lost a great ally in her. But I am glad her writing and legacy live on, and I am glad to be one of those that hopes to be worthy to carry on her words, and tell people of them. Thank you, Andrea Dworkin, for all that you did.