We need to resist the movement to privilege

By Lethbridge Herald on July 9, 2022.

Editor:

We are in eminent danger of throwing away the hard won principles that our forefathers fought so hard for. We need to remind ourselves that we chose to be separate and different from American republican and British empire ambitions.

Canadians chose to be different. We placed the values of cooperation and social inclusion above the simple ego gratification of individual dreams for gold and glory.

 Our forefathers decided for plans that were to benefit us all for health and in retirement. We let go the images of streets paved with gold, realistically chose equality over competitive exclusion. 

There have always been those in our midst who undermined and tried to divert efforts of cooperation for equality and fair-mindedness. 

They wanted exclusive privilege and special consideration, working to increase our tolerance for privatization and corporate accumulation.

 Albertans once shared the grandeur of our inheritance, we stood side by side with lucky and the steady, to insure none suffered for the benefit of the few. 

Today’s wordsmiths (some lawyers and politicians) have used the privilege of education to divert the flow of our natural benefit toward privatization and corporatism, while diluting benefits to all the rest.

These are not the values of most Canadians, and would have horrified our forefathers. Most of us still believe in the importance of equality. Yet we feel the pressure from the NIMBY crowd, who want to feel special. Canadians have a right to resist the efforts to privatize the common wealth of our inheritance. 

The land, our resources, water, and natural beauty were passed on to us all to share, not to be sealed up in private containers for an aristocracy that we long ago rejected.

 We are all required to resist fiercely this movement to privilege, and privatization over democracy. We know the alternative.

D. Ryane

Lethbridge