Stephen Harper’s House Party

It's the Canada Day weekend and the underage boys slouched outside my local liquor store can hardly contain themselves.

I find it impossible to enjoy the way we celebrate this national holiday. My strong dislike of Canada Day celebrations is not mere venom toward intoxicated teenagers. On July 1, Ottawa enters a strangely exceptional state of debauchery and consumption in the name of worshipping our nation. Let’s pause for a moment: didn’t most of us spend the better part of last year recoiling from the actions of the government of the day? At the very least, our sudden turn to state exaltation is silly. At most, it begs all kinds of ethical and political questions.

It’s socially unacceptable to speak out against national pride, and difficult to get a critical piece published at this time of year. Collectively, we don’t appreciate critiques of our “homeland.” To dishonour the nation, it seems, is to insult its citizens. But what’s lost in this defensive posture is how a criticism of Canada Day celebrations is not necessarily a rant against the land or its inhabitants. Instead, it might be read as strongly dedicated to this land, in the hope of making it more sustainable and just.

This year, I'm piqued less by how the evidence of rowdiness (vomit, broken glass, scraps of clothing) will litter my downtown community on the morning of 2 July, and more by how we are encouraged to consume this holiday. What comes before the neighbourhood malaise and what is its function? What does blind patriotism negate?

There were three flyers in my mailbox on Friday morning, all intending to capitalize on the holiday craze. The corner pizza shop is offering a special Canadian pizza (topped with bacon, not a sliced Canadian passport). The local chain grocer is offering sales on Coke, beef tenderloin steak, smoked sausage, and hotdog buns: evidence that this is a weekend to celebrate with consumption of animals, not a weekend for vegetables. A major hotel in the city is offering “Canada Day rooms” at reduced rates (picture: stuffed beaver and miniature canoe decor).

Symbols of Canadian pride are ubiquitous in the lead-up to this weekend. On a recent trip to Toronto, I emerged from the subway to an advertisement by Ottawa tourism, urging Torontonians to come party on the Hill once the boring bureaucrats go home! On Facebook, profiles are being changed to invoke a weekend of boozing and sunburn. Even my running group, a typically quirky gang, is planning to wear red and white on a Sunday morning jaunt.

These practices aren’t inherently problematic in themselves, but they are strange in the context of what I perceive to be an atmosphere of rising dissent in Canadian culture. For over a year now, my social media pages and pub conversations have hosted a laundry list of the terrible things Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are doing to the integrity of our country and the mobility of our citizenry. The passing of the Budget Bill C38 not two weeks ago, that effectively gutted 30 years of progression in environmental law, is fresh in our hearts. Lest we forget, Harper has muzzled government scientists, reduced protections on fish habitats, eliminated the long-gun registry, and officially withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol. He has called us names and excluded us from events and doesn't return our phone calls. Call me old fashioned, but when I don’t like someone, I’m not inclined to go to their house party.

It is clear that a significant bunch of us like to exercise our vocabulary of negative adjectives in describing this government’s behaviour: despicable, reprehensible, contemptible. But what are we doing about it? If we truly love our country, and hope for its future, might not July 1 be an ideal moment to gather in collective resistance against a government that repeatedly shows disrespect for our democracy? If there exists such widespread discontent with Ottawa today, isn’t Canada Day on Parliament Hill precisely the time and place to act on it?

This Sunday, Wellington Street will be packed with folks from miles around, wearing face paint, buying street meat, and not-so-fashionably displaying red bra straps under white tank tops (I digress...). As some of us comply with the recent federal splurge on 1812 commemoration by happily donning our flag socks, packing the cooler, and guiding the stroller onto the lawn of Parliament Hill, let us pause for moral reflection on this party. What are we doing at this party? What public work might be done here instead if the thousands of us waved signs for a better Canada, and a better world?

This weekend, may we open the dialogue to resist blind celebration, and urge our government to make Canada more enjoyable for more people, all year round.