Hopeful and Shameful

     

                           By Kenneth Bagnell

        Like many of you, I’m being asked what I think of the outcome of the American election. I am, as a theologian friend describes himself, “a member of the radical centre”.  So while I don’t dislike or disrespect Mitt Romney – a man born to privilege but on his own an accomplished businessman — I lean to the left. Well, more or less. So, all things considered, I favored President Obama. But my main reason for gratitude at the Obama victory is my deep reservations about the current American Right that is so entrenched in today’s Republican party. I don’t share its values and I’m especially wary of a marriage, hence empowerment, between evangelical Christianity and American conservatism. Imagine it wedded to the enduring and misrepresented proposition, “American Exceptionalism.”

     Republicans have to reclaim their more centrist position. (As the then mayor of Tucson, Arizona, Robert Walkup, a bright and gracious man, told me a year or so ago while we were there: “We Republicans were always a centrist party. We have to return to it.”) A few familiar names are windows on why the change needs to be made: Newt Gingrich. Michelle Bachman. Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin. Then there are the four Republican candidates who, in various ways, excuse rape claiming it can be God’s will. No wonder Bill Schneider, the commentator and academic, put the need for renewal directly to Republicans the night after the election. He told them: “It’s a new country, a new America, so deal with it.”  

     Finally, there’s a specifically Canadian reason for satisfaction in the Democratic win: it will be, taken on the whole, better for Canada. Why? Because, as Pierre Martin, a University of Montreal political scientist specializing in American politics, wrote on the eve of the election: “A Republican victory might embolden the more radical wing of the Harper party to press for an even sharper and faster shift to the right than the Prime Minister deems feasible….” He’s right. And who needs that?

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     In the years in which I was an editorial writer in Toronto there was one word I resisted using: disgraceful. It’s too easy for editorialists to use, thereby diminishing it by overuse. It should be reserved for action or inaction that most reasonable people would deem just that: disgraceful. One is now before us, outlined by an able columnist on The Globe & Mail, who writes on health issues, Andrew Picard. On November 6, 2012, Picard dealt with a revelation so shocking, it led the usually moderate man to charge the federal government with “an act so contemptuous one can barely find the word to describe it”.

          The federal government has failed, if not declined, to be represented at a meeting dealing with a disgraceful revelation: that some 600 women, probably all Aboriginal, have gone permanently missing or been murdered in the last ten years. That, in itself, is a disgrace. (To put the number in perspective consider Picard’s deduction: that if non-Aboriginal women went missing or were murdered at the same rate the number would be 20,000.) Then think of the public outcry. It gets worse: the federal government compounded this tragedy by declining to be represented at a recent consultation of coast to coast provincial ministers assembled to investigate what happened and what to do in light of it. Ottawa was a no show. This is dreadful since Aboriginal citizens are, in constitutional terms, part of the responsibilities of the federal cabinet, hence the minister holding the portfolio overseeing Aboriginal affairs. The descriptive disgraceful is apt.

    For all this Ottawa neglect, however, the prime issue remains the missing women: seeking those still alive, confirming the tragic deaths of others and furthering investigations that were or were not undertaken and why. Two regional inquiries are now underway, one in Manitoba, the other in British Columbia, the latter partly investigating aspects of the trial of homicidal William Picton. (He’s the serial murderer given life imprisonment for killing six women and suspected in the deaths of many others.)   Few will ever forget the film on which he told a cellmate, (actually a police officer in disguise,) speaking as psychopaths always do like a busy short order cook, that he intended to kill many more but settled for a smaller number.

      The RCMP — despite their worrying tarnished reputation — has outlined an approach: establishing a national database for missing persons with a website for citizens to place tips or clues. But most important it now has a formalized relationship with Canada’s Native Women’s Association. This offers hopeful possibility: it provides the women’s association with a computerized system and instructions on using it to do research on missing family members. (Along with this, the RCMP promises to train Native investigators.)

     The women’s group is more than justified in asking for a serious national inquiry into missing women. It made its plea at the October meeting in Manitoba of provincial ministers charged with overseeing justice issues, aboriginal issues and the status of women. That’s the one the federal government skipped. No wonder Andre Picard said there were virtually no words to describe Ottawa’s contemptuous ignoring of the tragedy among the families of fellow Canadians.

                             November 10, 2012, TORONTO