Freedom is fleeting
In my travels through Asia this past winter, I realized how lucky I am to be living in a developed country. Many of the countries I visited, including Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, often don’t allow their residents to freely travel to other parts of the globe. As a matter of fact, the political realities in most of these countries – many of which are emerging democracies – is very harsh.
As Canadians, we take for granted many of our freedoms and advantages. For instance, we have (mostly) free health care, accessible education and a fairly open democracy. We can travel to wherever we want and all we need is the money and time. Most people in other parts of the world don’t have the money, the time or even the right to travel.
Just about everyone I met on my trip through Asia expressed an interest in traveling to Canada, the United States or Europe. For most of them, it is an impossible dream.
Take Sangee, a young man I met in Delhi. He works 12 hours a day in a small hotel and makes about 7,000 rupees a month – about $66. At the age of 21, he managed to find an entry position in a Delhi hotel far from his home in Kashmir. When he does have the money and time to go home, he must take a train crammed with people without a sleeper for three days non-stop. He cannot afford to be sick or injured because he does not have much money at the end of the month after paying for a small room in a bleak building in the city centre with no kitchen facilities and a shared bathroom.
Sangee considers himself fortunate to speak English, which allows him entry into the tourism industry. He works hard and always has a smile on his face. The reality is that he is more or less enduring a life in what is billed as a democratic system in India. The truth is that although India is emerging as a powerful economic, manufacturing and consumer nation, it is far from democratic.
There is a small wealthy class of people, not much of a middle class and the vast majority struggle with poverty or on the edge of poverty. Moving up the social order is extremely difficult. The pollution in Delhi when I was there was so bad a doctor warned me not to venture outside too much as I had a cold and cough. I saw far too many people living on the streets or in shanty shacks. I even saw people who worked at collecting cow dung to dry into patties, which they then sold as fuel.
As Canadians we have so much to be happy about. However, if we don’t keep an eye on our governments, how they are elected and what their goals are, we could lose many of the freedoms and benefits that we now enjoy.
We are so lucky to be living in Canada in a democracy and economy that developed in a relatively short time. Tiny elites controlling resources and its populations mark most of our history on this planet. It is up to each of us to do our part in maintaing our democracy and system of sharing resources fairly.
The Aboriginal population in Canada only won the right to vote in Canadian elections in 1960. For most of the history in Canada, Aboriginal people were viewed as subhuman. It is amazing what a little time and education can achieve in this world.
If we think that we are guaranteed a Canada that is democratic and peaceful, we need to make sure that we are not allowing the 1% with most of the wealth to make all of the big decisions. If we want an open and free country where we actually care about each other and other people on the planet, then we need to learn more about how governments are controlled, where parties get their funding and expertise from, and what influential powers are pulling the strings. I have seen some so-called democracies where only money and greed are the reality. We never want that to happen here.