Check It Out: Reclaiming what is ours

By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com

If a modern version of the classic children’s story, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” were written today, one of the bears might say, “Someone’s been using my phone, and ordered two mattresses, a chair and porridge takeout from Amazon.” The original story was published in 1831, in a book that is now housed in the Toronto Public Library. The book is probably quite valuable.

I took a photo of a valuable document while touring the legislative buildings in Victoria, British Columbia in 2019. At the time I didn’t fully appreciate the value of the Canadian Bill of Rights, which reads, “An act for the recognition and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

Canadians who cherish items from the past often salvage window frames and wood from ancient buildings and barns. They clean off all the mud and debris, in order to reveal the beautiful exterior of the wood. They go through all that work, because those boards have a story to tell about the hard work of men and women who built the barn. They are reclaiming wood that withstood the elements of nature for a century, and still possesses strength to withstand sun, wind, rain and sleet for years to come.

Today Canadians are also reclaiming our freedoms and rights that existed many years ago. However our government doesn’t want to reclaim our history. Instead they are tearing down statues, banning all kinds of words and books, attempting to sweep away our history, so we’ll forget how we got to the present. They’re promising us a utopia, which is defined as “an imagined place or state of things”. Ironically, the sample sentence after the definition reads, “Misplaced faith in political utopias has led to ruin”.

Canadians need to reclaim what has always belonged to us - our freedom, which is a gift given by God to man. This is vitally important as we witness increasing attempts to stifle any criticism of government actions. A prime example is the recent fine of over $1,000 issued for the crime of writing “Free Tamara Lich” with chalk on a sidewalk in Ottawa.

Another full year of virtual parliament will stifle personal interaction and debate, further eroding the parliamentary process. And no government entity should be permitted to define ‘mis-information’ and ‘disinformation’ for Canadian citizens.

A recent government sponsored booklet, entitled ‘Confronting and Preventing Hate in Canadian Schools’, instructs children to be alert to classmates who invoke, “A free speech issue” in political discussions, as this is a common defence of hate propagandists. This booklet was funded by taxpayers, via a $268,400 grant from Canadian Heritage. Not only are we watching our freedoms dissipate, but we’re forced to fund the process.

Our Bill of Rights states, “Affirming also that men and institutions remain free only when freedom is founded upon respect for moral and spiritual values and the rule of law.”

I restate those words, in case we are unaware of them, or have forgotten them. After all, how can we reclaim something if we don’t know it exists?