Canadians need a new national animal

Compelled by a strange feeling of responsibility to manufacture one of those generic end of/beginning of the year articles, I recalled a memory from my childhood. Thumbing through a geography textbook as a young mushroom-haired boy, probably wearing either a Spiderman jumpsuit or an entire Toronto Blue Jays uniform, I found a cartoon that was comparing the size of Canada with Russia. Russia, represented as a grinning bear in a fez cap, was much larger than Canada, which was depicted as a beaver holding a hockey stick. In my approximately seven year old brain, these images didn’t demand much scrutiny beyond wondering what the bear thought was so funny. After all, what’s laughable about a beaver? Nothing, that’s what.

The beaver is a builder, a herbivore, an aquatic genius, a noble beast with work ethic that can make hot-blooded Protestants feel fancy. Indeed, the beaver is a majestic creature, an animal that deserves better than to be sullied as Canada’s national creature. A suggestion: re-illustrate our geography books to include a species that actually reflects Canada’s behaviour domestically and internationally. I think some variety of snake is more fitting. Unlike beavers, snakes do not have legs, movable eyelids, external ear-openings, or eardrums, just like many of the government officials and corporations that represent us here and abroad. Therefore, considering the troubled eggs our dry-eyed, legless, and hard of hearing Canadian elites have been laying all over the planet this year, I don’t believe it’s fair to ridicule the beaver any longer as Canada’s national creature.
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Do you have a bad roommate stereotype? For me, The Bad Roommate is constantly in a bathrobe that I’m sure belongs to me, has just, without even enjoying it, finished off the leftovers I was counting on, and isn’t sure what they did today, yet certainly created an unfathomable mess in the kitchen. Among other things, the worst part about my Bad Roommate is that they defiantly occupy an essential space in the house and aerate bad vibes while doing so.

Put another way, the Bad Roommate is a kind of angry, bathrobed, vacuum, that ironically doesn’t clean. (My apologies to any roommates, current, or fondly and formerly, who think I’m writing about them. In any case, I kid because I love).

I conjured up this image while reading reports that Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), Canada’s federally-owned and beleaguered nuclear technology company, is set to receive a $200 million bailout from the Harper government. The bailout, disclosed in the Conservative’s supplementary budget estimate, is the second the Crown-Corporation has received this year and makes the grand total of taxpayer subsidies doled out to AECL in 2009 $651 million. According to the document, this additional funding “will be used to address a cash shortfall caused by unexpected technical challenges on CANDU reactor refurbishment contracts.”
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With less than 40 days remaining before the governments of the world convene to hammer out a save-our-species style of agreement on Climate Change, there is a lot of bustling going on in Ottawa. For one thing this is an especially busy time for the staffers behind our politicians. I’m talking about those brave unheralded souls running around Ottawa buying plane tickets, planning dinners, and ensuring the business-attire economy remains recession-proof. Oh yes, the assistant armies of Ottawa are working all hours to ensure that our Government’s representatives are going to look good, eat-well, and rest comfortably while discussing the future of the planet in Copenhagen (COP15).

Good for those assistants: doing their jobs and taking the COP15 climate talks seriously. If only our Conservative Government and the official Opposition could do the same.

Bill C-311, otherwise known as the Climate Change Accountability Act, would have been a good opportunity for Steve and Mike’s boys and girls to begin to address Canada’s currently negligent role in international climate talks. The Bill, sponsored by the NDP’s Bruce Hyer, would see that the Government — no matter which party is in power — be on the hook to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gasses by 25% of 1990 levels, by the year 2020. Going forward, the Bill aimed to lower emissions by 80% of 1990 levels, by the year 2050.
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