Your Tax Dollars at Work - Seniors Edition

Will someone please make these people stop?

Seniors in Vancouver will soon have new opportunities to build stronger connections within their community through the New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP). The Honourable Alice Wong, Minister of State (Seniors) made the announcement today at Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House.

“Our government recognizes the diversity of skills, knowledge and experience seniors contribute to our society and the economy,” said Minister of State Wong. “Through initiatives like this one, we are taking action to ensure that seniors maintain a good quality of life and continue to be active members of their communities.”

Back in the bad old days, that would be the 1980s, various ethnic groups used to build their own community centres. The Portuguese still have several in Toronto. They were pretty much the same thing. Boiled cod fish, boiled vegetables, cabbage soup and young kids conscripted into doing ethnics dances to amuse their elders. There was usually one teenaged twerp video recording the whole thing to embarrass everyone in the decades to come.

Amazingly all of this was conducted without a government subsidy. Today even awkward inter-generational bonding takes place on the federal government's dime. No problem too great, no interest group too small, that Ottawa will not try to "assist." And the federal deficit? It just keeps rollin' along!

Press releases like these beg two questions:

1) What horrible crimes did the PR flacks commit in some previous life to do this for a living?

2) Why exactly is state intervention necessary to "raise cultural awareness?"

I won't bothering trying to define "cultural awareness." It's one of those non-phrases the modern world is littered with. Like "social justice" it means whatever the heck the speaker wants it to mean. More elastic than "family values" less pertinent than "investing in communities." So the government is raising my awareness of someone else's culture. Why do I care?

I can just about summon up the strength to remember who the heck the Prime Minister of Portugal is today. His last name means rabbit in English, so I call him Rabbit Boy. That's how I remember. Why should I summon up the strength to remember something about the ethnic dances of Moldovia? Or is that Moldova? Whatever. The Reds used to control it and now some other gangsters do. 

Some people call this progress.  I don't care. I don't have to care.

Regular readers of this blog will know that in foreign affairs I apply the Portugal Test. Any nation less geostrategically important than Portugal should be ignored. Portugal is a country you feel that, at any moment, might do something kind of important. Admittedly it won't be circumnavigating the globe, not as impressive a feat as it once was, but something serious people should pay attention to. They're overdue for another Nobel Prize. Possibly another war with Spain. 

About 75% of the countries in the world fail the Portugal Test. Miserably. I don't care about them. Neither should you. I don't mind people from these countries coming to Canada. The more productive people the better. I just don't see why I should care. They might care out of some misplaced sentimentality. Fine. Whatever. But as a Canadian I don't have to care. This is the greatest damn country in the world, with one or two possible exceptions, and so I can be pretty smug.

Take that Moldavia! Or Moldova? 

It is not the job of the federal government to promote its own national culture, much less someone else's culture. A national culture is something that evolves organically from the people, not something which is dictated by the state. In other countries this statist impulse can lead to dictatorship. This being Canada it just leads to the CBC. A pretty gruesome outcome in either case.

If ethnic seniors want to raise awareness of their own culture, let them pay for it themselves. And I'll be free to ignored them. 

 

 

Comments

[MikeG81]

It seems to be a modern 'thing' to raise 'awareness' of something, be it cultural or, increasingly, a medical condition.

Or, as I call it, trying to get others to give a crap about what's important to you.

[John Chittick]

The actual reason this happens has little to do with raising awareness of the client group but rather raising awareness of the federal government, reinforcing a flaccid attempt at establishing relevancy. We're here for you and don't forget us at the polling place next time. These numerous Ministries of Silly Walks don't have any real function other than as PR departments for the Party in Power.

The heavy lifting of government intrusion is mostly done by the Provinces (Health care, Education, Welfare, Energy, Resources, Highways etc) leaving the Feds with their many silly walks. Thankfully Canadian federalism hasn't quite centralized to the extent the US leviathan has in duplicating and over-stepping what used to be exclusive to the States.

[markottawa]

How about raising the cultural awareness of the Canadian-Monégasques?

Mark
Ottawa

[Cytotoxic]

"The heavy lifting of government intrusion is mostly done by the Provinces (Health care, Education, Welfare, Energy, Resources, Highways etc)"

I wouldn't exclude supply management, central banking, telecom and broadcast regulation, and drug prohibition from 'heavy lifting'. The feds are at war with freedom too.