shifting perspective

Yesterday's Toronto Star, under the screaming headline "Inside Gitmo North", ran a story about the three men who are being held in a specially-built prison near Kingston, Ontario. Along with two others who have been released on bail, these men have been detained for five years without being charged with any crime.

This is the perfect example of something shameful and wrong in Canada - which is still light years ahead of the United States.

There's little doubt that the three men in Kingston are being treated better than the people in the black hole of the real Guantanamo and the rest of the American Gulag. Also, these men remain in Canada because, if deported, they face torture and persecution, so Canadian courts have rightly ruled against deportation. But clearly, imprisoning people outside the judicial system without charges or rights is wrong. It is shameful, undemocratic and unacceptable.

If these men can't be charged with crimes after five years, could it be there's no evidence with which to charge them? Come on now. Either charge them with something or release them.

Coincidentally, on the same day I read this story, I received an email from an American living in the GTA. RB escaped a life of poverty in Appalachia when she married a Canadian. But she doesn't have much nice to say about Canada.

RB finds Canadians are anti-American. She moved here shortly after 9/11 and her daughter was subjected to some pretty awful stuff at school, but in general she seems not to understand where global anti-Americanism comes from. RB says health care in Canada is "horrendous". She related two incidents, both having to do with wait-times to see a specialist and in the emergency room. (I have experienced equally long waits in New York City.)

RB says, "Canada's not better - they're just better at hiding it". She also says she was a liberal in the US, but is considered conservative in Canada. (That's why I stopped calling myself liberal.) She finds my attitude about Canada "amusing" and hopes I will not be "disillusioned". How nice of her.

I don't dispute RB's facts, but I disagree with her conclusions.

Despite her wait-times, despite what her daughter went through, I maintain Canada is substantially a more democratic, more just and more humane society than the United States.

I also know that Canada, like all human societies, has a long way to go. Every time I read about the sorry state of public assistance in Ontario, this is brought home to me. As I always says, in some ways, like health care, Canada is just plain better. In other ways, like poverty, it is only better by degree. Those degrees make a difference, but they are meaningless to a family struggling to survive.

I see many shifting, contradictory perspectives at the same time.

I know Canadians who say Canada is no better than the United States. To them, I say: you have no idea how bad the US really is.

I know Americans who idealize Canada. A recent email from a prospective US defector lamented the "culture of stupidity and mediocrity" in the US. I don't know if he'll find much better here.

And I know that many Canadians don't aim high enough, don't demand enough from their government and their society, because it all looks so very good when compared with the United States.

For me, all these things are true at the same time.

[Information on the security-certificate prisoners, and how you can help them, here.]