OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Canada: Top Ten Things To Love and Hate

Unelected, undemocratic, unneeded. Feudal systems of government sucked in feudal times and they suck even more in the 21st century. Wake up people, wake up!

Read more here: The God Save The Queen Rant

5. Downtown Eastside, Vancouver (and other similar areas in other Canadian cities): It is absolutely inexplicable, inexcusable and downright disgraceful that a country this rich allows such an appalling, poverty-stricken, drug-riddled area to exist right in the middle of one of its major cities. And it's all the more outrageous when you consider that all these people have been abandoned to the streets of Vancouver, a city of incredible wealth and overabundance.

Obviously it's not something that is easy to solve, what with all the addiction and people so down on their luck, but if we can spend billions on bailing out GM then we can certainly spend the few millions it would take to clean up such a disgraceful situation and get all these homeless people housed and in proper treatment programs. There's simply no place for such suffering, poverty and hopelessness in a country as rich as this.

4. Police brutality: It may be true that police brutality occurs in every country on earth, but that doesn't lesson the revulsion of knowing that cases such as that of Robert Dziekanski actually happen right here in Canada.

It should also be noted that not all countries have national police forces (the RCMP) that seem to do whatever they can to protect the thugs within their ranks, rather than doing everything possible to clean up the force. Because at the end of the day the truly outrageous thing is how the thugs within the police force are coddled, protected and allowed to stay on the job when they should, of course, be charged and prosecuted.

I've said it over and over again, there are lots of good cops out there, but there are also a lot of hothead, kneejerk reactionary thugs in the force as well. And a truly civilized nation wouldn't put up with the thugs for a minute, let alone coddle them.

Read more here: The Dziekanski Killing and Cover-Up: Even Fellow Cops Now Feel Compelled To Speak Out In Disgust and here: Cowards and Apologists: The Police Brutality Rant

3. Getting sucked into America's so-called War On Terror: No, we, thankfully, did not get sucked into Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, but we, as a nation, have most certainly been dragged into some awful Bush-like behavior over the past eight years:

- First and foremost is our government's disgraceful stance when it comes to Canadian child soldier, Omar Khadr. Read more here about how we've left this poor kid to rot in Guantanamo Bay for seven long years: Canada The Callous and Cold: Get Omar Khadr Freed Now!

- Then there's the case of Abousfian Abdelrazika, the Canadian citizen stranded in Sudan for six years who, until earlier this summer, the Canadian government illegally refused to issue a new passport to, even after CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) and the Sudanese authorities had both cleared him of any wrongdoing or involvement with terrorism.

- Then there are those dreaded national security certificates that allow the government, in violation of hundreds of years of legal tradition, to withhold evidence from suspects in their own trials; certificates that Canada used to hold five men for up to eight years without charge (and still holds them today under house arrest). Just recently it was revealed that in two of these cases CSIS mishandled and misrepresented evidence against the accused (which the accused never knew, of course, since they and their lawyers had been denied the right to see the faulty evidence in the first place).

- Then, back in 2006, under intense American pressure the Canadian government, as part of the so-called "War On Terror", took sides in a civil war and, ridiculously, branded the Tamil Tigers alone as the terrorists in the 30-year-old conflict on the island of Sri Lanka. Read more here: Freedom Denied! Are We Happy Now: The Crushing of Sri Lanka's Tamils

- And let's not forget about our present government's one-sided, 100%-pro-Israel position, no matter how horrific the carnage and loss of civilian lives in Gaza earlier this year and in Lebanon back in 2006.

That the "War On Terror" is a joke that has destroyed many innocent lives is sad; that our country has largely gone along for the ride is tragic. Read more here: The War On Terror Charade: 14-Year-Old Terrorists and The Fight For Western Civilization

2. Treatment of Natives: If this were a purely historical list then this would, without question, sit at number one. Because when it comes to shameful aspects of Canadian history nothing really comes close to our treatment of this country's Native peoples. After all, we don't really see ourselves as a nation that commits horrific war crimes, slaughters innocents, steals land, breaks treaties and kidnaps children, do we? But that's exactly what this country is guilty of.

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