Health Canada has just recalled a plush toy animal (I suppose political correctness prevents them from identifying it as a bear) that is dressed as a mountie. The belt on the toy contains lead and the buttons could be swallowed and cause choking. It is good that these problems were caught before any child was hurt.
Now maybe I am warped, okay I am, but still there seems to be an irony here. Here is probably the most recognizable symbol of Canada, the country known around the world for peacekeeping, human rights and all that other touchy feely stuff, and it is being made in China. It was bad enough when Disney owned the copyright to mountie paraphenalia (actually I don’t know whether they still do or not). But China internationally stands for everything Canada is supposed to be against. At least with Disney there was only the problem of our country being mistaken for a cartoon. Come to think of it we do kind of have a mickey mouse prime minister at the moment.
China uses slave labour. China violates the right of self determination for the Tibetan people (of course many English Canadians would gladly violate that same right for French Canada if they try to leave). China practices religious intolerance. China has some of the worst pollution in the world. Now China has been trying to kill our children by putting plastic in milk and lead in plastic.
Question: Why are we still buying anything from China at all?
Answer: Greed, Capitalism and all those other related things that we really stand for. We are told that if we engage China their human rights and environmental records will improve. That is why we awarded them the 2008 Olympics. Remember they promised that they would clean up their record by the time of the games. Oh yeah they cleaned up all right. They cleaned up the streets by arresting anyone who might criticize the government or challenge the veracity of their public statements. They cleaned up by arresting foreign journalists who dared to photograph anything not pre-approved by the Beijing government. Environmentally they ordered wealthy government apparatcheks to refrain from driving for a few weeks until the games were over.
Message to Western governments: Engagement doesn’t work! The Chinese are laughing at you.
But I guess before we remove the speck from China’s eye, we should remove the beam from our own. This year has seen a plethora of food contamination problems in Canada and when was the last time you felt really safe driving a North American car. And when it comes to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, what do you want to bet they bus the homeless and street people to Alberta. Except for the prostitutes of course. We wouldn’t want all those foreign dignitaries to have nothing to do at night.
