Since then, that long arm in space with the Canadian flag on the top has
become the symbol of the creativity and ingenuity of this country and the
hope for an even better future for our children.
Last
week not many people paid mush attention to the news that MacDonald,
Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), a Vancouver-based company will be sold
to the America Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis.
MDA
now owns Canadarm and this means that another symbol of our Canadian
identity is leaving Canada.
After losing companies that represented the country’s past (like Eaton’s and
others) now we are losing a company that was supposed to lead us towards the
future. Of course, the future owners say they will leave all operations in
Canada and that we will acquire the ability to compete for U.S. contracts.
Isn’t that what everybody says when they swallow you up? Sure, it might be
that it will happen too, but the fact of the matter is that we don’t control
our future any longer.
And
this is much more troubling at a time when our manufacturing sector is not
just in trouble, it’s collapsing. Ontario and Quebec won’t be the engines of
the Canadian economy any longer, without having other provinces to carry the
load.
The
real prosperity we are enjoying now is not related to the ingenuity of
Canadians, but the richness of Canadian soil. We are rich because Mother
Nature made as win the 6/49, not because we take advantage of our brains.
The
Canadarm story proves that we have brains and ingenuity, but we need people
at the top of our institutions to be able to create an environment where our
capacities are properly exploited.
We
had an electoral campaign in Ontario where the major discussion was about
who was going to pay for the education of a few thousand children and in
Quebec they had a campaign revolving around an academic problem of what “a
state within a country” is all about.
I
haven’t even mentioned the federal politicians. Where are our MPs,
especially those from Quebec and Ontario? While our symbols are
disappearing, jobs in a vital sector are melting faster than snow in the
Sahara desert, and leading industries that were supposed to replace those in
the dying manufacturing sector are emigrating down south, our MPs are
engaged on a fake debate on a real problem like the environment, or on a
real debate on a fake issue like the Mulroney-Schreiber affair. While
leading technological companies leave Canada and thousands of more jobs are
ready to disappear in the immediate future, our MPs are engaged in a
divisive and useless debate about how much money a controversial
entrepreneur gave to a former prime minister 15 years ago.
The
richness of our land can only, to a point, fill the vacuum left from of our
politicians in defending the prosperity of the citizens of this country
.
