Building our nation with body bags
Penticton Herald
April 16, 2007
Opinion -- By: Linda McQuaig
EXCERPT

The old refrain "War, what is it good for?" raised a valid question. But it's a question that doesn't much trouble the Harper crowd.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government -- and the military lobby with which it is closely associated -- isn't squeamish about war. It promotes war as the stuff of nation-building....

The notion of war as nation-builder is being used as a convenient substitute for the other sort of nation-building, the kind that involves creating strong public programs, institutions and facilities that provide real benefit to citizens, rather than just giving our young people the experience of killing others or being killed or maimed themselves.

The same crowd that loves to wallow in the glories of war loves to cut off funding for this other sort of nation-building.

Even as the Harper government has dramatically increased military spending, it has eliminated the national child-care program that was finally put in place, and it has allowed private, for-profit medicine to push ever deeper into Canada, undermining the strength and viability of our public health-care system.

The significance of Vimy is said to be that Canadians fought together as a coherent unit, rather than merely as part of the British army.

But bringing Canadians together as a coherent unit to fight poverty and homelessness, to build a stronger public health-care or child-care system, or for that matter, to devise a national energy strategy or a real plan for participating in the worldwide battle against global warming -- there's little interest in that sort of nation-building.

It seems that under Harper, we'll do our nation-building with body bags.