An open letter to Barack Obama
(Canscene) —- Dear Senator,
Please don’t consider this letter, from a Canadian, as a colossally impertinent attempt to tell you how to run the United States of America if, as so many of us hope, you become its next President.
It is, rather, an expression of how I personally believe two great neighbours can return to a friendship once enjoyed but gone astray these last eight years through the arrogant dictatorship that has become the Republican administration.
Like many others, I congratulate our former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien for refusing to join a coalition based on a web of deceit and plunging American lives like Gadarene swine into the morass that is now Iraq. To say nothing of a wounded and bleeding Iraqui nation. Since then, our own current federal government elected two and a half years ago, proved initially to be a lickspittle to George W. Bush but now finds itself in a dilemma.
All of which goes to show that like the United States of America, it’s time for change here in Canada too: change in the way we look at poverty, at our regard for human rights, at the environment and at the war in Afghanistan, a country that the United States government left to its own devices after the Soviet forces had been defeated. And change to so many other fossilized ideas and institutions.
If it is true that the young people of America and their desire for change will be the deciding factor in bringing you to the White House, so must young Canadians break free from their dismal voting record and opt for change.
We fervently hope that you will become President for eight historic years during which democracy in the West is restored to its former regard in the eyes of the world. Then, you can begin to show us the way.
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