Cha-Ching!

Canada is preparing to host the G8 and G20 summits. Stephen Harper has gone on record in the past justifying the purpose of the summit as a way to address global issues like poverty and climate change. Yet Harper has decided to purposely leave climate change off the main agenda while spending over a billion dollars on expenses to host the conference. Not sure how that fits in his plan for addressing world poverty but that expense is obscene when you consider the economic challenges facing non G8 countries.

When I was growing up, I was led to believe that democracy and capitalism were one in the same. It was implied that there were two basic systems - communism and capitalism. Communism was what was happening in the USSR - suppression of human rights within a totalitarian state, and capitalism was what we had in Canada - freedom and a democratic form of government. The world was different back then. The iron curtain still existed and the cold war was one of the biggest threats facing the planet. So now that the iron curtain no longer exists, why do we allow our government to continue to conduct their affairs as if capitalism is equated with freedom? The way the west practices capitalism has very little to do with equality, freedom, or human rights. It is all about money, money, and money. As long as we continue to equate money with happiness, we’ll continue to work harder and harder while spending more and more on products that exploit people and resources in countries we don’t like to think about.

So let’s all drive our SUVs to rallies to protest the oil companies that continue to harvest high risk oil. We all need to look in the mirror if we want things to change.

“The time will come when it will disgust you to look in the mirror.” - Rose F. Kennedy (1890 - 1995)