http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/01/13/montreal-haiti-canada-support.html
Another day, another complaint. Tragedy has struck a severely underdeveloped nation and what do Canadians do? Complain! Today is a day I'd like to shout from the rooftops, "shut your pie hole!" over and over in every city in our country. Never have we known disaster of the magnitude of that which has struck Haiti, nor are we likely to.
I am appalled at the number of comments stating that Canada should save the tax dollars for in-country improvements. Don't send help. Keep the money. Let other nations take care of it. We always do it. Shut your pie hole!
Until you have spent time in a third world country, getting to know its citizens, living with them, eating with them, sharing with them, how dare you have the audacity to say we should deny them assistance.
Let us for a moment play make-believe. Let's say that "the big one" hit Vancouver. The downtown core collapses and is inaccessable. All of the bridges and tunnels over and under the river and inlets collapse. No one can get in and no one can get out. Cell service is down along with landlines, internet and cable. There is no power. No way to communicate. No way to travel. Canada sends out a desperate cry for assistance, but we are denied time and time again by neighbouring countries, because, after all, we're pretty stingy in our assistance when disaster hits outside our borders. We assumed that every other nation on the planet should be capable of dealing with thier own disasters, surely we are capable of dealing with one on our own. While the military is allowed entrance into the Greater Vancouver area, it takes several days for significant aid to arrive. In the meantime, all industry has shut down and all of our efforts are spent trying to locate loved ones, find ways in and out of the city. Most people are running on auto-pilot, wandering homeless, jobless, careless.
Do me a favour. Go to your favourite search engine. Search images of the Haiti earthquake.
**Warning: these photos are not suitable for those with a weak digestive system. **
Take a good look. Filter through photo after photo after photo. More are being posted by the minute. Keep looking. Look into the eyes of the orphaned children. Look at the mangled limbs of the trapped and dying. Look at the rubble-filled streets. I'd like to see you approach one of these individuals and deny them help to their face. Walk the streets of Port-au-Prince with aid supplies and deny assitance to every single person who approaches you.
If you walked a moment in their shoes (if they still have a pair), by now you'd be crying out, railing against the wealthier countries of the world, begging for help, cursing those who didn't get there soon enough for your liking.
How would you like to be Stephen Harper telling these people, "I'm sorry, we can't do more. You see, the people in my country want better health care even though what they have is better than 95% of that of the global population. There are homeless people who refuse to go to shelters saying they have a right to live on the street, so we have to spend more money on them and their dogs. We've been allowing in a lot of immigrants lately and many of them require social assistance, too. We just don't have the money to help you because Canadians really aren't as nice as the rest of the world makes them out to be. We'd like to do more, but, sorry, we can't." (And that's being polite!)
Take a step outside of yourself. Don't think about your "needs" for just a minute. Think of all the things that you can't possibly live without and then imagine your life without them. Take away the world you know. Imagine you can't do a thing about it, but someone else can. How would you feel about that one individual who was able to make a small difference in your life? How would you feel about an individual who refused to make that difference?
This is not about you. This is not about your selfish needs. This is not about our tax dollars. It's not about money spent or not spent. This is about humanity.
Another day, another complaint. Tragedy has struck a severely underdeveloped nation and what do Canadians do? Complain! Today is a day I'd like to shout from the rooftops, "shut your pie hole!" over and over in every city in our country. Never have we known disaster of the magnitude of that which has struck Haiti, nor are we likely to.
I am appalled at the number of comments stating that Canada should save the tax dollars for in-country improvements. Don't send help. Keep the money. Let other nations take care of it. We always do it. Shut your pie hole!
Until you have spent time in a third world country, getting to know its citizens, living with them, eating with them, sharing with them, how dare you have the audacity to say we should deny them assistance.
Let us for a moment play make-believe. Let's say that "the big one" hit Vancouver. The downtown core collapses and is inaccessable. All of the bridges and tunnels over and under the river and inlets collapse. No one can get in and no one can get out. Cell service is down along with landlines, internet and cable. There is no power. No way to communicate. No way to travel. Canada sends out a desperate cry for assistance, but we are denied time and time again by neighbouring countries, because, after all, we're pretty stingy in our assistance when disaster hits outside our borders. We assumed that every other nation on the planet should be capable of dealing with thier own disasters, surely we are capable of dealing with one on our own. While the military is allowed entrance into the Greater Vancouver area, it takes several days for significant aid to arrive. In the meantime, all industry has shut down and all of our efforts are spent trying to locate loved ones, find ways in and out of the city. Most people are running on auto-pilot, wandering homeless, jobless, careless.
Do me a favour. Go to your favourite search engine. Search images of the Haiti earthquake.
**Warning: these photos are not suitable for those with a weak digestive system. **
Take a good look. Filter through photo after photo after photo. More are being posted by the minute. Keep looking. Look into the eyes of the orphaned children. Look at the mangled limbs of the trapped and dying. Look at the rubble-filled streets. I'd like to see you approach one of these individuals and deny them help to their face. Walk the streets of Port-au-Prince with aid supplies and deny assitance to every single person who approaches you.
If you walked a moment in their shoes (if they still have a pair), by now you'd be crying out, railing against the wealthier countries of the world, begging for help, cursing those who didn't get there soon enough for your liking.
How would you like to be Stephen Harper telling these people, "I'm sorry, we can't do more. You see, the people in my country want better health care even though what they have is better than 95% of that of the global population. There are homeless people who refuse to go to shelters saying they have a right to live on the street, so we have to spend more money on them and their dogs. We've been allowing in a lot of immigrants lately and many of them require social assistance, too. We just don't have the money to help you because Canadians really aren't as nice as the rest of the world makes them out to be. We'd like to do more, but, sorry, we can't." (And that's being polite!)
Take a step outside of yourself. Don't think about your "needs" for just a minute. Think of all the things that you can't possibly live without and then imagine your life without them. Take away the world you know. Imagine you can't do a thing about it, but someone else can. How would you feel about that one individual who was able to make a small difference in your life? How would you feel about an individual who refused to make that difference?
This is not about you. This is not about your selfish needs. This is not about our tax dollars. It's not about money spent or not spent. This is about humanity.
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