The first time I was called a commie was in the field behind my elementary school.
The first time I was called a commie was in the field behind my elementary school. I was only in Grade 2 or Grade 3 and I didn’t really know what a commie was, why my teachers collected my baby teeth to have them tested for radiation, or why we had to be afraid that the Soviet Union had a missile aimed at Vancouver. But I had heard that commies would have been behind the big bomb. All of a sudden, by virtue of my last name, I was lumped in with the bad guys.
I was reminded of those memories last week when Ottawa announced its sweeping changes to the war on terror. They include new powers to help our spy agency, CSIS, crack down on terrorist acts, as well as, I would like to think, thwart the murderous acts of gun-toting losers and others with limited decision-making capacity before they happen. You can read the fine print elsewhere, but essentially it now looks as if my rights and protections as a citizen of this country, as well as the rights and protections of my family members will be diminished in the name of security, if these powers pass into law, which seems all but inevitable.
The ability of our spies, or secret police if you will, to snoop through my emails or mess with my finances, or throw me in jail for supposedly advocating terrorism rankles me. I have absolutely no interest in promoting terrorism, but I can’t help but feel the new laws have the strong potential of putting me, or someone I may know (likely Islamic), right back in the school ground, except lumped in with today’s bad guys.
I do not believe that is the kind of country we want or need. Nobody wants to see murder in the streets in the name of Allah or anything else, but realistically, in Canada that has not happened. Laws as they already are, have already been successful in preventing organized attacks. Lone wolf maniacs with the potential to kill may or may not always be caught or stopped. That is horribly unfortunate, but would we not all be better served to take away their weapons or find them some therapy? Will more police powers actually stop them?
But no. That does not seem to be the mood of our current government, and perhaps governments around the world, who currently prefer to treat all citizens with suspicion. Again, that is not the kind of country my law-abiding parents or grandparents wanted. They did not want me to be lumped in with the bad guys because of suspicion.
Back in the early ’50s, when my late father was studying to be an electrician in Calgary, he went to one meeting of campus communists, as he told me, just to see what the whole thing was about. It didn’t interest him to ever return, but a spy within the meeting, who turned out to be a former friend of my dad’s, reported him as a communist sympathizer. A few years later on his honeymoon, he was refused entry into the United States because of it, but that is another story. No, what touches me more deeply is that when a Mountie presumed he was carrying out his patriotic duty by showing up at my grandfather’s medical practice to report my dad, my grandfather asked him to leave and to mind his own business.
I can only hope I have the courage to do the same for my family.
Jeff Holubitsky is the editor of the St. Albert Gazette.
