Dear Mr Carney, Canadian party leaders and my local MP
When Canadians voted Liberal, they did so with the belief they would be getting an adult in the room. They were voting for a Canada committed to peace.
They voted for someone who promised to build homes for Canadians
They voted for someone who promised to work in partnership with Indigenous Peoples regarding energy – clean energy.
They voted for someone who recognized that kindness is a virtue, who promised to be humble.
Sir, we did not vote for war.
- Increased NATO spending will not put food on Canadian tables.
- Increased NATO spending will not address the crisis of loneliness and despair that leads many Canadians to destructive addictions.
- Increased NATO spending will not mitigate climate change, a rising threat to all of us, as is so clearly demonstrated by the wildfires ravaging Manitoba and Saskatchewan as I write this.
Mr Carney, increased spending an on international military alliance is more likely to *cause* war than prevent it, as the leadup to World War I demonstrates.
You weren’t ashamed to be described as channelling “dad energy” during your campaign. And Canada was happy with that. We’re looking for a dad with an ordinary haircut, who cites humility as a virtue, and above all, who wants to ensure all the kids are taken care of. Your Canadian “kids” aren’t looking for war.
- We’re looking for a better health care deal for our provinces.
- We’re looking for assistance in shifting to green energy and to make our homes and businesses more energy efficient.
- We’re looking for investment in mass transit and active transportation so we can leave behind expensive and inefficient private vehicles and travel by train, tram, bus and bicycle.
- We’re looking for protection for workers (not fighting the Canada Post union’s requests for fair treatment and reasonable compensation), especially from the threat of AI which always provides worse service at the expense of real people’s jobs.
- We’re looking to build a Canada that shows the world diversity can be a strength, that welcoming immigrants builds our country, that reconciliation (there’s that theme of humility again) is worth our earnest efforts, difficult as they may be.
Sir, I don’t believe there’s any playbook where building for war (which you never mentioned in your election campaign) correlates with kindness that feeds more kindness (about which you spoke so eloquently in your acceptance speech).
Canadians have done hard, seemingly impossible things. Let’s do it again. Let’s do the hard thing – the right thing – of fighting the trends of billionaires who intentionally destroy the planet to increase their profits while workers are increasingly disenfranchised, of politicians who foment division and act adversarially instead of collaboratively with those across the aisle, and of governments who profit off war while delivering meaningless platitudes about peace and equality.
It will take a billion steps – some monumental decisions by government, some daily decisions from citizens – to build the Canada of peace, respect and equality that you promised us, but not a single one of those involves increased military spending.
There’s no shame in changing your mind on what is shown to be a bad course of action.
Please do not increase NATO spending.
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