Geoff Russ: Only clowns label Canadians ‘settlers’

New poll shows that a quarter of Canadians like categorizing their countrymen as an invasive species

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The division of this country into modernized factions of cowboys and Indians is fully embraced by public sector unions. This practice, however, does not resonate with the average Canadian — not by a long shot, according to the results of a Leger poll released last Friday.

Just 23 per cent of Canadians identify themselves as a “settler” or a “colonist.” Roughly half — 47 per cent — reject the label, while 30 per cent have no opinion or do not care.

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Interestingly, Canadians aged 18 to 34 were less likely than any other age group to identify as settlers — with only 20 per cent accepting the label — and were the most likely to not care either way, at 39 per cent. Among those aged 35 to 54, 25 per cent self-identified as settlers, making them the group most likely to do so. The latter group includes many members of the Millennial generation, who has actively pushed decolonial ideas and faculty-lounge radicalism.

Most people can guess why most Canadians do not embrace the “settler” label, much the same way that most Canadians do not wear clown costumes to work. Nevertheless, the poll results show that one in four people walking among us are into self-flagellation. There is no scenario in their worldview where “settlers” are a positive presence — they will always be the invasive species which can only exist as antagonists or allies to Indigenous people. In no way does this racial labeling resemble those used in the census or other statistical gathering; it is purely political in the most repulsive way.

The children of parents who arrived from Poland in 1991 have no guilt for any violence or displacement that happened during the colonization of North America. Yet public school teachers in Toronto would treat them as if they burned the longhouses and are genetically responsible for residential schools.

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It would be unfair to believe that every single person working in public education is an idiot who finds comfort in the Hutus-and-Tutsi-ification of Canada. However, those saner voices are drowned out by demagogic figures within those unions, like Fred Hahn, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario.

That is the trade-off with public sector unions. You get benefits and the power to strike to try and strong-arm the government, but you are effectively muzzled from speaking up, lest you become ostracized.

Radical voices are always the loudest, regardless of how ridiculous and unpopular their views are. Do not expect change to come from within the public sector anytime soon, or from the universities, as both have been captured by this loud, corrosive minority of thinkers, if they can even be graced with that label.

In a July report, British Columbia’s public health officer Bonnie Henry endorsed making nearly all drugs legal and freely available to the public. Among the report’s contributors were a number of other gems: one referred to herself as a “third-generation Canadian settler” while another called himself an “English settler,” as if they were extras in the Last of the Mohicans.

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And just last week, news broke that several Toronto schools had roped students along to a demonstration ostensibly supporting the Grassy Narrows First Nation, which has suffered through a water-quality crisis for decades — though it quickly descended into an anti-Israel protest.

While parents were told their children would only be observing the protest, as if they were going to the zoo, video and eyewitness accounts suggested that students were actively pushed to participate. Students were reportedly told to wear blue to identify themselves, by some accounts, as “colonizers.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford tolerates far more nonsense in his province than he should, but he was spurred to action and condemned the teachers involved in the event. A probe into the field trip has been opened, and ideally, those who orchestrated it will be deservedly punished if they acted improperly.

Give it a few more years of folding, progressive governments and soon “settler” will be a label on passports. It will not change the fact that shopping up and dividing Canadians like this is wrong. The right thing to do is eliminate the practice, ideally with all the efficiency of shoving a vampire into the morning sunlight.

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Unfortunately, despite Leger’s poll showing that almost 80 per cent of Canadians either reject the “settler” label or do not care, the other 23 per cent have sunk their claws into our institutions. The result will be more field trips where “settler” students are told to dress in a way that marks them apart from others present.

For those who loathe and despise this course that Canadian society is being led towards, it does not mean abandoning universities and public education.

Whether it be conservatives, moderate liberals or simply concerned citizens, it means actively contesting school board elections with the same vigor and energy that provincial or federal elections are. It also means pushing governments to open up independent schools, such as the Calgary Classical Academy, a tuition-free charter school focused on inculcating “virtues, knowledge and habits befitting free citizens” within their pupils.

It also means remaining in higher academia and incrementally pushing back, as the radicals have succeeded in doing so persistently. Most people still need a university degree to succeed, and abandoning the path to management positions cedes the ground entirely to the radicals.

Anyone with the bravery and endurance to take an active role in weeding out the new racial categorization of Canadians should take comfort in the fact that despite all the noise, they are not in the minority, and they are certainly not a “settler.”

National Post

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