This past week marked the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Somewhere in my house I have small piece of concrete that was collected that fateful evening. The wall changed lives and separated families literally overnight and became an international symbol of repression and fear. Citizens on the East German side of the city suddenly found themselves subjected to inspection, imprisonment, torture and a state-created life of paranoia. They had lost something of huge value that most of us in the Western world take for granted: their freedom.
Generally speaking, Canadians are pretty complacent when it comes to being told what to do and how to do it. We pay our taxes, we say “sorry” to everyone, and we blindly accept our freedoms being gradually taken away.
Freedom is much more than being allowed to live anywhere in Canada. Last week, the prime minister stated that “our laws and police powers need to be strengthened in the area of surveillance, detention and arrest….They need to be much strengthened, and I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that work which is already underway will be expedited.” Now I agree that our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies must be given the necessary powers to prevent both criminal and terrorist acts, and confidentiality is often required to do so. But there is a cautionary note here as well – surveillance, detention and arrest was precisely how the East German Stasi (secret police) carried out their orders and that didn’t turn out well for the East German population, likewise with the McCarthy era policy of “rat on your communist neighbour” in the U.S.
The loss of freedom is insidious and active even in Squamish. I’ve mentioned before that Freedom of Information requests to the district are most often late, incomplete or refused. I submitted a request in January of this year, was provided some information and told, “That’s all we have.”
We are too often being told what our municipal leaders want us to hear, and the inconvenient facts are held back at their discretion.
The Stasi used to open the mail of their East German citizenry and either withhold it or change it before it was sent to the intended recipient. It’s not a stretch to see that our rights are being slowly retracted, and “spinning” information is often the first sign.
I’ll leave you with the words of Edmund Burke, the Irish-born statesman who commented on the subject of freedom more than 200 years ago: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men and women to do nothing.”
If you like what you have, work hard to keep it. When you see your freedom being degraded, call out those that are taking it. You would very likely fight back if your children were at risk, and your freedom is also really important. Fence-sitting is not an option.
Keith Sones
Squamish
