By Staff
April 23, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
The Burlington Library sent out the following statement a number of months ago:
“We live in an era of eroding democracy where polarization is increasingly fracturing our sense of a shared reality” adding that “ there’s a growing sense that our political system prioritizes short-term gains over the long-term health of our democracy.”
The CBC program, IDEAS decided to host a series of cross-Canada discussions that focus on local solutions with the potential to inspire national change.
Moderated by Nahlah Ayed, the discussions were to take place in Burlington, Charlottetown, Edmonton and Nanaimo, BC.
Lita Barrie (CEO, Burlington Public Library), Sabreena Delhon (CEO, The Samara Centre for Democracy), Meg Uttangi Matsos (Director, Service Design & Innovation, BPL), Nahlah Ayed (Host, CBC’s IDEAS), and Ira Wells (Professor, University of Toronto, critic & author).
Local innovators/thinkers/storytellers in each community came together for conversations that explore the next chapter of Canada’s democracy. In Burlington that included library CEO Lita Barrie and Ira Wells, a Professor, University of Toronto, critic & author).
The program will be broadcast on CBC’s IDEAS on Thursday April 24th at 8:00 pm
The series is part of CBC Collab fund and in partnership with the Samara Centre for Democracy.
Libraries are a target in the culture wars raging across the continent. Yet they define themselves as a place to give all people access “to the widest possible variety of expressive content.”
As upholders of intellectual freedom, can libraries remind Canadians what democracy is all about, and which values are still worth fighting for?
Last nigh (April 30th) I listened to the program while driving (Thus starting during the program), and I appreciate fighting for democracy. But at the end, to be fair, I was wondering if the shelf has also the Biblical instruction. What the faith community, evangelist in their varieties are publishing.
Justin Trudeau once stated, “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship allows them to turn their economy around on a dime.” This is a very odd statement coming from a democratically elected leader of a free democracy, especially considering the poor decisions made by the Chinese government in haste. These missteps occurred during a unique opportunity when left-leaning governments were convinced that engaging with China would lead to a democratized billion-plus population purchasing Western goods and services, ultimately enriching the West even further.
These same like-minded left-leaning leaders in Western democratic nations opted for a more palatable version of communism: globalization. When you compare the two side by side, they align quite closely. Both promise a worker’s paradise, a single-party system in good standing, and decisions made by the party for the proletariat—who represent a subculture of the working class with no voice and no future. Complicit in this are a cohort of white-collar, university-educated voters who will gladly ignore the attack on democracy in exchange for political favors.
Do you believe blue-collar workers should be allowed to vote? If your answer is “no,” then you may be considered an intellectual, which positions you as a threat to the worker’s paradise, with your fate seemingly predetermined by history.
How many times are we going to attempt this? How many failures will it take before we recognize this as a total waste of time?