THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT TABOOS THAN THOSE ABOUT CUTTING OFF BEARDS
An incident in which a nurse violated a cultural taboo by cutting off an elderly Sikh man's beard illustrates how multicultural concerns continue to trump much more important matters in Canada. Before the Sikhs and the media who have been helping to broadcast this incident get even more carried away, they should recall two crucial points. One is that many Sikh men shave off their own beards. The second and most significant is that government and media are ignoring issues which deserve to be tabooed nationally.
One of the truly important ones is a taboo needed to protect famland. British Columbia is the only province which has legislated such a taboo. It did so around 1973 when the NDP government established the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). It did this because the province was in danger of losing even more of the tiny 5% of the province's land base that could be used for farming. After considerable initial opposition, most people came to accept the new taboo which could be stated as follows : Land in the Agricultural Land Reserve must not be used for non-agricultural purposes. Developers soon began to find loopholes, and it was not long before land was taken out to build golf courses, etc. People protested, however, and loopholes were plugged. Up until about 8 years ago, the taboo was still strong.
When the new provincial government headed by Premier Gordon Campbell came to power in 2001, a major change occurred. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants had arrived in Metro Vancouver and created a demand for new housing. Developers began to lobby for land to be removed from the ALR. Aware that he might ignite a firestorm if he dismantled the Agricultural Land Reserve, Former Developer Campbell decided to assault the ALR taboo by stealth. He decentralized the power of the group that administered the ALR and he gave municipal governments the power to remove land from the ALR. This was like appointing the proverbial fox to be the protector of the hen house. Municipal governments are notorious for being composed of developers or their paid friends. It was not long before thousands of acres of farmland was removed. This process continues today. Campbell's government has tried to cover up their actions by saying that they have enlarged the size of the ALR. But what they have really done is remove the best land, that which is in Metro Vancouver and the rest of the Fraser Valley, and replaced it with marginal land in northern areas where climate renders farming marginal. Essentially, the taboo that the Agricultural Land Reserve established could be re-stated as follows for any other jurisdiction in Canada or elsewhere : Do not endanger your own food supply.
Canadians, particularly those of East Indian and Sikh background, should note that there has been some great irony on this issue in recent news from India. According to one report, as India industrializes, it too shows its contempt for such essentials as the land that produces its food. Like many other societies, it lionizes trivialities such as shopping malls. For example, in the New Delhi suburb of Noida, farmers have sold around 50,000 acres of farmland to developers. With newfound cash, farmers have bought replacement land elsewhere, banked the money, invested in their children's education, or improved their houses. In the Punjab, which is the homeland of many of Canada's Sikhs, some farmers have said they intend to use their new riches to move to Canada !!! As one Canadian who read about these events has said, “Brilliant. First they sell the land in their home country so that developers can pave it over. Then they come to Canada so that more of our farmland can be paved over as Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary devour the surrounding countryside. Good thing future generations won`t need to eat !!!.”
Finally, let's look at another important basic taboo which could be stated as follows : Do not endanger control of your future by allowing yourselves and your own taboos to be overwhelmed. Two of Canada's major immigrant groups, the Chinese and the Filipinos, have suffered from being overwhelmed. The Sikhs have suffered a similar fate. To get more control of their futures, some Sikhs tried to establish the independent state of Khalistan. That is why they fought with the Indian army at the Golden Temple in Amritsar and that is why, in revenge for their loss, they assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. That is also why some of them bombed an Air India plane from Vancouver to India and killed all 329+ aboard in 1985. Strangely, the Sikhs, the Chinese and the Filipinos, who have been the victims of invasion, see nothing wrong with their invasion of Canada. In fact, they like to say that Canada's policy of Multiculturalism approves their invasion. Regarding South Asians in particular, some Canadians may find it hard to believe that, a few years ago, a prominent East Indian newspaper publicly advocated that after immigrants had outnumbered and overwhelmed the mainstream population of Metro Vancouver, they should set up a separate province in the Metro Vancouver area !!!
Enemies of Canada do not come only from outside our borders. In continuing to employ its Manager of Diversity, Filipino immigrant Alden Habacon, who has publicly stated that British Columbia is “part of Asia”, our CBC demonstrates that it shares Habacon's disdain for traditional Canada. In fawning for someone like Henry Yu, who has called a predominantly white neighbourhood of Vancouver “an aberration”, our CBC shows that it sympathizes with Yu's contempt for the mainstream population of Canada. It is no secret that the CBC has become a notorious propaganda arm for Canada's immigration industry, particularly for ethnic groups whose numbers have mushroomed as a result of corrupt and illegitimate high immigration numbers. And our CBC is not alone. Some columnists at The Vancouver Sun and other newspapers across Canada try to equal its sycophancy. Strangely, these people fail to consider that sycophants are held in contempt by both the people they fawn before and the people they betray.
Many politicians of like mind should take note. Diane Watts, the Mayor of the Municipality of Surrey, B.C.'s largest municipality and home to a few hundred thousand Sikhs, should pay particular attention. Ms. Watts recently proclaimed that Surrey will eventually take another million people. In making her statement, she did not reveal that 85% of that increase at present consists of immigrants, mostly Sikhs, or that soon almost 100% of that increase will be immigrants. Nor did she say that almost all of the increase will make the Sikhs the dominant group. Ms. Watts' statement came just after Statistics Canada recently predicted that by 2031, 33% of Canada's population will be visible minorities. Ms. Watts implies that she and a large number of other politicians at all levels of government see nothing wrong with allowing that prediction to come true. In doing so, they reveal how little importance they give to the mainstream population of their jurisdictions and to the crucial overarching concern that their jurisdictions will probably lose their agricultural capacity. To them, notions such as multiculturalism, diversity and vibrancy and the votes they get from immigrants trump everything. To compound the hypocrisy, she and a host of other politicians like to portray themselves as green and see no contradiction between being green and converting farmland to housing and paving it over with blacktop.
The next time our media and others get wound up with an incident such as beard cutting, they should compare a taboo against cutting off a beard with ones against paving over farmland, against creating a crowded, poisoned environment, and against a population being overwhelmed by immigration.
Which taboos should they and our country give priority to?
The answer should be clear.
