For Christmas: Should Some “Neighbours” Get Preferred Treatment?
Recent events show that our CBC continues to preach its distorted idea of the word “neighbour”. In Jewish teaching, the word “neighbour” referred to “others”, that is, those other than oneself. A Jew’s responsibility to others was very important—as highlighted in the Jewish commandment, “Love Thy Neighbour”, but it probably had ethnic limitations. The commandment was strongly re-inforced by Jesus Christ in his Parable of the Good Samaritan and has been an important element in the West’s rich 2000-year-old Christian tradition, especially in Christian charitable institutions such as hospitals and schools.
In the past few weeks, Parliament has re-examined a continuation of that Christian tradition : Parliament’s promise made in 1989 to end child poverty in Canada. That promise has made little progress. In fact, there are nearly as many children (about a million) living in poverty now as there were when the promise was made. The CBC has correctly presented this issue as a national embarrassment. Obviously, the CBC believes that Canada has a moral responsibility to end child poverty. And they are right in saying that Canadians should see poor children in particular as the “neighbours” of all Canadians. In other words, all Canadians have a responsibility to end the conditions which these poor children suffer from. Similarly, Canada’s governments have a responsibility to create policies that would help to end child poverty.
So we have to ask two important questions : (1) Are current government policies helping to perpetuate child poverty? (2) Which policies are doing that?
In response to Question 1, we would say that current government policies are helping to perpetuate child poverty. In response to Question 2, we would say that high immigration policies are a major contributing factor to child poverty.
Most economists agree that wages in Canada have stagnated for the Middle Class since 1980. According to Stats Can, although the incomes of Canada’s wealthy have increased considerably, the incomes of Canada’s lower paid workers have declined considerably.
We would also say that maintaining Canada’s immigration intake at an average of 250,000 per year has contributed substantially to the latter. In other words, an unnecessary increase in the number of workers has caused a surplus of workers. As in most such cases, wages stagnate or fall.
At the same time, a UBC study showed that an unrelenting inflow of immigrants has caused the price of Metro Vancouver houses and of rental accommodation to rise. In fact, house prices in Metro Vancouver are now the second highest in the world. These prices have placed an enormous burden on middle-class workers, but an especially heavy one on low-wage workers, many of whom are renters.
Overall, our point is that adult poverty is a cause of child poverty. In other words, if government immigration policies promote adult poverty, the same policies also create child poverty
So our CBC is correct in saying that our government should be chastised for its failure to end child poverty. But our CBC, like much of our political establishment, refuses to admit that a strong connection exists between unnecessary immigration and both adult and child poverty. In fact, both our CBC and many of our MP’s, such as the NDP’s sluggardly Don Davies, see no connection between high immigration and its many negative consequences from traffic gridlock to child poverty.
The failures of both the CBC and most of our political leaders have worsened in the past week or so. A senior CBC host, Michael Enright, recently castigated our federal government for not bringing in more Syrian refugees. In fact, the CBC host stated that Canada was not meeting its obligations to these vulnerable people, particularly to Syrian children.
So our question to that host and to the entire CBC which has cheerled Canada’s high immigration intake and thus grossly abused its status as a subsidized national broadcaster, is this : If Canada is to “Love Thy Neighbour”, which of those “neighbours” should be given priority : impoverished Canadians or impoverished Syrians?
If Canadians had a vote on this issue, we suspect that most would vote to give priority to Canada’s impoverished. But we suspect the CBC and many of its supporters would distort the issue to justify doing the opposite.
In fact, our CBC has taken this issue to a new level in the past few days. Responding to allegations that our federal government plans to favour Syrian Christian refugees over Syrian Muslim refugees, the secular CBC has damned our federal government. They have done this in spite of the increasing, substantial evidence that says that a significant number of Muslims are incompatible with Canadian society.
Of all the examples which demonstrate the CBC’s xenophilia (love of foreigners at the expense of Canadians) and its contempt for Canadians, this is it. The same thing should be said of the many Canadian hypocrites who have cheerled the arrival of 6 million immigrants since the beginning of Canada’s Unnecessary High Immigration Intake policy in 1990. Simultaneously, these hypocrites have hurled contempt at needy Canadians and shown that they even believe they (the hypocrites) should be given national awards for their contemptuous actions.
Yes, indeed, as Christmas nears and the words of Jesus Christ get re-echoed in our beautiful carols and sacred music, the entire country and these hypocrites especially have to seriously examine the word “neighbour”. In particular, they have to answer the following question : ” Should Some ‘Neighbours’ Get Preferred Treatment? “
Our answer is that our “neighbours” within our own borders have to be given priority. All others come later.
