Change makers, decisive leaders and crisis fixers have been steadily purged from Canadian office culture for a while now. As much in the boardroom as the fire hall kitchen, to be fair. It’s been more important to fit in than to do a job well. It doesn’t usually matter until it really matters. Ask any middle manager these days, the employees that don’t really care and are happy to do the required minimum without causing a fuss are considered the preferred breed. We get the world we deserve. Enjoy the decline. Save your crypto.
Angela Merkel is the most-popular leader of any country just now. Even though: they have half-again our pandemic casualties per million, and are 10 percentage points behind us in vaccinations. They spent less in Afghanistan than we did, in the first place; despite over twice our population, contributed less, certainly sacrificed fewer lives.
Yet their population seems to think that Germany is fit-for-purpose.
Our foreign affairs department certainly didn't serve these people well, but we take in more immigrants than anybody, took in an extra 50,000 Syrians in the year where we'd already busted records by taking 300,000 regular immigrants and had to deal with 40,000 "American refugees" from Trump that froze their hands off to cross our border...Canada's population grew by a full percent that year, just on immigration.
Canada has done more-poorly at the pandemic than South Korea, Australia/NZ, Taiwan, Japan, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Of large, high-travel countries, though, that's about the full list. Our response was better than all the rest of western Europe, the States obviously (by 3:1...we'd have an additional 50,000 dead if we had American government).
So if we're "deeply dysfunctional", most of the rest of the developed world must count as "comatose".
If the author isn’t overstating the scale of the underground railroads, this is an excellent point: “ While we can debate how shocked we should have been at the speed at which Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the withdrawal of U.S. troops was entirely predictable. We should have begun to evacuate translators, activists, and fixers when the withdrawal was first announced in April. Women’s rights groups set up underground railroads for their own activists many, many months ago. How is it that small charities with shoestring budgets were better able to rescue their own people than an entire G7 nation?”
I do think it’s relevant though that we seem to have been caught by surprise along with every other government, and it seems to be a legitimately hard operation to get everyone out. But I am surprised at the seeming lack of foresight.
Change makers, decisive leaders and crisis fixers have been steadily purged from Canadian office culture for a while now. As much in the boardroom as the fire hall kitchen, to be fair. It’s been more important to fit in than to do a job well. It doesn’t usually matter until it really matters. Ask any middle manager these days, the employees that don’t really care and are happy to do the required minimum without causing a fuss are considered the preferred breed. We get the world we deserve. Enjoy the decline. Save your crypto.
Angela Merkel is the most-popular leader of any country just now. Even though: they have half-again our pandemic casualties per million, and are 10 percentage points behind us in vaccinations. They spent less in Afghanistan than we did, in the first place; despite over twice our population, contributed less, certainly sacrificed fewer lives.
Yet their population seems to think that Germany is fit-for-purpose.
Our foreign affairs department certainly didn't serve these people well, but we take in more immigrants than anybody, took in an extra 50,000 Syrians in the year where we'd already busted records by taking 300,000 regular immigrants and had to deal with 40,000 "American refugees" from Trump that froze their hands off to cross our border...Canada's population grew by a full percent that year, just on immigration.
Canada has done more-poorly at the pandemic than South Korea, Australia/NZ, Taiwan, Japan, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Of large, high-travel countries, though, that's about the full list. Our response was better than all the rest of western Europe, the States obviously (by 3:1...we'd have an additional 50,000 dead if we had American government).
So if we're "deeply dysfunctional", most of the rest of the developed world must count as "comatose".
YOUR ARTICLE FILLS OUT AND ENCAPSULATES EVERY THOUGHT I EXPRESSED LAST NIGHT TO MESSRS. TRUDEAU, GARNEAU AND SAJJAN (WHO I SKED TO RESIGN)
If the author isn’t overstating the scale of the underground railroads, this is an excellent point: “ While we can debate how shocked we should have been at the speed at which Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the withdrawal of U.S. troops was entirely predictable. We should have begun to evacuate translators, activists, and fixers when the withdrawal was first announced in April. Women’s rights groups set up underground railroads for their own activists many, many months ago. How is it that small charities with shoestring budgets were better able to rescue their own people than an entire G7 nation?”
I do think it’s relevant though that we seem to have been caught by surprise along with every other government, and it seems to be a legitimately hard operation to get everyone out. But I am surprised at the seeming lack of foresight.