Good Citizens

About a month ago, I was walking along Covey Hill Road with my daughter and son, both adults. We were taking a leisurely stroll when an RCMP car passed us in slow motion, then turned around and pulled up alongside us. After rolling down his window, he politely asked us what we were doing on the road. I replied, in French, that we were out for a walk. Then I asked him why he was asking that question, and he explained that people were worried about border crossings and had called them to let them know that a group was walking nearby. I told him that I often walked on Covey Hill and that obviously the people who were worried weren't very good physiognomists.

This event, which in itself seemed insignificant, came a few days after we had received, by post, an RCMP pamphlet addressed specifically to border residents, encouraging them to phone them if they saw people who seemed suspicious, i.e. carrying backpacks and struggling to express themselves in the two official languages. A description that raises questions, given that many legal newcomers do not speak either of the official languages well. (The Legault government's budget cuts to French courses for new arrivals won't help matters).

In other words, a foreigner automatically became a suspect, to be denounced.

As I was responding to this officer, I was also thinking that appealing to the public to report people was not the best way to create a friendly atmosphere and good neighborly relations. I wondered why people would report others to an authority without knowing who they were or why they were there.

I then thought that perhaps a society that no longer listens to its citizens creates individuals who are eager for attention and consideration, even at the expense of another human being, provided that for a few moments they have an ear that approves of them and encourages them, thanks them, and recognizes them. That when you feel like a pawn in a chess game you can't control, the other person, the weaker, the worse off, is the only thing you have to eat. A poorly governed world that is leading us to planetary, social, humanitarian and environmental disaster while claiming to be taking measures to remedy the situation, a world like this creates citizens in its own image: citizens who misunderstand who is to blame, humans who dehumanize what is foreign to them in order to better assert their superiority, who lie to themselves in the belief that the small power they are granted is proof of their importance.

I was thinking that civil wars begin by exploiting fear of the other, by encouraging denunciation, that our neighbors to the South are going to pay the price, and that we should ask ourselves whether we are not following their example.
 
I also thought of my grandfather, a member of the Resistance, who died in a concentration camp after being given away by a good citizen who followed the recommendations of the forces in power.

Dominique

(Translation of the original French blog 'Les bons citoyens')