While many of you were watching a porn actress talking about having sex with the guy that ended up becoming President of the United States last night, my wife and I were watching a live stream of the Canadian version of the Grammys–The Junos. It’s not that we wanted to see who won Artist of the Year or best Indigenous People’s Album. The Barenaked Ladies were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame–and they performed with former singer Steven Page for the first time in nearly a decade. Unfortunately, that magic moment came at the end of the awards broadcast–but having to sit through two hours of honoring the “best” of Canadian music did provide some insight into our neighbors to the north.
Canada is one of those countries that liberals like to say the US “should be more like”. They have health insurance for all, their kids are better-educated than ours, they openly accept refugees from predominantly Muslim countries, their Prime Minister is young, handsome and cries about past injustices upon people of color, they have high taxes and the rich “pay their fair share”. But based upon what we heard from their celebrities last night, that still isn’t good enough.
I can tell you based upon speeches given on the stage last night that women working in entertainment in Canada also face sexual harassment and assault. They also apparently don’t hold enough technical positions in the music field. They aren’t high-ranking officials at Canadian record companies either. And they don’t feel “safe” in the workplace. Indigenous peoples–known up there as “The First Nations”–still deserve reparations for their unfair treatment for centuries. Blacks (nobody referred to themselves as African-Canadians) don’t receive enough support in the entertainment industry and commercial radio doesn’t play enough of their songs.
A number of performers mentioned that public school music programs at their old schools had been cut due to tight budgets. And they asked the Government to do more to promote the arts (even though the Best New Artist Award and Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award were both sponsored “by the Government of Canada”).
The most touching moment of the night was a tribute to the lead singer of the Tragically Hip–Gord Downie–who died from cancer earlier this year. Nobody got on stage to blame “greedy health insurance companies” or to declare that “health care is a right” because they’ve got Government health care in Canada–and Gord got sick and died anyway.
Last night’s attempts at “celebrity activism” were tempered by typical Canadian politeness. Not a single politician was called out by name. No political party was blamed for the “ills of society” and nobody encouraged voters to head to the ballot boxes to “bring change to Ottawa”. Instead, to a person, they all said “we as Canadians need to work to together”. In that way, I guess maybe we should try to be more like Canada.
