PhilPaine.com

Do every­thing pos­si­ble to make it cheap and easy for any­one under 25 to trav­el in Cana­da. Our present facil­i­ties for back­pack­ers and stu­dent trav­el­ers are woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. Every young Kore­an, Eston­ian, or Peru­vian who back­packs across Cana­da at the age of 18, and has a good expe­ri­ence, is a future foun­tain­head of invest­ment, trade, pub­lic­i­ty and good­will for this coun­try. This is bread cast upon the waters that will come back five-fold after many days.

Equip a large num­ber of high schools across the coun­try to func­tion as youth trav­el hos­tels in the sum­mer hol­i­days. The tech­niques for oper­at­ing trav­el hos­tels are well estab­lished. It should be made pos­si­ble for any high school, uni­ver­si­ty, or com­mu­ni­ty col­lege stu­dent to stay overnight at a min­i­mal charge in any such hos­tel, any­where in the coun­try. Addi­tion­al trav­el hos­tels should be estab­lished in native reserves, nation­al parks, and in remote wilder­ness areas. Hope­ful­ly, the next gen­er­a­tion will actu­al­ly know our coun­try, and out­grow the pet­ty region­al squab­bling that embar­rass­es us before the rest of the world.

Make it extreme­ly easy for any stu­dent to spend a school term in any oth­er city in the country.

Make it extreme­ly easy for any stu­dent to sub­sti­tute a semes­ter of world trav­el for any semes­ter in the last two years of high school. Cre­ate funds (pub­lic or pri­vate) for loans and grants for world trav­el award­ed for scholas­tic achievement.

Build a fund and suit­able pro­grams so that thou­sands of high-school stu­dents from for­eign coun­tries can take the last two years of high school in Cana­da. Poor and trou­bled coun­tries should be tar­get­ed. Trans­porta­tion, hous­ing and expens­es should be includ­ed. This does not need to be a gov­ern­ment pro­gram — the mon­ey involved is well with­in the capa­bil­i­ties of pri­vate foun­da­tions. The stu­dents should be select­ed on the basis of grades and intel­li­gence, with in situ over­see­ing to make sure that it is not abused by priv­i­leged elites in the coun­tries of ori­gin. The aim should be to pro­vide an in-depth expe­ri­ence of Cana­di­an soci­ety. Such a pro­gram will do more good than a hun­dred times its cost in for­eign aid (which usu­al­ly does lit­tle more than wind up in the num­bered Swiss bank accounts of dic­ta­tors and thugs). And, in the long run, it will ben­e­fit us as much as it ben­e­fits its recipients.

Make a vis­it to the high arc­tic, or a major expe­ri­ence of wilder­ness, a basic com­po­nent of edu­ca­tion, expect­ed of every­one who attends high school. Canada’s Native her­itage should play a larg­er role in edu­ca­tion. The vast­ness of the land, and the ancient tra­di­tions of liv­ing with and under­stand­ing nature, are the core themes of our nation. Every­one should have access to them.

Break the child­hood “couch pota­to” syn­drome. Do every­thing pos­si­ble to ensure that our next gen­er­a­tion knows some­thing more than how to type on a key­board or play video games.

Make lan­guage instruc­tion a major aim of Cana­di­an edu­ca­tion. It should be expect­ed and nor­mal for any Cana­di­an to emerge from high school with some flu­en­cy in at least four lan­guages: Eng­lish, French, a for­eign lan­guage, and a native Cana­di­an lan­guage (such as Cree or Inuk­ti­tut). Pro­fi­cien­cy in five or six lan­guages should be rel­a­tive­ly com­mon. The max­i­mum vari­ety of for­eign lan­guages should be sought after, so that we can devel­op pools of pro­fi­cien­cy in any lan­guage that is use­ful in inter­na­tion­al trade, diplo­ma­cy, or cul­ture. We should attempt to make the next gen­er­a­tion of Cana­di­ans renowned in the world for cos­mopoli­tan sophis­ti­ca­tion. Lan­guages were the core of Clas­si­cal Edu­ca­tion, which focused on the dis­ci­pline of the mind and the prepa­ra­tion for indi­vid­ual growth. Much has been lost by sub­sti­tut­ing an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem that com­bines equal parts of job train­ing and baby-sit­ting, and views stu­dents as work­er-ter­mites or commodities.

Dou­ble the size of our cur­rent library sys­tem. Extend library hours and ser­vices. Improve libraries in remote communities.

Improve sci­ence edu­ca­tion. Reward and encour­age stu­dent inter­est in sci­ence in every way pos­si­ble. Build more insti­tu­tions devot­ed to pure sci­ence. Take out the damn check­book and pay for the best young minds from any cor­ner of the globe we can get them. Let them do real work, not paper-push­ing or near-sight­ed “prac­ti­cal” work. Our present lev­el of pure sci­ence research is pathet­ic — per­haps the worst among the G7 nations. We are not pulling our weight.

Make it vir­tu­al­ly effort­less for any work­ing sci­en­tist to vis­it and trav­el in Canada.

Revive Canada’s mori­bund space program.

Build a larg­er sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tion­al and exper­i­men­tal pres­ence in the Arctic.

Make Cana­da the “gay-friend­liest” nation on earth in both pub­lic and pri­vate insti­tu­tions. Pro­mote and encour­age gay tourism. Encour­age gays to “ride the free­dom train”, mak­ing it easy for gay cou­ples to immi­grate and acquire cit­i­zen­ship. How a coun­try treats gays is a clear and reli­able mea­sure of the degree of civ­i­liza­tion it has achieved. At present, our greater respect for the civ­il rights of gays is the one thing that unar­guably puts us on a high­er moral plane than our cousins to the south. Gay tourism, reveal­ing to oth­ers a cul­tur­al­ly and moral­ly advanced soci­ety, has a “mul­ti­pli­er effect” of influ­ences that far out­strips its imme­di­ate eco­nom­ic significance.

Strike down and elim­i­nate per­ni­cious anti-mar­i­jua­na laws and oth­er offen­sive vio­la­tions of indi­vid­ual free­dom. Make the world aware that Cana­da is a free land inhab­it­ed by free peo­ple, not a back­wa­ter of sav­ages ter­ror­ized by an intru­sive Nanny-State.