ferocious
Definition: a raging of the soul, living with fierceness, determination, gravity, deliberate intention and intensity.
And so it will be in 2019, a year of progressive change unlike any other in a generation, across Canada, in British Columbia, in our little burgh by the sea, in the United States, across Europe and across the globe.
Make no mistake, though, necessary progressive change for the better will not come should we fail to band together to fight the forces of regression.
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Justin Trudeau has said that the 2019 federal election will be the ugliest in Canadian history. Make no mistake, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer will make it so — aided by Maxime Bernier, the leader of the so-called People’s Party of Canada, who will force the Conservatives further to the right — focusing as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper did on “fear of the other”, as Trump has done in the United States, demonizing the Muslim population and “illegal immigrants”. According to a recent Angus Reid poll, two-thirds of Canadians believe the influx of asylum seekers into Canada is a “crisis”, with 84% of Canadians who voted for the Conservative Party of Canada of the belief that “there are too many people claiming asylum and that Canada is ‘too generous’ toward them;”
- In British Columbia, voting in the Nanaimo by-election to replace former BC NDP MLA Leonard Krog (who was elected Mayor of Nanaimo this past November) starts today. In late January, it’s a neck-and-neck race, with B.C Liberal candidate Tony Harris focusing on the botched roll-out of the government’s Speculation and Vacancy Tax, which forces every British Columbia homeowner to register their home with the government — failure to do so could result in a payout of thousands of dollars for unsuspecting, unregistered homeowners. If Harris wins, we’re looking at a late winter / early spring B.C. election, which bodes ill for any progressively-minded British Columbian & a return to the bad old days;
- In Vancouver, we’re sitting pretty, with a largely progressive City Council (notice the number of unanimous or near-unanimous progressive votes — on transit, affordable housing, 58 West Hastings, a renter’s office, our current climate emergency, and much, much more). The success of our City Council, though, is almost wholly dependent on a federal Liberal government, complemented by a provincial NDP government — which, for instance, have set aside $52 billion dollars on the affordable housing file alone, monies which would most assuredly be withdrawn by a right-of-centre / “the market is always right” do-nothing Conservative government, and their B.C. kin, Andrew Wilkinson and the B.C. Liberals.
Closer to home for me will be the fight in which I engage throughout 2019 against the forces of repression, intolerance, despotism, racism, homo-and-transphobia and hatred of “the other” that has defined that portion of my life, resident in the housing co-operative where I have dwelled for 35 years.
2019 is the year to fight back, to demand better, to organize, to recognize that — as is evident in the time of Trump across the United States, and across Europe — that in 2019 all of us are in for the fight of our lives.
