Post by sandstone on Jun 25, 2008 8:18:05 GMT -11
No maleitch, I'm not looking to start the handgun debate. As was pointed out in "Bowling for Columbine", Canadians have more guns per person than Americans do. I really don't know why Canadians are less likely to use them on each other. Maybe because pointing at others is rude, and we Canucks are annoyingly polite.
I'm just suggesting that to use this case as justification to insult Canada is silly. There are good things and bad things about every country.
It really depends on what your goals and values are. I liked living in the States, but home is home, and I do feel safer here.
Another thing to remember, true in both the U.S. and Canada (and around the world for that matter), the media tends to report the portions of the story that make it the most interesting (read: sensational), with little regard for the truth, or the full and accurate story. We can probably risk giving Canada the benefit of the doubt unless/until it is shown they have more per capita freaks then we have in the U.S.
When I lived in CO, the news constantly showed violent situations with great enthusiasm, almost encouraging such behavior. Here at home, the big news item is a failed relationship between an attractive/athletic French-Canadian member of Parliament and a hot biker chick who forced his resignation from the role of foreign affairs minister by ratting on him for leaving classified documents over at her place (Canadians love soaps). So sex and violence are used to distract people from the important issues.
In the case of the mother who was investigated on the say-so of a psychic... well, as we see in the CTV coverage there was more to it than that. Even there, only the mother was interviewed because the CAS can't discuss cases with the media, so we never get their side of this. But it looks like all the CAS did was to investigate a complaint (which they are legally obliged to do) by interviewing the people involved, and make a decision that the child was not in danger of abuse. The mother was never charged with abuse. The child was never taken away from her parents. The child's concerns were not neglected.