Hey Dude! Where Is My Country?

Dude 1: Hey Dude! Where’s my country, eh?

Dude 2: What country?

Dude 1: You know, the country where everyone was equal; where the exception was the exception and where your relationship with your invisible friend was a private one.

Dude 2: Oh, that country.

Dude 1: Yes, that country. What happened to it?

Dude 2: It was reasoned out of existence.

Dude 1: Reasoned out of existence!!! What are you talking about?

Dude 2: Sorry, reasonably accommodated out of existence.

Dude 1: Reasonably accommodated by whom?

Dude 2: By those you elected.

Dude 1: And why would they do that?

Dude 2: To get elected, they promised the people who voted for them to make them an exception.

Dude 1: An exception to what?

Dude 2: An exception to the rule.

Dude 1: What rule?

Dude 2: The rule that said everyone was equal.

Dude 1: Why would people not want to be equal?

Dude 2: I did not say that people did not want to be equal, but some people wanted to be more equal than others.

Dude 1: Oh, and making some people more equal than others was the smart thing to do!!!

Dude 2: Not really. It turned out to be a real bonasse thing to do.

Dude 1: Bone ass?

Dude 2: Not bone ass! Bonasse! French for generous to the point of being foolish.

Dude 1: And the politicians were responsible for this booone ass policy?

Dude 2: Not entirely! They created a Charter of Rights that said, in effect,  everyone was equal within their cultural and religious group.

Dude 1: What is wrong with that?

Dude 2: Nothing, if they had explicitly rank the groups and not, in the same Charter, redefined Canada as a multicultural society with the preserving of everyone's values and traditions as a priority.

Dude 1: What about Canadian culture?

Dude 2: What Canadian culture?

Dude 1: My culture where everyone was equal.

Dude 2: The Supreme Court of Canada decided differently.

Dude 1: Why?

Dude 2: We don't know why, for sure. Perhaps it was because freedom of religion was the first freedom guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and because the Charter explicitly stated that the preservation of cultural values, which in a religion like Islam for instance are the same as religious values.

Dude 1: So that is how I lost my country?

Dude 2: You did not lose your country, it just became God's country.

Dude 1: Whose god?

Dude 2: Everybody’s god.

Dude 1: So how do you make that work?

Dude 2: You make exceptions for the god-fearing.

Dude 1: If you make exceptions for one god then you have to make exceptions for all the other gods and all the flavours of the one god.

Dude 2: Yes, that’s only reasonable.

Dude 1: That’s a lot of exceptions.

Dude 2: And that’s how the exception became the rule.

Dude 1: And that’s how I lost my country?

Dude 2: As I said before, you did not lose your country, it's just a different country, a country  which the Supreme Court of Canada remade using the Charter of Rights and Freedom as a guide, a Charter whose very first sentence explicitly declares Canada as being "founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God".

Dude 1: I still think it's a shame. Damn the Charter, damn the Supreme Court, damn it all!

Dude 2: Damn Trudeau!

Boreal, September 16, 2007 (rev. March 10. 2011)