Continued from last weeks journal.
Perhaps take a look into another major issue in the social world such as extreme poverty. This is a direct cause to world hunger, homelessness and human deaths which make COVID-19 look like a mosquito bite. Mosquitos by the way, are the cause of over 2.7 million deaths in 2020. Approximately 1 year after COVID-19, the global deaths reported by John Hopkins University was 2.6 million. A staggering number by any measure. Compare that number to deaths from cardiovascular diseases at 18 million and cancer at 10 million. Even worse is the most easily preventable, deaths from hunger and hunger related diseases at over 9 million people. More than a third of that number is children. We can keep our focus inside our borders and not help or fight for the people most affected by these and all will be well in our country. But we are a country massively reliant on immigration for our population and economy. Our death rate outnumbers our birth rate and the only reason we do not have declining population is because of immigration. Over 75% of our population growth is from immigration, and as such we have an obligation to look beyond our borders.
That leads directly into the next question. As a Canadian, there is a very high probability that you are an immigrant or a descendent of one. Of course, as Canadians every person here is an immigrant, but for let’s use the last few generations as a definition in this case. You or your kin made it to Canada to build a better life, but you are forever linked to the places of your heritage. Yes, you and your family are now Canadians, but does that mean you forget about the hardships suffered in other lands and the people that still go through them. Is it not a responsibility to help those, so they may have a better life too?
These are but a handful of the important issues which plague our world, and our country, today. The world is no longer the wild, unexplored planet it was just 30 years ago. Nearly every place is within reach to us in just a day. And it is only getting smaller. We live in a new world, a new time. The COVID-19 virus showed just how small our world is, and just how quickly it can change. For the first time, we in the ‘developed’ nations were impacted and the world scrambled to combat it. But diseases far deadlier rage all over Africa every day and they can just as easily reach us as COVID. What happens elsewhere will eventually reach us. Knowing that, do we leave the rest of the world to its own fate? Do we let it stand alone? Do we really want to go back…to normal?
