New flags

On the occasion of permission-slip patriotism.

Hundreds of young Canadians span the length of a Kelowna office park for the right to receive the 99% likelihood of a denial of employment from Canadian Tire.

Sixty-six members of Iranian senior leadership stroll through YYZ and YVR, to waiting black cars, waiting government go-betweens, and a real estate agent with three showings already lined up in West Vancouver, Shaughnessy, or Forest Hill.

A freedom of information request gets the black-ink treatment, after the independent press comes asking about the Business Development Bank of Canada’s backing of senior Liberal campaigns.

The “Elbows up,” “Team Canada” crowd purchase more eventual Chinese spyware, with government approval, and one-billion in federal infrastructure funding.

The anniversary of the worst terror attack in Canadian history passes with a shrug, as the major parties now hold conference-room pizza parties for the votes of the same Khalistani radicals — India’s Taliban in all but name — who emulsified innocent families at 40,000 feet.

Property crime in Toronto reaches 40% higher than New York’s. Shootings are up 34%. Hate crimes and attacks on Jewish citizens are through the roof. In one month’s time, the mayor will again flail around in her skivvies, over mentioning any of this.

Ottawa, while claiming further changes to immigration will be considered, quietly sets a target to keep the Canadian labour force replaced and suppressed at that of 25% immigrant. (Historically high by a factor of double digits.)

That punishment of the yobs and the proles goes mainstream and worldwide, with Bloomberg reporting on this worst-of-any-advanced-economy mess.

For those not homesteading in the pockets of ‘Canada the good’ that still remain: walk through once-safer neighbourhoods, where middle and upper-middle-class families once lived and their kids played, and the silence from ten growthless years — and that gulf between the haves and have-nots — is accompanied only by Canadian flags, brand-new, bought on Amazon or Temu in the spring of 2025.

It matters little to those who hedged their bets on their country, who kept their colours tucked away for an occasion of wet snow that suddenly befell an imperfect but immeasurably less-bad opposition and their youth-laden support base.

All that matters is the result; a win is a win.

Now, everything but housing values get to stay cheap. (Lest we fight like hell to un-cheapen them.)

Services, values, the public square.

Not just cheap, but replacement-level — for a replacement-economy.

Borrowed from the present and the future, with the bill coming due after they’re gone.

And come Tuesday, the lower class, that missing middle, the Irish on the Titanic, are expected to revel in a day we never cancelled or diminished in the first place, and expected to lock hands with the same tree-ringed palms that hold our heads underwater.

It’s a funny one, this Canada Day. Celebrations or acts of self-respect would have been seen as an act of defiance in response to the historical vandalism of the Trudeau years. Now, the permission-slips have arrived by failing government mail carrier, and millions are asked to love their country, unquestionably, regardless of the 1/3rd of its people who remain committed to wasting it all on purpose.

You wouldn’t be alone in sensing the ‘vibe’ is off, in a country that just torpedoed a change election on vibe alone. And yet, there’s something vaguely revitalizing about seeing the red and the white flying at all; and not placed beneath orange, or whatever the heck these flags have turned into.

It turns out, the maple leaf wasn’t forever. It was lowered to half-mast, then to the ground, then buried in disturbed but ultimately empty topsoil, while those with the same sensibilities as the Globe and Mail’s opinion section recalibrated their efforts to reclaim ceded, then unceded, and now re-ceded territory.

It’s good to see that flag again. It wasn’t meant to be flown solely on the eighteen-wheelers and pick-up trucks of the nation.

It’s just such a damned shame that it’s been purchasso recently, and for so cheap.

Alexander Brown is a writer and third-party director. Of late, his work has appeared in The Hub, Toronto Sun, the Western Standard, and on Toronto Today with Greg Brady.