Living Government
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Historically, Canada is a nation founded by the British and the French. Yet it is now a great amalgam of many peoples. They have common rights and needs, and their own particular requirements within the general frame of the law. All these must be recognized. We are far yet from realizing many of our ideals, but we have made progress.
As a country we have grown richer, but we have paid a price in terms of environmental pollution. We are leaving the farms and bushlands and crowding into the cities. Ours is becoming a computerized, industrialized, urbanized, and ever more multicultural society, and we face the difficulties of adapting ourselves and our institutions to new lifestyles.
These changes have produced a new concern for an environment that our forebears took for granted. We believe in just and peaceful sharing, but how is that to be achieved? We have gained for ourselves a certain measure of security for the aged and sick and helpless, yet poverty is still with us. So are regional disparities.
These are all problems of government, and therefore your problems. They all concern millions of people and are therefore difficult to solve. Parliaments and parties, like life, have no instant remedies, but they have one common aim. It is to get closer to you, to determine your real will, and to endeavour to give it form and thrust for action. That is the work you chose them for, and it can be done in the end only with your help. When you take an interest in your community, when you form an opinion in politics, and when you go to cast your vote, you are part of government.
