Akaash Maharaj - Practical Idealism

The courts have ruled that the Ontario SPCA's police powers are unconstitutional. What is the future for animal welfare enforcement in Canada's largest province? Who can or will protect creatures who can not cry out for mercy?

All of us can wield a power that those who would divide us will never know: an ability to make common cause out of our common humanity and our common dignity, and a determination to join hands across the divisions that beset the human condition, to create a better world in the image of the better angels of our natures.

Addressing the United Nations was one of the more intimidating experiences of my life. I spoke on behalf of GOPAC's global alliance of parliamentarians, on our work to bring kleptocrats to justice.

There is no worse cancer in a free society than the thuggish impulse to equate dissent as disloyalty... The greatest patriot is the person with the courage to be the lone voice in the crowd crying out that the Emperor has no clothes. The test of our society's democratic nature is our instinct to value the right of our fellow human beings to disagree with us.

Our capacity to do violence to one another is the worst tragedy of the human condition, but it makes our still greater capacity to forgive one another all the more powerful.

Gandhi and Bose were brothers in the hunger for justice, and both had followers who were willing to die for freedom rather than live as slaves. But one group was so blinded by passion for its cause, that it was willing to join hands with regimes whose very names have become bywords for evil in almost every spoken language on the planet.

Throughout our history, Canada has grown through the toil of generations of Canadians who were inspired by the belief that our country is free of the rigid class systems of the Old World, that Canadians' success or failure depends on our own efforts and our own abilities...But in recent years, we have come to doubt our faith in this meritocracy.

In any democracy worthy of the name, it is not merely the right, but the responsibility of every citizen to resist unjust laws... but there is a contrast between making a scene, and making a difference. There is a choice between the comfort of self-righteous illusion, and the peril of self-sacrificing commitment. There is a hard journey between railing against unjust laws, and living out a life that models justice.

We will be able to hold our heads high before the judgement of history if we can reply that in our season, we held on to hope, we put aside our doubts, we came together believing in our better selves, and we remembered that we have always burned brightest as a nation during the darkest hours.

Over the past quarter century, political parties have too often lurched away from being mass movements of individual Canadians sharing a common vision of the public good, and towards being backdrops for individual party leaders who speak the language of democracy while wielding near-absolute power over their elected caucuses.