I heart Heather Mallick

CBC columnista extraordinaire Heather Mallick pulls a strip off the hairy back of Canadian propaganda aimed at new and prospective immigrants by equating this booklet with a national personals ad. God dammit woman, could you be more brilliant?

Case in point:

I rather adore Canada, and at times when I am at Wickaninnish in British Columbia or skiing at Lake Louise, Alta., or eating Nova Scotia oysters or drinking a Bloody Caesar (Canadian invention), I am actively in love with it. But at no time do I think we are God's gift to humanity. What arse would say it, or worse, believe it?

And again:

The booklet says Canadian values include equality (ask Muslim-Canadians now regularly referred to in newspapers as "brown-skinned"), freedom (ask a pregnant woman running the Christian-right gauntlet at a Fredericton abortion clinic), peacekeeping (ask a soldier fighting a pointless war in Afghanistan), and law and order (ask those Muslim-Canadian teenagers on trial for terrorism instead of adolescence).

And again:

For the sky is always blue as a jay in this land of moral and personable people devoted to their "parliamentary democracy," unstinting in their "environmentally sound" stewardship of the "clean and prosperous" country that their children will live in, speaking as one in their respect for "cultural differences" and their faith in "international peacekeeping."

No, seriously.

I'm not mocking the federal government's rendition of national perfection for the vulnerable immigrants most likely to fall for it. I understand the impulse. Canada needs skilled immigrants. It's the economic version of dating angst like, "Gosh, if we could just hook up with an emerging tech nation who has relatives who do plumbing on the side."

Bring on the open work

Between six and seven weeks later, Mr. O's open work permit arrived today. This means he can quit his job and/or take another one without having to reapply. It's good for one year. Yeah! (He had a bit of a scare, actually, in that he almost let his residence permit expire before getting his OWP application in. Tip: always have one ball in play.)

In other permit news, his application to get a police report from the U.A.E. is moving more slowly. Actually it hasn't moved anywhere since the fingerprints; it's sitting on our kitchen table. But what the hell, it's summer. Anyone with half a soul can't do paperwork in the summertime. Ciao.