01 January 2016
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau:
I send this correspondence from a perspective of a Christian. I am an immigrant from a Pacific Rim country, currently residing in the Territory of Nunavut; but I used to live in the Prairies for 23 years.
New Year is upon us. Christians searches inwardly for goodwill. What is happening around seems dark, we have an uncertain world. It bewilders the Christians because Christians are “people of the light”. Supposedly the era of colonialism is over, but there are residuals of colonialism that are bent in bringing the world into darkness – the darkness of spawned conflicts in the Middle East, the region where Christ was born.
The recent political exercise affirmed the national conversation that Canadians renounced the tired foreign policies of maintaining war assets in the Middle East. Canadians desire to speak of making life better, rather than death; light, rather than darkness; tolerance, rather than bigotry. We are locked in a debate about the unwinnable war without end in the Middle East wherein Canada deployed some of her war assets in those war torn region.
As a Canadian, I was thinking about a solution – a solution that has been tried and tested by Allied Forces after WW II. Instead of an army of soldiers with tanks, Canada and her North American and Western Allies dropped anchor off the coasts of Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Instead of guns and bullets, soldiers from dozen nations, bring with them bulldozers and construction materials and equipment.
Canada will take the lead to rebuild what were destroyed. America, Europe, including France, Germany, and Great Britain, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates with their petro dollars shall contribute to help fund a seven year project. Unarmed young able bodied Arab Moslems, Arab Christians, and Arab-Jews will be hired to help rebuild that were destroyed, and bring back the ravaged nations of Iraq, Libya, and Syria from the darkness of internecine fighting into the light of peace and harmony.
The only way of depriving ISIS of recruits is to design a program that will attract thousands of Syrian, and Iraqi fighters and refuges to return to their respective homeland and build their homes and till their land.
The U.S. led Marshall Plan that was undertaken after WW II was successful in rebuilding Europe. Such similar plan could be recreated and spread the cost equitably among peace loving participating nations.
Canada must rediscover her true identity as peacekeeper and peacemaker the world knew before. That what Canada did is always good and right.
About the Author: Bob had been writing for the Filipino Journal since 1988 but hibernated for a long while to recover his health from Leukemia. He spent five years in the Philippines to fully recover and pursued the commercial cultivation of Cassava for various industrial usages: food for human consumption, feeds for livestock, and fuel (biofuel) for the transportation industry. In 2008, he assisted a Venture Capitalist set up a medium sized distilliry plant in Negros Occidental, which process Cassava chips into food wine.
In the 90s, Bob, propelled a Winnipeg based accredited firm as the number one exporter of Canadian Commodity to the Orient. In the same period, he assisted the Royal Canadian Mint secure a niche market with the Central Bank of the Philippines deliver blank and stamped coins which is now in current circulation. Canada’s Twonie, is the Philippines’ ten peso coin. Furthermore, he helped initiate the recruitment of 200 Filipino Nurses direct from the Philippines in late 1990s.
Currently, Bob, sits as Member-at-Large, City Council, City of Iqaluit (Public Safety Committee), and Director, Governance Council, Worker’s Safety & Compensation Commission, Northwest Territories and Territory of Nunavut. In 2010, Bob and his wife, Judy Grace, decided to build a house in the Arctic, its design is inspired by a Nipa Hut concept. Judy Grace recruited a number of Filipinos; some are Winnipeggers, to work in the Territory of Nunavut.
Prior to his migration to Canada in 1987, Bob, served as Technical Assistant to the Constitutional Commission in 1986 that drafted the current Philippine Constitution.
