Stelmach’s joke still insensitive

Monday, 10 March 2008

The results of last week’s election have spawned a number of discussions—the obvious need for proportional representation, the possibility that voter apathy is to blame for an even larger Conservative majority government, why it would be in the best interest of opposition parties such as the Liberals and the NDP to merge as one in order to prevent split-voting—the list goes on.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned, however, is a remark that newly re-elected premier Ed Stelmach made during his victory speech. Dumbfounded by the landslide Conservative win, I decided to listen to Stelmach’s speech to see just why the media kept touting the rhetoric that “Albertans are becoming more comfortable with Ed.” Stelmach’s speech bored me for the most part, but the man came off as humble—at least, more so than Ralph Klein ever did during his tenure. Still, I was struck by his remark about how he’s glad that his grandparents’ boat arrived in Canada because the other destination would have been Argentina. He quickly added that his Spanish wasn’t all that great either, which made the audience chuckle. What’s even sadder is that the people at CTV News were praising Stelmach’s good sense of humour.

A few people I know took the remark at face value and felt that Stelmach was simply expressing happiness about living in Alberta. But if this were the case, shouldn’t it be enough to say just that and nothing more? There’s no need to bring up the other, supposedly lesser choice. It’s similar to how Canadians will put down Americans any chance they get. To me, this just makes the “better” one sound insecure because in order to make themselves look good, they need to lower someone else.

If Stelmach had actually meant to make a joke, that makes him more of a jackass than if he were simply stating facts. Unfortunately, culturally insensitive remarks like these are so subtle these days that few people seem to pick up on them. Stelmach didn’t say it outright, but by stating that Argentina would have been the other choice, he’s suggesting that it isn’t the best place to live in—which is true, if you’re part of the poor majority—but that’s completely dismissing all the reasons why that is. It forgets the fact that when his grandparents left their motherland, Argentina was one of the ten richest countries in the world. Unfortunately, it’s been hit by several recessions that it hasn’t been able to completely recover from due to pressures to accept
neo-liberal ideals.

One of the biggest reasons that people used to say that Canada is the best country to live in is that it’s multicultural. And it seems that just because Canada is officially multicultural, this gives Canadians some false sense that Canada is the only multicultural country in the world, which is simply untrue. Argentina itself is a land of immigrants consisting mainly of people with various European backgrounds and a growing number of Asians settling in Buenos Aires.

All in all, Stelmach trying to make Alberta look great by comparing it with Argentina is laughable since Alberta’s electoral system is just about as corrupt, if not worse, than that of any other “third world” country—anyone who tried to find out where they should vote using Elections Alberta’s website or calling their phone lines should know what I’m talking about.

To be fair, I don’t think Stelmach was purposely trying to be culturally insensitive before, but people laughed because either one person who finds the humour in even the most humourless situations laughed and everyone followed suit or the audience genuinely thought the remark was funny. However, the fact still remains that Stelmach’s “joke” was based on ignorant assumptions and stereotypes. This is an issue that goes beyond this election. These kinds of jokes are told everyday with the intention of marginalizing groups of people using supposedly inherent characteristics as a basis.

When these everyday offences are so easily dismissed and become part of the logic of politicians and of those in power, they leak into our laws and our institutions. And because people are unable to recognize the subtle but misguided ideas upon which the rules are based on, injustices remain.