Stuff I Find Hard to Fathom

Image from Res'Eau Waternet 


Stuff I Find Hard to Fathom

Sequel to Stuff I Just Don't Get

Meanwhile, Politicians dress up for another chance to do more of the same.

CanGov't: Ending long-term drinking water advisories

• Everyone in Canada should have access to safe, clean drinking water.

Agreed.

But there's been a Canada since July 1, 1867, so why is it only now that efforts are reportedly being made to provide First Nation communities with potable drinking water?

• There are currently 62 long-term drinking water advisories - and a further 78 advisories were in effect as late as November 2015.

The Liberal government says it's aiming to have finally lifted all long-term water advisories by March 2021 -- and it will have taken them only 154 years! 

Res'EauWaternet: During the 2015 election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals vowed to correct this social and cultural injustice within five years of taking office.

What Trudeau was clearly saying was that he would need to be elected for a second term to accomplish that, and he's already moved the goal post from 2020 to 2021.

Not only all of the above, but there is still the perpetual, grossly damaging, knee-jerk solution to what is euphemised as Indigenous "child welfare":

GlobalNews: Jane Philpott says political will is there to solve the child welfare crisis for Indigenous kids

Suddenly, it's recognized as a "crisis"?

• Gerald Lavallee was just three months old when he had his first contact with the child welfare system.
• By the time he was eight he was a permanent ward of the system in North Bay, Ont. By 14, he had been in more than 40 foster homes.
• Lavallee, now 25, says all he ever wanted was someone to love him.
• Looking back now, he realizes if the system had been equipped to help his family he might have had that in spades.

Instead, it seems the system was equipped with an ingrained bias against Native upbringing in general, since the government would not provide funding for Lavallee to live with willing relatives. So he wound up in foster-care hell.

It seems that the government, in its grossly prejudiced wisdom, has always sought to have Native children raised as "white", regardless of whether or not it caused irreversible trauma. But now ...

• Jane Philpott is hosting a two-day emergency meeting on Indigenous child welfare, a system she says is in a “humanitarian crisis” that is reliving the residential schools legacy under the guise of child protection.

No kidding, eh? And they're just deducing this now? Oh, right; it's an election year.

Moving on:

So how about us old farts, eh?  Doesn't matter how fancy a "home" is provided for the aged, there's still a chance you can freeze to death, unnoticed, in the back yard. Not to mention that the supervision is so poor in some nursing homes that staff and patients alike can bump seniors off.

I joke that I live next door to a handy-dandy old folks home to which I can crawl on my hands and knees when the time arrives. Truth is, they have a long waiting list so they'll probably eject me from the premises. So I'll be looking for a Kervorkian well before then. Right now, I live in a seniors' building with 68 other residents who are happy to pass on all news, good or bad. When the fire alarm went off recently, the grapevine went immediately into action to reassure one and all that it was a false alarm.

There are all types of Kervorkians, it seems:

TheStar: 180 people died on serial killer Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s shifts in one nursing home. Was that a red flag?

Apparently not.

CBC: 'It's a horror movie': Nursing home security footage provides raw picture of resident violence problem.

I can almost see the value of carrying a cane, whether or not it's needed for walking.

CNN: 11th death reported after a Florida nursing home was left without A/C

I guess they just couldn't afford (or were not motivated?) to repair it after a hurricane.

Oddly enough, it seems there's plenty of money available for research on how to manipulate a person's genes to increase longevity ... 

CTV: Anti-aging field 'explodes' in pursuit of healthy old age

... which is a bit confusing because there's also been a ton of research upholding the notion that the globe is over-populated. Maybe the concern really is that there are too many of a certain kind (hue) of people?

It would seem so, considering that forced sterilizations have taken place in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India ... and, oh yes, among Canada's First Nations women: YYC: Canada's Eugenics Program