Chester Borrows: Canadian politics much like ours

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leads a majority Liberal government promising radical change and yet struggling to deliver on all aspects. Photo/AP

We are in Canada and staying with family, including our youngest grandchild, whom we had never met.

The excitement of seeing our grandkids and to be required for book reading and cuddles has been building for months.

The oldest we haven't seen for two years, so the most obvious change to him is his growth and vocabulary.

Jimmy is addicted to the solar system at the moment, so I now know that the size of the sun comparative to the earth is that the number of earths you could fit into the sun is the same as the number of golf balls you could fit into the earth.

Young people can teach old people stuff, though often us oldies only concentrate on how much the young have to learn.

Like so many grandparents, we also spend time wondering what their world will look like when they grow up, but I am not a great visionary past my grand ideas on how we can fix stuff.

I spend precious little time wondering about travel and digital communication — if that will actually be a thing in 20 years — and more time worrying about the social stuff. How will people manage relationships in their neighbourhoods, let along between nations, if they cannot communicate one-to-one across the dinner table?

Canada has many similarities to New Zealand. They changed governments in 2016 and, after several terms of conservative leadership, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leads a majority Liberal government promising radical change and yet struggling to deliver on all aspects.

I guess the public were more in love with change than all the manifesto items the party thought were so attractive. They are learning the truth that government is hard because you can't choose issues — you need policy on everything.

Two big agenda items were electoral reform and the legalisation of cannabis.

The latter is popular across many states and is being effected quite well. Electoral reform is proving difficult as Trudeau wants to change by consensus — always hard to achieve, especially if such a big constitutional change is required and the support of parties which have been wedded to first-past-the-post for so long is needed.

Indigenous issues are huge here. Native title was never extinguished and although hundreds of treaties have been signed by governments for more than 200 years, it is very difficult to find a single one of any note that the government has observed.

Pipelines are required to move oil across the country, including between provinces, but most supporters of the Liberal government would rather the use of fossil fuels was wound back and they have a greater appreciation of indigenous rights.

The government wants to build a new pipeline because it generates money and income and jobs, but they want to achieve this with the agreement of the First Nations. So the First Nations — now finally being supported by courts and changes in public opinion — are saying that consent may be a little delayed as some of their more pressing concerns need to be addressed.

Indigenous people suffer hugely from a disgusting history which denied them education, welfare, health needs, denial of land rights and human rights.

Native peoples were not counted as citizens for generations, so births were frequently not registered and their abuses, murders and disappearances were not investigated.

Children were removed from families and placed in residential schools run by state and church, and many were gathered up and forcibly adopted. These projects were called "scoops" and occurred in huge sweeps across the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

I read an article in the newspaper on Saturday of indigenous parents who read advertisements of their own children being put up for adoption by the state.

There are many more worse examples of systematic attempts to wipe out First Nation Canadians by the direct and indirect actions of successive governments.

Just like New Zealand, a big chunk of the population refuse to accept any of it happened and the rest largely think, 'They should just get over it'. But, just like in our country, none of these issues are going away.

There is a growing dissatisfaction with the now not-so-new government in Canada, despite it having so much to applaud during its honeymoon with the public and the media.

The cabinet was a 50-50 gender split with a good ethnic diversity, and all the ministers had direct and recent experience in the portfolios they governed, so the expectation was that change would be speedy and all change would be good.

Now everybody is finding that a greater understanding can often lead to the uncovering of much more to fix. The workings of generations of meddlers — with not always they best of intentions — will take more than a few tweaks to make fair, just and workable.

There is a very real danger that the Liberal voters from last election will not support their own government into a second term because voter expectation was unreasonable in the first place. But then so were the promises made on the campaign trail.

The Canadian political scene has a familiar feel to it and, just like at home, the big answers will lie with the next generation.

Chester Borrows

Chester Borrows served as Whanganui MP for 12 years and as a minister in the National Government.