A student of mine sent me a distressing e-mail this week.
In it, Caroline George apologized for her absence. She said she’d been distracted. She explained that her sister had been vacationing in Mexico where she was stricken with an asthmatic attack. But because of the apparent outbreak of the so-called swine flu there, the family couldn’t get her sister, Victoria George-Pazzano, onto an air ambulance to fly her home to Canada.
“I was hoping you might be able to help,” Caroline George said.
Naturally, a number of us have investigated what could be done. It appeared the family had sufficient health insurance coverage to secure an air ambulance to get her home, but there didn’t seem to be either the awareness or the will on the part of authorities to release Caroline George’s sister from Mexico, nor receive her at an intensive care unit back here in Canada.
Help, these days, seems in short supply. Unless, of course, the plea has clout.
I’ve watched these past weeks, as the major North American automobile manufacturing companies have played hardball with their workers. General Motors, for example, faced with apparent bankruptcy, gave federal governments here and in the U.S. an ultimatum – bankroll us or we’ll go under.
Then, when the billions of dollars came from federal finance departments, the same companies told their workers to take wage and pension cuts or they’d close their businesses for good. Next, the auto-makers brow beat the workers into accepting pension cuts. This week, despite the workers’ concessions, GM said it’s still going to cut thousands more jobs. I can almost hear the cries anew coming the Detroit and Oshawa head offices:
“Save us. Save us. Or we’ll go under.”
I’ve been watching the same dance of death, along with feigned predictions of doom and disaster, in the broadcasting world recently too. This week, the CRTC invited the major Canadian private networks to Ottawa for licence renewal hearings. It seems the private broadcasters have their hands out too. At the head of the line was CTV executive Ivan Fecan.
“If we can’t make money, we have no reason to exist,” he told the CRTC.<br /><br />It seems the private networks have their own ultimatum. Among other things the private networks want Canadian content quotas reduced and to be able to charge cable and satellite delivery systems “fees for carriage.” Fecan said those carriers are amassing tremendous profits while the stations that make the programs are losing money. The broadcasters want the CRTC to save them. Or else. The history of the CRTC has been to cave in to the private broadcasters’ pleas.
It’s not just the private corporations crying for help these days. For the past month, demonstrators from the south-Asian island nation of Sri Lanka have periodically filled Toronto streets. While most are orderly and peaceful, demonstrators have marched, created kilometre-long human chains, and called upon the Canadian government to intervene in the civil war on the island to prevent civilian loss of life.
“We want the Canadian government involved,” a demonstrator told reporters.
To be fair, the Canadian government has its hands tied. In April 2006, the newly elected Harper government officially outlawed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization. So, expecting the Canadian government to intervene may be a pipe dream.
But that’s where the case of my student’s critically ill sister comes back into the picture. Remember the case of Brenda Martin? It was about a year ago, that efforts by Canadian and Mexican officials cut through red tape to spring the Trenton woman from a Mexican jail to have Canadian authorities return her to Canada to deal with her case.
What makes the case of a woman in a Mexican jail any higher priority than a woman sick in a Mexican hospital? At this writing, the Peterborough Regional Health Centre has made a bed available for Victoria George-Pazzano’s return. Full marks to that health facility, its staff and administrators.
A dropped thread of diplomacy and priority, I think, remains.
If governments are truly designed to serve their people, here must certainly be a case. According to Dylan Pazzano, Victoria’s husband, on radio this week, the asthmatic condition that felled her in Mexico had nothing to do with the swine flu problem.
The unfortunate predicament of the George-Pazzano family is that Victoria’s plight is not a corporate collapse. It’s not jeopardizing the jobs or pensions of thousands of workers. It’s not placing the profits of the private Canadian broadcasting industry in peril. Hers is not the survival of innocents in a civil war on the other side of the globe.
No. Hers is just the cry of an ordinary citizen for help from Canada.
