This one comes straight from the “They Said What?” file.

According to a recent article on Maclean’s magazine website, the UN has filed a formal complaint of racism against the Canadian government. After a thourough review of the dreadfully racist policy, a Canadian delegation must now appear before a UN review panel to explain our vile deed. Can you guess what horrible crime we committed? We passed legislation prohibiting discrimination in the workplace against visible minorities. Wow, are we evil, or what?

Apparently, the UN takes issue with the phrase, “visible minorities”. They believe it carries the implication that caucasians are the norm, and so demeans all other ethnicities. The legislation is actually designed to ensure equal treatment of all ethnicities in the workplace and provide a mechanism for resolving allegations of discrimination. Again, evil or what?

What the legislation says is: “It doesn’t matter if someone looks or sounds different from you. We guarantee you will be treated fairly in the workplace or else.” What the UN hears is this: ‘White people are the norm here and if you aren’t white, you aren’t normal.”

I’m not saying that Canada has a spotless record on human rights and equality. Our treatment of our indigeneous peoples is a historic disgrace which we are even now struggling to address. We have our share of social injustice. If we didn’t, we probably wouldn’t need legislation to guarantee rights to visible minorities, or women, or children. We arent’ perfect, but through this legislation and others like it, we are trying to change.

There are far more immediate issues to address, both here and elsewhere, than the wording of a document designed to protect people from harm. Of course not many of them are as easy as bickering about semantics nobody else really seems to care about. The UN is apparently okay with our opposition to discrimination, it’s our total failure to fudge the truth that has their knickers in a twist. The idea of visible minorities acknowledges two facts: caucasians are the majority ethnicity in Canada, and other ethnicies are visibly different from caucasians. That’s the big secret we let out of bag. According to the UN, by accepting that some people will discriminate based on the appearance of ethnicity, and in trying to prevent that, we are promoting racism.

Of course we are… because of our secret racist agenda. Like our other secret plan to undermine the UN misssion in Afghanistan by putting the brave and dedicated, men and women of our armed forces (including my nephew who went back three times and is one of my personal heroes) and a large number of non-military personel in harms way. See how totally evil we are? Good thing the UN is there to keep the world safe from us.

Maybe next time the UN wants some muscle they should ask Kim Jong Il. I’m guessing they won’t have to proofread too much legislation protecting minority rights in North Korea. Then they wouldn’t have to compromise their high moral standards by associating with a blatantly evil country like Canada.

I’ve lived here my whole life. Without the help of the UN, I might never have realized how evil we really are. That’s probably why they haven’t called to offer me a job with the Carefully Selected Transnational Panel To Find Fault With Countries That Support Us Because It’s Easier Than Dealing With The Unpleasant Ones. I don’t think I’d fit in anyway. I’m probably too evil because I’m Canadian.

Cheers, Winston

p.s. For the record I do support the idea of the UN. Unfortunately, the implementation of that idea, like many others, sometimes leaves something to be desired. For anyone not paying attention; this would be one of those times.

W