Sitting with my half full (half empty?) cup of Tim Hortons coffee, I have been pondering city council’s decision to commit the city’s total operational contingency budget to operate a Starbucks Coffee franchise in Servus Place. It is not a popular decision. Still, we elected council to govern this city’s public affairs. And we elected intelligent folk with significant business experience. So if they have promised that we would profit, as taxpayers, to the tune of over $90,000 annually and if we don’t end up subsidizing Servus Place customers in their stimulant fixes, let us give council the benefit of the doubt — so long as council reports annually the full direct and indirect costs of operating the franchise. To do otherwise would be inexplicable and offer less accountability than we expect from honest people.
Which brings me to accountability and to the serious business of Canada’s role in the Middle East. Over the past decade, Canadian men and women have sacrificed their lives, bodies and minds on battlefields where we did not start the conflict. We have spent huge sums of money that could otherwise have been used to educate our children, pay for our health care needs or provide dignity in living for fellow citizens of all ages who are unable to help themselves.
Our traditional national approach is to elect a federal government and give parliamentarians the responsibility for this task — allowing them to tax us for that purpose. Some of us also contribute to charitable and non-governmental organizations. But it is a special occurrence that someone devotes their personal life to helping the most vulnerable of our fellow humans in far off places.
There is a young woman, a “kid from St. Albert High,” according to her dad, Jack O’Neill, who is involved in a most remarkable venture. It is risky, because what she has committed herself to is out of her personal control and may very well fail with tragic consequences for people she cares deeply about. Yet, like Senator Romeo Dallaire, someone who she worked closely with when she was at Harvard University, Jacqueline O’Neill has become a focal point for trying to change war into a positive peace, this time in Afghanistan.
Jacqueline is the director of the Washington-based Institute for Inclusive Security. Her agency trains women living in conflict areas of the world to engage in peace negotiations. Her institute sponsored a delegation of 11 Afghan women, representing a 3,000-member women’s network to meet with senior United States officials. Jacqueline arranged meetings at the White House with senior Pentagon officials and with Congressional members headed by Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the House of Representatives. They want help in getting a place at the table where the Afghan government has male tribal elders and government appointed representatives involved in peace talks with the Taliban. While their most pressing political need is to obtain access to education for all and freedom for women to travel outside their homes and countries, there is something more fundamental involved — a future for their children.
This is the story told to Nancy Pelosi by one of the Afghan women. She was in her home when gunfire, a rocket attack and suicide bombers came to Kandahar a month ago. Her two-year-old daughter asked her what was happening. Her mother said that the sounds were from drums. To calm her, she started dancing — dancing to gunfire so that her daughter wouldn’t have to know what war was. She doesn’t want Afghan children to grow up dancing to the sounds of war.
Jacqueline O’Neill is doing her part to try to stop the tragedy of killing children. As we drop bombs on Libya, who is dancing there today?
Alan Murdoch is a local pediatrician.
