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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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A year ago I dared presenting my view on Canada and tried to find an answer for the basic question: What does it mean to be Canadian? Since I received many e-mails, most of them rather critical or highly critical. The point that particularly irritated some readers was included in the last sentence, where I said that without the US Independence Day there wouldn't be a reason for the Canadians to celebrate either. What went wrong, why some readers were so irritated, I asked myself in the months that followed trying to find out more arguments in my favor. These days we again celebrate the Canada Day and again I ask myself the seemingly simple question: What does it mean to be Canadian or live in Canada?

I won't repeat my arguments from the previous article not because I think they are wrong but because I'd like go little deeper. Some time ago I met a motto used by the people in Luxembourg to describe their mentality. It says, "We (the people of Luxembourg) like the way we live and we want to keep it that way". It's quite natural for the rich nations to want to keep that way as well as for the poor nations to want to change the course of their lives. On the other hand, some developed nations, and Canada makes part of this group, consider any change as something abnormal, undesired, unthinkable. These nations love enjoying their high living standards but don't make efforts to make this standard even higher.

Canada is a very special case because it admits a quarter of a million immigrants each year. Of course this liberal policy has one goal, to produce enough taxpayers to cover the increasing social costs. On the other hand, these thousands of new immigrants are a force of social change that has to be neutralized. Before being allowed to exercise their job, the immigrants have to be "integrated" into the system, i.e. to forget as much as possible about their past, both professional and emotional. For the 5-7 y.o. kids this is an easy task; not so easy is to wash the brains of 30-40 y.o. persons.

The recent pandemic spread of SARS gave me an excellent example of how the Canadians look at the newcomers. Did you see on your TV screens how the probable cases in Toronto are treated under quarantine? These people are not sick, but they can't go outside. Some Salvation Army volunteers bring to them some food and leave it to the doorsteps. When the quarantine period ends, the persons can go out and enjoy the life as usual.

The quarantine, that is the right word, explaining the situation thousands of immigrants have to endure until they get what they deserve depending on their merits. For some this quarantine continues months, for some years, it depends. If the position you expect to reach is paid 6-7$ per hour your period will be shorter than if you want to be a schoolteacher. There are some breaches in this quarantine system but in every case this is due to the fact that the employer is also a former first generation immigrant.

What the Canadians fear most? They fear that some newcomers can bring into their system the virus of some malign abnormality, some sort of cancer that would ultimately destroy the society. To go inside and upside the system the immigrant has to show proof of his full integration and the burden of this proof lies entirely on him. It's like in the frank masonry; you can't go up until you're invited to go up. And the exact timing of this promotion is decided not by the applicant but by the superior level.

I use the tools from the immigration domain because they show clearly how the whole social factory in Canada works. That's why this country isn't and won't be soon on the technological frontline even if it has enough financial resources to be there. People in Canada fear risking; all their market strategies and technologies have been tried so far across the border. When deciding to make some important decision their instinct tells them to do nothing. Their social ideal is to push as much as possible steam to the whistle and as less as possible to the main engine.

The result is that perhaps millions of people do nothing to enrich the society, permanently living on social welfare. In my eyes they do nothing, but in the eyes of the Canadians this is much better than to do something that can endanger the existing social order. In Quebec for example this means that hundreds of medical doctors can't heal patients because they graduated outside Canada and the local health system doesn't want to incorporate them. They have to start their professional life from the beginning. At the same time in the same province patients are dying because some ER's haven't enough personnel during the night. I almost feel the reaction of some of the readers: How dare you proposing to us to be treated by foreign-graduated doctors, who didn't pass throughout OUR universities?

Well, I dare and I hope I always will. For me one dead person because of lack of medical personnel will always be worse than a person treated by a doctor that doesn't speak my language. A big second-hand problem I see in this masonry-like mentality is that the system is going to outlive its actual agents, because many people with one or two years of "Canadian experience" already begin to treat the matters the same way, fearing everything and everyone coming from abroad, endangering the rightness of the society they live. They begin to forget where they come from and that the happiness isn't a social status but a constant upgrading. They become part of the system. They become Canadians. People living in a society where many want to keep it that way. Happy Canada Day!

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