Globalization is death: During the first round of SARS here, I asked Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement, through an aide, if the experience had made him think any differently about privatization versus the public role in health care.

I did so because, on TV, he often looked like a man genuinely trying to learn and grapple, not just calculate his best strategic response or facial expression.

The answer came back: Nope, no change. Still believes in an appropriate mix of public and private etc., as always. Too bad. Horrible events often offer nothing useful except a chance to learn a bit and grow.

The minister has, during the current outbreak, indicated he now thinks nursing may have been overprivatized — especially since nurses from agencies get far higher rates than they earn as public employees. It’s a start.

Another person I wonder about is microbiologist Donald Low, who has been the most prominent voice during the new outbreak. It’s striking, since his expertise is not public health.

I think this shows in some of his up-and-down fluctuations: First time around, he said we might end up like Hong Kong, yet shortly after that, he called the WHO ban bullshit; this time, he began upbeat, then started sounding discouraged.

It seemed human enough, but where were the actual public health experts, Drs. D’Cunha, Young and Basrur? Did it mean they were stymied or had nothing to say? Did it reflect their slashed budgets and the low priority on public health and the public interest in the age of privatization/globalization?

Consider the view of Globe columnist Marcus Gee (“Stop your snivelling, you bunch of pathetic hypochondriacs”), who accurately noted that AIDS, malaria and TB in the poorer countries are far more catastrophic than SARS and BSE here.

But I thought the whole point of globalization was to lift standards in those places, not stop us from sliding too far downward toward their wretched stats.

When I say globalization is death, I don’t just mean the diffusion of disease due to uncontrolled global market forces and deregulation. I also mean the death of the ability to think self-protectively as a society.

Our “authorities” now admit they didn’t pay close enough continuing attention to SARS, but look at the pressures on them: to be onside, boost Toronto, attack the WHO, get out and eat and spend — as if the only way to express the public interest in this era is to increase GDP. Can most of us even explain what “public health” means?

What would it take to get people to think differently? Minds don’t change easily. Pharaoh wouldn’t let the children of Israel go until his own child was struck down by a vengeful death and, even then, he reversed himself moments later, sending his chariots after the newly liberated slaves, only to see his forces drown in the Red Sea.

Canada is dead: Reports of Canada’s death are often exaggerated. The most intellectually visceral, if you can abide the phrase, was George Grant’s 1965 Lament for a Nation, which was followed by twenty of the best years that Canadian nationalism ever saw.

Three elections ago, über-Canadian nationalist Mel Hurtig said that vote would be Canada’s last chance to save itself. Ed Broadbent said the country wouldn’t last twenty-five years if free trade came in, though there are still ten to go. Time magazine’s latest cover asks, “Would anyone notice if Canada disappeared?” — which is the most attention that Time has paid Canada in a while.

Andrew Cohen’s new book, While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World, is not an “elegy,” he says, but it eulogizes Canada’s diplomacy, aid and peacekeeping in the Pearson years. He asks Canadians to “awaken from their long slumber” and adopt a national project (projet de pays) by defining “a particular idea of Canada.”

This week, I had the luck to hear Joe Clark, Canada’s smartest party leader, till tomorrow, ruminate on these things.

He was an effective foreign minister himself, in the 1980s. He admires Lester Pearson but says those guys had the chance to make policy without much interference. Canada was far less complex, diverse and insistent on knowing what was about to be done in its name. Still, Joe says he likes the idea of a projet de pays.

But it made me wonder if that idea, too, might belong to the past. I mean, kids are now told they will not have a single career (a “particular idea” of themselves). So why should a country? Canadians would hardly buy into a U.S.-style definition (greatest country in the world, bestower of freedom etc.).

Nations are not about to vanish, but what becomes of their identity in an age more skeptical, fluid, interconnected and, well, skeptical? Is there another way to acquire a sense of national self? Via attitude, openness, ability to respond quickly while staying attuned to others? That kind of thing could be useful in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.