Dealing with Five Decades of Psychological Warfare

Once again today we see evidence that Newfoundland and Labrador is being left behind by the rest of Canada. Although enough resources exist on the land and in the seas surrounding the place to sustain a much larger population, people are going hungry. The way those resources have been managed and developed in combination with the political marginalization of the people that’s existed for decades has resulted in something completely unconscionable. In 2006, Newfoundland and Labrador’s hunger rate is the highest in the country.

HungerCount is a national survey of emergency food programs in Canada conducted by the Canadian Association of Food Banks (CAFB). Their most recent survey found that 5.59% of the province’s population have been forced to make use of food banks in order to feed their families, the highest per capita rate in the Country. When you combine this information with outmigration that sees thousands leave every year, the lowest birth rates, the highest unemployment and a population that’s aging faster than anywhere else in Canada, the possibility arises that eventually the government of Canada will get exactly what it has so desperately wanted from Newfoundland and Labrador since pre-confederation, all of the resources and none of the people.

Since 1949 the government of Canada has been systematically robbing Newfoundland and Labrador of any hope for a future. I believe that immediately after confederation it may have been done intentionally in order to achieve a backroom plan intended to break the will of the people, get them under control (remember only about half the population wanted to be a part of the Canada) and ensure that they could be assimilated into the Canadian framework. Over the years the minds behind this horrendous practice have come and gone but by the time they did the practice itself had become second nature and was such a common practice that it simply continued to exist. It’s doubtful that today’s political leaders even realize what they are perpetuating but the effects are the same.

What we see today are a people who, by and large, have lost the will to stand up and fight to protect their heritage, their homeland and their way of life. We see a people who appear on the surface to be just like any other Canadian but they most certainly are not. Instead they have lived on the fringes of Canada, both physically and figuratively, for so long that many don’t even see the reality of what this ongoing practice means for them. They don’t even realize that by standing up as one they may have a chance for survival. Most of them simply go about their daily activities oblivious to the fact that they are, in many respects, worse off than the rest of the Country and that if current trend continues, in a few generations the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will become as extinct as the original Beothuk population

Taken down from the high level to that of the individual, the story becomes even more bleak. The lack of work is real. A lower than normal birth rate is real. Hunger is real. Poverty is real. These all contribute to a lack of self esteem and self worth that permeates the entire culture and the effects of this low self esteem are all too clear. It’s the reason why someone will sit in a room full of so called “fellow” Canadians and simply accept being called a “stupid newfie” or a “cod chucker”? It’s the reason why someone who is qualified for a top level position will simply accept being passed over in favor of someone who isn’t from “the Rock”? It’s why an entire people, who were once part of an independent nation in their own right, will quietly accept little more than handouts from Ottawa while their neighbor, who is supposedly an equal partner in confederation, is simply given the gift of nationhood.

When a person is put in a situation where they feel a total lack of control over their destiny, when they are told what they can or can’t do, when they have their belongings, their pride, their independence taken away and when they are put in a position where they must ask someone else for even the basic necessities of life, there is a commonly accepted term for the psychological state this type of dependence causes in many who are put in that position.

Definition: Stockholm syndrome - a psychological response sometimes seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage exhibits loyalty to the hostage-taker, in spite of the danger (or at least risk) in which the hostage has been placed. The victims become emotionally attached to their victimizers, and have even been known to defend their captors.