What is your Nationality worth ?

I can be minutes away from writing a blog, and still have no idea what it’s going to be about – then Serendipity runs you down like a truck, and it’s obvious. I wanted to comment on a piece that told of how many Canadians were buying US real estate, what with the sudden swing in financial fortunes within the two countries now leading to a point where the great mortgage bubble burst will lead to more US houses being owned by ‘foreigners’, and what that is going to do to the remainder of the economy. Then came Lord Black of Crossharbour.

Now that Conrad Black may have found the legal loophole to escape US justice, it appears that he wants to come back to Canada – a strange decision, considering that he gave up his Canadian citizenship in order to get his ‘gong’ from the Queen. As a British passport holder that has been living here for over 20 years, I say: “Screw Him”. We weren’t good enough then, we shouldn’t be good enough, now (One reason that I have never given up my British passport – I may have to crawl back with my tail between my legs someday). Of course, he is also a convicted felon, so our laws don’t allow him to visit – even if it is just to sell his Toronto mansion, in order to pick up a short-sale foreclosed deal in Phoenix!

But, then I began questioning what is a passport, anyway? In the modern world, where we are all connected in some way to the rest of the planet, does it really matter anymore? Here are some weird facts and the usual personal conclusions.

Three Million Canadians now live outside the country. In fact Canadians make up 10% of Hong Kong’s population. 40% of Canadians donate to charities based outside the country, and in survey after survey, Canadians rate global issues as the most important to them: Global Warming, and International Social Justice, and 20% send money overseas monthly for their elderly relatives. Does this mean that we have become a ‘flag of convenience’ for all and sundry? Perhaps we are the most forward thinking country. We embrace World travel and a global education through experience. We know that we are no longer off the leash from our families elsewhere in the World with the Internet and cell phones giving us no excuse not to keep in touch.

Of course the major difference between us and other countries is the fact that we are part of the mosaic, not the melting pot. Canada wants us to remain both who we were, and who we are – or vice versa. If immigrants move here for escape, they soon settle down, have children and stay. Even if their children move away when they are older, Mom and Dad usually remain here instead of going back to the old country. Perhaps the argument that Immigrants are welcome both here, and in other countries makes us part of who we are: Unless, of course, you decide to give up your citizenship. That should be irreversible – So long Conrad, and thanks for the newspapers.

When the Children are all grown up…

I was surprised to see that many 20-year old’s are looking for a special kind of property in the North American urban market: One that has a ‘granny flat’ so that they can have their parent or parents move in with them when they no longer need to pay the mortgage on the Family home. This is a wonderful idea when you consider the reasons why this has come about:

Families are having children later in order to enjoy a firmer start to their careers, which means they aren’t ending with their mortgages until their late sixties. This delay in their career line has been passed down to today’s teenagers, who expect a ‘gap year’ when they leave High School! This used to be the preserve of either the rich after a handful of years in Further education, AND getting their degrees, or gangs of perma-drunk females from Australia in VW microbuses – well it was if you were brought up in Europe.

Just like everything else in today’s life, the culture of entitlement we have in the ‘developed world’ now means that everyone must have it, so most kids aren’t even looking at a career until their mid-twenties. Following the ‘gap year’, there’s now the ‘sleeping-in-till-noon-while-living-at-home year’.

So we extend our adolescense, and work until our early 70′s, pay the mortgage off, and go get our revenge on our kids by living with them, and blasting Adam Ant on the Stereo to say to the kids: “There! How do you like it?”

While on the same subject, there is a distateful commercial on TV from Exxon, that mentions the rise of the Middle Class in the BRIC countries (Brazil, India, and China), in a very haughty way, mentioning that they need ‘greater access to fuels’, like those same parents, trying to get their 22-year old’s to work.

What we in the Western world, the ‘parents’, have done is raised the expectations of people that have taken two generations to go from the Colonized, through the Poverty struck, too something resembling life as we know it. We have used them as cheap labour, and a home to factories and plants too poisonous for our neighbourhoods for almost half-a-century, and are now blaming them for the mess that they have left, and the strain on the environment.

At some point in their life, every parent realises that their kids have grown up (and gotten their butts out of the TV chair?), and then we expect them to look after us. Isn’t it time that we did this with these developing countries? They are the next generation of this planet’s First World, as we fade into the background.  It’s time to start a dialogue about them looking after us in our dotage.

If they need more R and D assistance, more education, more fuel, more leeway, less Culture of ours being forced on them (Adam Ant, again), and more of us beginning to understand theirs.

We are going to need someone to look after us in the next 20 years – let’s see if we can use our lives as the Granny Flat under their ever expanding house.