Let’s Imagine Obama in Quebec

The remarkable speech made by Barack Obama in his inauguration as forty-fourth president of the United States of America was a moment of humanistic eloquence and grandeur, the sort of moment we are no longer accustomed to in our busy societies where too often cynicism vies with indifference. However, since so many Quebecois and Canadians have expressed since his election a boundless admiration for the new president, I have allowed myself to dream in asking myself what would happen to us if the speech of Barack Obama was carried out in Quebec.

Would we be ready, as Barack Obama demanded with fervor of his countrymen, to embrace the ideals and values that his speech evoked with such force and power of conviction? Do we need to wait to find here a man like him to convince us? Would we not have, as much as our American neighbors, an urgent need to rebuild a more free, more responsible, more just and more democratic society?

What is there in the speech of Barack Obama that is not applicable in Quebec outside of the influence of the American giant in the world and its foreign policy? When Barack Obama said “Our health system costs too much. Our schools let too many kids fall behind and every day brings new proof that the way in which we use energy is reinforcing our enemies and threatening our planet,” could not this be speaking of Quebec? When he proceeds saying, “But the time of immobility, of protection of tight interests and of the report of disagreeable decisions is well past,” is he speaking of Quebec or of the United States? Finally when he proclaims “Whatever a government can and must do, it is definitely on the faith and on the determination of Americans that this country depends,” couldn’t one replace the world American with Quebecois?

Work, honesty and courage

It is true that the America that Obama inherits is probably undergoing a much worse stage than Quebec. But when the new president evokes values like work, honesty and courage, the respect of rules, tolerance, curiosity, loyalty and patriotism, are we so sure that only the Americans need these to be recalled to their attention?

“What is demanded of us now, is a new era of responsibility, a recognition on the part of every American, that we have the duties that we don’t accept with a hard heart but that we seize with joy…” continues Barack Obama. Wasn’t there equally in Quebec the feeling that our rights, which are numerous and loudly claimed, have for a long time downgraded their counterpart, in this case, our duties as citizens? Isn’t there, in this neighbor to the North, a heavy tendency to believe that it is only the government that should solve everything and assume all responsibilities? Do we seriously carry this desire for change that Barack Obama is proposing within us? Could we take on again for our own account the famous “Yes We Can”?

If we want to believe in the virtues of Barack Obama as much as he has spoken out against the foibles of his predecessor, we must gain inspiration from all parts of his speech and not only those that are our business or which lead us to believe that the Americans are the only ones who should change. Before Obama’s January 20th speech, the whole world was afraid of the idea of seeing abnormally high American expectations of him. We have just seen that the expectations of the president for his people are equally high and demanding. The response of the Americans to this call can inspire us.