It is hard to sit on the other side of the world and watch videos of protestors swarming each other in the streets of Egypt.
With so much discussion from experts and journalists as to why the chaos is ensuing and what will happen next, it can be difficult to separate fact from opinion.
According to some experts, the revolution demanding that President Hosni Mubarak resign from his 30-year presidency has been a long time coming.
Still, the information coming in day in and out can be awfully hard to comprehend.
It is shocking to think about media being banned and people’s rights being revoked in such a way in a democratic society.
It is harder to imagine waking up each morning, knowing that outside there is a revolt, with people being brutally violent, looting and completely abandoning their daily routines and commitments to join the revolution.
It’s a sign of desperate times in these countries. Without available jobs or hopes for the future, people are looking to their government for answers and finding nothing.
It’s hard to imagine anything like that happening here in Canada. Yet right now there are hundreds of thousands of Canadians, maybe millions, who are angry.
They’re annoyed that Internet service might cost a great deal more in the near future. They’re angry with companies that could potentially build a profit on bandwidth usage that has been uncharged for years. It makes you feel a little taken advantage of as a consumer.
Not that there aren’t all kinds of well-crafted businesses that run off somewhat unnecessarily charging people copious amounts of money for very little reason, but when it smacks you right in the face as this, it stings.
With one eye on Egypt and the fate of this revolution, and one eye on our own governing bodies and what decisions they will make in order to protect the people, it’s fair to say we all feel uneasy.
What would happen here if in the public eye a governing group such as the CRTC allowed a business to take advantage of billing something that doesn’t need to be billed? If the government didn’t step in at that point, Canadians might feel a little disconcerted about their democratic comfort zone.
Would we still feel that we were under a people-friendly rule, or a rule that couldn’t care less?
This is not to compare the two situations but to point out the dangers of a democratically governed nation that does not hold the trust of its people.
It seems as though the world is changing rapidly but at the same time, it kind of just seems like a lot of skeletons are falling out of the closets of our governments.
How much do we know about our governments, their history, current affairs and motivations?
Furthermore, in democratic Egypt, how could a government that is so unfavourable have remained in power for 30 years?