Lincoln: An urgent letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney
Your reputation for quiet competence, reasoned judgment and steady decisiveness, already tested in your previous major career achievements, has resonated both here and beyond our shores since your election as our prime minister. No doubt your overwhelming victory as leader of the Liberal party played its part, as did your winning a national election in a result that had seemed quite improbable mere months beforehand.
Your presence as prime minister attracts respect and confidence, and once again Canada is viewed and listened to with deserved seriousness by your peers on the world stage. The voice of Canada as a middle power may not be prominent or especially powerful, yet it resonates far and wide as a voice of stability, fairness and peace.
Your mandate begins in a world beset by the instability and insecurity caused by conflict and war, where destruction and the loss of innocent lives have become the new normal. Conflict still rages in Myanmar after four years, with over 50,000 opponents of the junta losing their lives. The Sudan civil war has directly caused more than 150,000 deaths, with another depressing number of 525,000 infants having succumbed to malnutrition. The ethno-political cauldron that is the Middle East is stoked by the raging fire of ceaseless conflict and warfare. The recognized Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates a staggering 4.5 million deaths have occurred in post-9/11 war zones. Last September, the Wall Steet Journal estimated the number of those killed or wounded since the advent of the current Russo-Ukraine war at one million.
How can humankind tolerate such blatant disregard for life and living? How can the dignity and security of life and living have become mere stories and statistics for nightly news? How can the profound integrity and dignity of the human person have become mere 'collateral damage'?
Prime Minister, you can be that new respected Canadian leader who emulates Lester Pearson's historical call for peace, which led to the creation of the UN's first peacekeeping force and the saving of an untold number of lives. You can and should launch a peace initiative, perhaps called People Peace / Monde et Paix. You could invite eminent Canadians to join you for the launch — for instance, Céline Dion, Margaret Atwood, Roméo Dallaire, Irwin Cotler and David Suzuki. Governor General Mary Simon would provide the important presence of our First Peoples.
This would not be a political initiative, but a people's one, calling all across the globe to join hands and voices for peace and the preservation of life.
You could use your status as leader of a country of peace to ask Pope Leo XIV and his world faith peers to join in your call.
Each day that elapses means ever more deaths and destruction. The endless calls by political leaders for 'ceasefires' and 'de-escalation' remain so many buzzwords, while the carnage rages on. (Here's hoping the Iran-Israel ceasefire will be a welcome exception and will hold.) It is high time ordinary citizens, all of us across our lands, have our turn in urging and insisting, never giving up until peace and human life win the day.
Of all the causes you may champion as our prime minister, the cause of peace is the noblest. Peace has no political allegiance or religion; it protects all of us, regardless of age, race or status. It means our right to live free lives while respecting the right of our neighbours to do likewise. Peace means access to water, food and the essentials of life. Peace means the protection of infants, mothers and the most vulnerable. Peace is normalcy, and the clear possibility to anticipate a deserved future. Peace recognizes our differences, but allows us to accept them freely and willingly. Peace most certainly does not mean guns, bombs and missiles, which have no other purpose but to kill and destroy.
Please, Prime Minister, please be our champion for peace.
In respect and hope,
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