Reflection: News in Review - Ottawa Evacuates Nearly All Canadians from Libya

Reflection: News in Review

"Ottawa evacuates nearly all Canadians from Libya"

This newspaper story is about the evacuation of all Canadians trapped at the airport in Tripoli, Libya. As we know Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have reduced the oil reach country to chaos, and estimates of the death range from 200 up to 1000. Gaddafi controlled the capital Tripoli and cities in the western part of the country so far the cities on the East part of the country felt to the rebels. 334 Canadians were registered with the embassy in Tripoli and 213 said that they want to go back to Canada. Most of them were oil workers in the Calgary-based Suncor Energy Company. Also, Montreal engineering and construction giant SNC Lavalin had staff in Libya. The problem arises when the government scrambled to figure out an alternate escape route after a scheduled charter flight was scrapped when the carrier's insurance company ruled the mission to risky. Because of this problem 26 Canadians aboard an American-chartered boat that was to have evacuated foreigners to Malta, but rough seas delayed the voyage. Government official confirmed that other methods for getting Canadians out of Libya included hitching rides on charter flights or boats arranged by other governments. All in all Canadians arrived back to Canada safely.

This newspaper story relates to many topics that we have studied in Civics. One of the topics is democracy. This article clearly shows that Canada is a democratic country. Democracy means that all citizens should be treated equal, whether they are in Canada or abroad. We see that this basic rule of democracy is obeyed. Also, the most important thing that shows this article is that government (that people choose with voting) cares about Canadian people and provides them help when they need it. In short, this article was connected to what we have studied in Civics.

It is important that citizens in our democratic society are aware of this newspaper story because of two reasons. First, Canadian citizens, our fellows were at risk in Libya. Every democratic country need to care about its citizens and always be here for them. Second, the people who were in Libya have their families here in Canada, so it would be disaster if they could not get back to Canada and leave their families alone in pain. In conclusion this newspaper article was really important for citizens in our democratic society.