Canada a ‘model' for world

Makes ya pround to be Canadian, eh.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai praised Canada and its people today with his speech at the House of Commons.

“Thanks to Canada's contributions, Afghanistan today is profoundly different from the terrified and exhausted country it was five years ago,” he said.

Six million children now attend school in his country. Under Taliban rule, that number had been limited to just 700,000, all of them boys. Today more 35 per cent of those attending school are girls.

Hard to believe. We take education for granted and to get any job today in the Western world you need at least a college diploma. Yet a few years ago on the other side of the world girls weren't allowed to learn.

There are still places in the world where it's a luxury to have books or materials to teach children.

It's nice to hear President Karzai praise Canada as a model to the rest of the world. Though I'm not saying that we need to conform the world to be like Canada, but there's so much we take for granted that are luxuries for other people in the world, like drinking water. It would be nice if we could share some of these luxuries.

I'm a big fan of space exploration and even dreamed of being an astronaut when I was a kid, but really I think we need to get our own little corner of the universe in order before spending billions of dollars on settling on the moon or on Mars.