Aftab Ahmed: What the World Cup reminds Canada about itself

Nice reminder (and yes, we are watching as so many are):

….On the pitch, a public debate too often compressed into talking points becomes human, visible, and harder to caricature. These players are people before they are symbols, and heritage should never be reduced to a box-ticking exercise to make a policy argument.

Still, it is reasonable to notice what is in front of us. This group puts flesh and bone on the promise Canada has long projected to the world: families arriving, settling, working, struggling, raising children, and building excellence in communities across the country. But more to the point: On the soccer pitch itself, Canada is finally living up to expectations.

…Hockey will always be the headline sport here, but Canada’s win over Qatar was, arguably, one of this country’s finest international sporting achievements, on par with the men’s hockey gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. The win over Qatar was Canada announcing itself in the world’s only true universal sport and the biggest by global viewership, in a World Cup on home soil, through a team that looks like the country Canada has become.

The beautiful game is holding up a mirror to Canada: a country whose immigration, refugee protection, and asylum architecture rests on a principle of openness that has delivered a net benefit to Canada.

At a time when so much beyond sports feels grim, that is something worth holding onto.

Aftab Ahmed completed his Master of Public Policy degree at McGill University’s Max Bell School and is a policy development officer with the City of Toronto. He serves as a regular columnist for Canadian and Bangladeshi media outlets

Source: Aftab Ahmed: What the World Cup reminds Canada about itself