Intent For A Nation: What is Canada For. Michael Byers
health and safety regulations while mandating U.S. access to our energy supplies.
Chrétien’s decision to stay out of the 2003 Iraq War was momentous. Forty years after Diefenbaker’s downfall, a Canadian prime minister had declined to participate in a major U.S. military action. It seemed that, after all, economic sovereignty was not a prerequisite for independence in the foreign-policy domain.
Grant’s thesis was tested again in 2005. George W. Bush had deemed missile defence essential to U.S. national security and requested Canadian participation. But with polls indicating that most Canadians were against it, Paul Martin swallowed hard and said no.
Around the same time, pollsters discovered that the values of Canadians and Americans were diverging. Canadians had become more secular, tolerant of diversity and questioning of authority, while Americans were moving in the opposite direction. In Canada, these changes manifested themselves in the legalization of same-sex marriage and near-decriminalization of marijuana. In September 2003, the cover of the Economist was a moose in shades, under the banner “Canada is ‘cool’.”
Political scientists question whether individuals—as opposed to economic and political structures—have much influence on history. Yet it is difficult to explain Canada’s continued independence without referring to Tommy Douglas, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Douglas held the balance of power in the two minority parliaments that followed Diefenbaker’s defeat. Together, he and Pearson introduced universal public health care and the Canada Pension Plan and kept Canada out of the Vietnam War. Trudeau then introduced the Official Languages Act, the Foreign Investment Review Agency, wage and price controls, and the national energy program. None of these leaders exhibited the all-encompassing, small-l liberalism and subservience to Washington that Grant had predicted of all subsequent Canadian governments. Diefenbaker was gone, but remnants of a socially conscious Canadian nationalism remained.
During the 1990s, Canada drifted towards the United States under the influence of free trade, a burgeoning U.S. economy and the charismatic moderation of Bill Clinton. So did many other countries. The relative peace and prosperity of the post–Cold War period—and the apparent victory of the liberal democratic capitalist model—prompted the economist Francis Fukuyama to announce the “end of history.”
Were it not for George W. Bush, Canada might be on its way to becoming the fifty-first American state. But the U.S. president’s bellicose rhetoric and overt religiosity made many Canadians nervous, while his administration’s regressive cuts to taxes and social programs and massive increases in defence spending transformed the United States into a more unequal, fearful and militaristic place. Canada might still be moving in the direction of the United States, but since the year 2000, the United States has been moving away much faster.
Grant’s thesis extended beyond the absorption of Canada into the United States. He believed that all countries would eventually unite into a “universal and homogeneous state” founded on a U.S.-centred modernism. Again, this prediction looks less likely today that it did in 2000, when the United States still seemed in ascendancy.
Bush’s advisers squandered “soft power” through their evident contempt for international law and the opinions of other countries, while running up a national debt that has given foreign creditors— most notably the Chinese government—a stranglehold over the U.S. economy. At the same time, they became locked in a nihilistic struggle with radical Islam, creating chasms in international society that are more reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” than they are of Fukuyama’s—or Grant’s—transnational blending of differences into a worldwide version of the United States.
Today, China is not the only country that is gaining power and influence relative to the United States. India, with a population of 1.1 billion and an economic growth rate of 8 per cent, is poised to become a great power. Europe is now a single economy that is larger than that of the U.S. Russia, which made the ruble a fully convertible currency in 2006, is returning to geopolitical relevance on the back of high prices for oil and gas. Instead of hegemony or homogeneity, we seem to be witnessing the emergence of a multipolar world made up of interdependent—though still fiercely independent—nation-states.
Canada’s influence should be growing too, for all the reasons identified above and more: our geographic size and location; our well-educated, globally connected population; our high standard of living, strong public services and infrastructure; our abundant resources, large economy and firm fiscal foundations; our membership in international organizations and reputation for moderation and progressive thinking. Moreover, Canada has demonstrated the ability to achieve great things. We have done so internationally, for example, with the 1997 Landmines Convention. We have done so domestically, with universal public health care and our diverse, harmonious and livable cities. If Canadians have an inferiority complex, it is only because we became accustomed to living in the shadow of the world’s most powerful state.
All of which made Stephen Harper a strange choice for prime minister in January 2006. Harper had wanted Canada to join the Iraq War in 2003. As he explained to the House of Commons: “In an increasingly globalized and borderless world, the relationship between Canada and the United States is essential to our prosperity, to our democracy and to our future.” He also thought Canada should join the U.S. in missile defence. As early as May 2002, he criticized opponents of missile defence for offering “knee-jerk resistance… despite the fact that Canada is confronted by the same threats from rogue nations equipped with ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction as is the United States.”
Being elected prime minister changed neither Harper’s views nor those of his rebranded Conservative Party. Although the quest for a majority government temporarily modulated their domestic policies, in foreign affairs their continentalism remained starkly evident. In just one year, the Harper government extended our involvement in a U.S.-led war in Asia, gave the Pentagon access to maritime surveillance over our coastal waters, followed the lead of the Bush administration on climate change and the Middle East and took surreptitious steps towards participating in missile defence.
Harper and his colleagues have always believed that Canadians would just as happily be Americans, and they have done their best to make us so. Fortunately, George Grant was wrong. Our distinctiveness—our love of country—is rooted in the non-economic compartments of our national psyche.
It remains to be seen whether Stéphane Dion is all that different. Is the new Liberal leader up to the task of withstanding the inexorable pressures of continentalism while providing meaningful leadership at the global level? Certainly, when it comes to Dion’s signature issue of climate change (the focus of Chapter 6 of this book), his record as former federal environment minister is not encouraging.
At this point in Canadian history, we need vision and action, not just a “safe pair of hands.” As Grant pointed out: “But a nation does not remain a nation only because it has roots in the past. Memory is never enough to guarantee that a nation can articulate itself in the present. There must be a thrust of intention into the future.”
Canadians are confronted with great challenges, ranging from our deep economic, cultural and military exposure to the United States to climate change and nuclear proliferation. We need a vision to light the way, something more inspiring than keeping the U.S. border open to trade. This country is not a shadow of someone else’s destiny; we have a greater purpose. Let’s find that thrust of intention. Let’s decide—by ourselves—what Canada is for.
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“I HOPE THEY CATCH the sods who did it,” said the workman who was installing a new floor in my mother-in-law’s kitchen near London, England. “ It was July 7, 2005, just five short minutes after the first radio report of explosions on Underground railway trains, and he was already back to work. Fifty-two people were killed