We also do not teach our children that the increase in atmospheric CO2 has increased crop yields and accelerated forest growth.
We also do not tell our children that hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and coal have built modern civilization using four simple materials/ commodities.
The first commodity is fertilizer made from hydrocarbon, without which 4.5 billion people will starve.
Second is concrete; More concrete is poured than all the water treated in all the world's water treatment facilities.
Third is steel, which cannot be manufactured without coking coal and natural gas (never mind the fuel needed for mining and transport)
The fourth: Plastic-from medical tubing, the smartphone in your hand to our food supply protected from life-threatening bacteria, plastic is ubiquitous.
Our history is the building of modern society, and our children need to be taught this without shame or castigation.
Good comment. Just a point about chemical fertilizers. It was the invention of the Haber-Bosch process, which enabled the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. This process was crucial for producing fertilizers and had a profound impact on agriculture and food production worldwide. Fritz Haber was also the father of chemical warfare in WW1, but that is a story for another day. He still got a Nobel in 1918.
I heard an observation recently which stuck with me (sorry, I can't credit its originator): the best way to elevate societies out of poverty is to provide them with affordable energy.
I suggest that Canada’s slow slide accelerated after the COVID lockdowns and George Floyd protests. The false Kamloops claim, or something like it, was inevitable. We are at the bottom of a deep hole, and it took Donald Trump to get us to pay attention to this alarming reality
Exactly Terry. And you've just described most of my "liberal" friends and probably more than half the country. They haven't been paying attention. One of my best friends was one of these until Oct. 7, which opened his eyes, not just to Hamas and Israel, but to wokeness in general and in Canada. Unlike this friend, who is Jewish, my non-Jewish friends are likely still all going to vote Liberal. It's actually quite remarkable just how much people need to know and see before they'll see a problem with their preferred way of thinking.
One of my liberal friends - who stopped talking to me when this governement began to slip in the polls, which is evidently my doing - dismissed any criticism of his support of Trudeau thusly: "Hey, at least he tries".
Yup, that's the mentality of the few remaining TruAnon idealogues - give the guy a participation ribbon and a pat on the back. Competence? Integrity? Follow-through? Accomplishment? Not important.
Most people don't "pay attention" to politics,they vote once every four years and trust the people they elected to serve in the best interests of the country. Most of us here and on all the blogs are "political junkies",( a term I hate) and we probably comprise one percent of the population.
I think most people are paying attention now, because they can NOT AFFORD their food, gas, mortgage or rent. The prices at the grocery store are getting way out of hand! So I do know some are struggling! My thoughts only.
But, but... the prices are all the fault of Greedy Grocers...and the (likely Jewish) bankers and the grasping landlords and oil barons...even though taxes on fuel have no effect on the price of anything. People are easily distracted.
A fine article which describes our collective fall. Thank you. The current Liberal leadership race cannot be allowed to escape atonement for the intentional destruction of patriotism and pride in our achievements. The economic mismanagement is obvious but pale in importance compared to the constant erosion of national pride caused by ridiculous apologies and non-existent crimes. Imagine a country that flies its flag at half mast for over six months to commemorate a falsehood. We are all, to some extent complicit. It’s not Trump’s fault. Thanks for helping to open our eyes.
This is Leslie. Substack gets us mixed up. A family member is on a board of a volunteer organization that meets in church annexes, Legion halls, and other similar locations. They always did ritual land acknowledgements, which, while annoying, are harmless because you are talking about land that you don't actually own -- the land belongs to the church or the Legion -- it's someone else's land. During Covid they had to meet on Zoom, with everyone attending from their own homes. My family member made the astute observation that doing a land acknowledgement from your own living room could be implying that you felt guilty about the land you actually have your private residence on, where you live with the roof over your head. So she nixed land acknowledgements. To this day, most chapters of her organization don't do them even though they moved back to public venues after Covid ended. Good on her.
This is the kind of thing that once you think about it, you say, "No way!" It's a small thing, but never comply with tyranny in advance of coercion. Resistance begins with a single act.
That's Chapter 1 of Timothy Snyder's short book, "On Tyranny". Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Do NOT obey in advance.
"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do."
I think Canadians should see this as an opportunity rather than a threat. It's more like a hostile takeover in business than an invasion of a country. Let me explain.
When a publicly traded company is poorly managed, its share prices fall. Corporate raiders see this as an opportunity to buy up shares on the cheap, take control, then reorganize the corporate assets to make them profitable again. Depending on how badly the company has been mismanaged, and for how long, the reorganization will have to be more or less radical.
A hostile takeover benefits everyone except the pre-existing managers, who deserve to lose their jobs for performing them so poorly. Sometimes, the pre-existing managers wake up to the threat of a hostile takeover in time; in an attempt to keep their jobs, they scramble to implement the very recovery strategy that the corporate raider would have implemented. The mere threat of hostile takeovers keeps all of the players alert, to everyone's benefit.
Think of Trump by analogy as a political raider. He sees neighbouring properties being seriously mismanaged and floundering, so he threatens to take control to make them great again. If he wanted to, Trump could offer to make every resident of Greenland an American millionaire by spending less money than the Trudeau-Ford-Legault axis of evil spent on obsolete or bankrupt foreign EV manufacturers in the past few years. It would be a generous offer, and Greenlanders might well take it, if offered. After all, Greenland was basically an American military outpost during the Second World War.
Canadians should appreciate and welcome the opportunities we are being offered here. Indeed, the funniest thing going the past few weeks is watching Canada's current management team and their sycophant punditry scramble to implement most of the changes that a Trump takeover would have brought to Canada, in order to keep themselves in power. All of a sudden there is talk of a "Team Canada" approach that includes eliminating interprovincial trade barriers and building pipelines to tidewater, east west and north. Everyone is suddenly on board with axing the carbon tax! There's suddenly talk of reining in our out-of-control immigration from every third-world and war-torn hotspot on the planet. There's even talk of beefing up our disgraceful military and improving border security. Halleluiah!
It is an open question at this point in time whether the shareholders of some divisions of Canada Corp will accept the American buy-out, or whether we will elect a better management team to restructure everything before our stock falls to junk bond status.
Great analogy, but I'm this case the "management" does not have even the slightest desire for the company to succeed. They are deliberately driving if into the ground for the benefit of another actor. Their goal is to subvert US power by selling us off to the Chinese. It was Pierre Trudeau's goal, as a self confessed communist and his son is attempting to fulfill that vision.
I don't think Pierre Trudeau claimed to be communist, but he was very close to the ideology for much of his life.
His Harvard dissertation was on the topic of communism and Christianity.
Pierre Trudeau first travelled to China in 1949 when revolution was still in progress. He returned again in 1960, after which he and Jacques Hebert wrote their book, "Two Innocents in Red China", which downplayed the starvation going on there, presenting it as mere rationing.
Trudeau was also a friend of Fidel Castro. In January 1976, Trudeau visited Cuba to meet Castro and shouted to a crowd in Havana "Viva Cuba! Viva Castro!"
Perhaps you would like to read "Citizen of the world: the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau" by John English.
You're judging him by his trips and a few associations. I'm judging him on his 16-year record as prime minister. He may have leaned left, but that's about it. Nothing socialist or Communist about how he governed.
I think Trudeau's political ideology seemed social liberal/socialist, economic nationalist, and centralist to varying degrees over time.
He wasn't a Laurier-type individualist classical liberalist, but more a centralized federal government type of liberal. It's not communism, but it shares some of the similar characteristics: nationalization and centralized federal government.
That's quite a climbdown and I'm inclined to agree with you on that. Of course the world had changed a lot since Laurier's time, and what was classical liberal in the late 19th early 20th century was closer to what we would have called conservatism in the latter half of the 20th century.
I've recently developed a visceral sense that this is a long overdue political correction. Small tweaks to our broken confederation are no longer sufficient. Sweeping foundational changes are required to reverse what has been a disastrous course. If Canadians have the stomach for it.
Great article. Canada has slowly abdicated well, Canada, but what precisely did we think Trudeau meant by post-national state? I believe it goes back far further than the last 10 years, I believe it started with the Avro Arrow and Canada ceding that marvel to the US. At this point, I’m not sure what can be done.
In 1885, a national, coast to coast railway was a critical step in building our nation. In 2025, a coast to coast pipeline might be a good first step in reclaiming it.
The CPR wasn't coast-to-coast. It went from Montreal to Port Moody. The important thing for Confederation was that it got to BC as promised. Only much later under pressure from the government did the CPR build a line through Maine to Saint John, NB. It never made money and was sold off to short-line railroads a long time ago. The disaster in Lac Megantic was on that line.
It was the only one of the three great promises to lure BC into Confederation that was actually fulfilled. The others were treaties with the Indians and tariff-free trade across the provinces.
And we have Joseph Trutch and his racist (even for that time) dismissal of Douglas' treaty plans beyond the 14. Trutch knew he had more leverage than the feds and he used it. Now look at the mess we're in in BC.
If it's any consolation, Maddie, there were a lot of sophisticated jet fighters and bombers being developed in the late 1950s that had to be abandoned as the conditions of warfare changed. ICBMs and high-reaching anti-aircraft missiles required a radical rethink of just what a military airplane needed to do. The Arrow was just one of many cool designs that history overtook and made obsolete. We know about the Arrow because it was ours. But there are a lot of designs in U.S. and U.K. that got canceled as either too expensive or unable to do what needed to be done. 1960 was very different from 1955.
(The Arrow was actually a dog. It wasn't that great an airplane. It would have required bigger engines that wouldn't fit in the fuselage -- Oops! -- in order to have had a hope of achieving the gosh gee whiz performance Avro was promising. And it was becoming very expensive as problems kept cropping up. We didn't "cede" it to the U.S. They never developed the Arrow into one of their own interceptors and actually cancelled a somewhat similar interceptor that Convair was trying to develop from the B-58 bomber. Interceptors were useful for only one thing: flying really fast in a straight line to shoot down slow Soviet bombers. It would have been useless in any other role. It couldn't outfly other fighters and so wouldn't have been useful for air superiority or ground attack they way modern multi-role fighters are.)
Well, true, but that’s how the economics go. Developing a sophisticated weapons platform to serve uniquely Canadian military needs is one thing, although the uniquely Canadian needs are often exaggerated. But it is whole ‘nuther thing to keep pouring money into a white elephant just to keep engineering jobs in Canada when their own careers did better by moving to California or St. Louis to work on American projects.
The F-101 Voodoos we bought second-hand to replace the obsolete CF-100s worked just fine for protecting our airspace. No Russian bombers got through, did they? :-)
What did we think "post-national sate" meant? No idea. Trudeau didn't know, either, when he mumbled it out. It's pseudo-intellectual gibberish uttered by the master of the genre.
There's a quote that always lives rent-free in my head. I've mentioned it here before, but here it is again. It's from the wonderful 1941 film "49th Parallel" (aka "The Invaders"). For context (with spoilers), it takes place in the final scene of the movie, in which the antagonist (a German naval commander and nazi idealogue) has manged to elude capture across Canada after his U-boat is crippled off the East Coast. All he needs to do is to enter the (still neutral) United States where the German spy network will return him safely to Germany. He stows-away aboard a freight train crossing the border at Niagara Falls, but runs into two bemused AWOL Canadian soldiers also hiding from the authorities. The commander tries to win them over to his cause, but finds that even though the soldiers are fugitives as well, their loyalty to their home and its values rivals his own to his. One of the soldiers responds, "We own the right to be fed-up with anything we damn please and say so out-loud when we feel like it! And when things go wrong we can take it… and we can dish it out, too." And when US customs inspectors turn the train around on the technicality that the nazi wasn't on the freight manifest, the movie ends with the soldiers moving in to introduce him to a few rounds of bare-knuckle, Moncton-style beat-down while they wait for the Canadian authorities to arrive.
I love that quote. I love that movie. I thought about it often when I was serving in the army, where I could be found somewhat regularly fed-up. I still think about it often, fed-up or not.
But here's the thing. We have changed. We still own the right to be fed-up, but our rights to say so out-loud are slowly being stripped away. And, frankly, we are losing our ability to take it when things go wrong (more often than not turning on each other), and I fear we have completely lost the ability to dish it out.
Donald Trump is nuts (and, fun fact, he is the same age in this first year of his second term as "sleepy" Joe Biden was in the first year of his term). He's a troll and a provocateur. And our leader-class fell for the bait. What started (probably) as a joke riffing on the soy-boyness of our dunce of a PM has escalated to a potential full-blown trade war. Certainly Trump's business-mind sees the validity of trade protectionism. Maybe he was always planning on a hard-line in that respect. Maybe his security grievences with us are all smoke and mirrors. But now we're in a situation where this postnational state is simply not prepared to respond to Trump in any meaningful way. Instead of embracing the Canadian (to a fault) way of diplomatic semi-capitulation, we're pretending to wrap our knuckles for an imminent Moncton-style beat-down we are not fit to fight. To that end, what are we doing as I write this? Sending Melanie Joly to meet with Marco Rubio. We're sending our second-best moron to the Moron Summit.
Maybe Trump's real reason is legit. We certainly have allowed our border protection to become laughable. Bad actors know Canada is a soft entry to North America, and a mere literal sprint across what both sides used to boast as "the longest undefended border in the world". This may be why even though more uninvited individuals enter the US across the Mexican border or through international air travel, more individuals on the DHS watch-list enter through Canada than via any other way. Maybe even though we knew as early as 2016 that US protectionism was becoming an ideological juggernaut with or withour Trump 2.0, we squandered our precious time and money on performative feel-good bullcrap than on the kind of logistical and security measures understood to be essential by any country run by adults, rather than capering, unserious Instagram influencers.
So here we are, in the embarassing position of being economically coerced by the leader of another nation - our greatest ally and trade partner, no less - to get our act together.
I'm now reminded of another film, the 1959 war satire "The Mouse that Roared". We're the mouse, alright, but we don't even have the chainmail.
Canadians only have ourselves to blame for being such an apathetic, unaware of our own history society. We have a proud history and choose to ignore it and worse, vilify and deny it. Those who fought for our freedom would be so ashamed!
Thank you Terry for a very insightful article. We need a leader with a real vision and a passion for our country to dig us out of this very deep hole that we find ourselves in.
Though heading now well into my 7th decade on this earth and feeling, sometimes, as though the future may be shorter than desired, I remain engaged and quite concerned about the way things are playing out.
More than anything, though, after reading this frightening depiction of my Home and Native Land, I wonder if there might be a follow-up to it, providing any hope.
I respect honest analysis - but I value honest, positive direction even more.
In fairness, the slashing and burning of our military is a decades-old problem, predating the Trudeau, Harper, Chreten and even Mulroney governments. We have been pretending for decades that the CF is a modern and capable fighting force.
I don’t know, Sean & Terry. I really don’t. I’ve watch this country these past 10 years & wondered where’s the outrage over foreign interference? I mean the writers I follow are on top of it, but in general it’s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The government obfuscates, offers word salads by literally every single minister & the public shrugs. The only time we saw a collective outpouring of annoyance was the Freedom Convoy. And what? ‘Most Cdns agreed with Trudeau,’ so said the polling. Ok. Fine.
Recently - the attacks & burning of synagogues / churches, the disgusting Hamas supporters … where’s the collective outrage? The arrests, convictions? The stated public approbation for these people being punished? Or the demands for punishment? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ok. Fine.
These recent events should have mustered up something of a collective sentiment by Cdns. You’d think. No?
However, Danielle Smith seems to have re-ignited the Central Cdn collective derision for Alberta and now she’s blamed for undermining CANADA OMG! And, suddenly! WE NEED PIPELINES! (Quebec, the equalization payment sow, is strangely silent on that one lol.)
Trump is not the problem. Our Danielle is not the problem. Canada (whatever that is these days) look in the gd mirror.
This current situation may wake us from the slumber that has overcome this country.
Everyone knows that while we year after year fail on our NATO commitments we depend entirely on the US for defense. All this while Trudeau insults Americans. DT' s tongue in cheek comments are not to be laughed off easily as the musings of a foreign head of state. He does so because he sees our weakness. The liberal/ ndp coalition has greatly damaged and diminished this great country with their woke/climate post-national zealotry. We have been left in disarray and are an easy target for foreign powers. Our natural resources are the envy of many.
If I do not protect my home by ensuring it is secure it will be broken into and pilfered.
At the same time we have a PM who supposedly resigned, has shut down Parliament during a time of serious threat to our sovereignty. Who does the Trudeau/ Singh coalitipn serve?
Prof. Maloney - thank you for that. As with many of Terry’s submissions, I find myself saying: “...yes, except it’s worse than that...” In addition to the various rabbit holes the last decade of Liberal governance has taken us down, we have many years of magical thinking with climate policy that has embrittled our economy while we divert scarce resources into lavish industrial policy experiments - one can know this “just transition” was a lavish fantasy, by the degree to which Minister Wilkinson turned on a dime this week, and made breathless propositions to augment oil, natural gas, and uranium, and potash supply to the States, if they would only please leave us alone... Mr Trump had only to glance at this governments Potemkin Village of an industrial policy, and it fell down... so there’s that too
That is an astute perspective.
We also do not teach our children that the increase in atmospheric CO2 has increased crop yields and accelerated forest growth.
We also do not tell our children that hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and coal have built modern civilization using four simple materials/ commodities.
The first commodity is fertilizer made from hydrocarbon, without which 4.5 billion people will starve.
Second is concrete; More concrete is poured than all the water treated in all the world's water treatment facilities.
Third is steel, which cannot be manufactured without coking coal and natural gas (never mind the fuel needed for mining and transport)
The fourth: Plastic-from medical tubing, the smartphone in your hand to our food supply protected from life-threatening bacteria, plastic is ubiquitous.
Our history is the building of modern society, and our children need to be taught this without shame or castigation.
I agree - our society is built on the incredible efficiency and economic significance of those four. There’s no way around it.
"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
Edmund Burke 1790-“Reflections on the Revolution in France”
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana 1905 “The Life of Reason"
It has been a problem for a while.
Good comment. Just a point about chemical fertilizers. It was the invention of the Haber-Bosch process, which enabled the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. This process was crucial for producing fertilizers and had a profound impact on agriculture and food production worldwide. Fritz Haber was also the father of chemical warfare in WW1, but that is a story for another day. He still got a Nobel in 1918.
I heard an observation recently which stuck with me (sorry, I can't credit its originator): the best way to elevate societies out of poverty is to provide them with affordable energy.
Not only from poverty but it seems the only way shown to curb overpopulation and unsustainable levels of demand on resources, natural and otherwise.
I suggest that Canada’s slow slide accelerated after the COVID lockdowns and George Floyd protests. The false Kamloops claim, or something like it, was inevitable. We are at the bottom of a deep hole, and it took Donald Trump to get us to pay attention to this alarming reality
Anyone who needed Donald Trump to pay attention clearly hasn't been paying attention.
Yes, and that's a majority in any province!
We're Canadian - what did you expect?
Exactly Terry. And you've just described most of my "liberal" friends and probably more than half the country. They haven't been paying attention. One of my best friends was one of these until Oct. 7, which opened his eyes, not just to Hamas and Israel, but to wokeness in general and in Canada. Unlike this friend, who is Jewish, my non-Jewish friends are likely still all going to vote Liberal. It's actually quite remarkable just how much people need to know and see before they'll see a problem with their preferred way of thinking.
One of my liberal friends - who stopped talking to me when this governement began to slip in the polls, which is evidently my doing - dismissed any criticism of his support of Trudeau thusly: "Hey, at least he tries".
Yup, that's the mentality of the few remaining TruAnon idealogues - give the guy a participation ribbon and a pat on the back. Competence? Integrity? Follow-through? Accomplishment? Not important.
Most people don't "pay attention" to politics,they vote once every four years and trust the people they elected to serve in the best interests of the country. Most of us here and on all the blogs are "political junkies",( a term I hate) and we probably comprise one percent of the population.
I think most people are paying attention now, because they can NOT AFFORD their food, gas, mortgage or rent. The prices at the grocery store are getting way out of hand! So I do know some are struggling! My thoughts only.
But, but... the prices are all the fault of Greedy Grocers...and the (likely Jewish) bankers and the grasping landlords and oil barons...even though taxes on fuel have no effect on the price of anything. People are easily distracted.
Thats for sure. But one must admit that those who weren’t are now paying attention perhaps for the first time.
Come on Terry get your readership up into the millions and rescue the damn country!!
A fine article which describes our collective fall. Thank you. The current Liberal leadership race cannot be allowed to escape atonement for the intentional destruction of patriotism and pride in our achievements. The economic mismanagement is obvious but pale in importance compared to the constant erosion of national pride caused by ridiculous apologies and non-existent crimes. Imagine a country that flies its flag at half mast for over six months to commemorate a falsehood. We are all, to some extent complicit. It’s not Trump’s fault. Thanks for helping to open our eyes.
This is Leslie. Substack gets us mixed up. A family member is on a board of a volunteer organization that meets in church annexes, Legion halls, and other similar locations. They always did ritual land acknowledgements, which, while annoying, are harmless because you are talking about land that you don't actually own -- the land belongs to the church or the Legion -- it's someone else's land. During Covid they had to meet on Zoom, with everyone attending from their own homes. My family member made the astute observation that doing a land acknowledgement from your own living room could be implying that you felt guilty about the land you actually have your private residence on, where you live with the roof over your head. So she nixed land acknowledgements. To this day, most chapters of her organization don't do them even though they moved back to public venues after Covid ended. Good on her.
This is the kind of thing that once you think about it, you say, "No way!" It's a small thing, but never comply with tyranny in advance of coercion. Resistance begins with a single act.
That's Chapter 1 of Timothy Snyder's short book, "On Tyranny". Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Do NOT obey in advance.
"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do."
Thanks! I couldn’t remember where I heard it. Now I know where I can go to read it. 👍
I am not complicit. I did not comply.
Nor did I !!
I think Canadians should see this as an opportunity rather than a threat. It's more like a hostile takeover in business than an invasion of a country. Let me explain.
When a publicly traded company is poorly managed, its share prices fall. Corporate raiders see this as an opportunity to buy up shares on the cheap, take control, then reorganize the corporate assets to make them profitable again. Depending on how badly the company has been mismanaged, and for how long, the reorganization will have to be more or less radical.
A hostile takeover benefits everyone except the pre-existing managers, who deserve to lose their jobs for performing them so poorly. Sometimes, the pre-existing managers wake up to the threat of a hostile takeover in time; in an attempt to keep their jobs, they scramble to implement the very recovery strategy that the corporate raider would have implemented. The mere threat of hostile takeovers keeps all of the players alert, to everyone's benefit.
Think of Trump by analogy as a political raider. He sees neighbouring properties being seriously mismanaged and floundering, so he threatens to take control to make them great again. If he wanted to, Trump could offer to make every resident of Greenland an American millionaire by spending less money than the Trudeau-Ford-Legault axis of evil spent on obsolete or bankrupt foreign EV manufacturers in the past few years. It would be a generous offer, and Greenlanders might well take it, if offered. After all, Greenland was basically an American military outpost during the Second World War.
Canadians should appreciate and welcome the opportunities we are being offered here. Indeed, the funniest thing going the past few weeks is watching Canada's current management team and their sycophant punditry scramble to implement most of the changes that a Trump takeover would have brought to Canada, in order to keep themselves in power. All of a sudden there is talk of a "Team Canada" approach that includes eliminating interprovincial trade barriers and building pipelines to tidewater, east west and north. Everyone is suddenly on board with axing the carbon tax! There's suddenly talk of reining in our out-of-control immigration from every third-world and war-torn hotspot on the planet. There's even talk of beefing up our disgraceful military and improving border security. Halleluiah!
It is an open question at this point in time whether the shareholders of some divisions of Canada Corp will accept the American buy-out, or whether we will elect a better management team to restructure everything before our stock falls to junk bond status.
Great analogy, but I'm this case the "management" does not have even the slightest desire for the company to succeed. They are deliberately driving if into the ground for the benefit of another actor. Their goal is to subvert US power by selling us off to the Chinese. It was Pierre Trudeau's goal, as a self confessed communist and his son is attempting to fulfill that vision.
Trudeau was not a "self-confessed communist." Where do you get this crap from?
I don't think Pierre Trudeau claimed to be communist, but he was very close to the ideology for much of his life.
His Harvard dissertation was on the topic of communism and Christianity.
Pierre Trudeau first travelled to China in 1949 when revolution was still in progress. He returned again in 1960, after which he and Jacques Hebert wrote their book, "Two Innocents in Red China", which downplayed the starvation going on there, presenting it as mere rationing.
Trudeau was also a friend of Fidel Castro. In January 1976, Trudeau visited Cuba to meet Castro and shouted to a crowd in Havana "Viva Cuba! Viva Castro!"
Perhaps you would like to read "Citizen of the world: the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau" by John English.
You're judging him by his trips and a few associations. I'm judging him on his 16-year record as prime minister. He may have leaned left, but that's about it. Nothing socialist or Communist about how he governed.
National Energy Program?
I think Trudeau's political ideology seemed social liberal/socialist, economic nationalist, and centralist to varying degrees over time.
He wasn't a Laurier-type individualist classical liberalist, but more a centralized federal government type of liberal. It's not communism, but it shares some of the similar characteristics: nationalization and centralized federal government.
That's quite a climbdown and I'm inclined to agree with you on that. Of course the world had changed a lot since Laurier's time, and what was classical liberal in the late 19th early 20th century was closer to what we would have called conservatism in the latter half of the 20th century.
I've recently developed a visceral sense that this is a long overdue political correction. Small tweaks to our broken confederation are no longer sufficient. Sweeping foundational changes are required to reverse what has been a disastrous course. If Canadians have the stomach for it.
Hoping for a new/better management team!
Election required. A new CEO with the same plan as the old and the same board of directors will be neither new nor better.
Great article. Canada has slowly abdicated well, Canada, but what precisely did we think Trudeau meant by post-national state? I believe it goes back far further than the last 10 years, I believe it started with the Avro Arrow and Canada ceding that marvel to the US. At this point, I’m not sure what can be done.
In 1885, a national, coast to coast railway was a critical step in building our nation. In 2025, a coast to coast pipeline might be a good first step in reclaiming it.
The CPR wasn't coast-to-coast. It went from Montreal to Port Moody. The important thing for Confederation was that it got to BC as promised. Only much later under pressure from the government did the CPR build a line through Maine to Saint John, NB. It never made money and was sold off to short-line railroads a long time ago. The disaster in Lac Megantic was on that line.
It was the only one of the three great promises to lure BC into Confederation that was actually fulfilled. The others were treaties with the Indians and tariff-free trade across the provinces.
And we have Joseph Trutch and his racist (even for that time) dismissal of Douglas' treaty plans beyond the 14. Trutch knew he had more leverage than the feds and he used it. Now look at the mess we're in in BC.
If it's any consolation, Maddie, there were a lot of sophisticated jet fighters and bombers being developed in the late 1950s that had to be abandoned as the conditions of warfare changed. ICBMs and high-reaching anti-aircraft missiles required a radical rethink of just what a military airplane needed to do. The Arrow was just one of many cool designs that history overtook and made obsolete. We know about the Arrow because it was ours. But there are a lot of designs in U.S. and U.K. that got canceled as either too expensive or unable to do what needed to be done. 1960 was very different from 1955.
(The Arrow was actually a dog. It wasn't that great an airplane. It would have required bigger engines that wouldn't fit in the fuselage -- Oops! -- in order to have had a hope of achieving the gosh gee whiz performance Avro was promising. And it was becoming very expensive as problems kept cropping up. We didn't "cede" it to the U.S. They never developed the Arrow into one of their own interceptors and actually cancelled a somewhat similar interceptor that Convair was trying to develop from the B-58 bomber. Interceptors were useful for only one thing: flying really fast in a straight line to shoot down slow Soviet bombers. It would have been useless in any other role. It couldn't outfly other fighters and so wouldn't have been useful for air superiority or ground attack they way modern multi-role fighters are.)
But many of our engineers that worked on the Arrow ended up in the US building planes and rockers for them.
Well, true, but that’s how the economics go. Developing a sophisticated weapons platform to serve uniquely Canadian military needs is one thing, although the uniquely Canadian needs are often exaggerated. But it is whole ‘nuther thing to keep pouring money into a white elephant just to keep engineering jobs in Canada when their own careers did better by moving to California or St. Louis to work on American projects.
The F-101 Voodoos we bought second-hand to replace the obsolete CF-100s worked just fine for protecting our airspace. No Russian bombers got through, did they? :-)
I don’t take issue with individuals or countries following their best interests. I appreciate your insight into the Arrow.
Thank you.
What did we think "post-national sate" meant? No idea. Trudeau didn't know, either, when he mumbled it out. It's pseudo-intellectual gibberish uttered by the master of the genre.
Also ask him about quantum computing!
Excellent article! So many paragraphs I would love to quote as impressive! Thank you, Terry, and Sean!
There's a quote that always lives rent-free in my head. I've mentioned it here before, but here it is again. It's from the wonderful 1941 film "49th Parallel" (aka "The Invaders"). For context (with spoilers), it takes place in the final scene of the movie, in which the antagonist (a German naval commander and nazi idealogue) has manged to elude capture across Canada after his U-boat is crippled off the East Coast. All he needs to do is to enter the (still neutral) United States where the German spy network will return him safely to Germany. He stows-away aboard a freight train crossing the border at Niagara Falls, but runs into two bemused AWOL Canadian soldiers also hiding from the authorities. The commander tries to win them over to his cause, but finds that even though the soldiers are fugitives as well, their loyalty to their home and its values rivals his own to his. One of the soldiers responds, "We own the right to be fed-up with anything we damn please and say so out-loud when we feel like it! And when things go wrong we can take it… and we can dish it out, too." And when US customs inspectors turn the train around on the technicality that the nazi wasn't on the freight manifest, the movie ends with the soldiers moving in to introduce him to a few rounds of bare-knuckle, Moncton-style beat-down while they wait for the Canadian authorities to arrive.
I love that quote. I love that movie. I thought about it often when I was serving in the army, where I could be found somewhat regularly fed-up. I still think about it often, fed-up or not.
But here's the thing. We have changed. We still own the right to be fed-up, but our rights to say so out-loud are slowly being stripped away. And, frankly, we are losing our ability to take it when things go wrong (more often than not turning on each other), and I fear we have completely lost the ability to dish it out.
Donald Trump is nuts (and, fun fact, he is the same age in this first year of his second term as "sleepy" Joe Biden was in the first year of his term). He's a troll and a provocateur. And our leader-class fell for the bait. What started (probably) as a joke riffing on the soy-boyness of our dunce of a PM has escalated to a potential full-blown trade war. Certainly Trump's business-mind sees the validity of trade protectionism. Maybe he was always planning on a hard-line in that respect. Maybe his security grievences with us are all smoke and mirrors. But now we're in a situation where this postnational state is simply not prepared to respond to Trump in any meaningful way. Instead of embracing the Canadian (to a fault) way of diplomatic semi-capitulation, we're pretending to wrap our knuckles for an imminent Moncton-style beat-down we are not fit to fight. To that end, what are we doing as I write this? Sending Melanie Joly to meet with Marco Rubio. We're sending our second-best moron to the Moron Summit.
Maybe Trump's real reason is legit. We certainly have allowed our border protection to become laughable. Bad actors know Canada is a soft entry to North America, and a mere literal sprint across what both sides used to boast as "the longest undefended border in the world". This may be why even though more uninvited individuals enter the US across the Mexican border or through international air travel, more individuals on the DHS watch-list enter through Canada than via any other way. Maybe even though we knew as early as 2016 that US protectionism was becoming an ideological juggernaut with or withour Trump 2.0, we squandered our precious time and money on performative feel-good bullcrap than on the kind of logistical and security measures understood to be essential by any country run by adults, rather than capering, unserious Instagram influencers.
So here we are, in the embarassing position of being economically coerced by the leader of another nation - our greatest ally and trade partner, no less - to get our act together.
I'm now reminded of another film, the 1959 war satire "The Mouse that Roared". We're the mouse, alright, but we don't even have the chainmail.
“Kamloops as Auschwitz” — nailed it Sean.
Yeah. I want to know when Canadians are going to demand 'reparations' for this libelous false accusation.
Canadians only have ourselves to blame for being such an apathetic, unaware of our own history society. We have a proud history and choose to ignore it and worse, vilify and deny it. Those who fought for our freedom would be so ashamed!
Quebec has been raping our treasury for decades. There isn't much left, so they are giving it to the WEF to strip it of minerals.
Thank you Terry for a very insightful article. We need a leader with a real vision and a passion for our country to dig us out of this very deep hole that we find ourselves in.
Though heading now well into my 7th decade on this earth and feeling, sometimes, as though the future may be shorter than desired, I remain engaged and quite concerned about the way things are playing out.
More than anything, though, after reading this frightening depiction of my Home and Native Land, I wonder if there might be a follow-up to it, providing any hope.
I respect honest analysis - but I value honest, positive direction even more.
Every country has an army - either theirs or someone else's. Since Canada has none, I suppose that could leave us with China's or the US's.
Or we could have our own. But that was a non- priority for Trudeau & Co,
In fairness, the slashing and burning of our military is a decades-old problem, predating the Trudeau, Harper, Chreten and even Mulroney governments. We have been pretending for decades that the CF is a modern and capable fighting force.
With Trudeau and the Laurentian elites you can guarantee it’s China. This is exactly why we are no longer trustworthy to the US. Be it Biden or Trump.
Thought-provoking article.
I don’t know, Sean & Terry. I really don’t. I’ve watch this country these past 10 years & wondered where’s the outrage over foreign interference? I mean the writers I follow are on top of it, but in general it’s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The government obfuscates, offers word salads by literally every single minister & the public shrugs. The only time we saw a collective outpouring of annoyance was the Freedom Convoy. And what? ‘Most Cdns agreed with Trudeau,’ so said the polling. Ok. Fine.
Recently - the attacks & burning of synagogues / churches, the disgusting Hamas supporters … where’s the collective outrage? The arrests, convictions? The stated public approbation for these people being punished? Or the demands for punishment? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ok. Fine.
These recent events should have mustered up something of a collective sentiment by Cdns. You’d think. No?
However, Danielle Smith seems to have re-ignited the Central Cdn collective derision for Alberta and now she’s blamed for undermining CANADA OMG! And, suddenly! WE NEED PIPELINES! (Quebec, the equalization payment sow, is strangely silent on that one lol.)
Trump is not the problem. Our Danielle is not the problem. Canada (whatever that is these days) look in the gd mirror.
This current situation may wake us from the slumber that has overcome this country.
Everyone knows that while we year after year fail on our NATO commitments we depend entirely on the US for defense. All this while Trudeau insults Americans. DT' s tongue in cheek comments are not to be laughed off easily as the musings of a foreign head of state. He does so because he sees our weakness. The liberal/ ndp coalition has greatly damaged and diminished this great country with their woke/climate post-national zealotry. We have been left in disarray and are an easy target for foreign powers. Our natural resources are the envy of many.
If I do not protect my home by ensuring it is secure it will be broken into and pilfered.
At the same time we have a PM who supposedly resigned, has shut down Parliament during a time of serious threat to our sovereignty. Who does the Trudeau/ Singh coalitipn serve?
Beijing.
Unfortunately, you are correct.
Prof. Maloney - thank you for that. As with many of Terry’s submissions, I find myself saying: “...yes, except it’s worse than that...” In addition to the various rabbit holes the last decade of Liberal governance has taken us down, we have many years of magical thinking with climate policy that has embrittled our economy while we divert scarce resources into lavish industrial policy experiments - one can know this “just transition” was a lavish fantasy, by the degree to which Minister Wilkinson turned on a dime this week, and made breathless propositions to augment oil, natural gas, and uranium, and potash supply to the States, if they would only please leave us alone... Mr Trump had only to glance at this governments Potemkin Village of an industrial policy, and it fell down... so there’s that too