13
Canada on its 141st birthday remains a solid, improbable, curious country.
It is old by the standards of federalism, a tricky form of government to sustain, witness to which are the many carcasses of failed federations. Canada came together around the time of German and Italian unification and, with great respect to the Germans and Italians, has been rather less disruptive of world order than those countries have been.
Canada has withstood internal shocks to its very being: at the beginning from Nova Scotians, who wanted out of Confederation; and twice in recent decades by Quebec secessionists. The secessionists still gnaw at their bone, staging nationalistic theatrics on St. Jean Baptiste Day. They still have their writers and poets and existential philosophers. But no matter how many times, and how vigorously, they give Canada a kicking, the old country just keeps shuffling along, to their intense and undoubtedly deep frustration.
We learned the hard way that existentialism is for poets and the insecure, whereas pragmatism is for the mature. As a result, the Constitution has become a no-fly zone for Canadians. With all its faults, the Constitution is what it is, or what the judges of the Supreme Court on a given day interpret it to be. Changing the Constitution in some formal fashion has become the country's sleeping dog, best left alone.
The rest of Canada is so bored by these debates, and so removed from existentialism, that it does not care, as it would have several decades ago, that a prime minister goes around Quebec blithely using the word “autonomy” for Quebec in a positive fashion, declares in the House of Commons that the Québécois are a “nation,” and, having solved the non-problem of the “fiscal imbalance,” is contemplating fettering the federal spending power – all without a peep from any other political party or editorial board.
Is it boredom, political correctness, entrenched self-interest, self-satisfaction or moral superiority that creates so many no-fly zones for debate in this curious country?
There is the sacred cow of supply management in agriculture about which no politician will utter the faintest moo of criticism. Immigration is doing more to change and challenge Canada than any other development, yet we can't seem to debate it, even though the evidence is piling up that immigration isn't working as well for the country as it once did. One province, Alberta, is becoming so much richer than the rest that it will strain all sorts of federal policies, but we can't talk about it.
Nor can there be a debate about medicare. Canada's system ranks somewhere in the middle of the health-care pack in international studies, yet Canadians cling to it fervently and believe it to be the best in the world.
We can't use “productivity” without instilling fear and loathing in the public. Competition is a dirty sort of word. The native reserve system is taboo for debate.
We think of the splendours of our geography, and believe ourselves fit custodians of it, whereas we have a rather poor environmental record by the standards of the advanced industrial world.
We have the worst record of any industrial country in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet, listening to so many commentators (and watching so many politicians), you would think we either had done a fine job or don't have to do anything because we contribute only 2 per cent of the world's total.
We have a public broadcasting system that, in contrast to others, has almost completely lost its sense of being anything much beyond the private stations. About this, there is no serious debate, apart from within the dwindling core of people who care. That Jeopardy! will be coming to the CBC suggests that, just when you think the network cannot set its sights lower, it can.
We are a country without a national electrical grid, a national securities regulator or even a national economic market, all frustrated by entrenched provincialism.
But we have survived and thrived, muddling through here, avoiding breakups there, contributing somewhat to a better world order, getting along internally most of the time, and sometimes even doing extraordinary things, a record that, all things considered, is worth celebrating 141 years on.
