Reflections On Canada Day 2023: Is Canada ‘Broken’?
I’m writing this on the morning of Canada Day 2023, thinking about all the fascinating things I’ve read and the people I’ve met.
Is Canada ‘broken’?
The question certainly seems everywhere these days. People feel like they’re barely getting by; Younger Canadians have a harder time finding homes they can afford; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been criticized for the number of apologies he makes for the historical abuse and oppression many different groups have suffered in Canada; Hate crimes against many different groups of Canadians are on the rise; The airwaves are filled with stories of government incompetence; Other Canadians feel they can’t voice their concerns about some issues without immediately being labelled as hateful or bigoted; Environmental disasters seem to get worse by the year; Politics seem polarized, as if some people see those who disagree with them not as fellow citizens but as enemies who need to be destroyed.
There are a few reasons why this is happening.
One of the biggest is the toxic neoliberal globalist economic model that Canada has been following for decades. That model, which claimed that unrestricted markets and minimal taxes and regulations would lead to prosperity for everyone, has in practice led to massive job losses, the hollowing out of both economies and communities across the country, and more and more people struggling to get by. It’s gotten so bad that even many Conservative supporters and organizations that’d be expected to support neoliberalism are sounding the alarm on it. They’re calling for changes that would make the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek spin in their graves. Some Canadian thinkers have been warning about this for years-Mel Hurtig wrote nearly 25 years ago about the pressure many Canadians were facing. Eric Kierans and John Ralston Saul had similar concerns, while George Grant had concerns about the direction Canada was going over 60 years ago.
They were saying these things decades before the International Monetary Fund or World Bank were worried about them. That’s how long some of these issues have been stewing in Canada-and they’re coming to the fore more than ever before.
So, then, is Canada broken?
I’m not sure that it is, but it’s definitely under a lot of strain.
The same thing applies to Indigenous people and their Treaty rights. Indigenous criticisms of things like Canada Day and their advocating for land and governance rights get a lot of attention from non-Native Canadians now, but they’re nothing new. When Canada was celebrating its centennial in 1967, Chief Dan George gave his ‘Lament For Confederation’ criticizing the devastating effects of colonialism on Indigenous nations. Unfortunately, many of his criticisms ring all too true today, whether it be hateful comments directed at Indigenous people, the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls or the problems they have with traditional hunting and fishing that’re so important to their culture. It shows just how long these issues have been stewing in Canada too…which itself explains everything from Indigenous rail and road blockades to ‘Cancel Canada Day’ protest marches.
The loudest voices on any side of the debate make everyone who could be associated with them look bad. Social media’s only made things worse, especially in the last few years.
Even here in Alberta, the feeling that things are ‘broken’ ]stems from the seeming inability to get our oil and gas resources to market. This is another issue that’s been stewing in Canada for a long time now, that of an Alberta and more broadly a Western Canada that is left holding the bag on policies that benefit other parts of Canada. I’m personally torn about it. On one hand I realize of how oil and gas development has benefited all of Canada and how many people’s livelihoods depend on it. On the other hand, I realize that its pollution is harming Indigenous peoples’ connections to their lands and making the current wildfires worse. Where do Canada and Alberta go from there?
All these issues have been stewing for a while, but new ones are showing up too. People across Canada debate whether new immigrants are doing enough to fit into mainstream Canadian society, while Quebecers are concerned about what immigration will do to the status of French. The restrictions governments imposed to respond to the COVID pandemic led to major clashes between people who saw them as necessary to protect peoples’ health, and those who thought it infringed on citizens’ rights, most notably with the ‘trucker convoy’ that occupied Ottawa for three weeks last year. Backlash against LGBT+ Pride has led to everything from protests against drag queen story hours to teachers berating their Muslim students for skipping Pride events. The federal government’s bungled responses to accusations of Chinese government interference in our politics feeds a bigger narrative that it can’t solve the problems we’re facing.
So, then, is Canada broken?
I’m not sure that it is, but it’s definitely under a lot of strain.
The big question facing us as Canadians, then, becomes how and when we can try and find the common ground that’s likely to exist.
All the things I’ve mentioned have arguably fed off each other, building more and more tension between Canadians. People fear for their livelihoods, their children, their identities and their physical and mental health. That fear has led to backlash in many cases, causing a feedback loop that leaves people feeling like they don’t have any common ground. When they have concerns about someone else’s position, they might fear they’d be demonized if they spoke up. The loudest voices on any side of the debate make everyone who could be associated with them look bad. Social media’s only made things worse, especially in the last few years.
The other problem is that, like I said, a lot of these issues have been festering for decades. In that light, Trudeau’s apologies for various historical wrongs isn’t a sudden desire to demonize Canada but an attempt to address these issues. He’s just following in the footsteps of previous Prime Ministers like Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, who made their own apologies for everything from the residential school system to the abuse and imprisonment of Ukrainian and Japanese Canadians during the World Wars.
And these problems have to be dealt with. The courts have repeatedly confirmed that Indigenous rights and Treaties exist, and the violence Native people face still continues; many people still have a hard time making ends meet; the wildfires and heat waves won’t go away on their own; oil and gas is still a flashpoint in Canadian and Alberta politics; the concern over multiculturalism and shared Canadian values still exists; and the debates over how and when Pride should be recognized are as heated as ever, especially when they impact religious minorities like Muslim Canadians.
As Canadians, we might actually agree on more than we realize. Albertans still have a lot in common with the rest of Canada; Indigenous activists like Robert Jago and Melissa Mbarki talk about the positive connections many of their people have or want to have with Canada; speakers for the ‘Cancel Canada Day’ movement talk about how they’re motivated by a defense of their rights and people, rather than fighting or hating Canada or Canadians; Immigrants like some of the Chinese immigrants in Richmond, B.C. call for English to predominate in the city’s signate; and some analysts think polarization in Canada is caused more by partisan tribalism than particularly drastic divisions among Canadians.
The big question facing us as Canadians, then, becomes how and when we can try and find the common ground that’s likely to exist. How do we make people feel like their views are being taken into account, particularly when different sides of a debate have important points? We obviously can’t satisfy everyone, but is it still possible to find a broader middleground in this day and age?
If we find that, we might just find a way to dispute the claim that Canada is ‘broken’.
Vive le Canada uni!
