by Conrad Black
In what would become a remarkably consistent pattern, Canada tracked the United States with politically lifesaving precision. After debating Carleton’s Quebec Act for four years, the British government and Parliament took the one step that would gain the loyalty of the French Canadians, by assuring their religion, language, and civil law. The French Canadians seized it as their only means to avoid cultural assimilation by the Americans. Despite many historians’ underestimation of Carleton, and his own disappointment with the French Canadians, they gave him just enough support to repel Benjamin Franklin and the other American revolutionaries. The arrival of the Loyalists gave the British a connection that even the Foreign Office, in all its cynicism, had to take seriously. Thus were in place the cultural and political armament against fusion with America and the relationship that could protect the vulnerable and ambiguous northern entity as it plodded determinedly toward a destiny of its own choice and making.
Talented governors and commanders like Carleton, Simcoe, Brock, Kempt, Gosford, Bagot, Elgin, and Monck assisted in the assumption of democratic (responsible) government and autonomy. The crusty and francophobic veterans of the Napoleonic Wars whom the British sent to rule Canada (the egregious Colborne, Dalhousie, and so on) helped in the not always complementary task of protecting Canada and making it seem less appetizing to its neighbour. Brock gave his life to prevent an American takeover of Upper Canada (which was, in any case, 80 per cent American immigrants). The British and Canadians between them had just enough to resist the American attack in the War of 1812, a war precipitated by Britain’s outrages against the young republic on the oceans, matters in which Canada was completely blameless.
The same war yet gave some sense of solidarity to the colonists, and to the British, and the same sense of self-confidence and confirmation for the Canadians opposite the Americans as the Americans felt opposite the British, as a result of that war. On the other side of the balance of fates, if the War of 1812 had continued another six months, despite Jackson’s victory at New Orleans (over Wellington’s brother-in-law), Wellington’s Peninsular and Waterloo army would have begun arriving in strength, possibly with Field Marshal the Duke at its head, and might have thrust the Canadian border south to the Ohio River, at least for a time. Chicago and other later great cities of the Midwest would, at least initially, have been in Canada, and the correlation of forces would have been narrower between Canada and the United States and between the Northern and Southern U.S. states.
While the United States walked on eggshells toward the noble and terrible climax of the slavery debate, Canada worked out the responsible government question and had to vaporize an immense fog of British delusion about conditions in the North American colonies. The distraction of the United States with its domestic problems provided the half-century needed for Canada to get through its Gilbert and Sullivan rebellions, build serious relations between Lower and Upper Canada, overcome the British colonial nonsense of proconsular autocracy and Durham’s evanescent Ruritanian interlude with his fantasy about assimilating the French. The founders of modern Canada had just enough time to set up a country without creating such agitation that the British would be tempted to throw in the towel and just give Canada to the Americans for consideration elsewhere.
Macdonald, Cartier, Brown, and the others had the grand vision of a transcontinental, bicultural, parliamentary confederation, and the British accepted it as the best bet for Canada’s survival beside a United States emerging from its Civil War predestined to become a mighty force in the whole world. Laurier, King, Lapointe, St. Laurent, and Howe built steadily, always overshadowed by America, but never failing to keep pace with it. The liabilities of self-consciousness were generally compensated for by the homely virtues of diligence, prudence, and moderation, with all the tedious Canadian pieties that often went with those qualities. Successful though Canada was, it was very indistinct, the winner of the odd Olympic bronze medal and the birthplace of a few famous film actors (including “America’s sweetheart,” Mary Pickford, as President Ronald Reagan reminded the Canadian Parliament in 1981). Neither the French fact nor the British connection could substitute for or dilute the scarcely blurred similarity between English-speaking Canadians and greatly more numerous Americans from northern U.S. states.
Where Baldwin and LaFontaine made common cause across the cultural divide, and were both driven to represent constituencies of the other province and language by the skulduggery of the colonial authorities, they recognized the need for political movements that had strength among both founding communities. The alternative was an English party and a French party, the breakup of the link between them, and ultimately the absorption of all into the United States.
The post-war secularization of Quebec, and the dilution of the natural conservatism of an almost ultramontane Catholicism, produced a drive for Quebec’s independence that competed strenuously with the earlier somewhat resigned French-Canadian acceptance of an officially bicultural country that would protect French Quebec and enable those French Canadians who wanted to learn English and participate in the scale of the entire country’s private or public sector to do so. This competing separatist mission was aided for a time by the revival of France to world prominence and aggressive cultural nationalism, under its greatest leader since Napoleon, after a lapse of two centuries in France’s presence in Canada’s life.
Once again – as Carleton had produced the Quebec Act on the brink of the American Revolution, and Macdonald had launched Confederation as the American Civil War ended, and Laurier self-sacrificingly preserved national unity in the First World War and King did so (without the extreme and unwelcome inconvenience of self-sacrifice) in the Second World War – the indefinable Canadian process that passeth all understanding worked again. It produced a leader in Pierre Trudeau who was mediocre at almost all areas of policy except regaining the upper hand in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the French Canadians while retaining on the greatest national questions (barely) adequate support from the English-speaking Canadians.
Quebec has been tempted by independence but has had to reflect that it would lose hundreds of thousands of people, annual transfer payments of about two thousand dollars per capita, the security of the Canadian fiscal and international cocoon, and would endure potentially severe frictions, possibly including partition negotiating secession.
The prolonged Quebec crisis put tremendous strain on the unity of the country and on its ability to fund the federalist fiscal effort. But the Canadian genius for endless good-faith negotiation while exploiting French Canada’s bourgeois avarice and conceding it all the instances of nationality that do not seriously diminish Canadian federalism appears to be producing a satisfactory if, as always, unexciting compromise without much violence or unsustainable inter-regional hostility.
The whole constitutional problem of putting the country completely back together along contemporary lines was aggravated by the irresponsible posturing of many of the premiers of other provinces. They imposed on the traditional requirement of a double majority, in both founding groups, for the adoption of major policy directions the truism, which Liberal federalist dogma supported, that Quebec is, after all, just another province, and whatever jurisdiction it has, all must have. When the Quebec elites suddenly changed their ambitions from official and practical French–English equality to a special status that usually amounted virtually to independence while retaining transfer payments for Quebec, it was bound to exhaust English Canada’s disposition to accommodate the province. This was the wall that Brian Mulroney, with the most admirable ambitions, hit when, perhaps at Meech Lake and certainly at Charlottetown, he gave away too much jurisdiction to the claque of provincial scavengers in quest of a unanimity that was achieved by the first ministers but at the expense of the adherence of the public.
A stasis has settled, for a time. Quebec is autonomous in most internal policy, even more than Canada was prior to Confederation, and is fiscally well-upholstered by t
ransfer payments, Danegeld that Canada can justify as a placatory investment, and the federal government has adequate domestic jurisdiction and speaks for the country in the world.
In this ardent flirtation with independence, the French Canadians have lost a good deal of their bargaining power in Canada. Where they were formerly about one-third of the population, if the French Canadians outside Quebec, and the non-French within, both of whom are almost all federalist, are removed from the equation, they are now less than one-fifth. As there is a very large number of French Quebec federalists, the ability of the separatists to blackmail the entire country with the threat to secede is, as the Charlottetown Accord referendum result demonstrated, now very unclear. In this process, the Quebec nationalists have also weakened the argument for continued parity of the two official cultures. In promoting the nationalism of French Quebec over the status of the French in all of Canada, the Quebec nationalist leaders have fractured and enfeebled both the French fact and the stature of Quebec in the country. Trudeau was correct when he said in 1976 that Lévesque and his followers were trapped – that they could not win a vote to secede and would lose their influence on the federal government and in Canada as a whole.
Quebec, the pre-eminent voice in Ottawa for decades, is now almost without influence there and generally in the country. There is now a functioning compromise but not a permanent solution, which must await a new overture from Canada and the boldness for Quebec to take federalism seriously again, after fifty years of ambiguous and opportunistic posturing. This will have to include ceasing to oppress cultural minorities in Quebec. If the independentists ever were successful, they could not really aspire to drag millions of Quebec federalists out of Canada into a severely divided new republic of Quebec, and the new country would probably be a truncated remnant of its present extent. The Clarity Act should have provided for this, and should be amended to deal with secession in any province on the principle that provinces are no less divisible than Canada itself. Unless the federal hand is played by completely incompetent protagonists, however, no provincial majority will seriously aspire to secede.
It has been unavoidable that this lonely and incomprehensible and involutional quest for national distinction is unheroic or even anti-heroic: it does not rest on resonant epigrams or ringing tocsins and resides only in moderation, compromise, and the attrition of negotiation. The fact that it is so difficult to rouse any interest in it or enthusiasm for it does, oddly, make it heroic. It is relatively simple to whip people up with “Give me liberty or give me death!” but the Notwithstanding Clause, pro or con, is more of a challenge for stirring the juices.
The official entity of Canada since Champlain, Frontenac, and Carleton has been guided by an unglamorous talent of constructive compromise attending an occasionally fervent vision of nationhood. It has resolved itself into hard determination when tested. It has required, and received, cautious but skillful navigation, but also bold innovation and execution, to rise from rung to rung up the long and rickety ladder from New France to the world’s Group of Seven leading democratic economies.
Mackenzie King was the supreme cautious navigator among Canada’s post-colonial leaders, sometimes notoriously so, and Trudeau was perhaps the boldest, though not the most original, helmsman. Macdonald and Laurier best combined the two roles. The earlier three of those benefited from the creative tradition of public–private sector cooperation introduced by Jean Talon and continued by Francis Hincks, Clifford Sifton, and C.D. Howe, which has been allowed to lapse, though R.B. Bennett, Walter Gordon, and even Pierre Trudeau (Petro-Canada) were somewhat disposed to revive it.
There must be a return to great visions and projects, like Macdonald’s railway, Laurier’s development of the West, King’s management of the Second World War, Trudeau’s promotion of biculturalism, the creation of the instances of coherent sovereignty of Bennett and Howe – the CBC, the Bank of Canada, Air Canada, the Trans-Canada Highway, and Trans-Canada Pipelines – and bold initiatives like Mulroney’s trade, tax, and constitutional reforms.
The second group of prime ministers was also very talented: Louis St. Laurent was very distinguished and clearly successful, though sometimes erring on the side of caution. Lester Pearson and Brian Mulroney were in or near the same high bracket, though Pearson was sometimes insouciant, inconstant, and disorganized, and Mulroney occasionally over-ambitious and sometimes facile. Both had very important accomplishments to their credit. Stephen Harper may legitimately aspire to join this distinguished company. Robert Borden and Jean Chrétien were generally capable stewards of the federal government, though in very different ways and times. John Thompson and Paul Martin were at least average, and showed promise, which might have borne results if they had lasted longer. The first ten of these men, the above-average prime ministers, have governed for almost 85 per cent of Canada’s history since Confederation. American presidents reckoned to be above average have governed for only a little more than 50 per cent of its history since 1789, but those presidents include some of the gigantic statesmen of world history, and they raised the bar of average. (The five most prominent colonial governors in Canada, Champlain, Frontenac, the elder Vaudreuil, Beauharnois, and Carleton: plus Macdonald, Laurier, King, Trudeau, and any one of Borden, St. Laurent, Mulroney, or Chrétien, just ten men, governed for a majority of the 403 years between the installation of Champlain and the first election of Harper. Canada has had no aversion to official longevity.)
The rest of the prime ministers were either unsuccessful in that role or served too short a time to allow a clear appraisal. Arthur Meighen, R.B. Bennett, and John Diefenbaker were outstanding men in other ways, and several, including Charles Tupper, Joe Clark, and John Turner, served with distinction in other great offices of state. But not one of Canada’s twenty-two prime ministers was catastrophic, or even venal or contemptible; this is, after all, Canada, and it avoids the extremes of genius, ineptitude, and even depravity of some other countries. Now, more than ever, prime minister of Canada is a position that can influence Canadian history and be a positive force in the world, and should attract qualified claimants. The Canadian political system is complicated, but it works tolerably well; 150 years of continuity make it one of the world’s ten senior regimes, and it can be gradually fine-tuned to produce better results.
As in most things, in the quality of its governance and the talent of its leaders, Canada has steered between extremes and earned a good second prize in the national lottery of political history. And it has generally failed to recognize its great achievement in performing so strongly under such constraints of regionalism, cultural diversity, and the magnetic distractions and challenges of the American contiguity.
By the 1980s, Canada had become a G7 country (not so much on its merits as because the United States and Japan did not want to be numerically overwhelmed in the group by Europeans) and was well, if not very excitedly, regarded in the world. It was prosperous and civilized and peaceful, yet skilled in war and always in just wars and always victoriously, but it was still overshadowed by the overwhelming American presence. About 19 per cent of Canadians expressed satisfaction at the thought of federal union with the United States as late as 1999.1
And then, in the strangest denouement of all in the astronomically improbable sequence of twists and turns in Canadian history, the great United States of America, at the height of its power and raucous majesty, the only truly great power left in the world, suddenly embarked on a long slide into debt, mediocrity, bungled foreign interventions, consumptive fiscal and trade deficits, and, doubtless temporary and certainly reversible, decline. Only a few years after America saw off its last rival, it ceased to be a threat to Canada’s sense of self. At least for a time, its inexorable success and genius of showmanship and self-promotion abruptly ended.
And all the while, it has become more difficult for the sad sacks of Canadian anonymity to deplore that the country’s imagination is tweaked and lifted only from outside, and especially from
America. Correspondingly, it has become much harder for Quebec nationalists to engage in their well-tried and unutterably tiresome practice of dismissing English Canada as an excrescence deposited by the Anglo-Americans on Quebec’s doorstep to anesthetize the forces of noble French-Canadian nationhood. In forty years – and some of Trudeau’s cultural policies may deserve some credit for this – Canadian television has developed the ability to compete for and hold the attention of Canadians much of the time, although the full panoply of American television, hundreds of channels (mainly of pap), is available. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield attracted millions of followers and correspondents as he circled the earth in 2013 and constantly was in touch by social media from his spacecraft. It was reassuring when Alice Munro, whose finely crafted stories set in small and very ordinary Ontario towns have been familiar to Canadians for decades, won the country’s first Nobel Prize for Literature (a shameful oversight by the committee that it took so long to select a Canadian recipient). Canada now is a hot contender for world leadership in the Winter Olympics, a Canadian is governor of the Bank of England, and Canadians are numerous in the highest ranks of the entertainment and film industries. The brain drain to the United States that worried concerned Canadians for all their history as an organized society (despite Jean Chrétien’s glib assurance that departing doctors and executives would be happily replaced by Haitian taxi drivers) has stopped and even slightly reversed. Canada has become a country frequently and almost always respectfully referred to, all over the world, for its merits if not its spontaneity.
The Free Trade Agreement was good for Canada and the country did compete successfully with the United States. Macdonald was right to oppose economic union in 1891; Laurier could have sold reciprocity in 1911 if he had taken greater care, but Mulroney was right with Free Trade in 1988. And now, as China and India, representing nearly 40 per cent of the population of the world, reach for economic growth and the market for raw materials can no longer be manipulated by importers because of the scale of new demand, Canada’s trade flows are reducing the country’s integration with the United States (its share of Canada’s trade is down by about 20 per cent). General prosperity is flowing usefully in a benign cycle into strengthened and more sophisticated manufacturing exports. On every front, the country is advancing to a higher plane, including its slow progress back toward a two-party system, where each side comes to bat with some regularity.
