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National Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- National Post
The world's longest waiting list? It'll take you 100 years to obtain this Canada flag
Applying to the federal government for a Canadian flag that once graced Parliament Hill is now an act of extraordinary optimism – or intergenerational foresight. Article content Public Services and Procurement Canada says the wait list for a Peace Tower flag now extends more than 100 years. Article content Article content That means it's now vastly easier to land season's tickets to the Green Bay Packers (40-year wait) or Manchester United Football Club (25-year wait) than it is to secure a Maple Leaf flag from Parliament Hill. Article content Winnipeg's Richard Dyrkacz, 41, applied for a flag in May – even after learning it will be the next century before one arrives in the mail. Dyrkacz thought the wait list might be 30 or 40 years, and was shocked to learn he's unlikely to see the day he can raise his Parliament Hill-flown flag. Article content Article content 'Let's be honest, I probably will not live to 140,' he said in an interview. 'But I was thinking, 'If I have kids or grandkids, it will be a nice legacy that could be passed down to them.' Article content Then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson marked the occasion – a symbolic graduation from British dominance – with a Parliament Hill speech. Article content 'Under this flag,' Pearson said, 'may our youth find new inspiration for loyalty to Canada, for patriotism based not on any mean or narrow nationalism, but on the deep and equal pride that all Canadians will feel for every part of this good land.' Article content Article content The red-and-white Maple Leaf replaced the Canadian Red Ensign, which featured the Union Jack and Canada's coat of arms. Article content Pearson's speech also marked the end of a bitter, sometimes ugly debate over the design of the new flag, introduced as Canada approached its centennial. Conservative leader John Diefenbaker wanted the new flag to reflect Canada's British heritage, while Pearson argued for a forward-looking design that eschewed the country's colonial past and did not inflame Quebec nationalism. Article content The Maple Leaf's clean and simple design proved a popular, durable symbol of the Canadian identity. Article content The demand for Parliament Hill flags is one expression of that fact. Article content In 1994, the federal government launched a program that allowed ordinary citizens to request a flag used on Parliament Hill. They could receive either the Peace Tower flag or one of four smaller flags that fly above the East and West Blocks, and elsewhere on the Hill.
Globe and Mail
6 days ago
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
Sixty years ago, a philosopher said Canada would be absorbed by America. He could still be right
Michael Ignatieff teaches history at Central European University in Vienna. Sixty years ago, an obscure professor of theology at McMaster University published the most excoriating attack on the Canadian liberal establishment ever written. In an essay entitled Lament for a Nation – a torrent of righteous indignation funnelled into 95 blistering pages – George Grant accused Lester Pearson and the Liberals of selling out the country to the Americans. John Diefenbaker and the Conservatives had at least tried to stand up to the empire, he argued, but the Liberals, having won the 1963 election, had capitulated to the Americans by allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on Canadian soil. This, Grant claimed, was the culmination of a long history whose fatal first step had been taken in 1940, when Liberal prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt met at Ogdensburg, N.Y., and agreed to create a Permanent Joint Board on Defence. When America finally joined the Second World War in 1942, the two countries steadily integrated defence production. The Canadian War Production Board, led by the American-born Canadian industrialist C.D. Howe, transformed Canada into an industrial powerhouse that turned out ships, aircraft and tanks for the war in Europe and Asia. This pattern of wartime continental integration only accelerated in peacetime. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Liberal governments built pipelines to ship Alberta's oil south, strung electricity grids to take our hydropower to American cities, and in 1965 signed a pact to integrate U.S. and Canadian auto production. As Canada joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and then the North American Aerospace Defense Command, completely subordinating our economy and defence to the interests of the empire, Liberals pretended we could hold on to our political freedom. Grant vehemently disagreed. Once a country surrendered its economy and its defence, he argued, it gave up its political independence. For Grant, all that was left was to lament the nation that its elites had allowed to die. Sixty years later, the Canada that Grant thought was doomed is still here – but the questions he posed remain unanswered. His pessimism may have been unrelenting, but it had a bracing honesty even in its exaggerations. It feels more adequate to the threat we face from President Donald Trump than pretending, as we are doing now, that buying Canadian and cancelling our American vacations will get us through the crisis. For Grant struck a nerve by asking a question we still haven't answered: What kind of national independence is possible for a country that shares an undefended border with the incorrigibly violent, expansionist and yet irresistibly attractive monster state to the south? In Grant's era, the issue was allowing Americans to station nuclear weapons on our soil. Today, the issue before us is whether to sign up for Mr. Trump's 'Golden Dome,' the air defence system that is supposed to protect us at an estimated cost to us, as Mr. Trump said in May, of US$61-billion – a number that he increased by US$10-billion at June's G7 summit. Canada's ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae is not the only one who thinks Mr. Trump's offer has turned North American defence into a protection racket. The still more existential question that Grant asked Canadians 60 years ago, Mr. Trump has put to us once again. He asks, with his customary brutality: Since America protects Canada, and Canada couldn't survive without U.S. markets and U.S. technology, why keep up the ridiculous fiction of pretending you are an independent country? Mr. Trump's questions may be infuriating, but they must be answered. Our newly elected Liberal government is now trying to answer them, and unlike the elites of 60 years ago, they are at last responding to the economic threat to our sovereignty. Mark Carney's government, together with the provinces, have promised to abolish internal trade barriers and strengthen our east-west connections with pipelines and power grids, railways and faster internet. We are supposed to be diversifying our markets and reducing our dependence on the U.S. in our defence and in the economy. Recovering Canada's economic autonomy is the key to regaining political independence. That's the program, but the key to its success is not in our hands. Mr. Trump remains a tariff man, as he proclaimed at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta. He just doesn't care what we want, and we may lose the access to his market that, whether we like it or not, remains the key to our prosperity – even our survival. Sixty years ago, Pearson's Liberals confronted the same nation-building challenge. Then-finance minister Walter Gordon wanted the federal government to respond to our economic and defence dependency on the Americans, but Pearson dropped Mr. Gordon and changed the subject, choosing instead to modernize Canada's symbols and rid itself of the British vestiges that Grant believed were what had held us together. Pearson discarded the Red Ensign, the flag Canadian soldiers carried when they had fought for King and Empire. Pearson backed these gestures of emancipation from the old British identity by creating a new social contract at home, based on the national pension plan, Medicare and unemployment insurance. In 1967, amid the euphoria of self-discovery, we celebrated the country's achievements at Expo. At the same time – less noticed, but even more fundamental – Canada opened its doors to non-European immigration and a new Canadian identity as a multicultural society began to take shape. Grant watched as Pierre Trudeau tried to rebuild a Canadian identity around the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a repatriated constitution, and overtures (albeit unsuccessful ones) to bring Quebec into his new constitutional order. Liberal elites are rightly proud of these changes and the new Canada of multicultural inclusion that came into being. Looking back now, however, the question is whether multiculturalism and Mr. Trudeau's 'rights revolution' – as I called it in my 2000 Massey Lectures – have brought the country together, or separated us into warring tribes of disputing rights claimants, each more insistent on what the country owes us than what we owe to the common enterprise. Indigenous inclusion and reconciliation may one day strengthen our common bonds, but for now, we are locked in a painful impasse, at loggerheads over contending versions of our historical past. When Justin Trudeau celebrated Canada's new 'post-national' identity in 2015, he inadvertently laid bare the weakness of our rituals, symbols and institutions of common national purpose. Like his father, the younger Trudeau had sought to give Canadians a postmodern identity, but left untouched the fundamental issue that Grant had placed at the centre of his polemic: our subordination to the American empire. It was left to the Conservative branch of the Canadian elite, represented by Brian Mulroney, to address this question. He jettisoned Diefenbaker's Prairie radical resistance to American integration and came out for continental free trade in the election of 1988. It was John Turner, another charter member of the old liberal elite, who turned himself into the avatar of Canadian nationalism, denouncing a trade deal that he believed would 'fundamentally alter our way of life, our way of doing things, the way we make choices as Canadians,' while trying to nail Mr. Mulroney as the prime minister 'who signed over the sovereignty and independence of our nation.' When Canadians handed Mr. Mulroney a majority government in 1988, they anchored into our country's politics the settled conviction – whether reluctant, fatalistic or welcoming – that Canadian prosperity required greater integration with the American economy. When broadcaster Peter Gzowski famously asked Canadians to complete the sentence 'as Canadian as,' and the winning entry was 'as possible in the circumstances,' this revealed our grudging acceptance that we have only as much political sovereignty as the circumstances of our dependence on the Americans allow. Grant may have been the first to warn us that this was how continental integration would end, but he could not have predicted how our story has played out under Mr. Trump. For we are in a new world, and the tables have turned. From John A. Macdonald's time until the Second World War, we were wary of free trade. Now, we are the ones pleading to restore it as the Americans seek to shut us out of their economy. We are the ones pleading for the Americans to stay in the NATO alliance and the G7, to maintain the multilateral order they once led, and it is the Americans whose bored President abandons the G7 meeting after a day and returns home, telling us he has better things to do. Even in the fury of Lament for a Nation, America was seen as a benign hegemon – at least to us – who respected the fiction of our sovereignty. Today's President disdains his allies and can't stop telling Canada he wishes we didn't exist. Opinion: In Kananaskis, the G7 was a perfect miniature of where the world is now Grant's Lament remains worth reading again today, for he addressed a fear that runs even deeper than the Trump challenge. Grant wondered aloud whether the wellsprings of our identity had run dry, whether we still had what it takes to maintain a distinctive national culture and politics north of the 49th parallel. He believed these wellsprings could be found in Canada's French and British founding strands. The Loyalists who came north to flee the American Revolution in 1776 did so to build a northern sovereign under the British crown; Quebeckers aligned with this nation-building project because it promised to protect their distinct language, culture and religion against the Americans. This mutual understanding of a Canadian nation under the British Crown, ratified in Confederation in 1867, was the lynchpin of national unity. Remaining true to British Parliamentary traditions, the Crown, the Loyalist tradition and, above all, its conservative inflection of 'peace, order and good government' would have been the antidote to the foundational American conceit of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Carney accelerates talks with Trump to reach economic-security deal within 30 days With the Pearson Liberals' surrender to the Americans in 1963, Grant argued, the lynchpin had snapped. Canadian independence was a mere memory. Quebec would seek its survival in independence, Grant predicted, while English Canada would settle into a dependent afterlife in the branch plant economy. What else could Canada have done? Grant's answer was to embrace radical left-wing populism. Only a populist government with the guts to cut its tie to the Americans and launch a frankly socialist nationalization of the economy, he argued, could have preserved Canada's sovereignty. Only then could Canada have remained master in its own house. His paradoxical belief in a socialist state made Grant, a religious conservative who was profoundly opposed to abortion, an unlikely darling of the Canadian left. Grant's politics may no longer make sense, but his diagnosis of our dilemmas remains as acute as ever. The French and British sources of our distinctive identity remain our lynchpin, but they remain in permanent tension even to this day. The day after King Charles opened Parliament in May, the members of Quebec's provincial legislature unanimously voted to disavow the connection to the Crown. Even so, judging by the province's support for Mr. Carney's Liberals in the last federal election, Quebec has discovered, yet again, that Canada, even with its British institutions, remains the best guarantor of its independence as a nation. Albertans and Saskatchewanians are less sure: Their hostility to the federal government and the centralizing pretensions of the liberal elite may sound like whining to Easterners, but it is a visceral feeling out west. Today, we meet the Trump challenge at a moment of regional division and internal questioning, still struggling to answer the questions Grant raised more than a half-century ago. But a plan beats no plan, as the Prime Minister has said. A nationalist economic agenda that slowly and steadily rebuilds the ties that bind, helps us to rediscover what we gain from being together, and reduces our dependence on our neighbour to the south may be our best shot at regaining national cohesion and control over our economic destiny. George Grant, that gloomy but prescient sage, predicted that we no longer had what it takes to remain a free and sovereign people. He was my uncle, and I loved him, but I hope we seize this chance to prove him wrong.
Globe and Mail
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
The Trump administration's cuts to the U.S. State Department are a threat to Canada
Robert Bothwell and John English are Canadian historians working on an oral political history project about the 1990s and early 2000s. Donald Trump's war on the American public service, demonstrated by proposed savage cuts to the State Department and other government entities, is endangering not only the operations of the American state, but also the foundations of Canadian-American relations. Leaked documents and public statements coming from the White House show that distance is purposely being put between the U.S. and Canada, representing an unparalleled threat not seen for more than a century. A relationship that worked well for generations no longer will. Canadians should be as terrified as the American diplomats and public servants facing dismissal by Mr. Trump's minions. Canadian-American relations have not always run smoothly. In the 1960s, president John F. Kennedy loathed prime minister John Diefenbaker. Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's successor, developed a deep dislike of Diefenbaker's successor, Lester Pearson. Pearson, a son of a Methodist manse, and Johnson, a rough-edged and foul-mouthed Texan, shared liberal values but little else. When Pearson decided to cautiously suggest that the United States should temporarily pause its bombing of North Vietnam in April, 1965, Johnson exploded. Summoning Pearson to Camp David, the presidential retreat, Johnson is purported to have dragged Pearson out onto a terrace and harangued him, shouting: 'You don't come here and piss on my rug.' They never made up. As U.S. military activity in Vietnam went on, Canadian public opinion turned against the war. American draft dodgers flowed freely across the border, and universities seethed with student rebellion. Canadian anti-Americanism, so long subdued since Pearl Harbor and the Second World War, suddenly erupted. In 1968, London, Ont., artist Greg Curnoe released five large-scale, text-based paintings in a series called The True North Strong and Free. One painting, emblazoned with the words 'Close the 49th parallel,' became the cover art for a collection of essays published in 1970 by prominent academics condemning Canada's close relationship with the U.S. That same year, Winnipeg's The Guess Who released their classic song American Woman, featuring the lyrics 'Stay away from me.' It was, according to band member Randy Bachman, 'an anti-war protest song,' conceived while performing on American stages. Astonishingly, the Canadian-American diplomatic relationship maintained its efficiency and effectiveness throughout the 1960s and 1970s. That was because diplomatic professionals on both sides of the border believed that Canada-U.S. interests transcended what they hoped were temporary differences. Their co-operation led to the creation of a 'Canada desk' within the U.S. State Department, to facilitate the expanding relationship. One Canadian academic, Greg Donaghy, chose the title Tolerant Allies for his detailed study of Canadian-American relations during the 1960s, published in 2002. His argument is convincing. Last month, The New York Times reported that the State Department's Canada desk is set to be subsumed into a North American affairs office with a 'significantly reduced team,' and a shrunken embassy in Ottawa. This is an ominous development. It follows the Trump administration's closure of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center, which served as a forum to discuss Canadian issues in D.C. Since the Pearson years and, particularly, after the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement was signed in 1989, the relationship between the two countries has become more complex and intricate, requiring constant adaptation from officials. Whenever there have been disagreements, notably when Canada did not join the United States in the Iraq war, officials in various departments assured each other that those differences did not affect trade and other ties between the two nations. Conversely, when terrorists attacked the United States in 2001, the extensive links between Canadian and American officials assured a joint response. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has refuted reports that the State Department has done away with the Canada desk, despite a new organizational chart he released showing the lack of a North American affairs team. Nevertheless, dramatic proposed cuts to State Department staffing, Mr. Trump's repeated comment that he wants to 'annex' Canada, and a separate report suggesting that all but one consulate in Canada could be closed, all point to growing animosity. Isolating Canada within the State Department, cutting the number of officials dealing with bilateral issues, closing consulates, and reducing the American embassy in Ottawa to a functional office are markers usually found among nations preparing for conflict. Such an event still seems inconceivable, but some signs are there: Canadians are beginning to shun the United States; Americans are contemplating relocation to Canada or any other friendly country – friendly to individual citizens, that is, but not to the regime they are fleeing. A Canadian statesman once remarked that Canada had the great fortune of existing in North America: 'A fireproof house, far from inflammable materials.' We do not think he would say that today.
