"Is Canada a nation?" Or just Hotel Canada?

Lots of RoC, little roll. I certainly don't think a "nation", if it ever was. And there is no English Canadian nation any more either. Andrew Coyne makes what I believe is a forlorn plea that will echo around the greatest hotel on earth.

...it is a strange fact that among Canada's political class, it is considered provocative, even outre, to suggest that Canada is a nation. There is a certain irony in this, to say the least. Over the years, the "national unity" industry has invested a great deal of time and effort in the proposition that native peoples are nations, or that Quebec is a nation. The one group it hasn't occurred to them to recognize in the same way is the people of Canada.

So perhaps we have been asking the wrong question. The question is not: Is Quebec a nation? The question is: Is Canada?

It cannot have escaped notice that, in all the time Quebec has been acquiring the trappings of nationhood, the government of Canada has been discarding them. The lexicon of nationhood has slowly slipped from official use. There remain certain vestiges, of course -- the Department of National Defence, the National Capital Commission -- but they stand out as oddities. What once was known as the "Dominion" government has been downgraded to the "federal" government, when it is not derided as "Ottawa." In Quebec, it is not Canada that is defended, but "federalism." There's a line to stir the heart: there is some corner of a foreign field that is forever federalism...

...we stopped believing that Canada was a nation at all. In the political science faculties, the idea is considered quaint. Ambitious politicians soon learn that careers are made by appealing, not to a shared, pan-Canadian nationhood, but to regional chauvinisms. Quebec nationalism, in particular, is forever to be given deference. We might entrench recognition of Quebec as a nation in the constitution. But Canada? "The Constitution of Canada is to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the recognition that Canada is a nation." Try to imagine the response...

...Somebody has to make the case for Canada. This is no mere semantic point. That single, declarative sentence -- Canada is a nation -- implies a whole set of ideas about the country and how it works. It implies that every Canadian is tied to every other Canadian, directly, without the intermediation of province or other affiliation. It implies that they combine to make up a single political entity -- not a "marriage" or a "partnership" or a "compact" between sub-entities -- even if they choose to govern themselves federally.

And it implies a direct relationship between those citizens, individually and collectively, and the one government that answers to them all: the national -- or if you prefer, federal -- government. That's critical. Federalism, as such, is impossible without it.

So let's say it, out loud and without apology: Canada is a nation. Le Canada est une nation. And let's ask our national political leaders to say it, too.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at November 15, 2006 12:38 PM