"United Church of countries"

My Canada includes everything and nothing; on the whole one might rather be down under.

We are a country without shared values, a fractured history, and no clear national purpose.

There are repeated attempts to convert our national health-care system into an icon of Canadian nationalism, but that is a tired argument.

We do have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but in all honesty, there is very little left that truly binds the country together. And now, in a rare act of near-unanimity, the federalist parties agree with what many Canadians seem to know: that we are not a single nation.

Being a country was never supposed to be easy, and being a citizen of one of the wealthiest nations on Earth was never supposed to be without cost and consequences. Spared serious adversity for more than half a century, Canadians have become among the most complacent in the world...

Canada appears to have lost much of its soul and most of its sense of direction. Where there was once significant unity, there is now disharmony...

Australia has replaced Canada as the middle power of significance, most Asian nations and the United States largely ignore us, and Spain is itching to replace Canada at the G-8 meetings...

Countries do not flourish because of technical debates about constitutional matters. They succeed because the people share a vision of the past, present and future and because their national leadership has the courage and determination to tell the citizenry what needs to be done to prosper.

A sense of national purpose requires clearly articulated goals, passionate leadership, and a willingness to ask citizens to make sacrifices...

...we did not need...a parliamentary concession of the sad truth that Canada is not a nation and, perhaps, not really much of a country any more.

Ken Coates is dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Waterloo.

Posted by markc at December 8, 2006 02:23 PM