Like Justin Trudeau before him, Prime Minister Mark Carney is embracing “postnationalism.”
During his speech at the Liberal party’s convention in Montreal on Saturday, Carney praised multiculturalism and “inclusivity.” He declared that Canada was a nation “forged through accommodation, not assimilation”.
The prime minister proceeded to misrepresent Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Carney praised Laurier because he “governed a country that had once conquered his people.” He certainly got the first half of that sentence right, as he did govern a country. As for the second party, Canada never conquered Laurier’s people, for his own people helped to build Canada itself.
Regarding Canada’s tradition of accommodation, Carney was not entirely wrong. Confederation in 1867 was the maturation of the old colonial pact struck by the British and French-speaking Canadiens after the Seven Years War. Once the British conquered New France in 1760, they realized that governing the King’s new French-speaking subjects would require concessions.
In exchange for the loyalty of les Canadiens, the Crown guaranteed their French civil code, their French language, and the place of their Roman Catholic faith. Confederation merely confirmed this bargain as the basis for a new country in North America.
If history truly mattered in Ottawa, Carney would not enlist Laurier’s memory in such a sloppy fashion, for Canada’s seventh prime minister was no proponent of squishy multiculturalism or “inclusivity.” At a speech in Edmonton in 1905, Laurier spoke of welcoming newcomers, but not without clear obligations to the Canadian nation which they sought to join.
In order to share in “our lands, our laws, our civilization”, they were to become unambiguous British subjects, to take part in public life, and “become Canadians.” It was nothing short of a call to assimilate, not to become part of a “mosaic” or a “hotel” state.
Citing Laurier to argue against assimilation is like citing René Lévesque to argue against Quebec independence. What happened to Carney’s praise for the monarchy, bilingualism, and Canada’s “proud British heritage” as part the “bedrock” of Canada’s founding peoples?
Bedrock is not decorative gravel, but praise of it can apparently be a hollow public relations exercise. If not given primacy, Canada’s “bedrock” peoples will not be bedrock for long.
Why is that progressive “inclusion” so often grows by subtraction? The symbols of British and French heritage are the first to be pulled down and replaced with something bland, inoffensive, or unfamiliar.
Is there really so little value to the cultures that built Canadian democracy, industry, literature and the norms we take for granted?
Those who insist that “culture war” issues are not worth wasting time on are often the ones who are most eager to rename and replace streetnames, monuments, and buildings. Who and what we choose to remember or uphold as inspiration greatly matters. Choosing abstract ideals as the best representation of Canada, rather than our history and national cultures is a deliberate choice.
Globe & Mail columnist Konrad Yakabuski may have been premature when he wrote last year that Carney was abandoning Trudeau’s post-national mission of turning Canada into a country with “no core identity”. If Carney will praise the “bedrock” of three peoples one month and then invoke Laurier the next, while stripping Laurier of his pro-assimilation positions, he is certainly not fully turning the page. Canada may as well also be a giant food court full of foreign cuisines with the Charter plastered on the walls.
Canada is suffering from a record-low fertility rate, with 1.25 children born per woman in 2024. The government has sought to address this; not by taking measures to revitalize family life, but by replenishing our population through large-scale immigration. If Canadians will not reproduce themselves, nor have the state’s backing to absorb newcomers, we will be pushed even further along the road to becoming a pure economic zone with no nation to speak of.
Obsessing over cohesion looks quaint and possibly even suspect until cohesion itself disappears and the consequences emerge.
Recently Canadian police have been compelled to guard places of worship with assault rifles, while transnational gangs wreak havoc in Vancouver’s suburbs, and sectarian tensions from India manifest in the harassment of Hindus outside their temples in Brampton. According to many, Montreal is slowly losing its francophone culture, and becoming a mental enclave that stands apart from the province’s French-speaking majority. This is a small preview of life in a pure economic zone.
The accommodation reached in 1867 should not be erased by an ideology of dilution. It was meant to be a permanent foundation, that newcomers could join if they agreed to “become Canadian,” in Laurier’s words.
Even Laurier’s other famous quote, “Canada is free, and freedom is her nationality” can only be understood in the context of Laurier’s classical liberal beliefs, and his upbringing in a solidly Anglo-French country. Liberal societies that prioritize the individual only work when questions of culture and society are settled.
John Stuart Mill, the godfather of 19th century liberalism, even stated that, “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.” Given that Canada has come very close to breaking apart due to the differences between Anglos and the French, we should not push our luck further than we have.
Treating our norms, languages and loyalties as optional tells newcomers that Canada’s cultures matter less than others.
If Carney wants to set himself apart from Trudeau, he should stop cribbing Laurier’s name while jettisoning his ideals. It is also possible that none of it matters to Carney at all, and his true side will come out once he has a majority government.
If that is the case, there will likely be Liberal governance for three more long years. That is enough time for opposition parties to take up the mantle of Canada and craft a lasting alternative to Liberal postnationalism, if they choose.
National Post