JOURNEY TO NATIVISM IS SHORTER THAN YOU THINK
Oh, Canada. We can be such a simple country. A pat on the head from an international paper of repute, a rub of the belly by a visiting leader, and we purr like a smug kitten.
Barack Obama — a president who can find Canada on a map, if not in his foreign policy priorities — came to our House of Commons on his valedictory tour and told us exactly what we wanted to hear. A BeaverTails joke here (he knows what they are!), a hockey joke there, topped with a gentle tousle of Justin Trudeau’s hair, and the benches erupted in applause like a bunch of wannabe Sally Fields.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s better to receive flattery than to have none offered. There is no doubt the president likes the new boss a bajillion per cent more than he liked the old one. But are there any deeds to go with his kind words, or is the oratory meant to buy us off in the absence of more tangible goods? The government’s MPs were too busy swooning to ask the question.
“See! The world needs more Canada,” they crowed. Our fervent desire for praise from our perceived betters is outstripped only by our smugness once it’s received.
More Canada, eh? Yes, we are tolerant, open and inclusive. These are all wonderful things. Yes, we’re also free traders in a world that’s swerving into protectionist lanes. But these are easy things to be when you’re inoculated from more pernicious infections.
The smug Canadian parlour game du jour is to point at the Dumpster fire that is post-Brexit British politics and intone “it could never happen here.” We have no Nigel Farage equivalent, and Canadians would never morph into insecure nativists. How easily these sentences roll off the tongue when you’re protected by three oceans and the world’s best — and most powerful — neighbour.
We pat ourselves on the back for pledging to take 25,000 refugees. Sweden took in 163,000 migrants last year, with less than a third or our population. Germany took in more than a million. Not everyone is happy about it. Do you think we would be tickety-boo with that many people turning up on our doorstep virtually overnight?
Although Britain hasn’t taken in nearly as many migrants as its continental cousins, they have absorbed millions of EU citizens since the enlargement of the EU into eastern Europe, including 800,000 Poles alone. This has radically changed the nature and cultures of communities, and put incredible pressures on schools and hospitals.
What do you think an unemployed Cape Breton miner or fisherman would say if his or her long-lost jobs were replaced by call centres that paid a fraction of the salary and then had to compete with 300,000 newly admitted Guatemalans for the privilege of working there? I think our cloying Canada Day videos would be a little less rose-tinted.
We’ve had very little experience of modern mass migration and the pressures it can place on public services. Yes, Canada took in masses of people to help settle our western flanks and significant numbers in the interwar and postwar periods. This happened before government stuck its fingers into a universe of pies. New arrivals were what birthed the biggest cohort in human history — boomers — whose numbers made financing our new social programs possible.
It’s a different story now. Our immigration figures remain impressive. Our debt numbers, less so. We need the bodies if we’re going to keep the benefits a flowin’. The boomers are retiring and a looming skills shortage is a significant threat to our economy. It will be hard to give the world “more Canada” if we don’t give our flagging growth numbers a boost. Smugness isn’t an exportable commodity. Humility, however, is.
We would do well to stand “the world needs more Canada” on its head to read “Canada isn’t doing enough.”
You will not find a more privileged or fortunate place to live than Canada, and it’s foolish to think our advantages of geography can be exported to countries facing radically different pressures.
A little humility would make our important message to our friends in Europe on integration and frictionless borders more palatable.
What can the government do? Whatever it can to get our economy back on track. It’s hard to wield influence if you can’t pay for it. It’s hard to be welcoming if you don’t feel secure about your own future. The journey to nativism is shorter than you think. Pockets of Canada struggle in ways opinion-makers in cities do not. Trudeau must keep his ear to their ground.
Whatever we do, we mustn’t become the guy who was born on third base thinking he hit a triple. The world doesn’t need that Canada.