Is Canada is wasted on Canadians?
Compared to Centennial year, Canada at 150 has lost the ambition for great projects
we have peace, order and stability. This is extraordinary.
For all that, we have lost something. It’s an ability to see ourselves the way apost-warCanadacould:doingthings such as Expo, honouring our history, imagining something bigger.
Pierre Berton called 1967 “the last good year” — a halcyon time for Canada before the constitutional wars, stagflation, and wage and price controls. We survived it all, but lost something precious, too: the capacity to dream.
By 1967, Canada had been working feverishly since 1945. We built schools and universities, laced the country with a highway and intercity trains, dug subways, created museums, theatres and arenas. With a small but serious military, we led the world in peacekeeping, maintained respectable foreign aid and fielded a superb diplomatic service.
Lester Pearson introduced or enhanced old-age pensions, medicare, a new flag, student loans, labour rights, liberal immigration and the Order of Canada. Pierre Trudeau’s Just Society liberalized divorce and homosexuality and legislated official bilingualism.
We celebrated all that in the 1960s and kept going. In a heroic act of nation-building, Trudeau patriated the Constitution with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Brian Mulroney embraced free trade and a national sales tax. Jean Chrétien established 2,000 research chairs.
Stephen Harper’s government, by contrast, celebrated the War of 1812 (barelymentionedinthenewCanada Hall) and the Arctic, but was seized by little else beyond lowering taxes. The Conservatives viewed the approaching sesquicentennial like the visit of an alcoholic uncle.
The Liberals inherited their meagre commemoration but have failed to declare a national project worthy of the milestone. The Liberal government invests in infrastructure, plans pipelines and announces an indigenous centre across from Parliament. This we call ambition.
In 2017, Canadians are captains of complacency. We borrow more money than ever (household debt hit a record 167 per cent in 2016) and give less (charitable donations fell to the lowest in a decade last year.) Among leading industrialized nations, we are slipping — less rich and less productive than we were.
Sacrifice is passé. We congratulate ourselves for taking some 40,000 Syrian refugees, forgetting that as a smaller country we took some 69,000 Vietnamese boat people in the late 1970s.
Why are we so timid? We could have prettier cities. We could have faster trains. We could have better universities.WecouldhaveEuropean health care. We could have an elected Senate or no Senate, but we’re afraid – heaven forbid – to re-open the Constitution.
We rest on our laurels. We are resentful of excellence. We are hard on our politicians, unfairly so, thinking they are paid too much, do too little and live too well on our dime. Increasingly, we are stiflingly politically correct.
Ourcommitmenttocomfortbegets mediocrity. It makes us unwilling or unable to seek distinction.
Patriotism? For most, it’s waving the flag on July 1, wearing red mittens during the Olympic Games, and buying a double-double at Tim Hortons.