Adieu Mon Canada: 1867-2006

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - It seems I'm forever writing obituaries. So, in the interests of economy and greater efficiencies, today I can cover the thirty-odd million residents of the Country Formerly Known as Canada (CFKAC) in a fell swoop. With the election yesterday of the unabashedly un-Canadian "reformer" Stephen Harper to the Prime Minister's office, Canadians turned their collective backs (if in a minority manner) on Confederation.

Adieu Mon Canada: 1867-2006
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
January 26, 2006

Harper has made no secret of his disdain for confederation. His confreres in Alberta's Calgary School have urged Quebec leave the country post-haste for years. He favours stronger "integration" with the United States, and the completion of a North-South political and economic union with the States, begun in earnest by previous Tory PM, Brian Mulroney, with the Free Trade Agreement (since morphed into the trilateral, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), precursor to the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) at the expense of the traditional Canadian East-West alignment. That East-West arrangement guaranteed the continuity of the nation.

No More.

It really shouldn't come as a heavy blow to those Canadians pining for the flag; the Dear Old Girl has been sick for years. The ministrations of outgoing Liberal PM, Paul Martin did little to rehabilitate the country's decline. Martin shares Harper's diagnosis of Canada as a failed state, one better wrapped in the bosom of the U.S. for safekeeping. Only, Harper is more adamant than Martin. He's a man on a mission.

Harper's masters can be traced to the University of Calgary, chief among them, the Czar of the economics department, Tom Flanagan. Flanagan's ties go straight to the heart of Texas, so to speak, and his prescription for Canada is indistinguishable from the bitter pills prescribed by Reagan, Thatcher, Bush's I and II, and every tin pot cantor of the "marketplace" mantra found ruining the lives of citizens across the world.

Next: Culture War Comes to Canada

It's a pity Jack Layton and the NDP used their minority wad to bring down the Liberals when they did. One wonders will they be willing to stand against more odious legislation - assuming the NDP still believe what they purport to politically - or if they will even get the chance, given the increasing cosiness between Harper and Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois? Afterall, they share a vision of no Canada at all.

Will Jack and his party threaten to bring down the government, again over same-sex marriage, marijuana policy, immigration rights, or any of the plethora of carbon copy policies Harper plans to import from the United States?

And, what about the wars?

Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, CFKAC. You can check out the GR Blog here.


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