One Kingdom under God

Canada died yesterday. She was 139 years old.

The longstanding confederated fact that Canada is one nation, that the people of Canada constitute a nation in their own right, is no more. The entire political class stuck a dagger through the heart of that belief yesterday with their treacherous lining up behind the prime minister’s motion to move that “Quebeckers are a nation inside a united Canada”. By the government’s own admission, Canada is a state, but no longer a nation.

Oh, sure the prime minister confounded the Quebec sovereigntists in Parliament yesterday, and denied them the opportunity to corner federalists on their own motion to recognize Quebec as a nation without so much as a mention of Canada. And yes he saved the opposition Liberals from imploding over the issue, threw a lifeline to the embattled Quebec premier, united the federalists and bolstered the Conservative’s flagging fortunes in la belle province in a brilliant masterstroke of political strategy that won him a standing ovation in the House of Commons from all parties except le Bloc Quebecois, not to mention wide applause from the country’s ink stained wretches. Oh, goodie. Wankfest galore. Nobody plays triangulation better than Stephen Harper, but what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his country?

First to the idiot savant who started this mess. Michael Ignatieff is Harper’s dream opponent, not because he shares a special affinity for the Americans and supported the Iraq War, but because Lord Iggy is a political klutz. The man comes waltzing in here fresh from thirty years of living in his ivory tower at Cambridge and Harvard, and opportunistically lunges for the altar of the Liberal Party of Canada (Mark Steyn said it was like watching a classical pianist at the burlesque) by recklessly wooing Quebec nationalists and promising to speak for those who believe that “Quebec is my nation, Canada is my country”. We just barely survived thirty years of constitutional wrangling and gnashing of teeth, only to have this wise fool promise us more. It was a stink bomb that needed to be contained. Harper, sensing danger for his Quebec caucus and the country at large, struck at the right moment to neutralize the separatist menace. (But did it? Just wait for the demands that a nation means special rights…) What rankles more than anything is to see Iggy all smiles with the press now, applauding Harper for following his leadership on the issue! Actually, Ig, Harper was going in for the kill. And the kill is you, come next election, but first he had to save you from losing the Liberal leadership.

But the damage has been done. Andrew Coyne believes we are headed for Belgiumhood now. What’s worse, we may be headed towards what Churchill called a House of Many Mansions, a direct reference to Europe during the Second World War when Hitler and his odious goose-stepping Gustapo were busy stamping out the Mansions all over Europe. But whereas Europe is now trying to make the House stronger than its Mansions, the reverse is happening in Canada.

There may be a way out of this nonsense, but it would take a little imagination, something beyond that six letter hoser of a word: C eh, N eh, D eh (Okay, three letters and three ehs). We might say that “nation” has never done justice to the idea of Canada, that the complexities of this country require a new word to describe who we are. A country that is predominantly British, French and American, one that Andrew Coyne calls “polyethnic, multilingual and transcontinental”, instead of that dreaded and divisive multicultural notion. For what we need is not something that segregates, differentiates, separates and alienates us, but a word that binds us together in loyalty and allegiance to the whole. Dominion was good in its day, Churchill’s “Great Dominion” even better, but I’m thinking of something less imperial and more federal in a way that still honours our former majesty. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Thy Kingdom Come to this glorious and free land we call Canada!