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Is Canada a country in decline? There was a time when the future of this blessed land looked hopeful. But when we write the history of the past 30 years, it will be a sad story of squandered opportunity Michael Bliss National Post It has been too bad that the career and personality of the messenger blinds so many Canadians to the message Conrad Black has been trying to deliver. Strip away the ego-tripping and exaggeration, cut the adjectives and redundancies from his prose, and Black has been rather desperately trying to awaken us to the fact of Canadian decline. He isn't alone in this. In the past few years, the speeches of business leaders, the columns of journalists, even the off-the-record musings of politicians have increasingly been marked by anxiety about the shortcomings of our national performance. In nearly all the dimensions of national life, we Canadians are falling behind both our southern neighbours and our own potential. The fact that from certain perspectives we remain such a wonderfully successful country has a tendency to mask our weaknesses. But these weaknesses are becoming so numerous and so glaring that a moment of national truth is approaching, a time when we have to face up to the implications of Canadian decline. Here are the ways in which we are falling short: (1) Economic: Although Canada remains one of the world's richest countries, our standard of living has been failing since the 1970s to keep pace with that of the United States. Our per capita wealth, which nearly matched the United States in the 1960s, is now 75% to 80% of that of Americans, and continuing to decline relatively. Thus, as Black has pointed out, in the aggregate Canadians are doing economically about as well in the world as black Americans, a people who have had a few more handicaps to overcome. The decline in our dollar against the American, from above par in 1977 to recent record lows below 63�, is a fair index of our relative shrinkage. We have proven unwilling or unable to level the tax playing field with the Americans; we are relying on the low dollar to keep our export industries competitive; in area after area of our economic life, from retailing to banking, our firms are having trouble competing in the free trade climate. The national government and most provinces continued to be burdened with high levels of public debt; as the recession bites, they're sliding quickly back into deficit financing. We are hemorrhaging talented, highly trained Canadians to the United States. (2) Social: Canadian social policies are no longer pioneering, innovative or of much interest to anyone outside of Canada. Instead of being copied by other countries, our health care system is out of step with international practices, and in desperate need of reform. As our wealth declines relative to the United States, we are increasingly hard-pressed to compete with the Americans in a wide range of social policy, from educational and research excellence to urban infrastructure. There is no evidence that our national gun control legislation has achieved anything but cost overruns, bureaucratic bloat and citizen vexation. Forty years of national social policy aimed at regional equalization has perpetuated inequality and dependency, while spawning regional resentment. Our aboriginal policies are, at best, an anachronistic holding operation. (3) Cultural: Save for a handful of brilliant writers, Canada's contribution to global culture is minimal. We make no significant contribution to global popular culture. Our domestic publishing and entertainment industries remain on taxpayer-provided life-support. There is no evidence that the strong French presence in Canadian life has made any significant difference in our total cultural achievement. Effective bilingualism or biculturalism ends in Canada about five miles west of Ottawa. An increasingly multicultural society cannot, by definition, have a meaningful cultural identity. (4) Political: The embarrassingly inept complacency of our aging Prime Minister is only the tip of the iceberg of our political malaise. Ottawa arguably has fewer leaders of real stature than at any time since 1867. Not only has our two-party system disappeared, but the calibre of the replacement talent within the governing party is not high. A lucky, run-of-the-mill Finance Minister, and a disaster-prone Health Minister are the best of a shockingly bad lot. The opposition politicians are not credible alternatives. Worse, the individuals reflect the system. Canada's monarchically derived parliamentary government is anachronistic in the modern democratic world. Quite apart from the institutionalized scandal of our Senate, the House of Commons has sunk into irrelevance while the Prime Minister's Office has risen to autocratic dominance. The continuance of patronage and the plundering of the public treasury to advance the interests of the governing party would be seen as an affront to civic ideals, if only we still had ideals to offend. Our most respected pundit, Jeffrey Simpson, publishes a devastating attack on our political system as A Friendly Dictatorship, and Ottawa barely yawns. Everyone knows it's true. Nobody cares. (5) Military and Diplomatic: There is an important parallelism here. Just as we have armed forces fully trained, equipped and prepared for anything but fighting, so we go through all the motions on the world stage until it comes to actually having influence. The lies and exaggerations about our role that are spread for public consumption in Canada are accurately dealt with in the foreign media -- they just ignore us. Unlike Conrad Black, at age eight I had not yet visited New York or London, nor had I begun to formulate my vision of a great Canada that might be. In the early 1950s it was my mother who wrote the very successful public speech I gave as a 10-year-old on "Canada's Future," in which she/I predicted boundless possibilities for this rich and blessed country. For the most part over the next 20 years, peaking perhaps in 1967, Mom and I were right. In those years it was still possible to dream about Canada doing better than the United States. Ours would be a country with a higher standard of living, thanks to the wise use of its resources, a country with better social programs, a stronger commitment to civic and social order, cities that worked, more responsive political institutions and a balance of power and professionalism in world affairs. Ours would be a country on cultural and educational frontiers, a country that attracted talented Americans and offered boundless opportunities for its own people. Yes, Virginia, there was a time when we could envisage Canada as being on top in North America. Now it has become evident that when we write the history of the past 30 years of Canadian national life, it will be in substantial part a sad story of squandered opportunities and decline. It will be a story of ill-conceived national economic and social policies, of onanistic obsession with Quebec, of the mindless parochialism of provincial governments, of the decay of civic spirit, of the full flowering of our national penchant for self-delusion, complacency and mediocrity. On the other hand, part of our "decline" has been inevitable. I don't see how we could have avoided the north-south continental economic integration that was well on its way before NAFTA and now poses so many border-related conundrums. Nor is it clear how any distinctive "Canadian" identity could have evolved in a country that was opening and enriching itself to all the cultures of the world and becoming steadily more tolerant of multiple identities. How could we pride ourselves on monarchical government in an age of popular democracy, on being a law-and-order society in love with the RCMP in an age of civil liberties and charters? How could we resist Hollywood and fast food and Disneyfication? If globalization was bound to weaken all national cultures and governments, how could we have opted out? Because the notion of Canadian decline is more nebulous than clear-cut in the world of the 21st century, the country's future is similarly uncertain. We seem to have four options. Ranging from the least to the most likely, and from the most to the least preferable, they are: (1) Reinvigorating the Canadian nation, in accord with the optimism of 1967 and the aspirations of the Fathers of Confederation in 1867. This is least likely because of globalization, continentalization, the stubborn self-interest of our provincial governments and the black hole on Parliament Hill. (2) Organic union with the United States. It may happen in the long term, and it might be the best possible solution, but there is almost no popular support, nor will there be unless or until Canadians sense they have reached a national crisis signalling the end of the road. Union negotiations would take years, and there is a distinct possibility Americans might not agree that Canada is worth having. Would Prince Edward Island be a state? Why would Republicans want to add eight or nine Democratic states plus Alberta? (3) The creation of Greater North America, modelled after the new Europe. Perhaps the logic of free trade and 9/11 will lead to the explicit harmonization of continental tariff and immigration policies, security and defence. Gradually Canada's tax policies will have to be harmonized with those of nearby U.S. states. The debate on a common currency is not going to recede. As American economic influence on Canada continues to evolve, the pressure for erasing the border in every non-political aspect may be irresistible. While it's true the Americans will inevitably dominate all supra-national North American institutions, the possibility of having some representation and influence is surely better than having none. (4) The status quo: national half-life. Inertia is one of the most powerful forces in politics, especially in Canada. As the Chr�tien government has shown us in recent years, it is perfectly possible to drift from season to season, riding American coattails, adjusting policies occasionally to keep Washington happy, and either denying that we have problems or blaming them on forces beyond our control. None of Mr. Chr�tien's probable successors is likely seriously to change direction, seriously to upset the status quo. It's a comfortable kind of life up here in the northern backwater, not exciting or challenging, not so affluent, but not so stressful either. As someone has said, Canada makes a good decaffeinated USA -- it's a country you can do a lot of sleeping in. So what if the whiners and the American wannabees and the men on the make leave? When they go they take their votes with them. Every new immigrant is a potential new and grateful voter. A system like this can go on for a very long time, its hollowness hidden by the gewgaws of independence -- flags, Canada Day concerts, beer commercials, the CBC. Relative to most of the rest of the world, Canada does very well indeed. The current generation just shouldn't have as high expectations as the Americans do, or as Conrad Black does, or as Canadians brought up in the 1950s and 1960s came to have. Yes, you can ungratefully bad-mouth Liberal Canada, but now and for a long time to come it will remain possible to be affluently Canadian, happily Canadian, complacently Canadian. It makes things easier also to be resolutely, privately Canadian, for when you think about the quality and future of public life in the country you may slip back into dismay. When you think of how we rely on the United States for our security and our economic well-being, you might start having dark thoughts about Canadian hypocrisy. We still mouth the platitudes about our achievements and importance and sovereignty, but do we really believe them? When it comes to being committed to excellence, to real achievement, to making real contributions to the life of the world, it's increasingly hard to be proudly Canadian. And Canada is a country to be a little less proud of every time it drives out citizens like Conrad Black. For all his faults Lord Black invested money, talent, ideas and hope in this place. He challenged us to do better. He may not have succeeded, but Conrad Black served his native land far better than the ninnies who write puling, pusillanimous editorials and letters to the editor of The Globe and Mail. Michael Bliss is an author and a professor of history at the University of Toronto. ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
