{"id":262646,"date":"2009-07-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/snapshot-of-canadian-national-development\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T20:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:10:23","slug":"snapshot-of-canadian-national-development","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2009\/07\/snapshot-of-canadian-national-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapshot of Canadian national development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dropcap-big\">Rudyard Griffiths&#8217; <em>Who We Are<\/em> falls into two parts, plus suggested remedies for Canada&#8217;s ills, and a personal confession in the final chapter. Griffiths is one of the founders of the Dominion Institute, created after the razor-thin loss by the Quebec \u201cYes\u201d forces in the 1995 referendum. The confession reveals that Griffiths is himself a dual citizen, eligible for both a Canadian and a British passport. Canada&#8217;s first citizenship law did not recognize dual citizenship, though my earliest Canadian passport carried the statement: \u201cA Canadian citizen is a British subject,\u201d and so we were all dual citizens, the citizenship law notwithstanding. Had we retained that status, we could now carry European Union (EU) passports. But that could not be; there was no place for Canadian \u201cBritish subjects\u201d once the United Kingdom joined Europe in the EU.<\/p>\n<p>The first part of <em>Who We Are<\/em> presents a gloomy future. There will be global warming, graying of the population, lack of interest in civic responsibilities, provincial protectionism, foreign takeovers, and finally, insufficient respect for Canadian traditions. In 2005, the last Canadian veteran of the First World War died, and Britain and France sent representatives to his funeral. Canada sent none. The symbolism of Canada&#8217;s inaction speaks volumes. But veneration of national symbols is not bred into the Canadian psyche. After their Civil War, Americans used the heroic traditions of the American Revolution, seasoned with whiff of Anglophobia, to heal the wounds of the Union and reunite it. Canadians had nothing similar, nor did we feel the need for it. Canada&#8217;s claim to British North America rested upon her allegiance to the monarchy. Thus, when Britain gave the Arctic Islands to Canada in 1880, she merely passed an orders-in-council transferring them from Queen Victoria&#8217;s British government to her Canadian one. The monarchy could still unite us in 1939, when Canada entered the Second World War. On September 9, Parliament debated whether to declare war, and the \u201cnays\u201d clearly won on points, but then the justice minister, Ernest Lapointe, arose and appealed to Canadian loyalty. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had just ended a royal tour, and as the queen bid farewell, her parting words were \u201c<em>Que Dieu b\u00e9nisse le Canada<\/em>.\u201d Lapointe quoted them to conclude his speech, and the House rallied, voting for war with only one \u201cnay.\u201d Queen Elizabeth II could not provoke a similar response today, and certainly Charles and Camilla never could. The fading of the monarchy has left a void.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">Then there is demography. Caring for an aging population is a big, expensive business. How will Canada cope? Not very well, if Canadians retire at 65 and expect to live on pensions until they die. Medical advances have cured the diseases that used to decimate the over-65 cohort, and consequently the median age is increasing. Yet, with taxpayer dollars subsidizing their efforts to fend off old age, Canadians could remain longer in the work force. Immigration can counteract the declining birth rate and Griffiths wants lots of immigrants. Yet they bring problems. Immigrants today cluster in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, creating sprawling cities with ethnic enclaves, and they are more likely to fall beneath the poverty line than they once did. Griffiths recognizes another problem too: some of the brightest immigrants are returning home. Moving on is an old Canadian tradition: in the nineteenth century, emigration was only slightly less than immigration. But what magnifies this \u201cHomeland Beckons\u201d phenomenon now is the burgeoning of India, China, and the EU. Talented immigrants see a brighter future in their homelands than here. Griffiths thinks this \u201cHomeland Beckons\u201d phenomenon will create a new brain drain, and so it may, but it could also increase Canadian influence \u2014 and trade, abroad.<\/p>\n<p>The main section of <em>Who We Are<\/em> is a brilliant snapshot of Canadian national development. I agree with Griffiths that Canada is a product of its history, and we shall lose Canada&#8217;s spiritual wellbeing if we forget it. The pivotal development was the coming of self-government, or \u201cresponsible government,\u201d as the history books call it, in 1848. It was the starting point for new nation that was led out of a failed rebellion by two statesmen, an Anglo, Robert Baldwin, and a <em>Canadien,<\/em> Hippolyte Lafontaine. They were non-violent revolutionaries, whose goal was a country with peace, order and good govermment, where all men might be treated equally, whether they were born equal or not. Women too, though it took the intervention of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for them to be considered real persons eligible to sit in the Senate. Baldwin and Lafontaine belong to the history of central Canada, and a truly Canadian historical tradition should include the rest of the country. Yet anyone who seeks to understand Canadian attitudes should start with Baldwin and Lafontaine.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>A review of\u00a0Rudyard Griffiths, <\/em>Who We Are: A Citizen\u2019s Manifesto<em>. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"image-caption\">Photo: Shutterstock<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rudyard Griffiths&#8217; Who We Are falls into two parts, plus suggested remedies for Canada&#8217;s ills, and a personal confession in the final chapter. Griffiths is one of the founders of the Dominion Institute, created after the razor-thin loss by the Quebec \u201cYes\u201d forces in the 1995 referendum. The confession reveals that Griffiths is himself a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":248316,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T00:10:25Z","apple_news_api_id":"8181d596-9e56-4143-a1ca-6de3f84e92b8","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T00:10:25Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AgYHVlp5WQUOhym3j-E6SuA","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9385,9358],"tags":[],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4295],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[7136],"class_list":["post-262646","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medias-et-culture","category-politique","irpp-category-politique","irpp-tag-medias-et-culture"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Snapshot of Canadian national development<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2009\/07\/snapshot-of-canadian-national-development\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Snapshot of Canadian national development\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rudyard Griffiths&#8217; Who We Are falls into two parts, plus suggested remedies for Canada&#8217;s ills, and a personal confession in the final chapter. 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