A future for Canada? Is Canada sufficiently different from the United States?
Trying to move the conversation beyond a false binary.
The Facebook algorithm showed me this, and it immediately reminded me about what I don’t like about the “elbows up” and other movements that seem to be stoking Canadian nationalism.
”Hey USA: Keep f’ing around and find out! We're NOT your faucet.”
I do not remotely feel included or relevant to the “we” referenced in that post.
I don’t think of Canada or the USA as the names of places, or the names of groups of people. I have no idea what this person’s use of the phrase “We’re NOT your faucet” is supposed to indicate they believe Canada is, as I doubt they are trying to claim they are a drop of water among other drops of water. Even the Canadian constitution and law, if you believe it is the most relevant authority, grants jurisdiction to what Western European worldview loyalists think of as “natural resources” to Provincial Crowns, not to persons or any peoples.
The discussion shouldn’t only be about which empire we prefer: USA or the Dominion of Canada. Neither of these political entities are natural. Even the land Canada claims title to is only a bit smaller than Europe which has 44 different nation-states.
I also believe the identity and values of the Dominion of Canada need to be sufficiently different from those of the United States in order for that distinction to matter. The more conversations I have with what appear to be “average Canadians” about Canadian identity and values, the less of a distinction I see.
Canadian Imperialism / Colonialism
I agree with those who see the Dominion of Canada in the context of empire, even with those who do not understand the Dominion as an ongoing expression of Western European (primarily British and French) settler-colonialism. The region that was claimed the jurisdiction of the British Province of Canada from 1841 to 1867, the most populous region claimed the jurisdiction of Canada today, dominates Dominion of Canada politics. It is justifiably seen as the dominant center by those living in subordinate peripheries, much like other empires. Empires do not need an emperor, only a center and a periphery, which the Canadian crown’s colonial expansion since 1867 created.
Some people use terms such as “Laurentian elite” as they are indoctrinated by individualism and think all problems somehow relates to individuals. The issues are systemic and conflicts inevitably arise from the wide variety of different histories of how those regions came to be claimed to be under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Crown. The problem isn’t some group of living “elites”, but the notion of “Canada” and the largely intact foreign Constitution imposed in 1867.
It is often only the White/Eurocentric National separatist movements (not only Quebec and prairie) that are visible to Canadian Crown loyalists, while restoring sovereignty to domestic nations is ignored (or aggressively opposed as part of ongoing White/Eurocentric nationalism).
I believe the end of Canada in its current form is inevitable as the entity is unnatural and unsustainable, but that is separate from the conversation about whether (even further) US expansion on this continent is inevitable. For many US loyalists, regardless of which side of the imaginary line they live on, the war of 1812 was only on pause and never concluded.
I feel loyalty to this land and the peoples who stewarded it for thousands of years, but I really don’t know why I should stress over which foreign corporate brand (Ontario, Canada, USA) falsely claims to “own” (in some weird Western European sense) the land/water/etc.
I understand there are some policy differences between the USA and Canadian brands, similar to how there are differences between the Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, and NDP brands. I note people don’t confuse NDP as the name of a place.
You knocked this one out of the park