So Long, Canada

 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?

I am not over the trauma of the Canadian election. The result was, on its face, the worst possible. Four more years of the Liberals with their growing totalitarianism, growing censorship, growing immigration, deliberate hobbling of the economy, growing taxes and deficits, supply management and trade war.

Worse, with a minority. This means they do not have a mandate to negotiate with Trump. There is no unified front. Sooner than expected, but just as I expected, Alberta is talking of secession.

Has God abandoned Canada?

He might have reason to love America more. America has after all been at the forefront of advancing human rights and human liberty. And it has assumed the task of defending it. What, by contrast, does Canada’s existence do for the world, for mankind, for human progress, by existing apart?

America is also at the forefront of reverence for God, of religious faith. Granted that there is much religious fervour in poorer nations, America stands without parallel as a rich and successful nation that nevertheless has preserved its faith. It shows the path forward, then. Within the Catholic Church, America is now seen as the home of the resistance to modernism. And reports are growing of a general revival, a new Great Awakening.

At the same time, Canada has been blindly arrogant. On the one hand, we have looked down on Americans, imagined we are superior. We have not been grateful for their decency and generosity as a neighbour. Instead, we show contempt. “We burned down your White House.” Which, of course, we did not. “We won the War of 1812.” Which we did not. We object to their new tariffs, and ignore our tariffs on US products, as though America owes us something.

On the other hand, we in Eastern Canada, the bulk of the population, have arrogantly ignored the concerns of Alberta and the West. We have looked down on them. We have expected them to send us regular tribute, and expressed no gratitude for it. We have treated them like a colony.

We have deserved some chastisement.

But have we been so awful that we deserve to be destroyed? Surely we have still been on the whole a moral people, better than most.

Yet God perhaps knows best. Carney promises the destruction of Canada. Poilievre promised a chance to hold the enterprise together.

Maybe it is best for all if Canada dies fast so that the suffering is not drawn out. The great apocalypse everyone fears is simply Canada being assimilated into the United States—a fate that most people in the world would consider the best thing that could happen to them.

Canadians can then expect greater wealth, lower taxes, more career opportunities, stronger guarantees for our freedoms, more security, more life choices. 

Will we feel nostalgia for the old Canada? There is no real reason to, as we can and no doubt will preserve our traditions. Just as Texas remains distinct within the US, or Louisiana, or New England.