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Tag: canada
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
Apparently we’re back to debating how many Canadian politicians can grovel on the head of a Quebec nationalist pin. But before we decide whether Quebec is a nation, perhaps we should give a bit of thought to whether Canada is. And while we’re at it, what a nation actually is.
I realize talking about reality now marks you as something of a clod, or oppressor. After all, it’s about what you identify as, right? Up to a point, which you could test by wearing a Babylon Bee “I identify as vaccinated” T-shirt. But apparently Quebecers identify as a nation, or possibly a bunch of politicians identify them as one, and what’s the difference between acknowledging and stereotyping?
I’m glad you asked. Because in his magisterial if eccentric The Story of Philosophy Will Durant says Socrates drove people insane by insisting that before launching a lively endless hair-pulling argument they define their terms. For instance “justice”. Or, here, “nation”. You can’t really tell whether “Quebec” is a nation, as the CAQ now insists, or the “Quebecois” are as Stephen Harper insisted in one of his cunning plans to make the Tories the natural governing party, or neither, until you know what a nation is.
Of course Socrates and Aristotle and that crowd are long-dead white males so oppressive they didn’t even have the decency to be white so we’d know who to hate. But they had a point. Namely “You keep using that word. I do not think it means anything.”
Which to post-moderns is a feature not a bug. They say words don’t mean anything so it’s all a power struggle (which deconstructionist professors win on the salary and parking pass clauses in their employment contracts). Thus the issue may not be whether Quebec is a nation so much as whether they can make us all say so. As with whether Taiwan is one, I might add.
In the PC minefield that is Canadian politics, and public affairs, it’s also fraught because of our “First Nations”. If you say they’re not nations, you’re cancelled. And if you say as sovereign entities they should pay their own bills and go through Customs to enter another nation known as Canada, you’re cancelled. But if we don’t know what we’re talking about, we may not make a lot of sense.
So the first step in determining whether Quebec is a nation is to determine what nations are. Following the classic syllogism “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal”, whose acarpous formalism was tested empirically by making him drink hemlock, if you didn’t know what a man was you couldn’t check Socrates for relevant attributes. Which we might also struggle with now. But I digress.
When it comes to defining “nation”, the two major contenders seem to be “a sovereign entity” and “people with shared culture”. Stephen Harper tried to defuse this issue by making the Quebecois, not “Quebec,” a nation in the sense, I suppose, that they eat poutine, like the Habs and speak coherent English to customers if they feel like it. But the CAQ has in mind political implications like making people subject to the Quebec government not speak English to customers even if they feel like it. So we need to know: Is a nation a sovereign entity? A culture? Or the former defined by the latter? And Canada before Quebec please. Because one important issue is whether you can have nations within nations or they are mutually exclusive.
Another, to dwell on definitions so persistently that like Socrates’ hapless interlocutors we never get anywhere except into a rage, is that cultures do exist or there wouldn’t be forbidden jokes like the European heaven/ European hell gag or Max Weber’s permitted and forbidden jibe. But they are not uniform; there are German engineers whose bridges collapse and Frenchmen whose béchamel is inedible.
As you recall from high school history, people once thought homogeneous states helped avoid war. For instance in 1648. And 1919, at least if you were Woodrow Wilson. Then something happened to convince people excessive emphasis on ethnicity could also generate conflict, so we all became good multiculturalists. Without deciding whether to define that term as “it’s OK to eat garlic” or “it’s imperialist to oppose female genital mutilation.”
It matters, because when people go around claiming to be a nation, they generally don’t mean “Try this dish.” They mean “Our region should be a country because you’re stifling our core values.” And people who say “You’re not a nation” generally mean “You’re fine in the country you’re part of now.” Which is usually untrue; most secessionist movements are right about what they oppose but wrong about what they propose.
Canada is different. We are one of the world’s few truly great nations, free, prosperous, dynamic and open. And when I was young, proud of being bilingual not bitter about it. (We mostly weren’t actually bilingual, but we had the cereal boxes.) And proud of being the True North Strong and Free. Free from secret police, from high taxes and from rules against “Hello bonjour.”
Now we’re the world’s first post-modern nation with no core identity, a Charter of Loopholes, a swollen state and a grovelling elite that can only apologize. And in the process of losing our identity, or deliberately throwing it away, we apparently lost the capacity to assert our sovereignty, to the point that one province can now amend the constitution as if it were, what’s that word, a nation.
If we had a culture it would not be homogeneous. Some among us wouldn’t even eat maple shawarma. Or serve visiting dignitaries such a monotonous diet that, with Prince Phillip, they blurt out “If I have to eat any more salmon I shall swim up a river and spawn.” But the swimming pool joke would still be funny, and our victories at Vimy and Juno still reflect the steely competence beneath our modest exterior. And we’d still be a nation.
Instead, who speaks for Canada today? Who says no, Quebec is not a nation, it’s a province in Canada which should be good enough for anyone? Would one federal leader declare Canada a nation without a paper bag on their head, or its?
If not, you know why Quebec is slipping away. And Canada. We forgot to be a nation, because we forgot what they are.
Photo Credit: The Tyee
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
The fate of the Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac is not an immediate crisis. But it represents a much larger disaster looming over Canada’s energy industry.
A prolonged court process gives pipeline owner Enbridge and nervous consumers and politicians breathing room to contemplate what the 68-year-old piece of oil infrastructure actually represents.
At the heart of the dispute is whether North America has reached the tipping point between fossil fuels and the environment.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer claims to be arguing the environment’s side of that equation. The pristine waters of the Great Lakes are at stake, according to the Democrat governor, who campaigned on shutting the pipeline down.
Line 5 has suffered a couple of recent boat anchor dings without rupturing, but the line is getting old. Enbridge proposes to bury a replacement line deep under the strait in a tunnel to minimize the risk.
Whitmer wants the line closed immediately. Her state hasn’t given permission for the tunnel construction, which would take about three years to complete.
Proponents of the pipeline argue that if the line is shut down, trucks, railcars and barges needed to handle the oil capacity will be far more polluting in terms of carbon emissions. Michigan downplays that worry and suggests sustainable energy sources and energy efficiency could reduce demand for the pipeline’s contents.
Is it likely a Democrat governor would give a green light to a project to replace a major pipeline at a time when her ally President Joe Biden is aggressively vowing to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels? For that matter, is Biden himself going to look kindly on committing to a major new replacement line?
Ultimately what the line represents seals its longterm fate.
That won’t stop the wrangling over the short term. A huge amount of political capital will be expended as industry and governments take their stands.
This dispute is not exactly without risks for Whitmer. While Michigan’s government is painting the state as a mere way station for Canadian oil to reach Canadian consumers, Michigan consumers get plenty of propane from the pipeline. Neighbouring states have refinery jobs at stake in the line’s continued operation. Already a union representing Toledo, Ohio refinery workers has demonstrated its angst over the possible shutdown by littering the Michigan State capitol lawn with hard hats.
And then there’s the whole Canada versus the U.S. storyline. Canada has more to lose if Line 5 is disrupted. The line feeds into refineries in Sarnia, supplying Ontario and Quebec needs from there.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has jumped into the fray with Canada seeking to intervene in the court process. Canada wants the issue of whether Michigan has the right to shut down the line heard in federal court in the U.S. Whitmer wants it decided at the state court level.
Hanging over the process is also a 1977 treaty between Canada and the U.S. which protects pipelines from shutdown unless there is an emergency of some type.
Canadian energy ministers have drenched Line 5 in maple syrup, arguing that Canadian rights, jobs and the economy are at stake.
Enbridge would love this to come down to a focused business argument. Line 5 now carries 540,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries still hungry for Alberta’s energy resources. Transporting that much oil by alternative methods would be more expensive, push up the price of the product and create more carbon emissions.
But politicians have to wrestle with the bigger picture. The tough decision on whether to shift away from infrastructure investment in the carbon economy has to be made at some point.
A safer updated replacement to Line 5, with a hefty half a billion dollar price tag, would protect the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. But pipelines are designed to last for decades. Will administrations in five or 10 years be willing to argue the new Line 5 should be left only partially filled or shut down to meet emission reduction targets?
There’s been lots of talk about transitioning away from nonrenewable energy. Many of the political calls in that vein so far have involved not-yet-built pipelines and hypothetical jobs.
But the Line 5 decision goes deeper, affecting existing jobs on both sides of the border, treading into international treaty territory, striking at the economic status quo. The court process allows a delay but at some point the big existential carbon economy question must be answered.
Photo Credit: The Canadian Press
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
