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Monday, November 16, 2009
The Old Canada Makes A Small Comeback
I don't believe government should be in the business of dictating culture. It's how the Trudeaupian state was created. Official "biculturalism" evolved into "multiculturalism." The nation of Vimy Ridge and Juno Beach became a nation peace keepers. It's been said that the British acquired the Empire in a "fit of absence of mind." So Canada threw away its heritage and freedom in a modernizing temper tantrum in the Seventies. Using one of the tools of the Trudeaupian state, the citizenship guide, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, has struck a blow for the old pre-Seventies Canada.
The Defending Canada section invites newcomers to serve in the coast guard, police force, or fire department. "By helping to protect your community, you follow in the footsteps of Canadians before you who made sacrifices in the service of our country," the guide says.
The revamped handbook, which moved the Oath of Citizenship from the back of the book to the second page, goes deeper into Canada's military history, including information on the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, peacekeeping missions in Egypt, Haiti and Cyprus, and international security operations in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, the senior official said.
The guide looks back to the role of aboriginals, the Vikings and early explorers and the "struggle to build our country," the senior official said. The document also discusses the rebellions of 1837-38 and the fight for responsible government, and offers an expanded section on Confederation.
The guide hasn't been released yet, so I'll abstain from full judgement till I get a look at. Yet it looks promising.
Posted by Richard Anderson on November 16, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
This does sound promising. I hope that it is less profoundly anti-American as most other 1960s-90s Canadian "history" was.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-16 9:55:08 AM
The next stop has to be immigration reform.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-16 10:00:10 AM
The next step is government worrying about policy and not politics.
Posted by: Doug Gilchrist | 2009-11-16 12:48:19 PM
Doug: "The next step is government worrying about policy and not politics."
Like that is going to happen, with any party and any politician, ever.
Immigration policy in Canada needs a serious overhaul. Far too many criminals are allowed to stay here, even after extradition has been ordered, at a monumental cost to our society.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-16 2:13:39 PM
I can't believe it's only 62 pages. That sucker should be 620 pages! Okay maybe 200.
It should be in 150 optional languages, for the first page.
Which would explain that if you are not fluent in either English, French within five years you will be deported as it is a privileged not a right to be here and you're not taking it seriously enough.
After that it can be in English or French.
Somewhere in there it should explain hygiene and how to line up at a Tim Hortons properly.
Posted by: Pete | 2009-11-16 2:33:05 PM
I'm concerned about this. I find that Americans know little history, but what they know is generally accurate. Canadian knowledge of history is much larger, but tends to be biased drivel from the Trudeauists. From reading a Canadian history "textbook" one would think that the place was a conflict-free, peaceful society totally separate from the rest of North America from day one. Hardly! Remember the coureurs de bois? They traveled south to Louisiana and other French areas of the continent rather than west to Ontario.
Can we even say that Canada has a history? Would it not be more accurate to say you people have a pack of lies instead?
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-16 7:11:19 PM
Can we even say that Canada has a history? Would it not be more accurate to say you people have a pack of lies instead?
Posted by: the black racist Zebulon Punk | 2009-11-16 7:11:19 PM
"you people" Da Punk is in his holier than thou American mode today. He's having trouble getting his ZELDOX dosage correct.
Posted by: The Stig | 2009-11-16 7:26:05 PM
This is yet another example of why it is we DO need immigration reform: as in, Ottawa OUT of the immigration biz.
It should be conducted by provinces with private and civil parties.
Jason Kenney is not qualified to dictate what immigrants to this country need to believe about Canada's history and military tradition.
No government is.
Indoctrinating newcomers -- or attempting to -- in a statist version of history is wrong on countless levels.
Suggesting Canada is a military nation is as pathetic as saying Medicare is at the core of our culture. Both are lies.
The British Empire had a long tradition of recruiting colonials as cannon fodder for its endless little -- and big -- wars.
It is no surprise that a tin pot Franco fan boy like Jason Kenney is employing barf bag jingoism in an effort to prep a steady stream of new immigrant recruits for the Conservatives' longed-for future military adventurism -- and kick-back collections.
It is alleged that Canadians died in obscene numbers in WW1 and WW2 for...FREEDOM. If that is even remotely true, having a government dictate a belief in anything to newcomers, much less a politicized military "history", is anathema and a slap in the face to the dead and their survivors.
The Harper Tories are already in the process of organizing the CF for future "counter insurgency" activities in failed states around the world. They may yet try to pave the way for a draft; they may offer citizenship in exchange for military service, as the US already does; but for dam sure they are hoping to convince immigrants that Canada is and always has been a neocon country where military service is "heroic" even when we have not been attacked in 200 years.
When my ancestors arrived in this country there WAS no fascist federal government to tell them what to think. Later, Canada was a liberal society, one antithetical to the values promoted by Banana Republicans like Harpo and Kenney.
What Kenney and the Harper Tories are doing now, apart from lying, is creating the kind of country no Canadian alive before WW2 would recognize.
The Canada Harper hopes to create is not a reversal of the Trudeaupian period, a return to "the pre-seventies Canada", but rather a fascialist reaction to it.
The reality is immigration is too important to be left to Ottawa.
And, newsflash to "PUBLIUS": the "Canada of Vimy Ridge and Juno Beach" was a colony of the British Empire; it was a collection of communities whose coerced culturally martial nature was exploited for NOTHING but the lies of Empire and the profit of what would later be ID'd as the military-industrial complex.
"Looks promising"? You may get goose pimply over goose stepping, dude, but you clearly have no grasp of where politics in this country is going during the Harper Reaction....
Posted by: John Collison | 2009-11-16 8:20:13 PM
So John's vision is one of anarchy: a geographical area inhabited by x number of individuals, each doing his own thing, without anything in common. Some practise human sacrifice and others anything the imagination can produce along with open, or rather no borders.
Freedom is not anarchy.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-11-18 2:25:28 PM
It seems he doesn't get the fact that Canadian citizenship can only be granted by the federal government either. The provinces cannot grant citizenship nor issue passports, visas or expulsion orders.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-18 10:02:20 PM
Little has changed. The old Canada is very similar (except demographically) to the new Canada. Equality of sacrifice did/does not exist.
Contrast this:
"Who fights for Canada? Young white men, that's who fights," says Douglas Bland, chairman of Queen's University's defence studies program. - Chris Schwarz, Canwest News Service
...the great majority of casualties are white men between the ages of 20 and 39. They are more likely to have grown up in small towns than in major cities. And relative to its population, Atlantic Canada has suffered the heaviest losses.
With this:
Every ethnic group has carefully massaged
data to show that it sent the highest percentage etc, etc; this is all nonsense, in my view, because it includes conscripts and fails to differentiate between combat arms and services: Jews, who might have been expected to be especially concerned with the Second World War, e.g., had a lower percentage than their population share in volunteer enlistments and a higher percentage among conscripts; they also had a lower casualty rate than the norm which suggests a low combat arms representation.
Jack Granatstein
Posted by: Arminius | 2009-11-19 12:20:39 AM
Why is Canadian history about 50 years behind that of the US? Don't you people recognize that other people besides rich, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men in Toronto exist out there? The most you people include are wealthy Catholic Quebec men and pass it off as 'national unity'.
Until Westerners, Indians, Blacks, and women receive full attention, Canada doesn't have a history.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-19 8:25:23 AM
Hey Zeb:
You need to read more books and stop watching American movies.
Canada does have a rich, full and exciting history. We just don't tart it up like the American movie industry (the world's largest propaganda apparatus) does to American history.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-19 10:12:25 AM
Canada's "history" is little more than Holocaust denial. It is based more on wishful thinking and liberal fantasy than fact and analysis. Hollywood distorts American history every which way, but it is still better than Canada's founding lies.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-19 10:38:25 AM
Zeb:
Founding lies?
Please elaborate. And please add some fact and analysis for our edification.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-19 11:05:19 AM
The courers des bois did not stop at the US-Canadian border in colonial times because it did not exist. They were found at every point between (what later became) Michigan to Louisiana. Nor were they simple trappers. Many fought for their empire. Yet for some reason this image exists in "Canadian history" textbooks in high schools. Pathetic. You people are 50 years behind.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-19 11:31:34 AM
They also made it out to the West Coast of British Columbia and what was to become Washington as well, and all points in between.
They were the heavy lifters of the day and were the backbone of the fur trade, which opened up this country and the US. They also left many settlements right across Canada with perhaps the exception of British Columbia.
This is the image in every history book written for Canadian students.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-19 11:41:16 AM
you people" Da Punk is in his holier than thou American mode today. He's having trouble getting his ZELDOX dosage correct.
Posted by: The Stig | 2009-11-16 7:26:05 PM
Stig, are you off your meds again?
Posted by: Doug Gilchrist | 2009-11-20 10:06:00 AM
"Looks promising"? You may get goose pimply over goose stepping, dude, but you clearly have no grasp of where politics in this country is going during the Harper Reaction....
Posted by: John Collison | 2009-11-16 8:20:13 PM
Yeah I know exactly what harper is. He's a criminal because he broke his election law and he will pass any policy that will give him a majority. Welcome to the game of politics.
Posted by: Doug Gilchrist | 2009-11-20 10:08:27 AM
It seems he doesn't get the fact that Canadian citizenship can only be granted by the federal government either. The provinces cannot grant citizenship nor issue passports, visas or expulsion orders.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-18 10:02:20 PM
yes some people are too stupid to realize the difference between city, provincial and federal politics. Maybe there should be a minimum IQ for voting.
Posted by: Doug Gilchrist | 2009-11-20 10:11:37 AM
Canada's "history" is little more than Holocaust denial. It is based more on wishful thinking and liberal fantasy than fact and analysis. Hollywood distorts American history every which way, but it is still better than Canada's founding lies.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-19 10:38:25 AM
Pike's typical Marxist Claptrap.
Posted by: Doug Gilchrist | 2009-11-20 10:14:11 AM
The courers des bois did not stop at the US-Canadian border in colonial times because it did not exist. They were found at every point between (what later became) Michigan to Louisiana. Nor were they simple trappers. Many fought for their empire. Yet for some reason this image exists in "Canadian history" textbooks in high schools. Pathetic. You people are 50 years behind.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-19 11:31:34 AM
You wan't to live in a world of Unicorns where the sky is pink.
Posted by: Doug Gilchrist | 2009-11-20 10:16:01 AM
Not really but it is better than the lily white one you Canadians think you live in. Soviet propagandaists offered better history than what you people get.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-11-20 1:14:45 PM
Not really but it is better than the lily white one you Canadians think you live in. Soviet propagandaists offered better history than what you people get.
Posted by: the black racist Zebulon Punk | 2009-11-20 1:14:45 PM
You Canadians. Bwahahahahahaha Da Punk is an American today. Keep watching PBS Punk where everything has to include a negro angle even when there isn't one.
Posted by: The Stig | 2009-11-20 5:40:41 PM
It seems he doesn't get the fact that Canadian citizenship can only be granted by the federal government either. The provinces cannot grant citizenship nor issue passports, visas or expulsion orders.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-18 10:02:20 PM
yes some people are too stupid to realize the difference between city, provincial and federal politics. Maybe there should be a minimum IQ for voting.
Um, yes, Gentleman (Gilchrist, Ellison):
Thank you for the concern for my ignorance and/or intellectual deficiency.
This is what I wrote: "This is yet another example of why it is we DO need immigration reform: as in, Ottawa OUT of the immigration biz.
It should be conducted by provinces with private and civil parties."
It is what I still advocate. Notice the word "reform".
I can't wait to hear the case FOR something as vital and important as immigration to be managed by government bureaucrats in Ottawa as opposed to locally by provincial governments and civil groups.
Enlighten me with your sage advocacy of the status quo, please.
And skip any appeals to the dead hand of the past: federal control of immigration even if constitutional, is archaic and counter-productive.
Posted by: JC | 2009-11-21 1:54:05 AM
John,
Immigration into Quebec from outside of Canada is coordinated between federal and provincial counterparts to ensure compliance with Quebec language regulations and labour requirements. This means, in others words, that Quebec's preference is for French-speaking people, and the province decides more or less where they should go.
As far as I know, this is the only level of cooperation of this type between federal/provincial immigration entities in all of Canada.
The federal government of Canada, like all other federal governments in the world, is solely responsible for naturalization, issuing of passports and the like.
Until the time comes when Canada devolves and the provinces become independent states, provincially issued passports would not be recognized by any other other country for international travel or entry. Period.
Archaic? Counter-productive? Sounds like a legal requirement to me.
I really hope you are not advocating the use of government-issued documentation for work and travel within Canada. This really does smack of the fascism you so often claim to abhor.
I would like to hear your case as to why immigration should become a provincial responsibility, and why the provinces would be any less susceptable to corruption than the way it is presently done.
Posted by: Ed Ellison | 2009-11-21 9:45:17 AM
@ Ed Ellison
Devolve. Exactly.
And while I do advocate for separate "Canadas", obviously I would also advocate for unilateral free exchange of people, goods, capital... if one jurisdiction wished to restrict entry of these because another did not issue "papers", that is THEIR loss.
And we already experience that NOW to the detriment of the protectionists inside Canada and outside.
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Posted by: somaie | 2009-12-18 10:24:20 PM
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