Lord Black tells us an ugly truth about ourselves
by Ian Hunter
BEING Canadian means always having to say you're sorry. But it was not always so.
Last century Canada entered two world wars because we knew who our allies were and we knew right from wrong. By 1945 our military prowess was formidable. Canadian soldiers had achieved an enviable reputation worldwide. But that was then and this is now.
After September 11, when President George Bush declared war on terrorism, Canada was neither to be seen nor heard. Our prime minister considered a Liberal Party fundraiser in Toronto more important than a tour of "ground zero" in New York. Only after Mr. Chretien caught a whiff of the public disgust did he try to play catch-up by dispatching a few antique ships bearing Sea King helicopters in the general direction of landlocked Afghanistan. Predictably, the U.S. showed little interest in our military contribution; as one wag put it, if Canada wanted to make a serious contribution to the war effort we should donate our Sea Kings to Osama bin Laden.
Before our ships reached their destination, Defence Minister Art Eggleton announced that Canadian forces would not become involved, even in humanitarian missions, if it might be dangerous. After all, we are a nation of "peacekeepers." The trouble with that is, if you have peace you don't need "peacekeepers"; and if you have war, they are not much use.
Last month, the PM went to Edmonton to tell 900 members of the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry that even now (with Kabul already fallen) he could not say when, or even if, they will be deployed because "we have to get the mission right." Afterwards one paratrooper told the National Post: "It's embarrassing...knowing that you are not considered good enough to be sent in first." Another said: "I don't think they have a good understanding of what armies are for; it's like asking a policeman to run the other way if he sees a bank robbery."
How did we get this way? What has happened to Canada? Are we salvageable?
Conrad Black (now Lord Black of Crossharbour) has given much thought to these questions. He recently addressed the Fraser Institute under the title: "Reflections of an Ex-citizen."
From the age of eight, Lord Black told his audience, "I dreamt of a Canada where the most talented and ambitious people would not feel irresistibly drawn to other great foreign cities." But now, for Conrad Black, the dream is over. "Canada is, compared to other G7 countries, a plain vanilla place or...a good second place in the Lottario of life."
Mr. Black considers that endless constitutional wrangling drained our vitality; paternalism undermined our appetite for liberty; high taxes sapped initiative. "We became the only country in the world to entrench regional economic equality as a constitutional raison d'être of the country."
Canada pioneered universal medicare and compulsory gun control. "But these programs backfired," continued Mr. Black, "as we became one of the few countries to abolish private medicine, drove out many of our best doctors, reduced levels of medical services and persecuted gun collectors, hunters and farmers defending their animals from predators."
Pierre Trudeau gave us a Charter of Rights. "Its effect," Mr. Black said, "was to unleash on this country swarms of judicial tinkerers, social work judges ignoring the law and carrying out what they took to be the moral imperative of remaking society along faddish and idiosyncratic lines having little to do with relevant legislation. Canadian courts of law have largely become courts of equity, and the equity is politically correct dogma."
As for the economy: "[Canada's] productivity levels steadily lagged those of the U.S., the wage and security components of our industrial cost structure were higher than the American and the result was that in the last 45 years Canadians maintained their ability to export to the United States, upon which 87% of Canada's foreign trade and 43% of its gross national product now depend, by reducing the comparative value of the Canadian dollar by over 40%. Canada's standard of living, compared to that of the United States, factoring in tax reductions and productivity increases in the U.S., has declined by almost 40%."
What all this should tell us is that our military disgrace is not an isolated phenomenon: it is part of a general decline, the legacy of half a century of almost unbroken Liberal government. So where are we now?
Mr. Black again: "The movement of talented people to the United States has grown steadily to between 75,000 and 100,000 per year. The head of the Canadian government says they will be replaced by Haitian taxi drivers. They will not...Too many of Canada's leaders live in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles and London, which is one of the main reasons why the leaders in Ottawa and Toronto and elsewhere tend to be inadequate."
Lord Black concluded: "Renouncing my citizenship was the last and most consistent act of dissent I could pose against a public policy which I believe is depriving Canada of its right and duty to be one of the world's great countries...It was an act of patriotism directed against Canadian complacency at being a one-party federal state with no deliverance in sight."
How sad. How true.
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