The Niagara Independent, June 30, 2023 – Many Canadians now appreciate the full context of Justin Trudeau’s comment back in 2015, when he surmised that Canada would become the “first post-national state.” Having just become Prime Minister of the country, Trudeau stated in that often-quoted New York Times interview, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” when it comes to our national identity.

Perhaps Trudeau was off-side to say that in 2015, however, as a result of his systematic approach through the last eight years, PM Trudeau and his political operatives have effectively been erasing Canadian history to achieve his post-national vision.

As a point of reference, Wikipedia provides a definition of post-nationalism as: “the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to cross-nation and self-organized or supranational and global entities as well as local entities.” The factors constituting the post-national process include shifting national economies to global ones, increasingly referencing global identities and beliefs, and transferring national authorities to multinational corporations and the United Nations.

In celebrating our country this weekend, let’s consider some of the obvious ways the Trudeau government is revising and erasing the Canada’s history to further his post-national vision.

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell

From 2015 through to today, the overarching narrative of the Trudeau government is a woke progressivism that projects western culture as a hierarchy of power, one of oppressors and the oppressed. This woke world view is guilt-based, where success is achieved through force, and authority is undeserving.

In the last eight years, Canadians have been re-educated to understand our country is founded on genocide, theft, racism and oppression. It is therefore inappropriate, indeed unacceptable, to honour our forefathers’ achievements and their mores, traditions, and identifying symbols.

And in reconciling the darkness of our country’s past, the Trudeau government has set about to enlighten Canadians with a corrected record of cultural and societal legacies, one in which generations of “settlers” have no legitimate right to their accomplishments and should only harbour shame for past faults.

The Trudeau government’s purposeful revisionism of the country’s history has been unabated. There are many recent instances to cite. For example, on the eve of King Charles III’s coronation, the government issued a media statement that the image of the royal crown was to be redrawn with the cross and fleur-de-lys removed from Canada’s heraldry, replaced with a stylized snowflake and maple leaves. Canadians were also informed that there would be no further reference to the “United Kingdom” and “Defender of the Faith” in the title of our Canadian monarchy.

Similarly, this spring the government unilaterally announced it had redesigned the Canadian passport. The documentation was to be stripped of the historical images of the Fathers of Confederation, the Vimy Ridge memorial, the Famous Five, Champlain, the Northwest Mounted Police, the Stanley Cup, the Bluenose, and the Houses of Parliament. Even the most celebrated person in recent history – the beloved Terry Fox — was erased from the passport. In place of these iconic Canadianna images, the passport is to feature watermark pictures of a narwhale, Canada goose, a squirrel eating a nut, a man raking leaves, maple syrup, a barn, etc.

In the last few years Canadians have witnessed a series of acts that are cancelling recognition of our country’s history within the public forum. There has been a rash of statutes defaced and toppled – from Sir John A Macdonald to Egerton Ryerson to Queen Victoria. Some statues – like those at Queen’s Park and at the National Capital’s airport – have been quietly removed and put into storage for “safe keeping.” Canada’s first Prime Minister has had his name erased from schools, roads, and even at the aforementioned Ottawa airport.

John A Macdonald has also been taken from the country’s currency. Recall a few years ago the government announced it was redesigning the country’s bills and that the first alteration was to remove PM Macdonald, replaced by…. (Can you tell me who is now on the $10 bill – without looking? Okay, now look. Who is she?) 

In 2019, the federal cabinet issued a directive to review and revise more than 2,100 historic plaques and monuments nationwide to address concerns of the Canadian legacies of “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.” Parks Canada oversaw revisions that “address conflict and controversy” and “power dynamics”; “confront the legacy of colonialism and its impact on Indigenous peoples”; stress “inclusiveness”; and focus on “diversity of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and religion.”

In this same period, Canada’s chief archivist purged more than 7,000 webpages on the Library and Archives Canada website, including those referencing PM Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, and the War of 1812. It was explained that this was done to correct the government’s account of the country’s history, expunging documents “outdated and redundant” or that “may offend people.”

On a related matter, perhaps the greatest affront to the country and its people is the Trudeau government’s intent to amend the Citizenship Act so that new Canadians will be permitted to swear their oath of allegiance online with a tick of a box. To add insult, as Blacklock’s Reporter reveals, upon completing the form on the government website immigrants will be mailed a memento maple leaf pin – made in China.

Canadian historian Gerry Bowler, a senior fellow of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, has been highly critical of the government’s obsessiveness to erase Canada’s history and our forefather’s traditions. In an Epoch Times editorial, Bowler advanced, “These acts are not trivial and they are not accidental. They reflect an attitude on the part of our elites that resents attachments to our past because they hinder their attempts to alter our behaviours, which they view as outdated, parochial, and selfish. It is a stealth campaign that proceeds step by little, undebated, step.”

Dr. Mark Milke is another Canadian historian who has just published, “The 1867 Project – Why Canada should be cherished not cancelled.” This book is a collection of essays that distinguishes Canadian values and ideals found within the 19th century classic liberalism movement and the rich legacies of British government and institutions. Contrary to PM Trudeau’s contention that Canada has no national identity, Dr. Milke identifies the core essence of Canada is found in our regard for individual rights and freedoms, the worth of the individual, rule of law, capitalism, and democratic government.

In an insightful True North interview on the Andrew Lawton Show, Dr. Milke observed, “The point about history in a liberal democracy is that you build on the sacrifices and successes of the past, you don’t deny the wrong things that have happened in the past…. To take a simplistic view of history is to miss the full breadth and depth of human beings, and their age and ours.”

As Milke, Bowler and many others will argue, a people’s national identity is forged in the country’s history and with its peoples’ traditions and mores. No doubt, this is the very reason why the Trudeau government goes to such a great length to erase Canadian history and denigrate the country’s past accomplishments.

Bowler summarizes this idea succinctly, “A person without roots, without a memory, without a story can be easily influenced and cause no trouble to the authorities. A nation without a common history in which citizens can take pride cannot long survive.”

So, this Canada Day, let’s wave the flag and unashamedly celebrate our freedoms and good fortunes. Pay proper homage to the country’s forefathers and reflect on their successes. And in this way, may the Canadian dream endure Justin Trudeau’s post-national vision. To all, happy Canada Day!  

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/trudeau-erasing-canadian-history-to-achieve-his-post-national-vision/

The Niagara Independent, July 1, 2022 – From his earliest revelations about wanting to transform this country into a post-national state, PM Justin Trudeau and his enablers have been on a mission to hollow out the idea of Canada. There is to be no core identity, no proud history, no mainstream traditions, no sense of belonging. Seven years into his mission, the country marks its 155th birthday with chaotic and politically charged gatherings across the land that, at best, reflect a shaken sense of nationhood; but, perhaps more accurately, they signal Canadians’ social contract has been forsook. 

Whether it’s the PM’s response to the truckers or the Liberals embrace of the World Economic Forum’s agenda, Canadian editorialists and political pundits now openly debate the damage being done by the Trudeau Government’s constant undermining of the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights, its destabilization of the country’s resource economy, and the rewriting of Canada’s history to shame our cultural and societal legacies. 

Andrew Coyne’s commentary this week in the Globe and Mail identifies “the vacuum at the centre of Canadian politics” with politicians degrading and disregarding “obligations to common sense, or the ordinary routines of democratic politics, or the rule of law.” Independent journalist Matt Gurney suggests our lack of political leadership has Canadians settling for mediocrity. Numerous columnists including William Gairdner are documenting how the government has morphed from soft socialism to soft totalitarianism. Some like Rupa Subramanya and Warren Kinsella often write on the perverse nature of Trudeau’s authoritarian kleptocracy.

So, this day’s scenes of unrest in the Nation’s Capital and its various cross-country protests against the celebration of “Canada” speak directly to the crisis of our nationhood’s legitimacy, a crisis that is continuously being stoked by the Trudeau Government. Trudeau’s ceaseless use of wedge politics has effectively eroded Canadians’ trust and faith in one another. The PM and his operatives do not let a single opportunity pass by without virtue signaling a division between Canadians. Case in point is most recently when Trudeau and his senior ministers infused the U.S. political maelstrom on abortion into Canada’s public debate, purposefully to 1) embolden his progressive base, and 2) highlight the moral and political divides on this contentious issue.

In the Financial Post, Joe Oliver offers his Lament for a misgoverned nation: “As they prepare to celebrate their country’s 155th birthday, Canadians are suffering at the hands of a divisive, incompetent government that has undermined prosperity, freedom, parliamentary responsibility, the independence of institutions, national unity and our country’s global standing.”

From the deluge of hapless news coming out of Ottawa these days, it seems that the very fabric of our nation is threadbare. Consider how these situations will end.

Canadians are being told there has been no impropriety or “undue influence” exercised with the latest scandalous news that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki “made a promise” to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister’s Office to use the mass murders in Nova Scotia to help pass the Liberals gun control law. Senior Mounties have exposed the political power play. Yet, the same people who caused the obstruction of justice scandals involving Jody-Wilson-Raybould and SNC Lavalin, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, and the WE Charity payouts, claim the senior Mounties are fabricating their story. 

Canadians are now camping out for days in front of federal government offices with hopes that they might get their passports in time for their summer and fall vacations. To address the snake-like lineups moving at glacier speed, PM Trudeau announced a 13-member ministerial taskforce committee that (in his words) “will help guide the work of the government to better meet the changing needs of Canadians and continue to provide them with the high-quality services they need and deserve.” The committee will begin meeting in early July.  

Inflation last month hit almost 7.7 per cent, the highest it has been in 40 years when the current PM’s father was PM. Unfortunately, the Trudeau Liberals now know nothing more of how to handle runaway inflation as the Trudeau Liberals did then. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s latest budget included more fiscal stimulus, more debt, more regulation and more taxes. Recall, she appeared beside the Bank of Canada governor to pronounce inflation was “transitory.” Recently, when asked about government actions to tamper inflationary pressures, she claimed the government has “done enough already.” In another interview when asked about the frustrations Canadians are experiencing with rising prices, Freeland offered “it is okay to be mad.” 

Gas pump prices in Canada continue to climb causing increasing strain for daily commuters, suburban families, and commercial drivers. Though Canadians are being told this is a global pressure in part caused by Russia, the fact is our country has the highest and highest-rising prices of any oil-developing nation. In comparing pump prices in Niagara Falls, Ontario to Niagara Falls, New York the gap has widened to more than 33 per cent more per litre. (News Thursday from an internal Department of Environment report tells us that new regulatory taxes on gas to be imposed July 1, 2023 will have a direct impact on prices by as much as 36 cents per litre.) The Americans are considering tax relief for motorists; any type of gas tax relief is something the Trudeau government has repeatedly rejected. 

More horrors were reported from Ukraine this week when missiles hit residential buildings in Kiev and one missile struck a shopping centre, killing 16 and injuring over 40. While this news shook the world, PM Trudeau was hamming it up at the G7 meetings in Germany, mocking Vladimir Putin and photos of him bare-chested horseback riding. The Canadian PM had nothing more to offer his colleagues at the NATO summit. In the past couple of years, it is evident Canada has been marginalized in international affairs – left out of AUKUS, no mention with the QUAD Alliance, and our diplomats are MIA in any discussions of defending Ukraine. Still our Trudeau Government boasts its hashtag diplomacy: #IStandWithUkraine. 

Finally, consider the news that Canada Day in Winnipeg has been replaced with “New Day” celebrations, a solemn statement to support Indigenous rights and to stand with those who hold grievances against Canada as a nation. Queen’s University professor Bruce Pardy makes this observation in an Epoch Times article, “The cancellation and renaming of Canada Day… reflects a kind of cultural self-hate that has gripped the body politic in Canada.” 

Professor Pardy homes in on the sobering significance, “Our institutions have embraced the premises of critical theory, an anti-Western ideology that insists that Canada and other Western nations are fundamentally unjust, systemically racist, oppressive, and destructive… the most serious threat to Canada may be its conditioned disgust with its own history and traditions.”

So, returning to Joe Oliver’s column and his use of the adjective “misgoverned”. Oliver assumes the Trudeau Government is rudderless and unfocused when, in fact, there is plenty of evidence what is at play here is more than incompetence. On this Canada Day, Parliament Hill is off-limits. The PM is insulting “those people” again, purposefully dividing and erasing the idea that we should celebrate our country. 

Oh Canada, this is lamentable. 

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK: https://niagaraindependent.ca/lament-for-our-post-national-state/

The Niagara Independent, June 26, 2020 – Back in October 2015, the newly-elected Justin Trudeau’s seemingly obtuse comments on the country he was about to lead are now understood as a foreshadowing of his debasement of “Canada” as Canadians once knew it. In the now infamous New York Times Magazine interview, Canada’s new PM declared “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” and he speculated that the country could become the “first postnational state.” At the time nobody thought the advance of postnationalism would be a governing imperative. Now nearly five years later, Canadians have come to recognize it as the hallmark of Justin Trudeau’s time in office.

By definition “postnationalism” is pertaining to a time or mindset in which the identity of a nation is no longer important. Wikipedia concisely describes postnationalism: “the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to cross-nation and self-organized or supranational and global entities as well as local entities.” It continues to list a variety of factors constituting the postnational process: shifting national economies to global ones, increasingly referencing global identities and beliefs, and transferring national authorities to multinational corporations and the United Nations.

By looking at Canada through Justin Trudeau’s postnational lens, Canadians can better understand what is happening in the country. For example, Canadians learned this week that Canada has lost its AAA credit rating. Canada’s indebtedness has risen from 88 to 115 percent of the country’s GDP. This is being explained away as a result of necessary government spending to support Canadians through the pandemic. However, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre critiques the country’s financial state: “The Liberal government has destabilized our finances and downgraded our debt, through over four years of reckless deficit spending. The United States, the European Union, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Singapore, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have all retained AAA debt ratings with Fitch. All of these countries have had to contend with COVID-19, but Fitch has downgraded none.”

MP Poilievre assesses the Trudeau Government’s fiscal record: “Going into the pandemic Trudeau gave us $80 billion in debt, growth of 0.3%, half of Canadians $200 from insolvency, higher unemployment than the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Germany and the second highest total public and private debt/GDP in the G7. All of this occurred before the first COVID-19 case.”

With the additional pandemic spending, Canada’s national debt is now nearly $1 trillion. The country’s weakened economic state and loss of credit rating puts Canadians in a more vulnerable position in international markets, increasing the cost of borrowing and our burden of debt payments for years.

Across the land, the Nation seems to be splintering. Saskatchewan news columnist and former federal MP John Gormley this week surmised “In Trudeau-land, maybe this really is post-national Canada.” Gormley is very critical of PM Trudeau’s devaluing of a core Canadian identity – particularly in Western Canada and states that now there is “nothing that anchors us — from longtime to new Canadians — to a common purpose or strives to unify us behind an ideal.” He cities the PM as being responsible for the rising civil disobedience that has resulted in growing activism, barricades and contempt for the law. Gorley writes: “His non-stop campaign of piety, virtue signalling, grandstanding and lecturing us on the holy troika of Indigenous reconciliation and “balancing the economy with the environment,” has been a green light for many activists to stop all oil and gas.”

National Post columnist Jonathan Kay went further to suggest the PM has desecrated the country’s history, its builders and past leaders. Kay argues that Canada’s identity has transformed to a country convinced that we are “a genocide state.” Canadian media, academic and political elites are obsessed with the narrative that we are “an ugly scar on traditional Indigenous lands,” and the “whole vocabulary — settler, neo-colonial, appropriation — declares that Canada is garbage, hoping that an attitude of self-abasement would somehow lead us to “reconciliation.””

Donna Kennedy-Glans, former Albertan MLA, and former CBC broadcaster Don Hill coauthored an editorial that also voiced frustration with Trudeau’s vision of the country. “Our prime minister is focused on a global agenda. Meanwhile, he and his team are setting Canada against itself…. Our prime minister’s neglect, even callousness, is driving a wedge between regions and igniting Western alienation. He’s playing with fire. Trudeau and his cabinet have been preoccupied with their global vision of how things ought to be at the expense of how things are in the country.”

The Trudeau Liberals’ disregard for the country’s diverse national interests has resulted in a new separatist Party to take western Provinces from Confederation. This week Wexit Canada Party leader Jay Hill stated, “…in the end, [federal] governments have to cater to the golden triangle of Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa and the West will never get a fair deal.” In previous interview, Hill pulls no punches: “I’m saying that this is an illegitimate government. It was elected by Ontario. Ontarians decided to re-elect Mr. Dressup despite his clear disdain for Western Canada and for our resource industries. And we just simply cannot take it anymore.”

In a 2019 Sun Media editorial Candice Malcolm dissected the PM’s rejection of Canadian nationalism arguing he has devalued Canada’s racially diverse and pluralistic society for undefined globalism. Malcolm states, “Trudeau has engineered these changes and created a toxic brew in Canada: lax integration policies juxtaposed with a forced multiculturalism that downplays Canadian values and divisive identity politics that demonizes Canadian heritage and identity.”

So if Malcolm, Kay, Gormley and others are correct with their assessments of what is left of our country, it is a vast land devoid of national identifiers. Justin Trudeau’s Canada defies unifying definitions: with our embarrassing history, there are no acceptable norms or politically correct culture, no respected traditions, no legitimate mythos. We are but a mass of cosmopolitan people, gasping at some notion of globalism, without a grounding in a Nation’s past or its peoples’ efforts to get us to where we enjoy one of the best standards of living on the planet.

Oh (what once was) Canada! Enjoy your postnational Wednesday.

Chris George is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of CG&A COMMUNICATIONS. Contact: ChrisG.George@gmail.com

LINK:  https://niagaraindependent.ca/lament-for-what-once-was-a-nation/