Keywords Political Ideologies

Canada came to consciousness in a period when world war had undermined European power and discredited European nationalism and when the national power and influence of the US had spread throughout the world. In the Western world, the 2 wars, which were widely attributed to the excesses of nationalism, have contributed (along with liberal and Marxist historical thought) to strong antinationalist and internationalist reactions. Since 1945, Canadians have been divided about the Canadian variety of nationalism. Their federal governments, reflecting this confusion, have varied from the antinationalist to the nationalist - with incongruous results. The postwar prime minister most committed in rhetoric to the defence of national interests, John DIEFENBAKER, was probably the least effective in that defence; the PM most ardently opposed in principle to nationalism, Pierre Elliott TRUDEAU, zealously defended a nationalist ENERGY POLICY.

National sentiment developed slowly after Confederation, reflecting the strengths of provincialism and, in English-speaking Canada, the overriding sense of membership in the British Empire. There were glimmerings of nationalism in the CANADA FIRST movement of the 1870s and among writers of the 1890s. By 1911 Canada's nationalist dilemmas were becoming evident when the Laurier government was defeated over its modestly independent naval policy and a scheme of reciprocity with the United States, through a combination of anti- and pro-imperialist and anti-American opponents.

The country's participation in WWI did most to create a sense of distinct nationhood. The aftermath of WWI brought a surge of cultural nationalism, centered in Toronto and reflected in the painting of the GROUP OF SEVEN, in the founding of the CANADIAN FORUM, and the literary commentary of William Arthur DEACON in SATURDAY NIGHT magazine. Political nationalism, under the guidance of the Liberal government of W.L. Mackenzie KING, was directed against the fading symbols of colonial ties with Great Britain. This anticolonial nationalism met no resistance from Great Britain, but it conflicted with the attachment many English-speaking Canadians felt for British symbols, an attachment most persistently expressed politically through the CONSERVATIVE PARTY.

WWII thrust Canada, willy-nilly, into close military and economic integration with the US, which seriously undermined the possibility of independent Canadian nationhood. By 1945 the federal Liberal government and its influential senior civil service were inclined to believe that the country had passed beyond the era of nationalism into internationalism (in diplomacy) and CONTINENTALISM (in economic and cultural relations with the US), a condition considered blessed. In his last years of power, however, King sometimes brooded about the dangers of this absorption, and dreamed of independence. But, after the spring of 1946, COLD WAR hysteria caused King, as well as most Canadian politicians and their followers, to suppress such ideas.

Canadian national consciousness and the articulation of national interests were unexpectedly placed in suspension for a decade. English-speaking Canada was absorbed in economic development and Québec remained enveloped in its past. A vast and generally comfortable cultural and economic invasion from the south took place with the country's tacit consent. Only very tentative nationalist alarms could be sounded in this atmosphere of approval. The first of these in the postwar period was the Report of the Massey Royal Commission on NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ARTS, LETTERS AND SCIENCES (1951). It noted that the Canadian community faced not only dispersal in a vast landscape, but "influences from across the border as pervasive as they are friendly." In education, book publishing, magazine publishing, filmmaking, and radio the commission surveyed the American influences on Canadian life and warned of "the very present danger of permanent dependence."

Its nationalist program for containing the cultural challenge was increasingly accepted by the Liberal government of the early 1950s, while the same government maintained its indifference to any measures of ECONOMIC NATIONALISM. The Gordon Royal Commission on CANADA'S ECONOMIC PROSPECTS warned in 1956 of the potential dangers of economic subordination to the US and offered a mildly nationalist program of countermeasures. It was ignored by the ST. LAURENT administration. In view of the growth of direct US investment in Canada (see FOREIGN INVESTMENT), and Liberal encouragement of it, both the Conservative and CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH FEDERATION (CCF) opposition parties spoke in nationalist tones before the 1957 general election that brought the Conservatives to power. But in 6 years the Diefenbaker government could not work out a coherent cultural or economic program and continued, in practice, to promote economic and military integration with the US, while at the same time antagonizing the US administration with its defiant manner.

The Conservative defeat of 1963 brought a reformed Liberal Party to power under Lester B. PEARSON. In the beginning the Pearson government was dominated by the nationalist economic views of the minister of finance, Walter GORDON, a dissenting and atypical member of the Toronto business establishment. Gordon's program for gentle patriation of the economy suffered setbacks in Parliament and in party caucus almost immediately, but measures to limit foreign ownership of newspapers, magazines, radio and television were adopted in 1965, and the CANADA DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION was eventually established.

After 1965 the Pearson government retreated into quietism and came to terms with the opponents of nationalist policy in the business community. The Report of the Watkins Task Force on FOREIGN OWNERSHIP AND THE STRUCTURE OF CANADIAN INVESTMENT (1968) was officially ignored, as had been the Gordon Report. The government's renewed antinationalism was reinforced by the accession in 1968 of Pierre Trudeau, whose dogmatic opposition to nationalism was the product of his experiences in Québec under DUPLESSIS and his interpretation of European history.

The relative failure of Canadian nationalist policies in the 1960s and the evidence of overwhelming American influence in Canada stimulated the growth of a variety of popular nationalist organizations and activities in English-speaking Canada from 1968 onwards. The COMMITTEE FOR AN INDEPENDENT CANADA, led by Walter Gordon, Abraham Rotstein, Mel Hurtig, Peter NEWMAN and others, lobbied during the 1970s for a range of nationalist policies. The WAFFLE group sought to stiffen the nationalist backbone of the NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY but was eventually defeated and dispersed. The Public Petroleum Association incorporated nationalists from both movements in its campaign for repatriation of the oil industry.

A select committee of the Ontario legislature on economic and cultural nationalism, a national commission on Canadian Studies at the university level led by T.H.B. Symons, and various commissions on national identity in the media were active in the early 1970s. During its MINORITY GOVERNMENT 1972-74, the federal Liberal government conceded to evidence of increasing popular support for nationalist policies by creating the FOREIGN INVESTMENT REVIEW AGENCY and PETRO-CANADA, although both organizations lacked any clear direction from the Cabinet during their early years.

The nationalist movement in English-speaking Canada was weakened in the 1970s by an unreconciled division over attitudes to Québec nationalism. One element, while sympathetic to the cultural and linguistic aspirations of the Québecois, regarded Québec nationalism as a subversive force threatening the integrity of Canada. Another element saw it, on the contrary, as a potential complement to Canadian nationalism, to be emulated by English-speaking Canadians. The division lasted into the 1980s, when both Québec and Canadian nationalism lost their popular momentum. Following the Liberal Party's defeat in 1979, the Conservatives under Joe CLARK adopted a generally antinationalist stance favouring appeasement of MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS and the provinces, but the stance was uncertain and was incoherently applied in policy.

The government's early parliamentary defeat precipitated the election campaign of 1980, during which Trudeau and Marc LALONDE, in response to what they perceived as the forces of national disintegration in Québec and the West, adopted strong nationalist-centralist attitudes that led, on their return to power, to a drive for unilateral patriation of the Constitution and to the NATIONAL ENERGY PROGRAM of November 1980. This new Trudeau nationalism was blunt and heavy-handed, aimed at undercutting the growing power of the provinces rather than promoting national objectives for their own sake. It promoted strong responses from the provinces and from international business, who were able to appeal both to an unusual Canadian sense of fair play and to strong latent distaste for the prime minister's style. In the face of this opposition, the government's constitutional policy was adjusted to meet some provincial objections (though not those of Québec); and the energy policy was modified.

In the fall of 1982 the FEDERAL CULTURAL POLICY REVIEW COMMITTEE (Applebaum-Hébert) completed the first comprehensive survey of federal cultural policy since Massey's 1951 Royal Commission Report on Arts, Letters and Sciences. This review lacked the clear national vision and impact of the Massey Report. While it reflected the vastly expanded range of Canadian cultural enterprise in the intervening years, and contained over 100 policy recommendations, its proposals for retrenchment in the NATIONAL FILM BOARD and the CBC gave the Canadian cultural community confusing signals about national policy.

The Progressive Conservative government of Brian MULRONEY, elected in September 1984, adopted a policy of general reconciliation with the US which led to comprehensive FREE TRADE negotiations in 1986 and 1987, and ratification of the Free Trade Agreement following the general election of 1988. The Mulroney government's persistence in an antinationalist approach to the US was unprecedented, and prompted the revival of a nationalist opposition (see, eg, COUNCIL OF CANADIANS).

In 1993 the Free Trade Agreement was superseded by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which added Mexico to the North American economic community. Facing substantial popular criticism of the agreement, the Liberal Party promised to reopen the negotiation if it achieved office. But once in power the new government of PM Jean CHRÉTIEN conducted only token discussions with the US and Mexico, and confirmed the agreement without essential change.

In 1995 the Liberal government legislated to prevent publication of a split-run Canadian edition of the American magazine Sports Illustrated, but this action was judged to violate WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION rules after an American complaint in 1996. In 1999, the Americans used the threat of trade sanctions to force yet another initiative against split-run editions, this time under Sheila Copps, to dissipate into compromise.

Since 1945 the provinces, with only occasional exceptions (particularly Saskatchewan under the NDP's Allan BLAKENEY from 1971 to 1982), have followed open-door economic policies in competitive pursuit of foreign investment, regarding Ottawa's intermittent ventures into economic nationalism as misguided or worse. In the 1970s, however, the resource-rich provinces at last began to retrieve substantial shares of the economic rents formerly lost to the multinationals, but they typically did so in the name of provincial rather than national interests.

Canadian interests and the expression of national sensibility have been relegated to the margins of Canadian public life because of the overwhelming influences of American business and American culture in Canada and of the pressures of provincialism. Policies of national self-protection accepted as normal and uncontroversial in other industrial countries have been regarded with widespread alarm and disapproval in Canada. Efforts to sustain the Canadian arts have always been faced with the mass-marketing advantages of American competitors, whose products spill over the border, and with the dispiriting effects of rapid changes in technology that frequently render regulation obsolete. Nationalism in Canada, under the persistent barrages of the provincial governments, the business community, and the American private lobbies, administrations and media, has remained defensive and apologetic, rarely aggressive and never expansionist. It has become tenacious, but it remains the precarious nationalism of a diverse community that is still only dimly aware of itself, existing always in the American shadow and beset by doubt.

See also FRENCH CANADIAN NATIONALISM; ECONOMIC NATIONALISM; REGIONALISM.

Author DENIS SMITH

Suggested Reading
Maude Barlow and Bruce Campbell, Take Back the Nation (1991); Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging (1993); J.L. Granatstein, Yankee Go Home? (1996); D. Cameron, Nationalism, Self-Determination and The Quebec Question (1974); W.L. Gordon, A Choice For Canada (1966); G. Grant, Lament For A Nation (1965); L. LaPierre, If You Love This Country (1987); K. Levitt, Silent Surrender (1970); Denis Smith, Gentle Patriot (1973).

Links to Other Sites
The Canadian State: Documents & Dialogue
The Canadian State Web exhibition enables students to explore the various aspects of Canadian governance and to use a set of unique "real life" activities to create their own political party. The activities cover a wide variety of Social Science disciplines: History, Civics, Law, Language Arts, World Issues, Communications, and Canada in a North American Perspective. From Library and Archives Canada.