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COMMENTARY
November 14, 2009
Queen & country
Truth to tell, I am not an enthusiastic reader of government documents. I don't know many people who are, and the ones I do know, I wonder about.Nevertheless, having perused the new, fairly-well publicized revision of the Canadian government immigrants' guide, Discover Canada, I have felt a modest thrill. While this document has nothing on the great 19th-century immigrant guides -- some marvellous "private sector" literary productions, among which I rank Susanna Moodie's Life in the Clearings as the most exalted work of back-handed Canadian patriotism -- there is a faint echo of our actual national history, and even of our national virtues. The Canada depicted in the revised guide is recognizably the same Canada that had been here for some time; the one with some reasonably clear "normative" values, and which was not in the habit of apologizing for them. She remains, incidentally, the Canada that has a constitutional history, and a continuous record of responsible government, that is considerably older and deeper than any country on the mainland of Europe, except arguably Switzerland. This is a point that needs driving home to "my fellow Canadians" -- and not just new immigrants. Look at what happened in Europe through the last century; look at how young the European democracies are, and on what foundations they were erected. Look at what is still happening there today, as the dark Euro-bureaucracy imposes an anti-democratic constitutional order over the top of all those elected governments, with the power to arbitrarily overturn every decision they make. A "quasi-Lisbon treaty," only slightly amended from the original, and clouded by yet another layer of intentionally impenetrable language, has been rammed down the throats of Europeans, in defiance of unambiguous defeat in French, Dutch, and Irish referenda. It would have been rejected elsewhere, too, had not its promoters used legalistic means to prevent those from happening. Britain herself is now absorbed into this dark, irreversible squalour. For all our flaws, and for all the advances Canada's own dark bureaucracies have made in their cancerous invasions of our private lives, and into our traditions of due process, we have sunk to nothing like the European level of depravity. We still have independent institutions of long standing; and even if they won't stand boldly against the "trends of the times" -- against the metastatic growth of the Nanny State -- they could still do so. Our Canadian Parliament retains, on paper and in fact, real independent powers; and we, as citizens, do actually retain the power to elect all members of our legislative House. Courage alone would still serve to reverse those trends. The new immigrants' guide is itself an example of a little reversal. The attention it focuses on our Queen, as the lynchpin of our constitutional order, instead of prattling vainly about "caring and sharing" and "healthcare" and "multiculture" the way the previous document did, is exhilarating. This has nothing to do with the personal qualities or ethnicity of Her Majesty or other members of our royal family; it has everything to do with that system of "Crown in Parliament" that has been the guarantor of our liberties since it emerged in Magna Carta. This is something that can be hidden from immigrants, and from born Canadians regardless of ethnic past, only with evil intentions. In particular, the cheap nationalist attacks on the Queen over the last two generations in Quebec -- the attempt to make her a symbol of "Anglo imperialism" -- are an undermining of Quebec's own deepest royal traditions. For that Queen is head of state to French and English in exactly the same way; and she is successor to the old monarchs of France in an order that has never been republican. Our Queen is an Englishwoman, and so what? She has a house in London, and so what? She has a house in Ottawa, too, called Rideau Hall, and she is resident at Quebec, through her lieutenant-governor, in the same way representatives of the French Crown were resident in Château St-Louis. The system of representative government has evolved, but could do so in the way it has only thanks to such continuities. And when we look around the world, we have every reason to be thankful. Ditto, the emphasis on our military. This should have nothing to do with political faction; stressing Canada's "healthcare system" had far more to do with that. Our freedom is founded in Canadian sovereignty, and we have every reason to be proud of what our soldiery have done, and must do, to preserve that. The protection of the realm is any government's highest secular priority. The provision of social services can never be. How wonderful to see a big lie corrected, in the general direction of the truth. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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