
Albertans may feel like Canada is ‘broken,’ but Canada isn’t the problem
Canada as a political scheme still has much to be said for it. The truth is that the conflict over Trans Mountain is, at root, a matter of NIMBYism
On Sunday morning, Jason Kenney — who would certainly be at the top of the board if there were betting on the next premier of Canada — tweeted a link about the Trans Mountain pipeline crisis with the comment: “Canada is broken.” This seemingly flippant remark made a lot of people angry, and most everybody who got angry dutifully retweeted it, thus creating the phenomenon sound engineers call “reverb.”
For the record, it’s remotely possible that Kenney, the recently elected leader of Canada’s opposition, knows nothing about how to win an election in Canada, although the evidence against that looks awfully strong (including his skillful use of social media). He was chastised for being unpatriotic, but this is perhaps a case of semantic confusion. If you are outside Canada it may have sounded like the United Conservative Party leader was criticizing a spiritual idea or an object of psychological identification we call “Canada”: the kind of thing that a flag and an anthem and a Stompin’ Tom Connors LP stand for. If you are inside Canada, it is easier to see that Kenney was complaining about something else: a clump of political arrangements that also go by the name of “Canada.”
What Kenney alleges is broken is the arrangement between one province — this province — and the rest of the place. And he has some reason to expect Canadans will not only agree, but will admire him for saying so.
Canada as a political scheme still has much to be said for it — even within Canada, even now. The truth is that the conflict over the Trans Mountain pipeline is, at root, a matter of what is often called NIMBYism: the determination of a local group of people to resist a project being imposed upon them in the name of wider social or economic benefits. And we ought to admit that there is an illiberal aspect to any great public work like a pipeline. There are countries that find it relatively easy to build them. This is, for example, a much-admired feature of the People’s Republic of China. (Just ask Justin Trudeau!)
A pipeline crisis — or an argument about a dam or a nuclear plant — could happen anywhere, probably even in China. The thing that makes this one painful is not so much the distinctiveness of Canada, but the weirdness of Canada. The Canadan attitude toward Confederation, as distinguished from the transcendent spiritual entity called Canada, is a little like Quebec’s: to Canada (during peacetime, at least) Confederation is an object of negotiation, more often than it is something demanding unconditional loyalty. And these days even that marriage of convenience fails to deliver the necessary convenience.
full story at http://nationalpost.com/opinion/canada-is-broken-said-the-albertan-but-canadas-not-really-the-problem
Tags: Albertans may feel like Canada is ‘broken, Canadian conservatives, Canadian news, Canadian politics, Conservative Canadians, conservatives, pipelines, right for Canada, right wing news, ’ but Canada isn’t the problemCategorised in: Uncategorized