The Betrayal of Canada Redux

When we become a carbon copy of the presiding empire we are powerless.

The uncomfortable part of being a Canadian in these times is that we are living a very pretentious existence. In the aftermath of WW ll we like many other countries had some hard choices to make. Ours was unique in that had to choose between being a country or a colony. Sharing the world’s longest unprotected border with the empire next door was both a curse and a blessing. We could build a strong democracy on the northern half of the continent or we could coattail on the empire next door. The latter was the facile choice our political elites of the time. In doing so our political and economic sovereignty were the casualties as we became a”branch plant economy.”

Incremental colonization was the order of day over subsequent decades as it ate away at our institutions, policies and national cohesion, and our ability and willingness to act as a sovereign nation. Colonization has played a heavy hand in balkanizing the country.

Today colonization is replete, greatly accelerated by the advent of Neoliberalism in the 1980’s as it swept through the Western democracies leaving corporatism dominate and governments in corporate capture. National governments were no longer willing or able to set national priorities.

Canadians appear content with our colonial status but at the same time are restive. Our discontent with the present government is entirely justified but it goes further than that as we are living inverted totalitarianism where we have the trappings of democracy but no real democracy. We are dancing in the ruins of neoliberalism.

Mel Hurtig, publisher, author and nationalist spent his life time advocating a strong sovereign Canada. He died in 2016 at the age of 84. His books, writings and speeches defined the betrayal in all its manifestations over many decades. Today we are seeing the apotheosis of the betrayal as government is powerless to deal with debilitating crises.

As Ralston Saul points out above, capitalism left to run free will destroy societies, and the neoliberal ideology is the instrument of execution. It has destroyed the USA as a country, and Canada as a colony as we have become a carbon copy of the empire leaving our borders open to every influence and corruption.

The empire is waging war on the world and both Canadian and the US populations are slaves to its wars. As pundits have observed the US cannot afford these wars and must cannibalize its NATO vassal states to do so.

We consistently refuse to address the dire consequences of perpetual war on our societies. We think wars half-way around the world don’t affect us- they do!, in more ways than we can imagine.

Canada spends tens of billions of dollars supporting the empires wars. On a per capita basis we have spent almost as much in Ukraine as the US. Our Navy is in the the Taiwan Straits exercising gun boat diplomacy trying to provoke war with China. As of last January we have signed a sweet heart contract for the purchase of F-35 jet fighters. Over the the life of the contract it is going to cost Canadians 88 billion dollars.

In both Canada and the US social programs are being raided to cover the costs of the war and the critical decline of Canada’s much vaunted Medicare system continues.

With Canada’s looming housing crisis the federal government is clearly totally liable as it has failed to co-ordinate housing starts with the huge influx of refugees.

As the above chart shows there has been a sharp decline in housing starts since the Mulroney era which just happens to be when neoliberalism was taking root in Canada.

Little wonder we are in a housing crisis when successive governments have ignored the issue for two decades.

The stark reality is that government is powerless to address the crisis as its executive powers now reside with corporate capitalism — Canada(and the USA) are both dancing in the ruins of neoliberalism.

Just as in the 1990’s we have another wave of mortgage refugees forced out their homes by incompetent government policy, we have another one now.

Populations of the dissolute West must come to grips with the reality economic policy under neoliberalism will never be our favor. It is set to benefit corporations and the 1%, now and in the future.

Mortgage and war refugees are mere by-products of the absolute despotism we are witnessing.

Voters may believe that electing another, party, another president, or prime minister will solve issues ; but we are long past that point. All political parties have been emasculated by the neoliberal ideology. The crisis is systemic and there are no messiahs in sight.

The media is also instrumental in this profound betrayal of the public trust. As agents of corporatism and imperialist war mongering it has prostituted itself, failing to tell the truths of our times and becoming a laughable parody in the theater of the absurd.

Where American intellectuals and academics speak truth from the margins, their Canadian counterparts cower in their muddied ivory towers.

At a time when a dynamic progressive multipolar world is emerging Canada gets to watch from the sidelines impaled on its self-inflicted colonization- No scapegoats allowed.

Canada is not in a “natural state”.

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