Donald Trump has done the unthinkable, he has made patriotism cool again among Canada’s ruling elite.
Yes, people like Justin Trudeau who have described Canada as a postnational, genocidal state with no core identity now want to boast about Canada.
The people of Canada have long wanted our nation’s leaders to stand up for this country. Average Canadians have remained patriotic, it’s our leaders who have lost their way.
“There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” Trudeau told the New York Times in 2015. “There are shared values – openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.”
Those don’t sound like the words of a man who is proud of the country that he had just been elected to lead. Of course, Trudeau spent years denouncing Canada before he became prime minister and at one point, according to a book from Toronto Star writer Althia Raj, considered leaving Canada after Stephen Harper won the 2011 election.
“Trudeau thought not only of leaving politics but of leaving Canada. He mused about moving to a city like New York, London, Paris or Geneva,” she wrote in the book the Contender in 2012.
That same year he said Canada wasn’t “worthy of our hopes and dreams.”
His running down of the country didn’t stop after he was elected. In 2019 he accused the whole country of being involved in a genocide, and in 2021 he said Canada was built on “a system of colonialism, of discrimination, of systemic racism.”
Not only did the Trudeau government put our flag at half-mast for much of 2021 over the unmarked graves frenzy, we saw liberal-minded Canadians describing the Canadian flag as a hate symbol during the 2022 Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.
It’s easy to understand why so many Canadians would be distraught at the direction of their country if this is how their leadership speaks of Canada. A recent Angus Reid survey found just 34% said they are “very proud” to be Canadian.
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A column from Robyn Urback in the Globe and Mail last weekend stated that we haven’t done enough to foster our civic identity and that has put us in the state we are in now.
“We’ve lost our national identity and with it, our pride in our country. But with some effort, and a deliberate course change from Canada’s leadership, we can get it back,” she wrote.
Perhaps that is the problem for some in our major urban centres, for those in the upper echelons of society, but that’s not what I see across the country.
Average Canadians remain patriotic, they simply want to cheer for our country again rather than having our better thans lecture us about how awful and evil Canada is. The average Canadian doesn’t see us as postnational or genocidal, and they don’t believe we have no core identity.
Go to a hockey game – be it the Leafs in downtown Toronto or a small town anywhere in the country – and you will hear the crowd stand loud and proud for the national anthem. Introduce a member of the Canadian Armed Forces at any public event and the crowd welcomes them enthusiastically.
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That hasn’t been the case in official Ottawa for years, though many are now wrapping themselves in the flag as they prepare to do battle with Trump and his claims of making Canada the 51st state.
When it comes to patriotism and pride in Canada, the gulf between those who run the country and those who make the country run has been growing for years. There is still pride in Canada even if there is not pride in the current leadership.
If the next government wants to see those Angus Reid poll numbers reverse, just stop talking down Canada. Stop treating our country and our history as objects of shame rather than pride.
In essence, do the opposite of what Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have been doing the last nine years.