The Trouble with Canada: A Citizen Speaks Out

Franзois Boudreau is a professor of sociology at Laurentian University
in Sudbury.

In The Trouble with Canada, Gairdner attempts to explain Canada’s
contemporary problems. This ambitious project sends him digging deep
into the roots of Western culture.

The book has two parts. The first establishes the theoretical framework
for his perspective on two basic models of the modern state: the
English-style individual voluntary compact, based on common law (a
“bottom-up” system) and the French-style
individuals-as-a-product-of-the-community, based on civil and criminal
codes (a “top-down” system). The second part identifies Canada’s
major problems.

Gairdner correctly identifies a number of problems: the legitimation
crisis of Canada’s political life, the developing roles of experts and
bureaucrats, the “legalization of politics,” a huge deficit and high
taxes, and the rise of criminality, all of which underlie the loss of
control we experience in daily life. But Gairdner’s contribution stops
here: the rest of the book is problem solving by finger snapping.

For Gairdner, French-style government is totalitarian, leading to state
control over everything and everyone, whereas English-style government
is a democratic form of political power, which goes hand in hand with
capitalism and individual freedom. Societies choosing the latter form of
government live under democratic capitalism, the only way of realizing
the potential to maximize their wealth. According to Gairdner, Prime
Minister Trudeau implemented the French style of government and started
imposing socialism from the top down, which is the origin of our
troubles.

Gairdner’s vision is unsubtle, full of half-truths and second-hand
quotations. This former university professor and businessman takes a
“citizen’s” view that reduces Canada to a nation with a bilingual
region. Feminism is socialist by definition and communistic in its
goals. Homosexuality is abnormal and steals procreative males from
women. Present immigration policies will lead Canada to become an Asian
nation in 250 years. Expensive medical treatments should not be
performed on the poor. And so on.

Gairdner defines himself as a neo-conservative. What he disagrees with,
he calls totalitarian; his solutions, he calls democratic or
libertarian. Gairdner states that market competitiveness is human
nature, as if this “human nature” were not totalitarian when
imposed.