Canadian Communities: A Conservative Proposal for Social and Economic Restoration

H. Graham Rawlinson teaches history at York University in Toronto.

This brief set of reflections is businessman John Korinek’s solution
to the political and economic woes that plague Canada in the shadow of
the next millennium. He advocates a radical change to Canadian democracy
and calls for a new “natural” or “family” government, by which
he means community-based democracy, with a national “corporate”
government handing out money on the basis of need to Canada’s “4,500
communities.” An invigorated capitalism would be the result, and with
it an end to deficits, unemployment, Quebec separatism, a rotten
education system, ... and on and on.

This is a puzzling book. It is a set of recommendations on many
subjects, not a logically argued essay; it lurches awkwardly, for
example, from obscure specifics on the Canadian economy to astonishingly
simplistic prescriptions for satisfying aboriginal demands for
self-government. The book is also full of contradictions. Korinek blames
both “reckless individualism” and “misguided idealistic
socialism” for Canada’s ills. He denounces fascism and
dictatorships, yet his corporatist state and emphasis on citizen
responsibility seem frighteningly collectivist and fundamentally
undemocratic.

Perhaps, in an increasingly complex world, all manifestos that advocate
such radical surgery on the body politic contain these sorts of
problems. It does seem that the author’s biggest crime is caring very
much about his country. Still, with the unsettling certitude of a
religious convert, Korinek writes as if the solutions to the challenges
that the Canadian community faces are simple ones.