The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

“Some time, not too long ago, while no one was watching, Canada became
the world’s most successful country.” That this should be the
opening line of a book by John Ibbitson—an apologist for Mike Harris,
George W. Bush, and Stephen Harper—while the Liberals were still in
office is amazing. Indeed, Ibbitson considered what he calls “Liberal
hegemony” to be “the greatest single threat to the health of the
nation.”

A Globe and Mail columnist, Ibbitson finds Canada one of the most
tolerant, multicultural, ethnically diverse countries in the world, one
that is home to world-class writers, musicians, and athletes. By global
standards, he considers it well governed even under the Liberals. He
says that he did not want to write a diatribe but rather to present
suggestions on ways to make a good product better.

Unfortunately, his “solutions” to Canada’s problems are dubious.
Ibbitson believes in strong provinces that would handle almost
everything except defence and foreign policy. That, however, would be no
panacea even if corporations could not threaten one province with
relocation in another, or if powerful lobbyists like the oil industry in
Alberta and the Irving family in New Brunswick could not dominate
provincial governments in a manner unthinkable with the much larger
federal government.

There are ambiguities. Is an international treaty on the environment a
matter of foreign policy, or is it Alberta’s right as owner of natural
resources to sell unlimited supplies of oil to a jurisdiction (the
United States) in violation of international law (the Kyoto Treaty)?
Experience shows that poor provinces have appreciated assistance from
wealthier ones, and that those that are rich or poor in one generation
do not necessarily remain rich or poor in another. (Alberta was poor in
the 1930s but is rich now. Nova Scotia was once one of Canada’s most
economically advanced provinces.) If the federal government makes itself
next to irrelevant, Canadians may question the need for a federal
government. Finally, Ottawa is not always wrong, despite Ibbitson’s
examples, and the provinces are not always right. Yet, even if
Ibbitson’s recommendations are unacceptable and his fears dated, his
facts and figures make this book worthwhile.