Goodbye Canada?

Joseph Garcea is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan.

This clear and concise monograph is designed to stimulate thinking about
the perennial Canadian preoccupation with national underdevelopment and
the “brain drain” to the United States. It is yet another lament for
what is depicted as Canada’s hinterland role in the American regional
and global, hegemonic metropolis. In explaining the migration of
Canadian human and financial capital to the United States, it identifies
the conventional “push and pull” factors commonly attributed to
migrants throughout the world—the problems of the homeland and the
potential of the proverbial “promised land.”

Goodbye Canada? is the outgrowth of what is referred to as the
“Underground Royal Commission” television documentary by Stornoway
Productions, which was established to investigate the current and future
state of the Canadian political system and society. In keeping with its
origins, the book has a journalistic style and format. It consists of a
series of commentaries by the author and approximately two-dozen
Canadian interviewees, including some notable academics and
entertainers, some of whom have stayed in Canada and some of whom have
gone to make their mark and their home in the American promised land.

The book makes an attempt to be balanced by asking not only why many
people are migrating south of our border but also why many from south of
the border and around the world are migrating to Canada. It also
acknowledges the gains as well as the losses that this country incurs as
a result of those migration trends. Still, one gets an uneasy feeling
that Goodbye Canada? is more interested in highlighting what is wrong
with Canada and must be fixed, than what is right with it and must be
retained.