Dominion Society of Canada - The Death of Canadian Sovereignty： Diefenbaker and the Rise of Post-Nationalism

00:00:00.000 to be a true canadian nationalist in my view is to recognize the an ethnic ancestral continuity

00:00:08.240 that is canada to realize that our culture and our identity is inextricably linked with

00:00:15.280 the people uh that that ancestral continuity that stretches all the way back that

00:00:20.160 intergenerational continuity that stretches back to the the founders the founders there

00:00:25.360 the the the founders of our country the fathers of confederation the pioneers that settled and

00:00:32.300 built this great nation the the the the French the English the Irish the Scottish the the earliest

00:00:37.820 settlers that built up Canada and Diefenbaker in that effect is not really a nationalist in fact

00:00:44.180 he's very much uh uh started laid the groundwork of post-nationalism that would then be

00:00:50.300 taken advantage of by Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, to transform our society.

00:00:58.720 So it was like Diefenbaker was very much informed. We have to take a step back and understand the

00:01:05.400 history of the situation, right? So Diefenbaker's predecessors was Louis Saint Laurent and before

00:01:13.280 him, William Lyon, Mackenzie King. And through this period, through the World War II and

00:01:18.720 afterwards the liberals had dominated the halls of power 30 years of of liberal reign under under

00:01:26.560 uh these two leaders and they transformed our society right this is an era where before the

00:01:32.800 world wars uh the united kingdom england was the great power of the world but through the world

00:01:38.880 wars that that the the united kingdom declined in power as a result of their actions through

00:01:44.400 world war ii and the the united states ascended as as the global hegemon and this had an impact

00:01:50.560 on canadian society it had an impact on the whole world transformed the the normal politics towards

00:01:57.040 this era of liberalism but it had an even more intimate impact on canada because we had that

00:02:03.840 close tie that ancestral colonial tie with great britain and as they waned as the superpower

00:02:10.240 instead of going off and standing on our own two feet we kind of replaced them with

00:02:15.540 uh america and that was very much through the actions of william lyon mckenzie king

00:02:20.940 king spent his career working in the u.s working with elite families in the u.s and he brought that

00:02:27.680 experience to canada as he took over as as our prime minister and he worked with

00:02:33.100 his minister of everything cd howe to to closely integrate our economies with uh with the united

00:02:39.840 States. And that's had huge impacts on our society that, that DEAF did push back against.

00:02:48.200 But we have to understand before this, there was, there was things like restrictions on board of

00:02:52.080 directors, ownerships over companies to make sure that they were rooted in Canada, that they were

00:02:57.280 manned by Canadians. DEAF and C.D. Howe, they, they repealed all these restrictions. They

00:03:03.940 integrated our economy so closely with the United States that it transformed Canada's economy into

00:03:11.560 what Grant describes as a branch plant economy. So instead of decisions, economic decisions being

00:03:17.480 made in Montreal, in Toronto, in Ottawa, increasingly these decisions were happening

00:03:23.120 in Washington and New York because of the ownership of these companies became these

00:03:28.820 multinational American-based companies, which does benefit the elites, which did stimulate the

00:03:35.060 Canadian economy, but it hurt our autonomy, our sovereignty. So Grant writes about this,

00:03:43.620 his lament for the nation. The last Canadian nationalist, John Diefenbaker, because he pushed

00:03:48.320 back on the Americanization of our society. He stood for Canadian sovereignty, but at the same

00:03:54.840 time, Dief was very much informed by his own personal ethnic background. And Dief was, he was

00:04:01.880 half Scottish on his mother's side, but on his father's side, he was a German. That's where,

00:04:08.100 you know, his name, John Diefenberger comes from. And growing up, he had to deal with

00:04:12.800 discrimination and all this stuff because he wasn't seen as true a Canadian. So this really

00:04:18.960 informed his his time in office where he he put forward this this concept of one canada not seeing

00:04:27.220 quebec and and english canada as two kind of distinct uh cooperating societies but he wanted

00:04:34.620 to put forward one canada not not only to to merge uh english english and french canada but also

00:04:41.640 to integrate all the other new European ethnic groups that had been migrated into Canada since

00:04:49.180 the early 1900s, you know, the groups like the Germans and the Ukrainians and the Dutch and

00:04:53.060 so on, all into this one, this vision of a one Canada. So we also started to repeal

00:05:02.180 immigration restrictions based on, that were based on countries, to liberalize the system

00:05:08.540 in this post-war period of American liberalism, he's the one that started stripping back these

00:05:16.200 immigration policies. He's the one that brought forward the Bill of Rights, this American-style

00:05:24.360 document that was the precursor to Trudeau's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So it was very

00:05:33.280 much Diefenbaker this last Canadian nationalist who was stripping who started stripping away the

00:05:39.920 things that protected Canada's ethnic identity to to to make this kind of rights-based society that

00:05:47.120 transition power away from the parliaments and towards the courts that creates so much

00:05:52.160 dysfunction that we have here in modern society.

Dominion Society of Canada - June 30, 2026

The Death of Canadian Sovereignty： Diefenbaker and the Rise of Post-Nationalism

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript