The Death of Canadian Sovereignty： Diefenbaker and the Rise of Post-Nationalism
Episode Stats
Summary
To be a true Canadian nationalist is to recognize the an ethnic ancestral continuity that is Canada, to realize that our culture and identity is inextricably linked with the people who built it, and to recognize that our identity is rooted in that intergenerational continuity that stretches back to the founders of our country, the fathers of confederation, the pioneers that settled and built this great nation.
Transcript
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to be a true canadian nationalist in my view is to recognize the an ethnic ancestral continuity
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that is canada to realize that our culture and our identity is inextricably linked with
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the people uh that that ancestral continuity that stretches all the way back that
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intergenerational continuity that stretches back to the the founders the founders there
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the the the founders of our country the fathers of confederation the pioneers that settled and
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built this great nation the the the the French the English the Irish the Scottish the the earliest
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settlers that built up Canada and Diefenbaker in that effect is not really a nationalist in fact
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he's very much uh uh started laid the groundwork of post-nationalism that would then be
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taken advantage of by Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, to transform our society.
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So it was like Diefenbaker was very much informed. We have to take a step back and understand the
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history of the situation, right? So Diefenbaker's predecessors was Louis Saint Laurent and before
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him, William Lyon, Mackenzie King. And through this period, through the World War II and
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afterwards the liberals had dominated the halls of power 30 years of of liberal reign under under
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uh these two leaders and they transformed our society right this is an era where before the
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world wars uh the united kingdom england was the great power of the world but through the world
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wars that that the the united kingdom declined in power as a result of their actions through
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world war ii and the the united states ascended as as the global hegemon and this had an impact
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on canadian society it had an impact on the whole world transformed the the normal politics towards
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this era of liberalism but it had an even more intimate impact on canada because we had that
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close tie that ancestral colonial tie with great britain and as they waned as the superpower
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instead of going off and standing on our own two feet we kind of replaced them with
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uh america and that was very much through the actions of william lyon mckenzie king
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king spent his career working in the u.s working with elite families in the u.s and he brought that
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experience to canada as he took over as as our prime minister and he worked with
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his minister of everything cd howe to to closely integrate our economies with uh with the united
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States. And that's had huge impacts on our society that, that DEAF did push back against.
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But we have to understand before this, there was, there was things like restrictions on board of
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directors, ownerships over companies to make sure that they were rooted in Canada, that they were
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manned by Canadians. DEAF and C.D. Howe, they, they repealed all these restrictions. They
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integrated our economy so closely with the United States that it transformed Canada's economy into
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what Grant describes as a branch plant economy. So instead of decisions, economic decisions being
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made in Montreal, in Toronto, in Ottawa, increasingly these decisions were happening
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in Washington and New York because of the ownership of these companies became these
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multinational American-based companies, which does benefit the elites, which did stimulate the
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Canadian economy, but it hurt our autonomy, our sovereignty. So Grant writes about this,
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his lament for the nation. The last Canadian nationalist, John Diefenbaker, because he pushed
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back on the Americanization of our society. He stood for Canadian sovereignty, but at the same
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time, Dief was very much informed by his own personal ethnic background. And Dief was, he was
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half Scottish on his mother's side, but on his father's side, he was a German. That's where,
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you know, his name, John Diefenberger comes from. And growing up, he had to deal with
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discrimination and all this stuff because he wasn't seen as true a Canadian. So this really
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informed his his time in office where he he put forward this this concept of one canada not seeing
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quebec and and english canada as two kind of distinct uh cooperating societies but he wanted
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to put forward one canada not not only to to merge uh english english and french canada but also
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to integrate all the other new European ethnic groups that had been migrated into Canada since
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the early 1900s, you know, the groups like the Germans and the Ukrainians and the Dutch and
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so on, all into this one, this vision of a one Canada. So we also started to repeal
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immigration restrictions based on, that were based on countries, to liberalize the system
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in this post-war period of American liberalism, he's the one that started stripping back these
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immigration policies. He's the one that brought forward the Bill of Rights, this American-style
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document that was the precursor to Trudeau's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So it was very
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much Diefenbaker this last Canadian nationalist who was stripping who started stripping away the
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things that protected Canada's ethnic identity to to to make this kind of rights-based society that
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transition power away from the parliaments and towards the courts that creates so much
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dysfunction that we have here in modern society.