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Was Canada Just Too Good to Be True?
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: May 25, 2005
TORONTO, May 24 - The news from Canada has been very un-Canadian of late. Or has it?
A government program sponsoring sporting and cultural events in Quebec has been tainted by allegations of millions of dollars in kickbacks and money laundering. Witnesses before a federal inquiry into the scandal have described envelopes full of cash left on restaurant tables to advance the cause of the governing Liberal Party.
But even as the "sponsorship scandal" has unfolded, one unseemly chapter after another, Prime Minister Paul Martin has held fast, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to a cherished Liberal Party script: Canada as a singularly virtuous country that adheres more than most to values like honesty, decency, fairness and multiethnic equality, not to mention publicly financed universal health care.
"We will set the standard by which other nations judge themselves," Mr. Martin boasted to his party caucus only minutes after his government was saved on May 19 by a single vote in the House of Commons - the vote of a lawmaker who had turned her back not only on the Conservative Party, which she helped found only a year ago, but on her boyfriend, a Conservative leader, in return for a Liberal cabinet seat.
This notion of national rectitude and compassion, long promoted by the Liberals, has been captured in the slogan of a national book chain: "The world needs more Canada."
Of course, quite a few nations have an embellished sense of righteousness, not least among them, many would say, Canada's southern neighbor. But perhaps no other country puts such a high premium on its own virtue than does Canada.
"That's why the sponsorship scandal stings as much as it does," said Janice Stein, director of the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto. With a touch of irony, she added, "We're not like this; we're nice and good."
The recent spectacle of scandal and tawdry politics has some Canadians now wondering if all the self-congratulatory virtue is not mixed with some old-fashioned hypocrisy, or what Robert Fulford, a leading literary journalist and columnist characterizes as "a fable" expounded by generations of Liberal leaders.
"During recent decades our politicians have told us a sweet bedtime story about Canada being an exceptionally compassionate country, a world leader in multiculturalism and wonderfully generous to the poor countries," Mr. Fulford said. "All of this expresses something called 'Canadian values.' All lies."
Most Canadians would probably consider that assessment harsh.
Canadian cities are among the most ethnically diverse and safest in the world. Canadian tolerance took real form during the past two years with the extension of marriage rights to gays and lesbians in most of the country. Canada's reputation as an exemplary world citizen comes from its strong support of the International Criminal Court, a ban on land mines and the Kyoto climate control accord.
But there is another side to the story.
While Canada signed and ratified the Kyoto accord, making a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 6 percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012, emissions have risen to 24 percent above 1990 levels. The powerful domestic oil industry has lobbied effectively to guarantee that the development of oil sands - a noxious source of carbon dioxide - will go on expanding.
In fact, Canada, where logging, mining and oil interests are extremely powerful, has a less than sterling environmental record. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada produces more nuclear waste per capita than any other member country and ranks as the fourth per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, following the United States, Australia and Luxembourg. Environmental activists say that only Finland and Sweden log more forest land per capita among industrialized countries.
When European governments sought to ban the import of Canadian asbestos for its toxicity in recent years, Ottawa complained to the World Trade Organization that such an action would violate free trade.
"Canada for years has fought against international controls on asbestos because of the importance of that industry to Quebec," noted Michael Bliss, a leading historian at the University of Toronto. Mr. Bliss, for his part, dismisses as "posturing" the idea that "Canada is some kind of moral superpower."
Canadian officials constantly lecture Europe and the United States on the need to level the playing field in agriculture for third world producers. But at the same time Canada runs monopolistic dairy product marketing boards that raise tariffs of 200 percent and more to protect its own producers of milk, eggs and butter.
On social policy, Canada has been slow to make amends to indigenous Canadians for a century-long policy of forced assimilation under which parents were forced to send their children to residential schools where they were routinely punished for speaking their native languages and routinely abused sexually. Only a bit more than a thousand victims in the schools, the last of which closed in 1986, have received minimal compensation in a process that has been hobbled by delays and bureaucracy.
As diverse as Canada is, corporate boards and senior political bodies on the federal and provincial levels remain overwhelmingly dominated by people of European stock. Incomes of immigrants have been dropping in recent years relative to the population at large, as 25 percent of the immigrants with college educations are forced to settle for unskilled jobs.
"We are putting on blinders," said Ratna Omidvar, executive director of the Maytree Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to reducing inequality. "We don't talk about racism, but of course it exists."
Canada is rarely criticized at home or abroad, making a recent international boycott of Canadian products by animal rights activists protesting the return of the large-scale commercial baby seal hunt off Newfoundland and Labrador particularly rankling here.
The discussion over what exactly is Canada's identity - and whether its favored definition is perhaps a piece of Liberal propaganda - is beginning to emerge in the political debate between the struggling Liberals and the challenging Conservatives.
At a recent Liberal party convention, Mr. Martin pledged that "our most important commitment to the Canadian people was our pledge to protect and defend the values that define us: Liberal values, Canadian values." To which Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, shot back at a rally of his own: "Corruption is not a Canadian value."
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: May 25, 2005
TORONTO, May 24 - The news from Canada has been very un-Canadian of late. Or has it?
A government program sponsoring sporting and cultural events in Quebec has been tainted by allegations of millions of dollars in kickbacks and money laundering. Witnesses before a federal inquiry into the scandal have described envelopes full of cash left on restaurant tables to advance the cause of the governing Liberal Party.
But even as the "sponsorship scandal" has unfolded, one unseemly chapter after another, Prime Minister Paul Martin has held fast, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to a cherished Liberal Party script: Canada as a singularly virtuous country that adheres more than most to values like honesty, decency, fairness and multiethnic equality, not to mention publicly financed universal health care.
"We will set the standard by which other nations judge themselves," Mr. Martin boasted to his party caucus only minutes after his government was saved on May 19 by a single vote in the House of Commons - the vote of a lawmaker who had turned her back not only on the Conservative Party, which she helped found only a year ago, but on her boyfriend, a Conservative leader, in return for a Liberal cabinet seat.
This notion of national rectitude and compassion, long promoted by the Liberals, has been captured in the slogan of a national book chain: "The world needs more Canada."
Of course, quite a few nations have an embellished sense of righteousness, not least among them, many would say, Canada's southern neighbor. But perhaps no other country puts such a high premium on its own virtue than does Canada.
"That's why the sponsorship scandal stings as much as it does," said Janice Stein, director of the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto. With a touch of irony, she added, "We're not like this; we're nice and good."
The recent spectacle of scandal and tawdry politics has some Canadians now wondering if all the self-congratulatory virtue is not mixed with some old-fashioned hypocrisy, or what Robert Fulford, a leading literary journalist and columnist characterizes as "a fable" expounded by generations of Liberal leaders.
"During recent decades our politicians have told us a sweet bedtime story about Canada being an exceptionally compassionate country, a world leader in multiculturalism and wonderfully generous to the poor countries," Mr. Fulford said. "All of this expresses something called 'Canadian values.' All lies."
Most Canadians would probably consider that assessment harsh.
Canadian cities are among the most ethnically diverse and safest in the world. Canadian tolerance took real form during the past two years with the extension of marriage rights to gays and lesbians in most of the country. Canada's reputation as an exemplary world citizen comes from its strong support of the International Criminal Court, a ban on land mines and the Kyoto climate control accord.
But there is another side to the story.
While Canada signed and ratified the Kyoto accord, making a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 6 percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012, emissions have risen to 24 percent above 1990 levels. The powerful domestic oil industry has lobbied effectively to guarantee that the development of oil sands - a noxious source of carbon dioxide - will go on expanding.
In fact, Canada, where logging, mining and oil interests are extremely powerful, has a less than sterling environmental record. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada produces more nuclear waste per capita than any other member country and ranks as the fourth per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, following the United States, Australia and Luxembourg. Environmental activists say that only Finland and Sweden log more forest land per capita among industrialized countries.
When European governments sought to ban the import of Canadian asbestos for its toxicity in recent years, Ottawa complained to the World Trade Organization that such an action would violate free trade.
"Canada for years has fought against international controls on asbestos because of the importance of that industry to Quebec," noted Michael Bliss, a leading historian at the University of Toronto. Mr. Bliss, for his part, dismisses as "posturing" the idea that "Canada is some kind of moral superpower."
Canadian officials constantly lecture Europe and the United States on the need to level the playing field in agriculture for third world producers. But at the same time Canada runs monopolistic dairy product marketing boards that raise tariffs of 200 percent and more to protect its own producers of milk, eggs and butter.
On social policy, Canada has been slow to make amends to indigenous Canadians for a century-long policy of forced assimilation under which parents were forced to send their children to residential schools where they were routinely punished for speaking their native languages and routinely abused sexually. Only a bit more than a thousand victims in the schools, the last of which closed in 1986, have received minimal compensation in a process that has been hobbled by delays and bureaucracy.
As diverse as Canada is, corporate boards and senior political bodies on the federal and provincial levels remain overwhelmingly dominated by people of European stock. Incomes of immigrants have been dropping in recent years relative to the population at large, as 25 percent of the immigrants with college educations are forced to settle for unskilled jobs.
"We are putting on blinders," said Ratna Omidvar, executive director of the Maytree Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to reducing inequality. "We don't talk about racism, but of course it exists."
Canada is rarely criticized at home or abroad, making a recent international boycott of Canadian products by animal rights activists protesting the return of the large-scale commercial baby seal hunt off Newfoundland and Labrador particularly rankling here.
The discussion over what exactly is Canada's identity - and whether its favored definition is perhaps a piece of Liberal propaganda - is beginning to emerge in the political debate between the struggling Liberals and the challenging Conservatives.
At a recent Liberal party convention, Mr. Martin pledged that "our most important commitment to the Canadian people was our pledge to protect and defend the values that define us: Liberal values, Canadian values." To which Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, shot back at a rally of his own: "Corruption is not a Canadian value."
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