Canada in Decay: Mass Immigration, Diversity, and the Ethnocide of Euro-Canadians by Ricardo Duchesne

Author:Ricardo Duchesne
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Canada In Decay
Publisher: Black House Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-08-20T07:00:00+00:00

Janet Ajzenstat on Canada’s “Political Nationality”

The most prominent exponent of a Straussian interpretation of Canada’s identity is Janet Ajzenstat. She has gone right back to the arguments of the “Fathers of Confederation” to counter the long prevailing “Tory” argument that Canada was envisioned as a nation founded by two cultural groups who view the government as not only a paternalistic protector of the liberties of citizens but of the cultural identities of the British and French-Catholics. Ajzenstat fully expresses this new thesis in The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament, published in 2007. I will focus first on her carefully constructed arguments, which are categorized within the field of political philosophy, before moving on to examine two books by two historians who may be said to be Straussians in their assessment of Canada’s identity without prioritizing any culture except the universal principles of liberalism. These two historians are Roger Riendeau and J.L. Granatstein. Ajzenstat and Granatstein are both known “conservatives", while Riendeau appears to be a middle of the road liberal.

Janet Ajzenstat’s The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament, winner of the John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History, seeks out to determine what Canadian identity is by digging into lesser known writings associated with the making of the BNA Act, as well as re-interpreting, or finding new meanings in the classical writings of the Fathers of Confederation. She questions both i) the economic nationalist leftist idea that Canada’s identity has been characterized by its anti-Americanism and its socialistic commitment to government funded programs such as public health care, and a top-down enactment of what is deemed to be good for the citizens, and ii) the old Tory idea that the BNA Act was all about a Canada with “peace, order and good Government", as contrasted to America’s Declaration of Independence, which was about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". It is really this second “old” conservative idea that Ajzenstat goes after in her effort to propose a new interpretation of Canada’s founding principles, whereas it is the leftist interpretation she challenges in her assessment of the way Canada is governed today by a leftist political ideology that relies on the courts, an activist Supreme Court, even international tribunals, that disregard the traditional principle of legislative supremacy.

Since my concern is with Ajzenstat’s re-interpretation of Canada’s past, I will focus on her criticisms of the Tory interpretation of Canada’s foundation. Ajzenstat is known as a conservative who emphasizes individual rights rather than any form of collective identity, and therefore as a “Neoconservative” in her rejection of the old Tory conservatism of Canada. The Tory interpretation of Canada’s founding values has been quite influential, and Ajzenstat is determined to show that it is based on an incorrect reading of writings and documents associated with Confederation. The Tory argument is that the Loyalists who fled to Canada during the Revolutionary Era were very attached to their Anglo-Saxon heritage and that their descendants, who formed the ruling elite of Upper Canada, conceived Canada as a nation “founded on a resistance to the American way of life".

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