Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada by Mark Satin

Author:Mark Satin [Satin, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Emigration & Immigration, History, Military, General, Political Science, Civics & Citizenship
ISBN: 9781487002909
Google: howEEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: House of Anansi
Published: 2017-08-26T03:17:48+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN / POLITICS

it has politics . . .

by Heather Dean, former staff member, Student Union for Peace Action

I. INSTITUTIONS

The Canadian constitution, written in 1867, was concerned with two major problems: how to avoid anything like the American civil war and what to do about the French. The constitution was designed to give the Federal government much more power than its American counterpart; the provinces were given minor responsibilities like education and social welfare, and minor revenue sources like income taxes. Obviously, the course of history has caused a few changes unforeseen by Canada’s founding fathers. The Federal government has rectified one error by borrowing the right to tax income during World War II and refusing to give it back, but in general the provinces have as much autonomy as they have money to take advantage of.

Provincial and federal politics are very separate. The political parties have independent organizations and provinces frequently vote solidly for one party in provincial elections and solidly for a different party federally.

“What to do about the French” is still with us. After conquering the French, our British forbears confidently expected that they would be assimilated in a few years. However the French did not disappear and English Canadians are still sputtering with indignation. The French in Canada have been almost an internal colony, taxed and legislated by a non-French government, their businesses and resources owned and managed by non-French. The Quebec government was traditionally corrupt, inefficient, repressive, and serviced English Canadian rather than French Canadian interests.

The most exciting thing happening in Canada has been “the Quiet Revolution” in Quebec over the last ten years. The new liberal government in Quebec has at least as honest a claim to the title “social democratic” as does the NDP, and is responding to even more dynamic social forces. Intellectual life, the arts, minority politics have all been transformed in Quebec, and if they do not gain freedom within Canada’s existing political structures there is a real possibility of Quebec separating from Canada.

English Canadians argue that individually English and French Canada can not resist the encroachments of the United States. The Quebecois retort that they haven’t noticed any “Anglo’s” resisting terribly hard lately, and that, far from helping them resist the U.S., the English are dragging them down the drain.

Quebec is where it’s happening, but the Quiet Revolution is fiercely nationalistic and an American couldn’t make it there without impeccable (and non-Parisian) French and a great deal of cultural humility.

* * *

The federal government is composed of the House of Commons and the Senate. The Senate serves two functions: its appointees can be drawn from out-of-the-way areas and politically unrepresented groups (women, Indians, etc.) thus lending an impression of balance to the government; and it provides a generous retirement pension for party workhorses or people who need buying off. It need not be mentioned again.

The House of Commons, as the name suggests, represents an invasion of government by the British lower classes. Canadian school kids study the several centuries of

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