Is Canada a Country?

 Is Canada a country?

According to Wikipedia, World Atlas, the CIA Factbook and Britannica, Canada is a country; in fact, the second largest country in the world.  However, Quebec sovereigntists have long claimed that Canada is not a real country.  At the other end of the. . . .whatever we are . . . in a Macleans article published in 2018, Scott Gilmore is categorical that “Canada is not a country.”  Prophetically, seven years ago, Gilmore pointed out that  

One lesson that the last 20 years has reinforced is that there are far more black swan moments, completely unanticipated game-changing events, out there than we realize. It is almost inevitable that this country is one day going to face some unexpected shock.

As a co-founder of a theatre company committed to producing Canadian plays, then a teacher, and a professor of Canadian Literature and Drama, I have been dealing with the question of “Canadian nationalism” for fifty years.  This “black swan moment”—with the President of the USA musing aloud about Canada becoming a 51st state— is the first time in my experience that Canadian politicians, journalists and the citizenry in general have, at the same time, shown interest in engaging with the question.

The Paradox of Canadian nationalism

The paradox of Canadian nationalism is that Canadians love Canada but they don’t like nationalism.  The solution for the last 50 years now has been to imagine Canada as a “cultural mosaic,” a state with many nations and cultures. Much as I value and celebrate multiculturalism and what the philosopher Charles Taylor called “different ways for belonging,” I recognize the challenge of finding unity, or even consensus, in our diversity.  In this our moment of existential crisis, what appears to be holding us together is disdain for Donald Trump.  It’s not enough.

What are we?

Gilmore underlines that “ We love to revel in our progress as a ‘post-national’ state.”  Then he asks rhetorically, “So if Canada is not a people, not a nation, possibly not even a nation state, what are we?”  In the  reverse psychology of the 1970s, the answer was that Canada was/is a colony.  In theory, in 1867 we ceased to be a British colony and became a country, but as of 2025, we are still requiring an oath of allegiance to King Charles III.  We don’t even have an up-to-date constitution.  We most typically hear about the repatriated archaic constitution when one premier or another threatens to use the “notwithstanding clause” to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms created in 1982. Canada has yet to resolve its treaty issues with First Nations. And without any official declaration, in all practical terms, we have become a branch-plant colony of the USA.  Or, as the Chinese Foreign Minister told our Ambassador, “You are lapdogs of the United States.”  (Gee!  Why would the Chinese think that?)

Gilmore’s Answer

Gilmore’s answer to his rhetorical question:  “we remain the same colour on the map not because of a strong sense of shared identity or a common purpose, but because we simply haven’t had much of a reason to split up. Yet.”  Then came Trump 2.0.  In my last post, I expressed some glimmer of hope that Canadian reaction to Trump would cause us to do the one thing that makes us a country . . .act like a country.  I’ve seen lots of nationalist elan from my friends and the citizenry in general.  Some politicians have begun to say the right things:  noting the willingness of Canadians to respond unitedly to Trumpian threats, talk of bringing down interprovincial trade barriers, and diversifying trade. 

Canada as an “imagined community”

Since the late postmodernist period, since 1983 to be precise and the publication of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, the expression “imagined communities” has been used in academic circles to sidestep uncomfortable discussions of nationalism. “Nations,” according the Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind, are just one of many “imagined orders,” fictitious believed-in realities that allow us to develop and progress together. If Canada is going to be a “real country,” beyond disentangling from the domination of the US economy, culture and federation, we must do the very hard work of imagining the Canadian nation, daring to share and receive its cultures and histories with one another, and find reasons for pride and celebration and unity. 

Is Donald Trump the Alien Invader that Canada Needs?

Unlikely Canada:  One more time

 I thought this was the right time to remind readers of my post on “Unlikely Canada,”  Peter Zeihan’s prediction that Canada was unlikely to survive as a country beyond 2030, together with his claim that Alberta was destined to become the 51st American state. Ever since my youthful Canadian nationalist phase in the 1970s, I have rankled at Canada’s acting like an economic branch plant, as well as a cultural and political colony of the USA. The history of Canada has always been a story of its relationship with the USA.   The Canadian Encyclopedia offers a succinct overview of this history, the vacillations from resistance to acquiescence and back again, from  the American Revolution, to the War of 1812, to the Rebellions of 1837,  from John MacDonald’s anti-American grumblings to Wilfred Laurier’s concessions to reciprocity.  We live in the constant shadow of "manifest  destiny." 

A History of back and forth and con jobs

The USA was late to enter the First World War (three years after Canada), but in the 1920s and 30s the similarities between the two countries grew, and with the Second World War, the USA emerged as the great defender of the values Canadians held dear.  Animosity between Diefenbaker and Kennedy kept Canada out of the nuclear arms race. (Diefenbaker blamed American inference for his election loss in 1963.) Pearson kept Canada out of the Vietnam War (politically if not materially), and Pierre Trudeau opened the door to accept American draft evaders.  Flickerings of Canadian nationalism in the 1970s were extinguished with the Reagan-Mulroney bromance in the 1980s and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Under Mulroney, Canadian men and women served in George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 1990-91.  (You may remember how we were conned by a young girl claiming to be a nurse telling stories of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of their incubators.  She turned out to be a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.  See Petrodollar Warfare.)  Jean Chrétien  kept Canada out of George W. Bush’s bogus-WMD war in Iraq in 2003.  

After the Harper Conservatives had negotiated and signed the Canada-China  Foreign Investment Promotion and Protecton Agreement, the Justin Trudeau Liberals were elected, in 2015, on the promise of a free-trade agreement with China,  Canada’s second largest trading partner and only leverage against total US economic domination.  [The Government of Canada web site on Canada-China free trade has been removed since I posted a link to it on 11 October 2024.  See Pubic Inquiry on Foreign Interference] * In 2016, Donald Trump was elected as US President.  Unbeknownst to President Trump, his National Security Advisor, John Bolton hatched a plot in 2018 to make Canada the patsy by having the RCMP arrest the CFO of Huawei  ensuring the breakdown of trade relations between Canada and China.  Far from garnering respect and appreciation from the Americans, our mindless acquiescence to US interests in detriment to our own has made us appear weak, inept and fearful.  The newly elected US President will not hesitate to exploit our ineptitude, weakness and fear.

The Merger: For and against  (Conrad Black against!?!?)

In my faulty memory Conrad Black, one-time Canadian owner of the world’s third-largest newspaper empire, was an advocate of Canada joining the USA.  I therefore read with great interest his critique and rebuttal of Diane Francis’s book, The Merger of the Century:  Why Canada and the USA Should Become One Country. In his editorial (18 Jan. 2014), Black claims, “I was for a time reviled [. . . ] by some of the traditional, leftist Canadian nationalists, [that would be me] though I was never an annexationist.” 

As Francis was promoting her book, arguing that the merger was already underway and nigh on inevitable,  Black countered that   

Canada is, by every measure, a better-governed country than the United States, and much of this is new in the last 30 years. Not even the multi-trillion-dollar pay-off Diane Francis envisions would be an adequate compensation to Canadians to take such a great leap backwards in good government.

Diane Francis in 2014

Diane Francis laid out the basic arguments of her book in a lecture at the University of Western Ontario in 2014.

Diane Francis in 2025

Interviewed last week, Francis’s perspective seemed to have shifted slightly, as she emphasized the last chapter of her book on what Canada had to do if there was no merger with the USA:  end tariff barriers between provinces, take over the defence of its own borders and coastline, expand its business and trade options.  However, in the recent interview, she did return to the notion of Canada and the USA becoming a single federation, following a European Union economic model.

Can We now start talking about the US threat to Canadian sovereignty and independence, or should we maintain our focus on Chinese influence on Canadian elections?

One point that particularly struck me in this recent interview is her claim that she was blacklisted by the media as she attempted to promote her book in 2014.  Perhaps we would have benefited from having a more robust conversation ten years ago.  I tried to to make this point, from a very different perspective, in 2002, at a conference presentation at the University of Toronto: “ I am prepared to be unsentimental about the destiny of the Canadian nation, but I would consider it a tragedy if Canadians did not participate fully in the exchange and debate and decision-making process.

Will Trump force us to start acting like a sovereign nation?

Back to the question.  In theory, it is thought that an external threat is sometimes what a nation needs to appreciate the value of its sovereignty, to generate solidarity and unity.  For a moment I thought Donald Trump might be that beneficial threat.  Unfortunately, so far the response has been lip service and chaos.  And Danielle Smith has already responded like the Governor of Alberta, the 51st state, as predicted by Peter Zeihan: holding one-on-one meetings with President-elect Trump and refusing to join with Canadian Premiers and the Prime Minister in threatening to cut off energy supplies from Canada to the USA in the event of a trade war.  The survival of Canada may still not be “unlikely” but it is looking less and less likely these days. 

Addendum

* After a bit of searching I found another Government of Canada web page which makes reference to the Canada-China Free Trade Agreement which was in the exploratory stages in 2016.

A Dozen Reasons Why the Canadian Minister of Justice Should Release the Huawei CFO, Sabrina Meng Wanzhou

The "Canadian Extradition Act" Gives the Minister of Justice the Right and Obligation to Release Meng

It's becoming more and more obvious in the media (social, anti-social and other) that the  request for Sabrina Meng Wanzhou's extradition is bogus. Contrary to what you may have read or heard from Canadian politicians about extradition proceedings being out of the hands of the political leadership, the Canadian Extradition Act clearly states that:  "The Minister [of Justice] is responsible for the implementation of extradition agreements, the administration of this Act and dealing with requests for extradition made under them." (For more see Was Freeland Lying?  and How Canada Arrested a Chinese Exec.)

According to The Act, the Canadian Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, can and should intervene in an extradition if she considers it "unjust" after reviewing "all the relevant circumstances."  She can "at any time withdraw the authority to proceed and, if the Minister does so, the court shall discharge the person." The "circumstances" provide ample reasons and The Act provides specific injunctions requiring the Minister to intervene in the case of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou; including the "political" nature of the extradition request, that the request is based on Meng's "nationality and ethnicity," that her alleged crimes would not be prosecuted in Canada, that her alleged white-collar crimes would not warrant two years of imprisonment as required by The Act, that the character and legitimacy of the warrant for Meng's arrest, detention and extradition are highly questionable, and that while the legitimacy of Meng's detention and the extradition proceedings are in serious doubt, they pose a threat to public safety and are counter to Canadian interests.

1. The charges against Meng are not substantive enough to warrant extradition.  

Various media outlets have repeated the claim that each of the charges against Meng is punishable by 30 years of imprisonment.  Stop and consider:  why are we being fed this piece of information?  The exact details of her alleged crimes have remained sketchy, so why has this precise detail of 30 years of imprisonment been so widely and precisely promulgated?  Who is spreading this claim?  For what purpose?  More to the point, even based on the most exaggerated rumours of the seriousness of Meng's alleged crimes, does anybody really believe that an American court is going to throw her in jail for the next 30 or 60 or 90 or 120 years?  So why this emphasis on the maximum sentence?  Because, according to the Extradition Act, in order for the extradition process to proceed, it must be clear that Meng's crimes would be punishable by at least two years of imprisonment.  We don't extradite people for minor crimes; we don't extradite people to pay fines, or be put on probation or be imprisoned for less than two years.  In the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008 and extensive evidence of wrongdoing, no American was convicted of a crime, but the punishment for white-collar crime in the USA has become a much debated topic.  Based on the information leaked to the public so far, Meng's alleged white-collar crimes fall well below the two-years-of-imprisonment threshold required for extradition.

2.  The accusations against Meng would not constitute a criminal offence in Canada.   

According to media reports, Meng is accused of contravening trade sanctions against Iran; Huawei, of which she is CFO, is accused of selling technology in Iran which contained US components and/or patents, and Meng is accused of bank fraud.  Of these three accusations only "bank fraud" would be a criminal offence in Canada.  To keep it simple, "bank fraud" is stealing money from a bank--but without pointing a gun at anyone.  (You might want to have a look at Should Bank Robbery Be Deregulated?) However, the "bank fraud" in this case is related to sanctions against Iran in that she is accused of failing to inform or hiding from bankers that Huawei owned a shell company which owned a company called Skycom which was doing business with Iran.  (For more detail see:  The Chaos Theory of International Trade.) How much money did she steal?  There is no hint of an answer to this question in the media.  I suspect the answer will be zero.  How much the banks lost determines how long the prison sentence could possibly be.  The claims of a 30-year prison sentence imply that the banks (or a bank) lost billions.  I have seen no claims concerning the amounts that the banks lost despite the repeated claims of multiple 30-year prison sentences. As reporters for the New York Times point out:  HSBC (the bank Meng is accused of defrauding) has repeatedly been convicted of money laundering.  In order to avoid another conviction in the USA for moving money in Iran, they threw Huawei CFO Meng under the bus, claiming that she tricked them into doing it.

Patent Infringement would be a civil and not a criminal case, therefore not grounds for extradition.  Moreover, patent infringement is such a common occurrence in large American companies that the practice has spawned a new expression: infringement efficiency, which means, in short, that stealing patents is good business as long as the amount of money you end up paying if you are found guilty in court is less than the profit made from the stolen patents.

3.  Contravening trade sanctions against Iran is not a crime in Canada.  

(See the Canadian Government's Guide for Doing Business in Iran.) In order to continue to push for extradition, the US Attorney will have to keep pushing the idea of "bank fraud," despite the shadowy, sketchy chain of events which will need to be proven.  The necessary sequence of accusations depends on trade sanctions against Iran.  Canada does restrict trade with Iran, but those restrictions only apply to materials for the construction of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.  The accusations against Meng refer to statements she made (or failed to make) in 2013 or 2014 (depending on which news report you believe).  The year or years are crucial because in 2016 the Obama administration negotiated an anti-nuclear deal with Iran and trade sanctions were lifted.  In 2018 the Trump administration reneged on and cancelled that agreement and unilaterally imposed new sanctions.  Here's a legal question:  Would we prosecute someone for committing a crime which is no longer a crime in Canada?  Need some context?  We just legalized possession of marijuana.  Will we prosecute people if we find proof that they possessed pot before it was legalized?  Still not convinced?  In 1968, homosexuality and various forms of recreational sex were legalized in Canada.  Do you imagine that we might have continued to convict people for acts of homosexuality and oral sex in the 1970s?  We would not prosecute Meng in Canada because the underlying basis of her alleged crimes is currently not criminal in Canada.

4.  There is an underlying conflict of interest in the request for Meng's extradition.  

As I outlined in an earlier post (The Chaos Theory of International Trade), Richard Donoghue is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.  In a matter of months, Donoghue went from being an employee of CA Technologies (their Chief Litigator, in fact) to spearheading the request for Meng's arrest, detention and extradition.  The mere fact that he was so recently employed by a Huawei competitor strongly suggests that he might still be acting as an agent for the benefit of CA Technologies, which puts him in an apparent, if not actual, conflict of interest.

5.  The extradition request is based on Meng's nationality and ethnicity.  

The Canadian Extradition Act explicitly instructs that the Minister of Justice "shall refuse to make a surrender order if the Minister is satisfied that  . . . .  the request for extradition is made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin language, colour, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability or status or that the person’s position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons.  German banks continue to do business in Iran.  The USA has an extradition treaty with Germany, but there have been no reported moves to extradite executives of German banks.  Skycom, the German company at the centre of the accusations against Meng, continues to operate, and there have been no moves to extradite German executives.  When the Standard Chartered Bank of Britain was convicted, in 2012, of doing hundreds of billions of dollars of business with Iran through its New York office, they were required to pay a fine.  No criminal charges have been laid.  Banks found to be in noncompliance and fined with operations in the United States include Barclays, ING, Credit Suisse, Lloyds, and ABN Amro.  No bank executive has faced criminal charges for doing business in Iran.  There is little doubt that the only reason Meng is being singled out for criminal prosecution is because she is Chinese and her company is Chinese.

6.  The extradition request is political.  

The Act specifies that the extradition will be refused if "the conduct in respect of which extradition is sought is a political offence or an offence of a political character."  The political nature of the request is so obvious, it seems redundant to comment.  However, the moment that President Donald Trump tweeted that he was prepared to intervene in the case, he made the case political (if there was any doubt that it already was).  If this case is about "national security" as is being constantly and slyly implied by US politicians and others, then the extradition request is by definition political.  To date, no one has claimed that Meng, as an individual, has done something to jeopardize American or, more importantly in this case, Canadian national security.  [By firing the Canadian Ambassador to China, John McCallum, for stating the obvious--that Meng had a strong case against being extradited--PM Justin Trudeau reinforced the "political" nature of the case.  Worse still, the PM has prejudiced the case against Meng.  The new Justice Minister, David Lametti, will be hard pressed to refuse the extradition after his boss, the PM, fired the Ambassador just for saying Meng had a case.]

7.  Canada is being played.  

For all intents and purposes the extradition request looks like a move by American tech giants to undermine a Chinese technology company which has been taking over a huge swath of the global market share.  Far from attempting to further justice and punish the crimes of an individual, what we are witnessing is one group of business interests blocking the development of a competitor by arranging the arrest of the company's CFO.  My prognosis is that Meng will never be convicted of a crime worthy of imprisonment.  It is unlikely that she will ever stand trial.  However, if the naivety and Dudly-Do-Rightism of Canadian leadership allow the extradition hearings and detainment of Meng to continue for years, then the corporate objective of slowing down the competition will have been achieved--and the Government of Canada will have colluded in that corrupt undertaking.

8.  Public safety.  

The arrests of two Canadians by Chinese authorities, ostensibly in retaliation for the Meng detention, have made the optics of releasing Meng more difficult.  Nonetheless, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Public Safety (Ralph Goodale) and the Minister of External Affairs (Chrystia Freeland) have the obligation to confer with one another and recognize that they have to prioritize the safety of Canadians over dubious demands for the extradition of one Chinese citizen.

9.  Canadian self-interest.  

Every kid in the schoolyard knows that if some bigger kid asks you to punch yourself in the head, you are being bullied--and if you submit to this bullying, you are encouraging more bullying in the future.  It is in Canada's interests to diversify its trading partners.  It is, in particular, in Canada's interests to increase trade and friendly relations with China.  Canada will greatly benefit from Huawei's 5G technology, and the research funding and business development which Huawei Canada offers.  Of course, we need to maintain our trading partnership, friendly relations and military alliances with the USA, but the occasional demonstration that we are willing to act in our own best interests should strengthen the mutual respect that makes these relationships work.

10.  Canadian sovereignty.  

Historically, when Canada has asserted its independence from American military and foreign policies, our independence has served us well.  Prime Minister Jean Chretien's refusal to enter George W. Bush's Iraq war in 2003 is a good example.  Similarly, PM Lester B. Pearson kept Canada out of the Vietnam War in the 60s.  On June 1, 2018, the Trump administration's imposition of a 25% tariff on Canadian steel on the grounds of "US national security" together with Trump's alienated nationalism has provided a conspicuous opportunity for Canadians to recognize the importance of Canadian independence from American hegemony.  Unfortunately, Canada accepted the inclusion of the "China clause" in the recent US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement which, according to some analysts, has given the USA rights of veto over future Canadian trade deals--in particular, over our trade with China.  The American warrant for the extradition of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou trapped us into the embarrassing situation of arresting Huawei's CFO at the same time that we are courting and receiving Huawei investment in Canada.  Worse still, the arrest of Meng puts a halt to our developing relationship and plans for increased trade with China--once again surrendering our sovereignty to American interests.  Pathetically, in the arrest of Meng we are not even serving explicit American national or security interests, just the corporate interests of American technology companies.

11. Canadian "peace, order and good government."  

Clearly, Canada and China have ideological differences, although I suspect those differences are not well understood in either country.  Canada's ideological tendencies are quite different from those of the USA, and the difference has become pronounced in recent years.  In contrast to the American Declaration of Independence's valourization of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the Canadian constitution sets out the objectives of the Federal Government as "peace, order and good government."    The American pursuit of life, liberty and happiness has resulted in a state of near-constant warfare throughout the USA's history. The question which our Minister of Justice needs to ask in the Meng extradition case is:  "what decision will best promote and exemplify 'peace, order and good government' in Canada?"  As sparsely and sporadically as I have been informed of the details of the case through the media--and I trust the Minister has been more thoroughly informed--I have become convinced that Canada would be best served by Meng's immediate release.

12.  Canadian respect for the Chinese.  

The Chinese response to the Meng arrest has been to describe it as a gesture of disrespect toward China and the Chinese people.  Canadian apathy toward the Meng arrest has led me to fear that Canadians have been conditioned to accept the melodramatic myth of "The American 'good guys' versus the Chinese [and Asian in general] 'bad guys'."  Distance makes it easy for Canadians to ignore the empirical facts that while the Americans have been spending trillions of dollars on wars in Iraq and elsewhere, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, the Chinese have raised 800 million of their fellow citizens out of poverty, and China has not been engaged in a war since the 1970s.  Canada must also respect the Chinese because they have been part of its history since Canada's earliest development in the 18th century.  There are 1.78 million Canadians of Chinese ancestry currently living here.  They have contributed to every aspect of life and culture in Canada, perhaps most iconically represented by our former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.  Sabrina Meng Wanzhou has herself been a long-term resident of Canada. Attitudes of mistrust and suspicion are unwarranted and insulting to the Chinese of China and to our fellow citizens.  No doubt, apologies will be forthcoming--because we're good at that--but the Government of Canada should act quickly and not allow this insult to linger.

PS Since I first published this post on January 5, 2019, Jody Wilson-Raybould was demoted from Justice to Veterans Affairs.  The middle of a crisis requiring action from the Minister of Justice seems a very strange time (or was it deliberate obfuscation?) to be changing the Minister, but that is what the Government of Canada has chosen to do. David Lametti became the new Minister of Justice. On Feb. 7, 2019, despite denials from the PM and the Minister of External Affairs, the new Justice Minister, David Lametti, finally admitted that the extradition of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou is "political." https://www.thestar.com/…/decision-whether-to-extradite-hua…

PS2 On February 12, 2019, Jody Wilson-Raybould resigned her position as Minister of Veterans Affairs in the Trudeau cabinet. The prevailing assumption is that Wilson-Raybould resigned because of reports she was under pressure from the PM's office to allow the engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin, to pay a remediation agreement rather than face further criminal proceedings for bribes they were alleged to have paid in Libya in 2002 to 2011.  In the wake of the Meng arrest, two Canadians remain in jail and a third is facing the death penalty.  In terms of significance and potential consequences, the SNC-Lavalin affair doesn't even compare to the Meng extradition, but SNC-Lavalin has disappeared the Meng extradition from media coverage.

PS3 In a feature article in the February edition, Maclean's magazine reported that "29 percent of Canadians align with Beijing’s views, believing the arrest [of Meng] was politically and economically motivated."  In other words, almost 1 in 3 Canadians believe that the Meng arrest was contrary to Canadian law--the Canadian Extradition Act.  Imagine what the numbers would be if the Canadian media told the whole story, instead of the fable they think Canadians want to hear about our being law-abiding, transparent and honest in this case.  Imagine what the numbers would be if our Canadian representatives, like John McCallum, were allowed to tell the obvious truth--that Meng has a strong case against extradition--without being fired.

PS4 On January 28, 2019, the US Justice Department released its 13-count indictment against Huawei.  If you read the Justice Department announcement carefully, you will note that there is nothing new in the accusations against Meng.   The only direct accusation against Meng is that she misinformed executives of HSBC, as described above.  There are four (4) defendants named in the indictment.  It is worth noting that Meng is the only individual, the only executive, named as a defendant.  The other three defendants are companies, reinforcing the fact as noted above, that there is no precedent for criminal charges against an individual executive in this type of case.