Canadians are living through interesting times.
There are a few days left before Donald Trump officially returns to the White House, but from his court at Mar-a-Lago, he is already making threats to annex Canada and complete Manifest Destiny. Trump’s threat follows a promise to aggressively hit Canada with 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian items imported into the US.
Few take Trump’s annexationist threat seriously, but his sheer audacity to suggest such a thing has electrified Canadians into a nationalist mood.
The unpopular Liberal government, led by the outgoing Justin Trudeau, is ill-suited to this moment of revived national feeling and chest-thumping patriotism. It is not that Trudeau or the Liberals are unpatriotic per se, but their vision of Canada is badly outdated for the times.
As leader of the party of multiculturalism, and the son of the Prime Minister who declared that the idea of an ‘all-Canadian boy’ was absurd, Trudeau is not equipped to guide his MPs in crafting a nationalist message.
There are few progressive parties in the Western world still espousing a distinct cultural and historically rooted vision of their country. Their guiding principles are diversity, bigger government, and the nebulous ideal of ‘inclusion’, meaning the neutering of society so that nobody could possibly take offence at a symbol or holiday.
In France, far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has called for the ‘créolisation’ of France, which means eschewing a distinctly French identity for a mosaic made up of every immigrant community in the country. Even if she was passably sensible on immigration, New Zealand’s own Jacinda Ardern was a hardline proponent of maximising multiculturalism and overseeing higher taxes.
Trudeau himself wanted to make Canada a ‘post-national’ state with no mainstream identity or culture.
The ideological homogeneity of the modern-day Western left is truly remarkable. Within their international organisations like the Progressive Alliance or the Socialist International, there is little difference beyond language and party logo.
These are not political parties capable of crafting a nationalist message made distinct by respect for a country’s history and tradition, because that would require being selective. This runs counter to the ideal of inclusivity, which entails granting validity to nearly all cultural norms and habits created by a diverse society.
It was in this spirit that Trudeau weakened Canadian laws that granted the federal government the ability to revoke citizenship from immigrants who participated in terrorism or espionage.
During the 2015 election debates, former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Trudeau: ‘Why would we not revoke the citizenship of people convicted of terrorist offences against this country?’
In response, Trudeau fired back with his trademark flair: ‘A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and you devalue the citizenship of every Canadian in this place and in this country when you break down and make it conditional for anybody.’
If terrorism is not enough to exclude someone in the Liberal vision of a national community, it is folly to expect citizens to demonstrate an active respect for established habits, institutions, and history.
A government that insists a Canadian mainstream is redundant, and rules out excluding would-be political murderers from society, is unfit to take up the mantle of nationalism.
When Canadian left-wingers do try to rally the people, it almost invariably boils down to chauvinism about publicly funded healthcare and multicultural societies. This usually comes out in anti-American tirades, where richly-pensioned Baby Boomers rail against the American melting pot approach to assimilation, and their lack of nationalised healthcare.
The problem is that multicultural society is failing in Canada.
Pro-Hamas activists routinely hunt for Jewish cultural centres to attack, sectarian violence has broken out in the Indian immigrant community, and radical decolonial activists are trying to erase all traces of colonial British history.
Canada’s publicly funded healthcare is in shambles, along with the currency, economic growth, and public safety. The average delay to get procedures like knee surgery exceeds 182 days, and an estimated 74,000 people have died on waitlists in Canada since 2018. These two pillars of the Canadian Liberal concept of national identity are further discredited by the day.
A combination of left-wing economic policies and cultural globalism cannot sustain a national community in 2025. This is why the championing of the War of 1812 by Canadian Liberals is so bewildering.
The war was deeply connected to the physical and emotional defence of the British Empire and the Crown. Commemorating it today involves venerating soldiers who died fighting under the Union Jack.
Furthermore, it was a colonial affair, the likes of which are boogeymen in the activist worldview.
Since 2015, the Liberal government has embraced the spirit of decolonisation and portrayed Canada’s colonial history as an original sin. British settlers are treated as villains, and those who killed and scalped them are given the heroic treatment in Liberal narratives.
After years of the Liberal tolerance and validation of the black armband view of history, the very concept of chest-thumping Canadian identity and nationalism has been gifted to conservatives by default. It is simply not compatible with left-wing politics.
Canada is due for a federal election and the Conservative Party itself is expected to win decisively, barring a disaster self-inflicted by the party that last governed from 2006 to 2015.
The 2010 Vancouver Olympics was a high-water mark of nationalism, when the Canadian men’s hockey team triumphed over Team USA for the gold. The Conservative government mostly cared for sound economics, but still offered a moderate alternative to the Liberal model of a worldly Canadian identity.
The Conservative cultural vision was distinctly Anglo-American, no different than conceiving of Austria as a Germanic country made distinct by its unique history and cultural nuances. Like so many other modern countries, American cultural influence has made its mark on Canada.
Respect was still paid to British heritage by not hesitating to point out the impact that the Crown, Westminster democracy, and English liberty had a positive effect on Canada. This view was similar to the one held by John Howard and Tony Abbott when they headed Coalition governments in Australia.
Naturally, many progressively minded Canadians grumbled and whined about the attempt to refashion national identity with a basis in history that went further back than the 21st Century, to the rugged days of the cold, hardscrabble colonies and the adventures that came with them.
Nationalism without history is hollow. Attempts to forge an identity based in social democracy and cultural universalism are a mismatch, as exemplified by the Canadian Liberals. A people cannot simply be the product of wealth redistribution and no obligation to be part of something distinct and coherent.
History reminds people of the efforts, bloodshed, and inspiration that made countries possible. It gives meaning to national defence, and makes one reconsider if it is worth shedding centuries-old symbols of national unity just to satisfy the demands of a minority of radicals.
While trying to refashion themselves as rock-ribbed patriots, the Liberals may cite episodes like the War of 1812 all they like, but this generation of their party will convince few beyond themselves.
For conservatives not only in Canada, but around the world, the ownership of nationalism is theirs for the taking.