Politics

Perspective | The trucker 'convoys' have roiled politics in Canada — and the U.S. Why that's rare. – The Washington Post

Published

3 years ago

March 3, 2022

For weeks, reports about the Canadian truckers’ occupation of Ottawa generated headlines, alongside stories about the support they enjoyed in the United States and Justin Trudeau’s controversial decision to end the protest. The trucker protests in Canada reflected a sense of anti-government popularism that emerged under Trump in the United States. Yet they were unpopular among most Canadians.

It is rare for Canadian politics to spill over so concretely into the United States, just as U.S. politics typically has little impact in Canada. But American and Canadian politics used to be far more intertwined.

In the 19th century, political trends in the United States often made their way northward as American groups worked to influence political movements in Canada. These situations usually resulted in violence and fueled Canadian fears of annexation before, and even after, the 1867 Confederation, when Canada achieved self-government within the framework of the British Commonwealth. The intermingling died down as the establishment of the Confederation installed at the root of Canadian politics a philosophy of improving upon the flaws Canadians saw in the early U.S. republic — one antithetical to some American ideals of liberty.

On a cold December day in 1837, on Navy Island in the Niagara River — which separates the United States from Canada — a group of revolutionaries proclaimed the Republic of Canada. In a symbolic gesture, their leader, politician and journalist William Lyon Mackenzie, raised the flag of the new country, independent from Britain. It was a blue flag with two stars, one for Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), the other for Upper Canada (present-day Ontario).

During the following months these revolutionaries shook Canada with guerrilla attacks, particularly in the south. Canadians organized these strikes with the support of American enthusiasts. Together with Canadian sympathizers, the Americans brought supplies to the rebels in an American-owned ship, the Caroline.

British forces crossed into U.S. territory to pursue them, set fire to the ship and hurled it, all ablaze, over Niagara Falls. Several people on both sides of the skirmish were injured and one died.

The entire incident occurred on American soil and caused a decade-long diplomatic embarrassment for both countries. The leaders of the rebellion, including Mackenzie himself, fled to the United States. In January 1838, President Martin Van Buren took steps to ensure the United States’ official neutrality in the Canadian rebellions and avoid a war with Britain.

But the protests simmered on. Groups of American supporters of Canadian independence organized in a secret network known as the Hunters’ Lodges, headquartered in Cleveland. The organization swelled over the following year, with estimates ranging from 15,000 to 200,000 members. They were popular especially in Northern border areas, from Maine to Wisconsin. But the groups organized as far south as Kentucky, and they also grew in British North America. The lodges launched two more failed attacks into Canada, in November and December 1838, when hundreds of Americans crossed into Canada only to be pushed out again by local militias with the help of a few regular troops.

The Canadian rebellions and the border conflicts that followed them were a local manifestation of larger continental and transatlantic upheavals. Jacksonian democracy had swept the United States. Broader economic shocks, including the Panic of 1837, caused anxiety and hardship in both the United States and Canada. Borders were in flux. Texas had seceded from Mexico in 1836 and stood poised to join the United States, and the unsettled Maine-Canada border created territorial tensions to the north.

To Mackenzie’s American supporters, the conflict in Canada was simply a movement for self-government and a conflict between autocracy and liberty. They saw their involvement as a natural continuation of the anti-colonial struggle that had birthed the American republic in 1776.

But, republican enthusiasms in Canada had a very different root. Those advocating for change usually expressed frustrations with Britain’s colonial policies rather than admiration of American models. Canada’s imperial and monarchical allegiances actually remained strong. The chaos of American politics in the 1830s and 1840s, punctuated by street riots and recurrent violence, tarnished the appeal of republicanism and American-style federalism. To most Canadian colonists, the American experiment in democracy was a cautionary tale of weak central government and mob rule, and pointed clearly to the value of remaining part of the British Empire.

American style-republicanism also struggled to catch on in Canada, because Canadians had fundamentally different visions of community, law and freedom. Historian Michel Ducharme explains that an understanding of liberty that located government legitimacy solely in the popular will guided American political institutions. By contrast, similar to the British, colonial Canadians favored an understanding of liberty as the sum of individual rights that a state had the duty to guarantee to all its citizens. This interpretation did not assume direct political participation for everyone, nor did it legitimize revolution and rebellion whenever the government lost popular support.

Ideological debates over monarchy and republicanism suffused colonial Canadian culture, from journalism to literature. But Canadians came to a very different conclusion than their neighbors to the south. While by the 1840s most Canadians believed that they should have a say in their government, they favored gradual reform within the parameters of the constitutional monarchy and the British Empire rather than a radical break and American-style republicanism.

Because it lacked the expected popular support from within, Canadian and British forces defeated Mackenzie’s revolutionary movement. Even though political conversations about republicanism and annexation to the United States continued on and off for another 100 years, as historian David Smith argues, republicanism never acquired widespread traction across the provinces, and the monarchy never faced another serious challenge in Canada again.

In 1867, one of the founding fathers of the Canadian Confederation, Georges-Etienne Cartier, summed up the American influence on the formation of Canadian parliamentary democracy. Canadians had 80 years to “contemplate republicanism in action” in the United States. Seeing its defects convinced them “that purely democratic institutions could not be conducive to the peace and prosperity of nations.”

The Canadian experiment instead intended to avoid the mistakes of the United States. The British North America Act that marked the creation of the Confederation of Canada as a parliamentary liberal democracy under the British Crown included the phrase “Peace, order and good government” to describe the lawmaking powers of the Parliament. Over the years, the phrase has become the Canadian counterpart to the American “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This fundamental difference explains why it’s so rare for political movements to cross the northern border of the United States in the 21st century. Though they are in some ways similar and exist as neighbors, American and Canadian politics have fundamentally different philosophies at their root.

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Politics

‘Disgraceful:’ N.S. Tory leader slams school’s request that military remove uniform

Published

1 day ago

November 8, 2024

Anne Joseph

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.

Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.

A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”

Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.

“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.

In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”

“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”

Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.

Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.

Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.

“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.

“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.

“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.

“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”

“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

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Politics

Saskatchewan NDP’s Beck holds first caucus meeting after election, outlines plans

Published

1 day ago

November 8, 2024

Anne Joseph

REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.

Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.

She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.

Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.

Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.

The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

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Politics

Nova Scotia election: Liberals say province’s immigration levels are too high

Published

2 days ago

November 7, 2024

Anne Joseph

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.

Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.

“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.

“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”

The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.

In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.

“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”

In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.

“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”

Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.

Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”

In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.

In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.

“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”

Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.

“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”

The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.

“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.

“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

— With files from Keith Doucette in Halifax

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