The Slow Decay of Pearsonian Nationalism 1993-2015
I grew up as an enthusiastic participant in Pearsonian nationalism, the theory of Canadian nationalism that the governments of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau carefully designed and built between 1963 and 1982. As canvassed in my last post, this included a new flag, anthem, constitution and, more importantly, theory of what Canada was. Canada was understood to be a bilingual, multicultural welfare state structured by benign elite consensus maintained through brokerage.
This theory of Canada’s nature was embraced Conservative leaders Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney, the latter of whom actually sought to amplify most features of Pearsonian nationalism, seeking higher levels of elite consensus, albeit based on a more decentralized model of the federation, with a powerful but less coercive federal government.
But, as neoliberalism increasingly came to structure the global economy, most welfare states began running large structural budget deficits. Consequently, when the Liberals returned to power in 1993, they were forced to modify Pearsonian nationalism and engaged in unilateral cuts in transfer payments to the provinces that funded most social programs.
The kind of elite consensus among the federal government and provincial premiers that had created Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Canada Assistance Plan (the system of co-funded welfare programs backed by federal legislation proclaiming Canadians’ right to food and shelter) was not sought by Jean Chretien’s government when it radically reduced transfer payments and raided the Unemployment Insurance fund.
With the exception of Paul Martin’s brief stint as Prime Minister from 2003 to 2006, no attempt has been made by any government since the defeat of Mulroney in 1993 to return to the idea that paternalistic elite brokerage and consensus should make nation-defining decisions. But neither has any successor model taken hold. There has existed no broadly shared or coherently narrated agreement about how we decide the big things about who we are as a nation.
Furthermore, one of the primary tools used to describe and instil Canadian values, the CBC has had a rough ride for most of the past thirty years, suffering under waves of austerity, during the Chretien and Harper governments, while, at the same time, being crowded out by a massive increase in Canadian cable channels in the 1990s followed by the rise of streaming TV in the 2010s.
When Canadians returned the Liberal Party to power in 2015, Pearsonian nationalism was in a state of institutional and cultural disrepair, following not just the decay I have described above but nine years of Stephen Harper’s intermittent efforts to propound the alternative 1812 nationalism I described in my previous article, during which time he did successfully rewrite the guide for new citizens and other important definitional texts.
The Post-Harper Liberals
Initially, it seemed as though, following his “Sunny Ways” election night speech in 2015, it was Justin Trudeau’s plan to reunite Canada with the Liberal past. And, although he never suggested it, we assumed that he would seek to restore the nationalism that his father had been instrumental in crafting. But instead, over the past eight years, we have seen a bizarre new kind of nationalism emerge, one propounded by a highly ideological CBC whose funding has been fully restored to function as the megaphone for Trudeau’s new theory of Canadian nationalism.
In some ways, we can see this new nationalism as an elaboration of official multiculturalism structured by a phenomenon I have been calling neo-Ottomanism in my writing over the past three years, a social order and a politics of diversity, best-exemplified in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Or, in the language of the Second British Empire, “a place for everyone and everyone in their place.”
This intensification of multicultural rhetoric and state support and endorsement of the festivals of racialized Canadians and non-Christian religious minorities not, itself a bad thing at all. I welcomed and continue to welcome enthusiastic state support and endorsement of festivals like Vaisakhi, which really brightens up my neighbourhood and is really important to our sense of community here as my Sikh neighbours welcome everyone into their traditions of generosity and celebration. I have no beef with the Trudeau government’s policies when it comes to sponsoring and promoting even nationalist patriotic festivals like Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates not a religious or cultural tradition but a decisive military victory of the Mexican state, something of which the Mexican diaspora remain justly proud. It is the larger context in which these events are now being placed that is concerning.
If one is not a member of a non-Christian religious minority or racialized group, there are two kinds of Canadian nationalism currently on offer:
The White Consciousness Movement, an Elite Nationalism of Self-Flagellation
Among elites, the commissar class and the caring professions, there is a new, muscular vibrant Canadian nationalism, a novel and bizarre way of celebrating a new kind of white racialist nationalism. This nationalism celebrates what one might call a “White Consciousness Movement.” The idea is that Canadians born since the mid-1960s are the very first good Canadians who have ever existed. Our ancestors were, all of them, genocidal, racist, misogynistic homophobes. But beginning in the late 1980s or early 90s, an increasing number of as Stephen Harper might say, “old stock Canadians,” threw off these centuries of cruelty and bigotry and became the first ever good Canadians.
My generation and the Prime Minister’s (we were born the same year), came to understand that the Canadian project and its history were something to be deeply ashamed of and sad about. And, beginning in the 1990s, we began developing new ritual acts to celebrate this nationalism.
In fact, I attended what I believe to be the first ever land acknowledgment in Sechelt in 1992. Originally, as I have explained in other articles, land acknowledgments were performed by indigenous government officials or random indigenous people one pulled off the street and handed $50 or $100. But, as the cultural practice matured into being one of the first displays of this new white consciousness nationalism, ritual acts performed by white Canadians for white Canadians, an opportunity for commissars and caring professionals to perform their white guilt and sensitivity to a receptive audience, eager to show their virtue by crying along.
The Canadian White Consciousness Movement’s nationalism primarily comprises acts of mourning and effacement of traditional symbols. The Maple Leaf flag, which once sat at the centre of the Pearsonian nationalist symbolic order, is still used in White Consciousness nationalism but as an object of shame, humiliation or mourning. It is the lowering, not the raising of the flag that Maple Leaf rituals are about. Statues are toppled by vigilantes or decommissioned by elites. Flags are removed, festivals canceled; sometimes even books are burned.
When there is a real or imagined past event about which the White Consciousness Movement wishes to stage an apology, their preferred ritual act, one of the key ritual acts is flag lowering or flag removal. The only flags it celebrates raising are the geometrically complex, post-rainbow Pharma Pride flags that adorn the windows of every business in a Canadian downtown core and fly above our legislative buildings, military installations and chartered banks.
The White Consciousness Movement believes that Canada was a mistake, which it may well have been. And they believe that it has historically been a stinking racist hellhole. Consequently, it cannot imagine that racialized Canadians would want to celebrate their nation, never mind that many immigrants deliberately chose Canada precisely because they believed it was not a stinking racist hellhole. As a result, White Consciousness nationalism does not make itself available to most racialized Canadians; and even the few who are permitted into White Consciousness nationalist ritual are not allowed to play the same ritual roles as old stock white Canadians in civic ritual. The roles reserved for non-whites are primarily the scold, one available to folks from all racial groups who can scold the White Consciousness movement’s members to help them stage acts of contrition and grief. But the contrition and grief is reserved for whites; and the noble savage, available to Indigenous Canadians who are asked to show up with blankets and drums to sanctify, as opposed to prompting, the ritual expression of white guilt. In this way, the central form of nationalist performance is walled-off from non-whites even if they are invited as participants.
Not only are racialized Canadians disqualified from full participation in this nationalism; so are those who have an aspirational or celebratory view of the country, especially folks who don’t have a lot of days off and really appreciate having a big party weekend in early July when the weather is good. White Consciousness Canadian nationalism is fundamentally an elitist movement that conceptualizes most Canadians is ineligible to participate in its public displays of grief, regret and guilt.
Hoser Nationalism and the Third Northwest Rebellion
The degree to which working class Canadians working and living in the Boreal Forest belt are viewed as outsiders by the White Consciousness Movement became very clear during the 2022 Freedom Convoy, during which the establishment press characterized their march on the capital as an invasion and them as “invaders.” How exactly can one “invade” one’s own country?
What struck me as I read more outlandish denunciations of the convoyists was that it reminded me of something from the past. It took me a few weeks to realize that these denunciations were reflective of the same ideological and class position of the establishment figures who denounced Louis Riel and his movements during Canada’s first generation.
It became clear that the White Consciousness movement believed that, while most racialized Canadians and most members of religious minorities could celebrate some kind of nationalism, as long as they did not attempt to claim full ownership of Canadian-ness and or attempt to equally participate in the White Consciousness Movement.
But for white working-class Canadians and indigenous and Métis people who are not neo-traditionalists, there is no appropriate expression of nationalism, especially if such an expression is joyful, fun or expresses appreciation for Canada in the present or optimism about our shared future, even if the present is dark. Just today, Calgary, supposedly the most conservative major city in Canada, just canceled Canada Day fireworks because watching an entertaining visual spectacle on a July 1st would be an act of anti-Indigenous racism.
Indeed, the CBC has run stories suggesting that, like the word, “freedom,” our own flag constitutes an “alt-right dog-whistle,” a symbol of racism and hate. True Canadian nationalism must be elite, somber lamenting the existence of the nation. People who want to have a party to celebrate what they enjoy about Canada now or what they hope it could one day become are not supposed to celebrate Canada Day at all because expressing joy on that holiday reveals one to be a deplorable, someone unfit to celebrate the new elite nationalism of our White Consciousness movement.
And the very symbols and traditions that underpinned Pearsonian nationalism are now understood to be symbols of genocide and racism. Indeed, the White Consciousness Movement has attempted to replace “our home and native land” in our anthem with “our home on native land,” something that may sound like an expression of sensitivity or regret but, like so much Woke discourse, is actually a spiteful racist humblebrag, telling Indigenous people not that they are part of our communities and equal citizens but victims of a crime we have successfully committed against them. Healthy sane people want to be part of inclusive communities, not exiled from the mainstream of their society and cast as perpetual victims and dupes.
And this is all part of the social partitioning of Canada, the establishment’s effort to make sure that Canadians do not encounter other sorts of Canadians, and especially not in a joyful context. To keep Canada post-political, the establishment has fashioned an anti-nationalism, one in which recent immigrants are insulted as fools for liking their life in Canada and ignoramuses for choosing to come here, one in which regular people are looked on not merely as public nuisances but as dangerous fascists for having a barbecue, getting drunk, shooting off fireworks and waving the flag of their own country on its own national holiday
It Does Not Have To Be This Way
It does not have to be this way. I am no keen to resurrect Pearsonian nationalism, nor do I think we can return to the alternative vision of John Diefenbaker. Stephen Harper’s 1812 nationalism is not my bag either. But what if we re-considered the nationalism of James Laxer and Waffle Movement that, albeit briefly, took Canadian socialists by storm in the 1970s? In my next piece, I am going to explore the Waffle as a historical phenomenon but also, the possibilities Laxer’s project presents to us today.
