Oh, Canada!

Following the link from a comment left on a recent post has re-awakened my long interest in this country's appalling neglect of Canada. Last year or the year before, I read that Bill Bryson's publishers had told him that "even Canadians do not want to read a book about Canada!" This is most unfortunate, because Canada is a hugely important country, where the Crown and the Keynes-Beveridge settlement that so depends on it (as against the wholly false "classlessness" or "meritocracy" of, in particular, the United States) survive and thrive upon the very North American continent, securing everything that true conservatives exist in order to conserve. There is no other purpose either to the Crown or to the Keynes-Beveridge Settlement, nor am I aware that the latter exists anywhere part from the former.

It is striking that a large anti-monarchist movement has arisen in Australia precisely during the long and ongoing Premiership of John Howard. New Labour was frankly "republican" to every extent short of actually saying the word, and that position is in turn the inexorable logic of Thatcherism.

In Canada as anywhere else, this all needs to be explained. But the land of the Red Tories is of course hallowed in this regard.

Indeed, Britain’s real special relationship across the North Atlantic is with Canada. The descendants of the United Empire Loyalists are to the Commonwealth as the Palestinians are to the Arabs. Like the Palestinians, they even keep the keys and the title deeds to their ancestors’ confiscated properties. Huge numbers of Canadians are of Scottish descent. So are huge numbers of Americans, but all the fuss there is made of a ridiculous pseudo-Irishness.

Although Canada was undoubtedly an independent country, she fought in both World Wars from the start. She did not wait for Germany to encourage a third country to attack her several years into the First. Nor did she wait for Germany to declare war on her, and to attack her shipping, several years into the Second.

As one of the 16 Commonwealth Realms, including Britain, independent Canada retains the monarchy. Any of them can abolish it (as many others have done), or change her own Law of Succession. Canada freely chooses not to, just as Britain does. She cherishes her ties to us and to our other 14 sisters. Likewise, we cherish our ties to her and to our other 14 sisters. Or, at least, we should.

Canada’s was a social democracy constructed in order to defend the best conservative values against capitalism, just like ours. Most of her people still want this, just like ours. Yet she currently has a neoconservative government, just like ours. And it engages in scaremongering in order to curtail liberty, just like ours.

Finally, Canada’s vast resources of fuel, fresh water and other key commodities make her a coming superpower of the twenty-first century. By contrast, her southern neighbour is already in decline. I do not mean this in any anti-American way; it is just a fact.

Which transatlantic special relationship matters more? Indeed, when the chips are down, which one really exists at all?