Canada's Identity Crisis
By Chris Nerpin
For those who prefer to listen to the article, the author has also recorded an audio version
We’re only six-weeks into 2025 and the conversation in Canada has mostly been centred around being annexed by President Trump to become the 51st US state. This is happening on social and traditional media and is being heard from the mouths of all our elected officials. Alarmingly, it is not a debate being held in our government institutions. Our House of Commons (HoC) is currently in a government induced coma after being prorogued. The discussion is not happening at any legislative level, though it’s the pivot all our leaders are now using to garner our trust, support and votes for whenever our democracy is revived. The conversation is being used by our so-called democratic leaders to manipulate us.
Among Canadians the conversation is rightfully contentious and the citizenry is fractured. Many are touting 51st State as a great idea, while some are labelling that as traitorous; others are drifting wildly between. Occasionally you’ll come across a logical exchange of opinions; sadly, that’s a rarity. You won’t hear much that’s rational coming from our leaders. Most are now flying the Canadian flag proclaiming their patriotism and lecturing us to display ours. All are now clamouring to prove great defenders of our sovereignty, shouting fighting words to our closest ally. Our leaders of all affiliations are now adversarial with the world’s mightiest nation which happens to be our next-door neighbour.
Canada, its leaders and its citizens are suffering a full-blown identity crisis. It’s not because there’s tampons in men’s washrooms across the country; that certainly doesn’t help. I offer it is very much a result of our politician’s envy of the global respect and dominance America’s constitutional republic provides its Presidents and politicians. It’s also due in big part to a collective ignorance of our own parliamentary democracy. In regard to the latter, Canadians exist in a fallacy that the Prime Minister (PM) of Canada is the central figure/role of our democracy. Our Commander in Chief. That’s become the norm thanks to consecutive elected governments perverting our system for the benefit of party politics. Our media and our own political apathy have helped to engrain it. The foundation of our democracy is our HoC and the collective of Members of Parliament (MP) are supposed to hold the PM to account. The PM is not the commander of the HoC. In Canada, that’s actually the role of Governor General (GG).
To put this into perspective Donald Trump won the recent US election with 77.3 million Americans checking his name on their ballot. 156.3 million Americans voted; a majority voted for Trump. In Canada’s 2021 federal election, only 22,526 Canadians cast a ballot selecting Justin Trudeau’s name. 17.2 million Canadians voted. Only 0.13% voted directly for the PM. Every modern PM has only ever received less than 1% of votes in any federal election. Our southern neighbours cast votes for their president, their congressmen, and their senators. Americans directly elect the highest office in the land, and they also elect the individuals to hold that office to account. We do not directly elect the leader of our nation. We cast one vote for our local candidate to be our voice in Canada’s HoC and charge that role with holding the PM to account. While an American President is given a mandate by direct votes from citizens, the PMs mandate in Canada is in fact to deliver a collaborated mandate as decided by the members Canadians send to the HoC. Canadians do not vote for or elect a Prime Minister.
You wouldn’t know it watching our politics and our elections play out. Like what we see during US elections, here at home all the focus is on the two major party leaders running to be PM. All attention is given to two - sometimes three - individuals who will receive less than 1% of Canadians’ votes, combined. 99% of us actually elect the 337 - soon to be 342 - other MPs. Of the 99% of us, how many know the person they actually cast their vote for? MPs run on their party’s platform. They parrot the promises, policies and even the image of their party’s leader. Often your local candidate propaganda has the party leader’s image more prevalent than their own. Too few have any relationship or even tangible engagement with the individual who is supposed to be their representative. In Canada, far too many of us check a name of a relatively anonymous person and claim to have voted for the Prime Minister.
Canada has been suffering this national political identity crisis for decades. Our politicians have contributed to and capitalized on it juggling their own. As a result, the role of the PM has become almost omnipotent and can subvert democratic accountability on a whim. The act of proroguing gives the PM of Canada more power to shut down our democracy than the US President has to defy the US Congress and Senate. Our PMs behave as sovereigns. Our political ignorance relegates us to peasants. With the swipe of the pen of Canada’s Governor General (GG) – it’s Commander and Chief – an individual with less than 1% of electoral support can shutter our democracy. Incestuously, the GG is appointed by and is also advised by the PM when to use this “royal prerogative”.
Three of the four PMs over the last 25-years have wielded this almighty sword five times cutting our democracy off at its knees to protect the government from accountability. In 2002 Jean Chretien did it to avoid tabling the Sponsorship Report. He simply asked the GG he appointed, Adrienne Clarkson, to grant it. Michaelle Jean appointed by Prime Minister Paul Martin granted the wish to Stephen Harper in 2008 to prevent a non-confidence vote threat against his government. Jean granted another for Harper a year later in 2009. The PM at the time claimed it was to consult with Canadians regarding the recession the country was facing. It conveniently shut down investigations and provided a window for the conservative PM to install conservative majorities on Senate committees.
In 2020 Trudeau advised GG Julie Payette to prorogue parliament, shutting down the WE Charity scandal and investigations. Payette’s disgraceful tenure as GG and subsequent resignation is evidence of a Prime Ministerial disregard for the importance and function of the GG to Canada’s constitutional framework. Appointed in 2017 by Trudeau, Payette is only the second GG to ever resign. Romeo LeBlance resigned in 1999 due to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Payette resigned in 2021 in utter disgrace due to her behaviour with staff and treatment of the Office of the GG itself. Moreover, both professional and personal controversy preceded her ascent to this mightiest of positions. A PM can choose an undignified and unscrupulous individual to fill an exalted and conscientious position; a pillar of our democracy. Of course, parliament is now prorogued again so the Liberal Party of Canada can sort itself out. It was granted by GG Mary Simon who Trudeau also appointed in 2021, and who herself has proven to be less than distinguished.
The latest dismissal of our democracy is evidence of at least our democratic identity as a nation being in crisis. Not only is this proroguing arguable wholly undemocratic, its implementation has stripped all Canadians of any representation when threats of taxation and tariffs are coming from both outside the country and from within. Canada never had a Boston Tea Party. While our American cousins fought the War of Independence to break the chains of taxation without representation from the British Monarchy, Canada did not. Loyalist to the monarchy fled Boston and other parts of the then colonies, flocking north to what later became Canada. We became a British Parliamentary Democracy, while the US established its American Constitutional Republic. It might be that some 250 years later the lingering effects of Loyalism have left us a subjugated population with a seemingly only performative democracy. We identify as free citizens of a democratic society at par with our Yankee cousins. We are not.
Considering this, it should come as no surprise many Canadians are ecstatic at the idea of joining the US, let alone piqued by interest. After all, the US is a global military and economic superpower. The American experiment has fundamentally changed the whole of the planet over its 250-year history, arguably for the better. It’s a strong, self-made, self-reliant, vibrant and patriotic nation. We’ve really only ever existed in the shadow of that.
Canada did not become an independent nation until 1982, yet still hasn’t cut the cord with Great Britain (GB); we’ve retained all it’s democratic systems. It could be said Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 1982 to sign our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was GB washing its hands of any responsibility for Canada. It left behind what’s known as the Canadian Crown or the Office of the GG. The GG costs Canadians upwards of $60 million dollars a year; former GGs cost taxpayers an additional million dollars annually. It’s could be argued that’s a tremendous expense for a crowned charlatan, as GG Payette proved to be. It’s proving to be a tax-payer funded crown that PMs wield at their will. It’s worlds away from how our southern neighbours operate.
It’s said every time the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold. Canada however, enjoys great wealth and opportunity when the US prospers. In the shadow of the United States of America, Canadians have lost sight of our own democratic process. We vote like we’re Americans, yet there is nothing American about our democracy, its institutions, their functions or the role we play in all of it. Worse, our elected leaders, appointed officials and senior bureaucrats have benefited from this while the whole of our nation has stagnated and is now in precipitous decline.
They continue to benefit. The 51st state conversation has spread like wildfire across the country. Our leaders have seemingly found a new fire of pride in the nation of Canada, only adding to the identity crisis. Canada is at the back-end of Justin Trudeau’s post-national vision. Executing that vision required our nation adopt the identity of being a genocidal, racist nation of irreparable disrepute. Our government lowered our national flag to half mast for six-months while simultaneously promoting activist and identity flags, reinforcing a self-loathing of what it is to be Canadian. In 2022 leaders decried our flag and the citizens who flew it. We have Canadians still facing judgment for participating in protests where Canadians flew their flags proudly. Federal politicians of all stripes were either active or passively against all of this. None notably stood up for Canadians. None defended our history or touted Canadian pride. None stood against the post-national, self-hatred being propagated throughout our government institutions and media. Now those same politicians want Canadians to forget it all and rally behind them, they themselves now flying our flag apparently proud of our Country.
It's exacerbating just for that. It’s infuriating because its more distraction from the heart of the issue. It’s performative politics when we need our leaders to be performing their jobs and addressing the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue has everything to do with the identity of Canada. The soul of our country is mortally wounded. Mass immigration, increasing poverty and homelessness, nefarious social ideologies, crime and violent crime, organized drug syndicates, grand scale money laundering, compromised politicians, this is Canada today. What our country looks like today is not the Canada of 10-years ago. Its identity has fundamentally changed. To now try to revive a nostalgic patriotism and ignore the facts is to try to put a blindfold on a pig, then put lipstick on that pig, and then send that pig off to slaughter. Canada’s the pig; the politicians the farmer.
While calling it an identity crisis may seem superficial in the stark reality of the existential crisis Canadians are in fact facing as a nation, we must answer a question if we wish to truly solve this crisis. What or who do we want to be as a nation? It’s a question neither we as a citizenry has ever taken seriously, nor any of our leaders have asked us to answer. The history of our confederation has mostly been a slow crawl of mediocre accomplishments while the world develops around us knocking and dragging us along from one global event to another. The conversation about becoming the 51st state is in fact all about what and who we are as a nation; our identity. It is a conversation we would not be having so passionately if we weren’t already suffering an identity crisis.
Our politicians cannot be trusted to answer this question and settle this conversation. Certainly not when all of them were either aggressively or passively part of the erosion of the idea of Canada most of us thought we knew. The response and the position coming from most our leaders is troubling, but it may also be definitive evidence of the choice we have to make. Is Canada going go to be a for the people, by the people led country of free market, free enterprise, personal choice, liberty and freedoms? Is Canada going to be a socialist-style, wholly corrupted country controlled by a few privileged elites accountable only to themselves dictating to the populous the intricacies of our lives? Our American neighbours spilled the tea 250-years ago of the failures of parliamentary democracy. They broke the mold and built a new model for themselves. Canada was and remains indifferent to that, but it has always mostly only been to the benefit of our culture and our economy. Our chickens have come home to roost though and that may very well save the pig from being slaughtered by the farmer.
Chris Nerpin is an Independent Accounting Professional working in the Nation's capital. A politics junkie, he's watched, played, and written about politics since junior high. Never a shy observer, he doesn't hesitate to call things as he sees them. You can find more of his opinions about Canadian politics and social issues on X @chrisnerpin.