The Price of Liberty

A secondary note regarding liberty, freedom, and independence on this day.

Canada Day is the Dominion’s national day and a statuatory federal holiday. It celebrates, not freedom from rule by the British Crown, but the anniversary of the Confederation of Canada. (On 1 July, 1867), merging the “United Canadas” (Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. The Confederation remained within the British Empire.

Until 1982, when Canada got its own Constitution (by the Canada Act) and severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the UK Parliament in London, it was called Dominion Day.

Although it is often informally referred to as “Canada’s birthday” (parroting US ideas of Independence Day), it is not: Instead of an eight-year war and a peace treaty, it took a long time to reach the country’s full sovereignty. Today, Canada is a “kingdom in its own right” within the Empire (Commonwealth).

What it did not do was guarantee the liberty of Canadians, then or now. Although many Canadians will claim otherwise, the “rights” stated under the 1982 Constitution are limited and subject even more to the power of the federal and provincial governments than even in the decayed Union of their neighbor to the South. Canadians are constantly bombarded with instructions to “bear the white man’s guilt” when it comes to “First Nations” (Canada’s equivalent to AmerInd nations down South).

In recent years more and more Canadians have been disarmed, had their rights of free speech, association, and even freedom of worship reduced. At the same time, their federal government has gone to desperate lengths to keep Quebec in the Confederation, which has meant stealing even more from Peter to pay Paul. It is not a pretty picture, especially to the Canadian subjects of the Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and especially Alberta). (One of the great differences between the USA and Canada is that their Constitution explicitly states that the provinces have the power to leave the Dominion; to secede. Theoretically.)

In recent decades, as in the United Kingdom itself, and Europe, Canada is flooded with immigrants, not just from other Commonwealth nations but from around the world. With this mass migration has come the same problems as seen elsewhere, including the Fifty States. And solutions have not been all that good, when we get down to it.

Any time we look north, Americans and lovers of liberty everywhere can and should learn lessons from the history of a lovely and productive country.

But in the meantime, as votes are being scheduled on at least one attempt to secede (in Alberta), we at TPOL wish our neighbors, friends, and especially lovers of liberty up North, a good Canada Day.