J. Gayson said:
Canada is not anti-military.
The problem is the average canadian really cares about public health care, funding for specilized groups and social programs. Parties that want votes are going to invest in these programs to stay in power, thus the CF becomes a secondary priority.
How many Canadians have we heard saying that they want the CF to get more money, but they don't want other programs to get less, and they aren't willing to pay more taxes. . .
I think you need to understand that the idea that universal, public
free, health care and social programmes, in general, ought to be central to the
national fabric has its origins in the famous 1960 Kingston Conference in which Tom Kent, amongst others, developed the policy
directions which would guide the Liberal Party of Canada for 40+ years.
The key problem was
national unity which the Liberals, in 1960, saw as having two main components:
1. Québec
nationalism; and
2.
Territorialism - which the Liberals saw as inimical to the strong, centralized federal state which the
Fathers of Confederation clearly wanted and which most Liberals saw as being the only
siren song which would tempt Québec away from the national 'centre'.
There is no doubt in my mind that the
Fathers did want a strong, centralized, federal state. Québec's
place was, in 1867, an issue and the dreadful experiences of the US Civil War were fresh in everyone's minds. The problem was (still is) that the Constitution they wrote, despite their intentions, decentralized those areas of responsibility which matter most to most people - the areas of exclusive federal jurisdiction, including the 'new' areas reserved for the feds, are not matters which concern Canadians, day-by-day. Over the course of two world wars the Liberals learned that the federal government can
intrude into areas of political jurisdiction with no appreciable political risk - only the tiniest possible minority of Canadians knows or cares about the Constitution; their votes are negligible.
The Kingston Conference saw
federal social programmes, especially health care, as the best possible tool to:
"¢ Strengthen national unity and, simultaneously, reduce the territorialist
pull which weakened the national 'centre'; and
"¢ Reinforce the Liberal Party's already strong position as the
moderate, progressive 'Party of the Centre'.
The aim became:
1. Intrude, further and further into areas on (constitutionally mandated) provincial responsibility;
2. Blur the line (regarding
desirable social programmes) between the national government and the Liberal Party; and
3. Make social programmes
central to Canadians' expectations from the nation-state.
The last item was paramount and it was easy. In the 1960s there were
(my guesstimate) 4,000,000+ voters who had
come of age before or during the Great Depression. The Depression (always capitalized) was, even more than World War II, what defined them and their political agenda. (In the '62 and '63 general elections about 7,800,000 Canadians voted - a few were born between and 1929 (the start of the Depression) 1942 (the voting age was 21 back then) but the 'baby boomers' were not, yet a factor.) The Depression generation embraced social programmes as only those who had experienced real hardship -
which I suggest cannot even be imagined by 90% of native born Canadians born after 1936 - can. Their children - the boomers - took social programmes and all they implied about a
just society, etc, to heart.
Moving social programmes, especially
free health care, up to a primary position in our national self-image meant that other, less tangible things, including thoughts about foreign and defence policy, moved down, and down, and down.
By 1969, when Pierre Trudeau (a bloody fool of the first order) and his foreign policy
guru Ivan Head repudiated Louis St Laurent's policy of an active, responsible,
leading middle power Canada - in an act of policy vandalism which still animates the Liberal party of Canada, Canadians were ready and willing to embrace something akin to pacifism. The Viet Nam war didn't make it hard - US 'culture' (including
infotainment via the all-powerful TV news] had, already, completely swamped English Canada, and the American anti-war movement spread world-wide, tarring all things military with its brush.
Turning the ship around and regaining St Laurent's
correct policy - the only
independent Canadian foreign policy we ever had - will require many years and much money and, I believe, leadership other than that which can be provided by the Liberal Party of Canada until the (now)
thirty-somethings take power.
