Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

370

also in the proliferation of galleries and exhibitions as well as the devel-

opment of art magazines. The Canada Council and the provincial art

councils played a crucial role in this development, as did the growth of

museums and art departments in Canadian colleges and universities.

The diversiﬁ cation of styles and themes over the past half-century has

produced not so much a “Canadian art” as a dynamic Canadian art

scene. The major contemporary Canadian artists include Eli Boorstein,

Patterson Ewen, Dorothy Knowles, William Kurelek, Charles Pachter,

Christopher Pratt, Otto Rogers, Jack Shadbolt, Michael Snow, Takao

Tanabe, Joanne Todd, Claude Tousignant, Joyce Wieland, and Bill

Reid, the internationally acclaimed Haida sculptor. The danger of such

a list is that it invariably excludes numerous other artists whose work

deserves recognition.

The same dilemma occurs in highlighting the spectacular growth of

Canadian musical achievement over the past four decades. The emer-

gence of world-rank performers, ensembles, and composers performing

in splendid new concert halls and arts centers across the country is also

attributable to Canada Council support and the development of music

education programs and scholarly research in colleges and universities.

Such groups as the Orford String Quartet, the Festival Singers of Can-

ada, the Canadian Brass Quintet, Tafelmusik, and the Elmer Iseler Sing-

ers are internationally acclaimed. Individual performers of world repute

include opera singers Maureen Forrester, Ben Heppner, Richard Margi-

son, Lois Marshall, Teresa Stratas, and John Vickers; pianists Angela

Hewitt, Anton Kuerti, André Laplante, Louis Lortie, John Kimura

Parker, and the legendary Glenn Gould; cellist Ophra Harnoy; violinist

James Ehnes; guitarist Liona Boyd; jazz musicians Maynard Ferguson,

Diane Krall, and Oscar Peterson; composers Murray Adaskin, Jean

Coulthard, Alexina Louie, R. Murray Schafer, and Harry Somers; and

conductors Mario Bernardi and Boris Brott.

Likewise, Canadians have been proliﬁ c in the realm of popular

music. A host of English-Canadian singer-songwriters emerged in the

1960s, including Paul Anka, Leonard Cohen, Tommy Hunter, Gordon

Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. In Quebec, Robert Char-

lebois, Pauline Julien, Ginette Reno, and Gilles Vigneault expressed the

powerful nationalist current of the Quiet Revolution through their

songs. Anne Murray was the ﬁ rst star of the Canadian Radio-television

and Telecomunications Commission era, but her popularity proved to

be enduring inside and outside of Canada. Other performers of the

1970s, 1980s, and 1990s who have left their mark on contemporary

music include Bryan Adams, The Band, Bruce Cockburn, Céline Dion,

371

composer David Foster, The Guess Who (including Burton Cum-

mings), Sarah McLachlan, Rita McNeil, Alanis Morissette, The Rankin

Family, Rush, The Tragically Hip, Shania Twain, and Roch Voisine.

The Canadian recording industry has become a multibillion-dollar

business, producing music that is popular well beyond the relatively

small national market and that is no longer dependent on Canadian

content regulations.

A growing number of Canadians have become household names

around the world as movie and television performers. The major dra-

matic actors include Geneviève Bujold, Martha Henry, William Hutt,

Margot Kidder, Dora Mavor Moore, Kate Nelligan, Gordon Pinsent,

Christopher Plummer, Kate Reid, William Shatner, Donald Suther-

land and his son Keifer, R. H. Thompson, and Al Waxman. Canada

has had a penchant for producing comedians and comedic actors,

including Dan Ackroyd, John Candy, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox,

André-Philippe Gagnon, Rich Little, Andrea Martin, Mike Myers,

Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and the team of (John) Wayne and

(Frank) Shuster. Major ﬁ lm directors and producers include James

Cameron (who won an Academy Award for Titanic in 1998), David

Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, and Norman Jewison. Unlike their prede-

cessors, most of these performers have maintained their Canadian ties

and identity even though their work may require them to live in the

United States.

Another form of popular culture that has become a multibillion-dol-

lar industry is sports (Morrow and Wamsley 2005). Hockey continues

to be considered the national sport with additional NHL teams located

in Vancouver (1971), Calgary and Edmonton (1979), and Ottawa

(1993). Quebec City and Winnipeg also entered the NHL in 1979, but

escalating player salaries along with higher taxation levels in Canada

forced the franchises to move to U.S. locations in the 1990s. How long

the other six Canadian teams can remain economically competitive

with the 24 American-based franchises is a pressing question. During

the 1980s and 1990s, hockey fans were thrilled by the scoring exploits

of Wayne Gretzky of Brantford, Ontario, who has rewritten the record

book in virtually every offensive category. After leading the Edmonton

Oilers to four Stanley Cups in ﬁ ve years from 1984 to 1988, Gretzky

was traded to the Los Angeles Kings for ﬁ nancial reasons—yet another

Canadian who found it necessary to continue his career south of the

border. In the wake of Canada’s dramatic last-minute victory in the

eight-game series with the Soviet Union in 1972, the Canada Cup was

inaugurated in 1976 as a tournament to be held every four years to

THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

372

determine international hockey supremacy. Canada has won four of the

six competitions.

In recent times, hockey has had to share the limelight with baseball

and basketball. Major league baseball came to Montreal in 1969 and

Toronto in 1977. The Toronto Blue Jays, operating since 1989 out of

a magniﬁ cent and expensive retractable-roofed stadium known as

Skydome, became the ﬁ rst foreign team to win the World Series in

1992 and 1993. On the other hand, the Montreal Expos fell on ﬁ nan-

cial hard times as a “small market” franchise and were forced to move

to an American city in 2004. The Vancouver Grizzlies, which joined

the National Basketball Association (NBA) along with the Toronto

Raptors in 1996, suffered the same fate in 2001. Financial problems

also plagued the Canadian Football League as Montreal and Ottawa

were temporarily forced to curtail operations in the late 1980s and the

mid-1990s, respectively. As in hockey and baseball, the Canadian

teams have had to overcome competition from the American-based

National Football League (NFL). In the late 20th century, Canadians

have been inclined to support only major league professional sports,

even though the Canadian market may not be large enough to sustain

a team.

The international sporting spotlight shone on Canada when Mon-

treal hosted the summer Olympic games in 1976 and Calgary hosted

the winter Olympic games in 1988. Vancouver will enjoy similar rec-

ognition when it hosts the winter Olympic games in 2010. After World

War II, Canada became an important ﬁ gure skating nation. Canadian

world champions in individual competition have included: Barbara

Ann Scott (1947–48), Donald Jackson (1962), Donald McPherson

(1963), Petra Burka (1965), Karen Magnusson (1973), Kurt Browning

(1989–91, 1993), and Elvis Stojko (1994–95). Canadian world cham-

pions in pairs competition have included: Frances Dafoe and Norris

Bowden (1954–55), Barbara Wagner and Robert Paul (1957–60),

Maria and Otto Jelinek (1962), Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini

(1984), Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler (1993). During the 1980s,

Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver became regular stops on the major

international auto racing circuits. In the late 1990s, Jacques Villeneuve

achieved the world championship recognition in auto racing that

eluded his legendary father Gilles Villeneuve, who was killed in a rac-

ing accident early in the previous decade. Indeed, Canadians at the

beginning of the new millennium have such high expectations of their

athletes because so many of them have achieved world championship

distinction in their sports.

373

National Ambivalence in the New Millennium

Whereas Canadians strode hopefully into the 20th century buoyed by

Prime Minister Laurier’s conﬁ dent proclamation that it would be

“Canada’s century,” they edged ambivalently into the 21st century still

uncertain about their nation’s direction or destiny. This prevailing

sense of national uncertainty would appear to defy logic and reality.

Since the early 1990s, the United Nations Human Development Report

has ranked Canada at or near the top of its list of nations in a survey on

quality of life. Other major international surveys before and since have

rated Canada highly as a safe, healthy, and stable place to live and

work. With its population increasing from 30 million in 2001 to 31.6

million in 2006, mostly through immigration, Canada enjoyed the fast-

est rate of population growth among the G8 nations. Despite such evi-

dence of the envy with which the rest of the world views the opportunity

to live in Canada, political cynicism, regional discontent, and anxieties

about economic security and social diversity continue to pervade

national life.

The continuing ambivalence of Canadians has been to some extent

politically induced. No compelling vision, such as Macdonald’s National

Policy or Trudeau’s “just society,” has emerged from the political arena

to foster a sense of national unity or identity. Instead, political leader-

ship has been preoccupied with holding on to power, reacting to public

opinion polls, or dealing with internal party wrangling. After a decade

as prime minister, the fourth-longest tenure in Canadian history, Jean

Chrétien retired in late 2003 amid growing allegations of corruption and

scandal as well as pressure from the supporters of his arch-rival and suc-

cessor, Paul Martin, Jr., son of a cabinet minister in the King, St. Laurent,

Pearson, and Trudeau administrations. From the outset, Prime Minister

Martin was besieged by the so-called sponsorship scandal, or “AdScam,”

originally conceived in response to the Quebec referendum scare of 1995

as part of a two-pronged plan to combat future separatist threats.

The most publicized part of the plan to stiﬂ e Quebec separatism

involved an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ultimately

ruled in 1998 that no province enjoyed a legal right to secede from

Canada unilaterally. On the other hand, a province could initiate legal

steps toward secession after achieving the consent of a “clear” majority

of its population on a “clear” question in a referendum, although the

Court left the matter of deﬁ ning clarity to the politicians. In essence,

the Court was acknowledging that Quebec’s future in the Canadian

Confederation was more a political than a legal matter. While the Que-

bec government refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the Supreme

THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

374

Court on this matter, it interpreted the judicial decision as a victory.

Also declaring victory, the Canadian government proceeded in 2000 to

pass the Clarity Bill (Bill C-20), which deﬁ ned a “clear majority” on a

“clear question” in terms that were substantially more than 50 percent

plus one. By this time, Premier Lucien Bouchard and his successor (in

2001), Bernard Landry, were stymied by popular indifference to sepa-

ratism and dissension within the Parti Québécois, which was defeated

by Jean Charest’s Liberals in 2003.

Meanwhile, the less heralded strategy to counter separatism in Que-

bec proved to be the most controversial. The sponsorship program

involved the allocation of funds to advertising ﬁ rms that were allies of

the Quebec branch of the federal Liberal Party for the purpose of pro-

moting Canada through cultural and sporting events in Quebec. As

early as 1999, allegations of misuse and misdirection of funds were

being investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but

little was known about the matter and the public showed little interest

until an auditor-general’s report released in February 2004 revealed

that up to $100 million of the $250 million sponsorship program had

been allocated to Liberal-friendly advertising agencies and Crown cor-

porations for little or no work. The report was originally scheduled to

be released three months earlier, but Chrétien prorogued Parliament

and stepped down as prime minister, thereby leaving his successor to

bear the brunt of the scandal. In trying to redirect the blame back to his

predecessor, Prime Minister Martin could not escape suspicions about

his knowledge of the evolving scandal as ﬁ nance minister from 1993 to

2002. Under intense opposition and media pressure, Martin referred

the whole matter to a special Commission of Inquiry and then called an

election in the hopes of gaining a mandate to govern before more dam-

aging allegations were reported.

The Liberals also hoped to strike before their opposition in Parlia-

ment could strengthen. In late 2003, the Canadian Alliance and the

Progressive Conservatives agreed to merge into the Conservative Party

of Canada, under the leadership of Stephen Harper. The new party was

the culmination of a “Unite the Right” movement, driven by the desire

to present an effective opposition that could draw support from all parts

of Canada and would not split the right-wing vote as had been the case

in the previous three federal elections. In a campaign that focused on the

corruption of the centrist governing party and the uncertainty associated

with the new right-wing coalition, Canadians decided that they feared

corruption slightly less than uncertainty. Stronger support for the Con-

servative Party (notably in Ontario) and the Bloc Québécois combined

375

to deprive the Liberals of a majority government. Indicative of the

national mood was the record low voter turnout in the election of 2004;

almost two-ﬁ fths of the electorate did not bother to cast a ballot, mark-

ing the ﬁ rst time in Canadian history that voter apathy exceeded support

for the victorious party.

During the spring of 2005, the minority Liberal government nearly

fell in the wake of more damaging testimony before the federal Commis-

sion of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities,

headed by the retired justice John Gomery. Another national election

was averted when the Liberals struck a deal with the NDP for a reduc-

tion in corporate tax cuts and $4.6 billion in spending on social pro-

grams, while Conservative deputy leader Belinda Stronarch agreed to

join the Liberal Party as a cabinet minister. The political crisis temporar-

ily subsided with Prime Minister Martin’s pledge that he would call an

election within 30 days of the release of the ﬁ nal report of the Gomery

Commission. When the interim report of the Gomery Commission in

November 2005 conﬁ rmed allegations of criminal corruption within

the Chrétien administration and identiﬁ ed a “culture of entitlement”

within the federal Liberal party, public support for the Martin government

began to erode even though the Prime Minister was “exonerated from any

blame for carelessness or misconduct.” After the Martin government was

defeated on a motion of nonconﬁ dence, a national election was called for

January 2006. Already reeling from the sponsorship scandal, the Liberal

campaign suffered a mortal wound when the RCMP launched a criminal

probe into possible government leaks regarding income trust tax changes

that facilitated insider trading in the stock market.

This time, apocalyptic rhetoric and fear mongering could not dis-

suade enough voters from supporting the Conservative Party. With

only 40 percent of the seats and less than three-eighths of the popular

vote, Harper’s Conservatives formed the smallest minority government

in Canadian history, largely on the strength of support in the West and

in Ontario, notwithstanding the metropolitan Toronto area. The cor-

rosive impact of the sponsorship and the income trust/insider trading

scandals was particularly evident in Quebec, where the Liberals were

reduced to 13 seats and 20 percent of the popular vote in the wake of

another Bloc Québécois sweep of their former stronghold. In effect,

Canadians were more certain about what they were voting against than

what they were voting for.

Another major issue in the national elections of 2004 and 2006 was

Canada’s relations with its southern neighbor. While acknowledging

mutual cultural and political traditions, supporting collective security,

THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

376

and appreciating the economic beneﬁ ts of access to American markets

and capital, further stimulated by NAFTA, Canadians remained wary of

the potential threat to national sovereignty that closer integration

posed in the age of globalization. A hint of tension between the two

countries became evident in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks

against the United States on September 11, 2001, which resulted in

more than 3,000 deaths. Although the Canadian government improved

aviation and airport security, reinforced border security as well as

police and intelligence agencies, and assigned new powers of investiga-

tion and detention to law enforcement authorities—much to the cha-

grin of civil libertarians—new President George W. Bush went out of

his way to identify Britain as America’s chief ally in the “War on Ter-

ror.” Moving beyond its traditional peacekeeping role, Canada further

afﬁ rmed its commitment to ﬁ ghting terrorism in 2002 by deploying

combat troops to support American forces in Afghanistan. However,

the Chrétien administration refused to participate directly in the Amer-

ican and British invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that the mili-

tary operation was not authorized by the United Nations Security

Council and thus violated the UN Charter. In an attempt to appease the

Americans, Canada moved military planners and ships into positions of

readiness for the war against Iraq and sent more troops to Afghanistan,

thereby freeing U.S. forces. The Liberal government was, in fact, com-

plying with the American request in military terms, while maintaining

a public stance that gave the appearance of nonparticipation and an

independent foreign policy. Prime Minister Harper’s decision to visit

Canadian troops in Afghanistan as his ﬁ rst ofﬁ cial overseas trip in

March 2006 was hailed not only as a demonstration of the Conservative

government’s commitment to reconstruction and stability in the region,

but also as a signiﬁ cant change in the relationship between the govern-

ment and the military in Canada.

A similar pattern of ambivalence and change has accompanied the

heated debate over participation in the American missile defense pro-

gram. Traditionally, the Canadian Department of National Defence has

been quietly favorable to participation in the program, largely because it

wishes to retain the current level of Canadian involvement in North

American Air Defense (NORAD). The diplomatic concern has been that

failure to participate in the program will mean being shut out of Ameri-

can defense planning and might even lead to other reprisals. Pointing to

the increasingly aggressive foreign policy of the recent Bush administra-

tion, opponents have contended that the program will do great damage

to international peace and security by creating a new arms race among

377

the great powers. By having the courage to oppose its mighty ally,

Canada was not only reasserting its national independence but also rees-

tablishing its voice in the international arena as a crusader for global

disarmament and a revitalization of the UN.

During the election campaign of 2004, the Liberals and NDP sup-

ported the latter view, while the Conservatives demanded a stronger

commitment to continental defense, in addition to greater military sup-

port for the United States in Iraq. The decision of the Martin administra-

tion not to participate in the missile defense program in February 2005,

in the context of ongoing criticisms about liberal immigration policies

and questionable border security, was greeted in some American politi-

cal and media circles as further conﬁ rmation that Canada was becoming

a haven or conduit for terrorists and a military liability. After the elec-

tion of 2006, the new Harper government adopted a more conciliatory

stance by formally renewing the NORAD agreement with the United

States and extending its provisions to maritime defense. On the other

hand, Prime Minister Harper left no doubt about his government’s plans

to assert Canada’s sovereignty over the Arctic waters with armed forces

and its opposition to an American law that will require Canadian citi-

zens to show their passport when crossing the border into the United

States.

Diplomatic tensions have also tainted trade relations between the

two countries, judging by the softwood lumber dispute that escalated

following the expiry of a ﬁ ve-year trade agreement in 2001. Contending

that the federal and provincial governments unfairly subsidized the

Canadian lumber industry, the American government imposed tariffs

that a NAFTA panel ruled were excessive in 2003. The dispute and the

refusal of the United States to obey NAFTA rulings most seriously

affected British Columbia, the major Canadian exporter of softwood

lumber. Identifying the issue as “the top priority,” the Harper govern-

ment reached a seven-year agreement with the United States in April

2006. The deal eventually supported by the lumber industry in British

Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec requires the United States to return

about 80 percent of the more than $5 billion in duties that it had col-

lected on lumber imports.

Another issue of increasing importance in the bilateral relationship

has been environmental protection, as embodied in Chapter 11 of

NAFTA. While the two countries have worked closely to resolve trans-

boundary environmental issues, the Canadian government has tended

to be more committed to energy and ecological conservation than has

its U.S. counterpart. Their differences became evident in their responses

THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

378

to the international pact on the reduction of greenhouse gases signed

in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Whereas the United States refused to ratify

the Kyoto Protocol to control global warming and extreme climate

change, the Canadian government ﬁ nally agreed to sign the pact in

2002, despite strong objection from Alberta, which produces almost

one-third of the nation’s greenhouse gases. The subsequent election of

a Conservative government in Ottawa with strong electoral support

from Alberta and a leader formerly employed in the province’s oil

industry has raised concern that Canada will not take the Kyoto Proto-

col seriously. Indeed, recent developments have tended to highlight the

way in which Canadian-American relations shape and are shaped by

partisan politics, in addition to changing economic realities and uncer-

tain global events.

The resurgence of the western-based Conservatives and the struggles

of central Canadian–focused Liberals in Ottawa have coincided with

the apparently shifting course of regionalism at the start of the new

millennium. Relative economic prosperity since the mid-1990s for the

most part has rendered the various regions less inclined to engage in

heated battles with the federal government over the maldistribution of

resources. Just as the focus of the global economy has shifted from the

Atlantic to the Paciﬁ c world, so the Canadian economy has become less

centrally dominated to the beneﬁ t of the western and eastern regions,

largely due to a thriving primary resource sector.

The traditional sense of western alienation has been somewhat miti-

gated by economic growth. On the strength of a booming energy sector,

Alberta has enjoyed a population growth of about 20 percent since the

mid-1990s and has consistently boasted the highest rate of economic

growth in Canada. In 2005, Alberta’s economy grew by an estimated

4.5 percent (compared to 3 percent nationally), and experts predict

that the province will have one of Canada’s top-performing economies

in the future, perhaps even surpassing Ontario as the leader. The effects

of a faltering Asian economy in the 1990s and the ongoing softwood

lumber dispute with the United States caused British Columbia to fall

behind Alberta as the economic engine of western Canada. But a rate of

economic and population growth second only to Alberta and a recent

recovery fueled by a diverse resource base, ﬁ lm and high tech indus-

tries, and tourism have solidiﬁ ed British Columbia’s status as a major

“have” province. The traditional “have not” provinces of Saskatchewan

and Manitoba have also improved their economic prospects in an

attempt to become less dependent on the agricultural sector. In addi-

tion to its already thriving petroleum industry, Saskatchewan has

379

become recognized as a world leader in agricultural biotechnology, and

the opening of Canada’s ﬁ rst synchrotron facility in 2004 at the Univer-

sity of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon represents a major advancement in

life science and pharmaceutical research. Stronger manufacturing,

utilities, and scientiﬁ c and technical service sectors have highlighted

Manitoba’s recent economic growth.

The prospects of the Canadian North have also been bolstered by

recent resource developments. The discovery of one of the world’s larg-

est nickel deposits in northeastern Labrador in 1997 is beneﬁ cial to

both the province of Newfoundland and the adjacent eastern Arctic

region. Likewise, the development of northern Alberta’s Athabasca tar

sands, believed to be the largest oil deposit in the world, with a poten-

tial capacity estimated at 1.6 trillion barrels, will enhance the fortunes

of the adjacent Northwest Territories. Northern life is bound to be

transformed by the discovery of several diamond deposits in the 1990s

and the opening of productive mines 300 miles northeast of Yellow-

knife in 1998 and 2003, respectively. Another three mines are sched-

uled to open by 2008: at Snap Lake, about 200 kilometers northeast of

Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories; at Victor, near James Bay in

Ontario; and at Jericho, in Nunavut. These mines will consolidate

Canada’s position as the world’s third-largest diamond producer by

value, after Botswana and Russia. The richness of Canada’s northern

frontier is becoming more apparent as modern technology opens the

way for further exploration and extraction of resources. In addition, the

higher stakes of resource development are intensifying and motivating

settlement of long-standing Native land claims in the Arctic and Sub-

arctic regions as they have in the northern frontiers of the provinces.

Although Canada’s economic center of gravity is clearly shifting

westward, the prospects of the Atlantic provinces have shown signs of

improvement as a result of increased economic diversiﬁ cation. After

enduring the decline of its cod ﬁ sheries that prompted a moratorium

on ﬁ shing in the early 1990s, the economy of Newfoundland and Lab-

rador is being revitalized by the development of the Hibernia oil ﬁ eld,

located about 300 kilometers southeast of St. John’s. Over three decades

of experimental drilling, federal funding, and mishaps—notably the

loss of 84 lives in the sinking of the Ocean Ranger mobile oil drilling

platform in 1982—culminated in the opening of the Hibernian ﬁ eld in

1997–98. Hibernia has proven to be one of the more successful oil

wells, with a dedicated ﬂ eet of shuttle tankers continuously operating

between the offshore drilling platform and an onshore storage terminal

adjacent to an oil reﬁ nery at Come By Chance. Likewise, Nova Scotia’s

THE ILLUSION OF CONSENSUS