by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
October 13, 2004
In her column in the Toronto Star last Monday, columnist Linda McQuaig wrote about how some prominent Canadians, "a small but influential group of right-wing Canadian academics and media commentators", hate Canada. She refers to these people as "Canadian self-haters".
Hate is a strong word. Even if, and it is a big "if", she is right about what she is saying, only someone on the hard left would ascribe the word "hate" to opinions that disagree with those that McQuaig holds. To automatically assume that someone who legitimately disagrees with major policies and views of the Canadian government hates this country is disingenuous to say the least. The "Canadian self-haters" that McQuaig names are historians Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein and Globe and Mail columnists Jeffrey Simpson and Margaret Wente.
Linda McQuaig is no doubt not being paid by the Liberal government but she should be. She is echoing the party line that was expressed so well by Prime Minister Paul Martin during last year's federal election campaign. anyone who disagrees with the Liberal Party's vision of Canada is "un-Canadian". McQuaig is one of those people that agree with freedom of expression as long as she agrees with what is being expressed. If she doesn't, rather than argue that they are wrong, she resorts to name-calling – they disagree with her; therefore they must hate Canada.
McQuaig criticizes the "hand-wringing lately about anti-americanism that's said to be afoot in the land". She then goes on to characterize this anti-americanism as being based upon Canada's refusal to join the United States and its real allies in the war against Iraq. although Canada's reluctance to join in the Iraqi War because the United Nations refused to sanction it is certainly part of it, she completely ignores other forms of anti-americanism such as MP Carolyn Parrish's second outburst in as many years when she called the United States "idiots". It's true that Parrish is, in the immortal words of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, "a nobody", but the Prime Minister's refusal to discipline her leads to the inevitable inference that he is supportive of not only her but of what she said. anti-americanism in Canada, despite McQuaig's best efforts, cannot be simply put down to Canadians disagreeing with the foreign policy of the United States.
McQuaig also writes, "It seems they're [the neo-cons] frustrated that 9/11 didn't finally push Canadians deeply into the arms of the United States". Here we go again. If a Canadian thinks differently than the Natural Governing Party does it must be because they merely want to follow the lead of the United States. It seems there can be no other reason for disagreeing with the Canadian government. McQuaig does not allow for the possibility that there are some of us that take the threat of terrorism seriously; who think that there are certain people in the world such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden who cannot be appeased or reasoned with and agree with what the United States is doing for reasons other than the desire to blindly follow George W. Bush.
Linda McQuaig also goes after the Globe's Jeffrey Simpson who wrote that we should "de-dramatize all future discussions about health, and ban such words as 'moral covenant,' 'national identity' and 'the fight of our lives…'"
There happen to be people in this country, like Simpson, who think that there is more to being a Canadian than who pays for our rectal examinations. McQuaig seemingly buys into the notion that you can't be a real Canadian unless you agree with the Liberal Party's view of the health care system. any attempt to involve privatization must be referred to as a move to american style health care even though no one on any political level has ever suggested doing away with our public system of health. again, the columnist suggests that anyone that doesn't adopt her view of Canada's health care system, must hate Canada.
Canada had better be a perfect country. If it isn't, there will be no chance we can improve if people like Linda McQuaig get their way. If she was really concerned about Canada, perhaps she would be better off pondering those who really hate us instead of ascribing hate to people such as Jack Granatstein and Michael Bliss.