Since at least the time of the Pearson Government, one of the Liberal party’s central purposes has been to mould Canada into its own image, remaking national symbols to reflect the party while at the same time populating the civil service and public institutions with Liberal loyalists (hello Trudeau Foundation). Today, the Justin Trudeau Liberals are not merely content to put a party stamp on the country. They behave as if they want to, and as if they believe they can, remake society entirely by removing symbols and references to the past.
Earlier on, most of the changes made by Liberal governments at least incorporated recognizable Canadian symbols, with a Liberal spin on Canada, as opposed to a Conservative one. For instance, the red and white flag adopted in 1965 transparently displays Liberal colours, but the maple leaf had long been a symbol of Canada, and was prominently incorporated into the previous Red Ensign flag.
Patriating the constitution introduced the Charter of Rights and Freedoms along with a new amending formula, but also maintained Canada’s status as a constitutional monarchy, as well as the original constitution, “similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom.”
This is how societies evolve, with changes sometimes small and subtle, and other times big and loud. A government confident in itself should be confident to modernize, while also recognizing there is a past.
For the Liberals of today, however, it’s as if they want us to believe that Canada was reforged anew in 2015, with the ascendancy of Trudeau to prime minister.
The latest attempt is the redesign of the Canadian passport. Apart from uglifying the cover, which at least maintains Canada’s royal coat of arms, the pages within have done away with recognizable symbols, such as images of the Fathers of Confederation, the Last Spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, the Vimy Memorial, as well as images of Terry Fox and Nellie McClung.
In their place, there are now generic pictures that appear to have been drawn and coloured by elementary school children, that if they were not contained within a Canadian passport, there would be no indication that they represent Canada. Yet, we are to believe that they highlight “Canada’s diverse people, landscapes and wildlife across the four seasons.”
As with most things intended to represent diversity, they do so by removing and sanitizing the diversity that actually does exist. Adding imagery that represents Indigenous Canadians would be desirable and appropriate, but adding images that represent everyone, represents no one.
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The government has been on something of a roll of late in its mission to scrub Canada of anything resembling Canadianess. Beginning just this spring, the Liberals have removed from King Charles III’s official title references to the “United Kingdom” and “Defender of the Faith.” Similarly breaking with tradition, a new Canadian crown has been designed to sit atop the royal coat of arms. Rather than adopt Charles’ crown, this “Trudeau Crown” replaces religious symbols with maple leafs and snowflakes.
These are just the most recent. There has also been a redesign of bank notes that removes, or will remove, former prime ministers from the $5 and $10 bills, and changes to the citizenship oath that allow would-be Canadians to swear allegiance online, as part of a general cheapening of what it means to be Canadian. Last year, a federally funded “toolkit” targeting schools effectively branded the Red Ensign as a hate symbol.
While lowering the Canadian flag after the discovery of suspected graves at the Kamloops Residential School in 2021 may have been appropriate, leaving it down for half a year, as the government did, was dismissive of the very country the Liberals apparently govern. If you need to understand how Trudeau truly feels about reconciliation, as opposed to how he pretends to feel, consider the fact he spent the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on a surfing holiday.
When a spat of churches were burned down, also in 2021, the Trudeau government barely acknowledged it, and former Principal Secretary Gerald Butts called the burnings “understandable.”
There was and continues to be shoulders shrugging at the toppling of statues of former prime ministers and monarchs. The Liberals aren’t necessarily cheering this behaviour on, but this is the Canada, the “first post-national state,” that Trudeau clearly wants.
Fortunately for Canadians, and despite the government’s efforts, history and tradition have a way of asserting themselves.
Among the greatest examples would be France after the 1789 revolution. The revolutionary government tried, and eventually failed, to do away with that country’s past, a policy that horrifyingly included the murder of as many as 40,000 people, including 17,000, who were publicly executed.
The French aimed to remove any reference to, or symbol of, the king or the Catholic church, starting, of course, with the king’s head. There was a general policy to topple statues and destroy crosses and bells and any and all references to Catholic worship. The Catholic clergy were ordered to pledge allegiance to the government and renounce the pope, and any priests that refused faced imprisonment or death.
The government also attempted to “decimalize” all units of time, converting the calendar into 10 months of 30 days, each with three weeks of 10 days. The months were all renamed to reference crops or the weather in Paris, the month of July was roughly converted to Thermidor (meaning heat). This had the effect of removing religious holidays, as well as Sundays, from the calendar. The French also tried to convert the 24-hour day into a 10-hour day.
But practical concerns, such as the prevalence of 12 hour clocks and the fact that 10 day weeks gave workers fewer days off, meant that people were generally reluctant to adopt the new calendar. Unsurprisingly, the system was eventually scrapped, just as the Catholic church was re-established and the monarchy was restored.
Surely Canada is strong enough as a country to weather Trudeau’s timid revolution.
National Post
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