[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Valmy]

European francophones  are much more likely to talk about fur traders - one of the rare, possible, unity figures in Canada

That is certainly the iconic French Canadian American media provides to us

Well that and nuns. Those French Canadian nuns. Obviously that one is a little outdated.

[Valmy]

The RCMP is nothing but vices.

What are you an anarchist or something?

[Syt]

European francophones  are much more likely to talk about fur traders - one of the rare, possible, unity figures in Canada

That is certainly the iconic French Canadian American media provides to us

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ugnxt

[Grey Fox]

The RCMP is nothing but vices.

What are you an anarchist or something?

No. I am against the continuous use of the Armed forces that did this;

[viper37]

I think Rule of Law, when it comes to First Nations, remains quite a tricky concept to wield.

Sorta true, but irrelevant to the current problem.
Heriditary chief is not a legal concept, and they don't have authority over anything in their nation.And more to it, does who did not disagree with the pipeline were expelled from the group and prevented the use of their title.  Even if they were a majority.

At what point do we listen to every individual complaints?  A group decides something is ok, they negotiate with a government and a corporate entity.  Everyone acts in good faith, but some people show dissent and refuse to accept the majority.

It happens everywhere.  In democracies and in non democracies.  Should Canada be governed by unanimity?  Or do we follow a plurality?  Up to where to we listen to complaints of people who are opposed to everything?  If a specific territory belongs to a community rather than an individual, with whom do we negotiate, assuming they want to negotiate?  If a territory belonged to the city of Montreal and a developper wanted to do something over there, will he negotiate with the city of with every individual citizen?  Should we require unanimous consent for whenever we talk about social acceptability of a project?  If it's a majority, is it 50%+1 as is the norm in the country?  Do we invent a new rule to say it's 2/3? 3/4? 90%?

It is here that Trudeau lacks leadership.  We know members of the First Nations not opposed to the pipeline are verbally and physically intimidated by the opponents.  Why negotiate with thugs who don't even want to meet the politicians to negotiate something?  Where does it stops?  If a police corps is unwilling to apply the laws of the country, why do we tolerate it?  We have banned assault weapons and require all guns to be registered.  Most indians will not register their guns and in some places, the Peacekeepers don't even care about illegal weapons possession, or traffic.  Why tolerate this?

[Malthus]

Then your rebuttal of "weak" makes little sense, as you seemed intent to frame it into a competing assessment of strength.

I'm pointing out it isn't "weak". 

You are the one who transforms "intellectualized" into "over-intellectualized", and "over-intellectualized" into "no actual relevance to anyone". I have never claimed any of this. I simply claimed that an intellectualized notion of identity is much harder to spontaneously mobilize. I don't recognize myself in the other by virtue of believing in "peace order and good government". Outside of academic circles (see Ian McKay's work), these notions have come up in casual conversations about 0 times. I recognize other people from Quebec from a shared culture - that we know the same TV shows, have read the same books in school, know the same authors, and singers, recognize each other's more subtle social clues, share the same set of references, etc. It takes a different sort of conversation to enter the fraught realm of values, and it's an entirely different set of conversations to index those values to "Quebec". 

Take another example: in Quebec, between 1988 and 1995, you could find a lot of people ready to talk about the "5 Historic Demands of Quebec", and the Constitution of 1982. It was a major point of politicization. Since 1995, talk about the Constitution, and the Meech Agreement have considerably receded, and the necessary legal and institutional pedagogy that was necessary to maintain Constitutional grievances at the heart of Quebec's political identity have considerably receded.

Does it mean the Constitution to have no importance? No. It just means it required a lot of effort to make it, and maintain it, as a part of one's identity.

You recognize that people from Quebec have a shared culture, but seem unable to recognize that Canadians not from Quebec have a shared culture - because it doesn't resonate with you?

I'm confused as to what you are advocating. 

Again, these are incredibly vague. They require a lot of pedagogy to index something as uninspiring and dry as the BNA Act into "basic values that people can, and do understand and recognize". Contrast with the Declaration of the Rights of Men, or with the Bill of Rights. The Charter does a much better job at that, hence its centrality. But all this needs to be buttressed and sustained in other ways.

I disagree. Your claim that Canadian ideals are "incredibly vague", "uninspiring and dry" is, well, very subjective. Some people are more inspired by peace and order than blood-and-thunder abstract declarations of Enlightenment ideals, because it is peace and order that they want. To them, it isn't "vague" and "uninspiring", but concrete and necessary.

I think your Mountie may be a good example of such a way for English Canadians - but it has considerably less echo in Quebec (and perhaps in the Maritimes?). I certainly would not identify any of the characteristics you mention as so intimately tied to the Mountie, who is mostly a policeman in a silly hat. (It was, in fact, a conversation I had with my BC colleague). It has never been an iconic character in any Quebec shows, and the RCMP never really features (whereas Quebec's SQ does). Dudley-do-Right has no existence, and the kinds of self-image that Francophones send back to Quebeckers rarely involve Mounties - contrary to Americans, who project the image of the Mounties back to English Canadians. (European francophones  are much more likely to talk about fur traders - one of the rare, possible, unity figures in Canada).

It also has to contend with its own colonial past. Your image of the Mountie is incredibly recent, and the process of quite a deliberate institutional process of rehabilitating it through a mix of old-time pageantry, British inheritance, and contemporary shows located "North of the 60o".

You are missing the point. Iconic figures, while they may be rooted in the past, are always in part contemporary creations. That's what makes them iconic, that each era re-invents them. The "Cowboy" in American culture is a creation of the movies and serials, not a mere historical account of Western agricultural workers. That's exactly why such imagined figures are able to represent national ideals.

Moreover, the Mountie image comes from exactly the same era as the Cowboy - in popular serials, movies and the like. It isn't solely an "incredibly recent" image, but dates back at least to pre-WW1. See for example:

In 1912, Ralph Connor's Corporal Cameron of the North-West Mounted Police: A Tale of the MacLeod Trail appeared, becoming an international best-selling novel. Mounties fiction became a popular genre in both pulp magazines and book form. Among the best-selling authors who specialized in tales of the Mounted Police were James Oliver Curwood, Laurie York Erskine, James B Hendryx, T Lund, Harwood Steele (the son of Sam Steele), and William Byron Mowery.

In other media, a famous example is the radio and television series, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Dudley Do-Right (of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show) is a 1960s example of the comic aspect of the Mountie myth, as is Klondike Kat, from Total Television. The Broadway musical and Hollywood movie Rose-Marie is a 1930s example of its romantic side. A successful combination were a series of Renfrew of the Royal Mounted boy's adventure novels written by Laurie York Erskine beginning in 1922 running to 1941. In the 1930s Erskine narrated a Sgt Renfrew of the Mounties radio show and a series of films with actor-singer James Newill playing Renfrew were released between 1937 and 1940. In 1953 portions of the films were mixed with new sequences of Newill for a Renfrew of the Mounted television series.

Bruce Carruthers (b.1901–d.1953), a former Mounted Police corporal (1919–1923), served as an unofficial technical advisor to Hollywood in many films with RCMP characters.[112] They included Heart of the North (1938), Susannah of the Mounties (1939), Northern Pursuit (1943), Gene Autry and The Mounties (1951), The Wild North (1952), and The Pony Soldier (1952).

From Wikipedia, but adequate for this purpose.

Naturally, the exact ambit of the ideals embodied by the Mountie change, because the audience changes. They always represented "justice", but (for example) the notion that justice ought to be colour-blind gained more currency in the modern era.

Sure - I wouldn't myself say it is hogwash. But it is delicate. Because it never truly solves the issue of whether First Nations are Canadians or not, whether Rule of Law represents a colonial inheritance (which it does) slowly being corrected (which it surely is), etc.

Point is that it is through the Rule of Law that these issues make a practical difference. Yes, the Rule of Law is a "colonial" inheritance. The mistake people on the hard left make, is thinking "colonial" = "inevitably bad and wrong". Some things "colonial" have been good - such as the notion of the Rule of Law.

[Oexmelin]

You recognize that people from Quebec have a shared culture, but seem unable to recognize that Canadians not from Quebec have a shared culture - because it doesn't resonate with you?  I'm confused as to what you are advocating. 

Maybe because I am not advocating anything? You seem intent to read in my post some form of normative/prescriptive recipe for The Best National Identity.

I have said it earlier: no, I don't *get* English Canadian identity, and not just because it's not mine. I think I *get* American, or French, or Haudenosaunee identity, or at least some aspect of it. I don't really get English Canada, and the kinds of things I see people in the press insist is so "typically Canadian" always seem weirdly dis-incarnated to me. In ways that other identities not my own aren't. 

I am not saying there is no such thing, that it is wrong, that you're all a bunch of losers. I am saying my impression is that it is something that pundits, commentators, academics, colleagues that I read / interact with insist is based on sets of things which are overwhelmingly institutional. And yes, I still think that this is something that is looser than shared cultural references. It requires a lot of effort to manifest "peace order and good government" in spontaneous interactions. 

I disagree. Your claim that Canadian ideals are "incredibly vague", "uninspiring and dry" is, well, very subjective.

Err... again, you distort my words. Yes, I find the BNA Act uninspiring. I am not sure it is from some weird personal idiosyncrasies. I'd love to see someone other than a Constitutionalist that is all starry-eyed about it, and would wax poetic about it. And no, it's not because I love war and chaos, weirdly enough. It is only recently that the whole "Peace, Order and Good Government" sentence has left the narrow confines of bureaucratic prose, and while I am sure you and I can wax lyrical about the virtues of peace, order and good government, I am pretty sure we would borrow very little about it from the BNA Act. Once again, my point is not that "peace, order and good government" mean nothing - but that they require a lot of deliberate, pedagogical work to be a core part of an identity.

[Barrister]

Bah.  Digging deep into the 2020-2021 budget, the ACPS budget line is to be reduced from $105 million to $102.

Since our expenses are about 95% salary, that means not filling positions I fear.  Not sure how they square that with their election promise to hire 20 more prosecutors, the first of which are supposed to be allocated this year.

Promise made, promise broken.  UCP has been a disaster.

Apparently the 20 new Crowns (and I mis-spoke - it's 50 new Crowns, 20 of which are hired this year) come from a separate budget line, so is not reflected in out budget.

The great news: of the 20 new Crowns for the whole province, 9 of them are to be allocated to Edmonton.  Tells you something about our workload.

And I disagree theyre a disaster.  They're at least doing something about the deficit!  The NDP just ignored it.

[The Minsky Moment]

No, it doesn't, really. France or the US, for instance, do not have what you seem to imply is an "ethno-linguistic notion of nationalism" either, but they have quite robust discourses about themselves.

Oh but do we.  Neither of those two examples may be ideal models for emulation.

[Oexmelin]

Oh but do we.  Neither of those two examples may be ideal models for emulation.

Again, I am not proposing anything for emulation. And Canada has its own share of nativists, too. 

[Camerus]

The RCMP is nothing but vices.

What are you an anarchist or something?

No. I am against the continuous use of the Armed forces that did this;

As leftwing propagandist artwork goes, Soviet posters kick that tripe to the curb.

[Razgovory]

When did this even occur? The kids running away look like they are wearing blue jeans.  Also all the RCMP guys look like they are clones.

[viper37]

It also has to contend with its own colonial past. Your image of the Mountie is incredibly recent, and the process of quite a deliberate institutional process of rehabilitating it through a mix of old-time pageantry, British inheritance, and contemporary shows located "North of the 60o".

You forgot Due South!!

[PRC]

When did this even occur? The kids running away look like they are wearing blue jeans.  Also all the RCMP guys look like they are clones.

I don't know the actual context for the image but it's probably the 60's scoop.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop

[Admiral Yi]

The picture would be better if one of the birds were pecking out a Mounty's eye.