by Morley Evans
Canada is an excellent example of "divide and rule" politics which the Liberal Party of Canada has used to dominate Canada for most of its history. A minority inside a minority ruled the roost for most of Canada's history. But the game has been breaking down and the Liberal Party has lost its grip. Can it create a new game?
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/mapping/historical_maps/1867.asp
Note: Newfoundland was an independent Crown colony until it joined Canada in 1948.
Canada fundamentally changed when the Parti Québecois got into power in 1976. The Anglos in Montréal, who had run everything in Canada since Confederation, moved to Toronto. That ended the political game Wilfrid Laurier had established for the Liberal Party to play: tell the French they need the Liberal Party to protect them from the Anglos (everyone else in Canada); tell the Anglos they need the Liberal Party to keep the country together; keep the French under the Anglo's thumbs at home in Montréal. Long ago, George the Third had kept the French with the British against the Americans by guaranteeing them 1). Their language, 2). their religion and 3). their culture. The French agreed not to join the Americans which is why there is a Canada today. When Benedict Arnold invaded Québec in 1775, the French stayed home and Arnold lost.
Despite what Torontonians might like to think, Montréal was the most important city in British North America until 1976. Montréal was run by the Anglos who reneged on the agreement with the French right from the beginning. "We'll just keep everything of value for ourselves. They can keep their language, religion and culture." A few years later the Canadians did the same thing to the Indians who signed up for the same reason as the French, the British looked better to the Indians than the Americans who had been slaughtering their cousins for a couple of hundred years. Over a century later, the Canadian Indian treaties are still not fully implemented. The Indians got better treaties with the Americans than they got with the Canadians. Not great, but better: the Navaho got half of Arizona; the Lakota got half of the Dakotas. Canada gave the indians tiny bits here and there where Indians could starve on welfare and be despised. When Desmond Tutu visited some Canadian Indian Reserves, he was shocked by what he saw. Canadians are not as lily white as they imagine themselves. Canadians can put that news in their pipe and smoke it.
My own greatest problem with Steven Harper, today's PM, is that he signed Canada up for the "War on Terror" the day after he became the Prime MInister of Canada with a minority in the House of Commons. That day, Harper declared Hamas a terrorist organization and froze all aid to Gaza, endorsing the Israeli terror campaign against the Palestinians; Harper turned Canada's peace-keepers in Afghanistan into American peace-makers; he approved the Israeli rampage in Lebanon two years ago along with Israel's murder of a company of Canadian peace-keeper observers on the Lebanese border. Harper thought it was just fine that Israel bomb Lebanon into the stone age. None of this major foreign policy shift was mentioned during the election campaign and none of it was approved by anyone. Harper is a lying sneak with a smarmy smile. The sooner Harper is out, the better. The Tories would do anything to stay in power, so they can go back to the dog house.
The Liberals are not much interested in my reasons to get rid of Harper. The NDP is closer to me on foreign policy. But I would never vote for them, having grown up in Tommy Douglas Saskatchewan.
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