Problems of Canadian Nationalism

Abstract

subject is Canadian nationalism. This is not a subject in which I have a long-established scholarly interest. The growth of nationalist sentiment in Canada during the past five years or so has, however, forced itself on my attention through my professional interests in international trade and monetary policy, as well as through my general interests as a Canadian citizen. As a Canadian, I have been disturbed because nationalism in its recent form seems to me to appeal to, and to reinforce, the most undesirable features of the Canadian national character. In these I include not only the mean and underhanded anti-Americanism which serves many Canadians as an excuse for their failure to accomplish anything worthy of genuine national pride, but also what I think of, perhaps unfairly, as the small-town pettiness of outlook that is the shadow side of many Canadian virtues. As an economist, I have been even more disturbed by the protectionist and anti-foreign investment proposals which have been associated with nationalist sentiment. It is not just that these proposals seem to be attempting to enlist, by specious reasoning, the support of a confused nationalist sentiment for measures whose chief effect will be to increase the profits and power of particular interests at the expense of the community. Much more serious is that these proposals seem to me to be running in the precisely opposite direction to the kinds of policies Canada should be pursuing to make the most of her opportunities in the emerging world economy. What is also serious, the emphasis that has been placed on foreign competition and American investment in Canada as the causes of Canada's recent economic difficulties has served to distract the attention of the general public though not of the professional economists from the fact that these difficulties are in large part attributable to an inept and perhaps wilful certainly unnecessary failure to those in charge of Canadian economic policy to take appropriate remedial measures. Thus, far from