Soon after becoming prime minister in 2015, Justin Trudeau declared that Canada as a distinctive nation, was dead.
‘‘There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada. There are shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first post-national state.’’
To the prince born with the silver spoon "Canada" was a state, a governing body ruling within a geographic boundary — but not a nation — a distinctive people imbued with a natural right to self-determination.
In a sense, he wasn't wrong. Canada was always a state before a nation, as the Fathers of Confederation stitched together the English and French-speaking colonies of British North America for the primary purposes of resisting American annexation and creating a free-trade zone.
The Canadian state did not develop organically from pre-existing nations like France and England over centuries or through blood and iron like Germany in 1871. It was a "civic" nation more akin to the Americans but lacked the heroic founding struggle for revolutionary birth.
Canada was a deal. It was a transaction brokered over much liquor by men who — despite lacking the mythos of America's founding fathers — understood the greatness of what they were doing. They understood Canada as an inheritance from Great Britain that they were to carry on in North America.
Canada became more independent from Britain in the years that followed and the Canadian 'state' gradually developed a sense of the Canadian 'nation'.
Pierre Trudeau fully embraced the darker side of Canadian nationalism — our anti-American inferiority complex. He set about to replace Canadian culture with "multiculturalism" and hollowed out the definition of "Canadian" to mean merely a North American who isn't an American.
What little was left of Canadian identity was boiled down to a beer commercial: hockey, Tim Hortons, government healthcare. All of which isn't really much to be proud of at this point.
When the Petite Dauphin declared that Canada was a state, but not a nation in 2015, he was almost correct. He made it his mission to make sure it was true by the time he was done with the place.
When racialist Black Lives Matter protests came to Canada, Trudeau kneeled before them, expressing Canada's collective guilt at being one of the first places on the planet in human history to abolish slavery.
When moral panic swept the country after (still) unproven claims of mass graves at residential schools, Trudeau ordered the flag on Parliament Hill be lowered to half-mast as an expression of "national" self-shame. The sackcloth and ashes went on for six self-debasing months until Remembrance Day necessitated raising it again so it could be lowered once more.
Progressivist politicians across the land followed suit, with mayors cancelling Canada Day celebrations.
The Liberals and NDP have contrived — but thus far not succeeded — in a bill to jail Canadians who deny that Canada is a genocidal state.
When people burned hundreds of historic Christian churches to the ground, Trudeau's chief of staff, Gerald Butts, said it was "understandable".
When violent mobs toppled statues of Sir John A. MacDonald, Queen Victoria and other great figures from Canada's history, Trudeau and his progressivists sat idly by.
Trudeau and his father actively sought to plunder and destroy the wealth of Alberta and Saskatchewan, creating a deep-rooted alienation here from a sense of shared prosperity and identity with the rest of Canada.
Trudeau actively gutted the Canadian Armed Forces of any sense of tradition and valour, replacing it with DEI and tampons in the men's room.
And these are the people demanding that Canadian patriots man the ramparts against American encroachment right now?
These are the people calling us to stand on guard for the True North? To defend what? Our Western industries that they have hunted like jackals for generations? Our traditions that they so openly despise and debase? Our history that they are so ashamed of? Our culture that they feel is so inherently hateful? Our symbols that they are so eager to tear down?
Spare me the false sense of duty to country. Spare me the beseechment to defend what you have defiled.
Trump smells weakness wreaking from the Canadian border, and the predator that he is, has come to feast. And like Trudeau, he does not see a nation-state. He sees a post-national state ripe for the picking, with its own leader considering it in such low regard that he was willing to sacrifice it for just a few more vain months in office.
Trudeau's post-national state is now prey to become a post-state nation.
