Terry Burton is a retired veteran of Alberta’s oil and heavy construction industry, and a former member of the Alberta Apprenticeship Board.Canada is not in crisis because it is under siege from hostile foreign powers. Nor is it a victim of some unavoidable global conspiracy or historical inevitability. Canada’s predicament is far more unsettling as it is largely self‑inflicted. The country is struggling because too many of its leaders — and too many citizens — are trapped in an acute and dangerous form of denialism about the nation’s vulnerabilities, its declining institutional capacity, and the cumulative consequences of decades of misguided political, economic, and social decisions.Denialism is not simply disagreement or optimism. It is the refusal to acknowledge evidence, trade‑offs, and limits. In Canada’s case, it has taken the form of moral certainty combined with policy recklessness, where good intentions substitute for results and dissent is dismissed as reactionary or immoral. This mindset has hollowed out the foundations of a country that was once confident, pragmatic, and capable of hard choices.Canada’s decline has not been driven by invasion or coercion. Rather, it increasingly resembles a nation engaged in political self‑harm — voluntarily weakening its economic base, fragmenting its social cohesion, and surrendering decision‑making authority to unaccountable quasi‑governmental international bodies and activist NGOs. Canadian leaders vigorously deny this reality, yet their actions consistently affirm it.At the heart of this problem is a saviour complex that vastly overestimates Canada’s capacity and moral authority. Canada represents roughly 0.5% of the world’s population, yet behaves as though it bears responsibility for correcting every perceived global injustice or existential threat. No matter how well‑intentioned, Canada cannot save the world, and pretending otherwise has led to policies that impose real hardship on Canadians while delivering negligible global impact.Climate policy illustrates this imbalance. For more than half a century, dire predictions of imminent climate catastrophe have repeatedly failed to materialize as forecast. Yet Canadian governments persist in policies that deliberately constrain energy development, inflate household costs, and undermine national competitiveness — despite Canada’s marginal share of global emissions. Fewer than 15% of the world’s population, concentrated in Western democracies, has embraced this self‑punitive approach, while the remaining 85% continues to prioritize growth, energy security, and poverty reduction. Canada insists on leading a moral crusade that others neither follow nor reward..In doing so, the country has drifted dangerously close to a political event horizon. The essential glue that once held Canada together — shared beliefs, values, ethics, morals, and principles — has been steadily eroded. These common reference points were never perfect or uniform, but they provided enough cohesion to sustain a vast, geographically dispersed federation. Today, they are treated with suspicion or outright hostility.For decades, and with accelerating intensity over the last ten years, Canada has embraced the illusion that a highly centralized state can successfully manage a sprawling, diverse, regionally distinct country while simultaneously dismantling its economic engines and accumulating unsustainable debt. Canadians have been persuaded that prosperity can exist without resource development, that fuelling regional alienation strengthens unity, that permanent deficits are harmless, and that failing systems — education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure — are signs of moral progress rather than policy failure.They have also been told that chronic underfunding of national defence is responsible governance, that mass immigration without adequate integration capacity enhances cohesion, and that profound differences in language, culture, religion, and social norms can be harmonized effortlessly through rhetoric alone. This is not tolerance; it is magical thinking.Human beings are tribal by nature. Societies require shared norms and reciprocal obligations to function. No amount of virtue signalling can override this reality. Predictably, Canada is now perceived — by millions of its own citizens and by observers abroad — as a country whose ambitions increasingly defy practical reality, producing fragmentation rather than unity.The deeper question is how a nation rich in natural resources, human capital, and institutional heritage lost its momentum and began actively sabotaging its own prosperity. The answer lies in institutional decay.Canada’s political architecture is weakening. Parliament’s role as a forum for genuine debate and accountability has diminished as power concentrates in the Prime Minister’s Office. Members of Parliament are increasingly reduced to party functionaries rather than representatives of their constituents. The Senate, composed of political appointees, offers symbolism rather than meaningful restraint. Courts are increasingly perceived as policymakers, while access to justice is impeded by cost and delay.Meanwhile, much of the mainstream media has become financially and ideologically dependent on government support, blurring the line between scrutiny and advocacy. Public trust has eroded as journalism gives way to narrative enforcement, selective outrage, and ideological conformity. Social media has amplified this dysfunction, rewarding moral exhibitionism, outrage, and simplification while deepening polarization.These weaknesses are compounded by long‑standing strategic failures. Canada’s overwhelming dependence on trade with the United States was repeatedly identified as a vulnerability, yet diversification was deferred until consequences became unavoidable. External pressure did not create this exposure; domestic complacency did.Overlaying all of this is a set of beliefs that, while passionately held by some, are corrosive to social order: the embrace of open borders without enforcement capacity; tolerance of rising crime; indifference to fraud and waste in government; hostility to economic self‑protection; failure to confront organized crime and drug trafficking; acceptance of overt political bias in media and universities; and the normalization of policies that undermine parental authority, women’s sports, religious freedom, and public decency. Individually debated, these issues are complex. Collectively ignored, they signal a governing class unwilling to draw boundaries.Foreign leaders may expose these vulnerabilities bluntly, even crudely, but they did not create them. Canada built this fragile structure itself.Recovery begins with honesty. Canada must abandon denialism and rediscover prudence. That means re‑anchoring policy in reality rather than ideology, restoring institutional accountability, rebuilding economic capacity, and reaffirming a shared civic culture. It requires leadership willing to accept short‑term discomfort for long‑term stability.A country that refuses to acknowledge its self‑inflicted wounds cannot heal them. Canada still possesses the resources, talent, and institutional memory to reverse course — but only if it is prepared to confront itself before it is too late.Terry Burton is a retired veteran of Alberta’s oil and heavy construction industry, and a former member of the Alberta Apprenticeship Board.
