The Constant Creation of Canada

Policy decisions are more than choices about taxation, infrastructure, or social welfare. They're planks with which we build a civic nation-state, or not.

Photo by Jason Hafso on Unsplash

Nation-making is a constant process, even if it ebbs and flows. After some delay — the summer doldrums — I’m researching and writing my book on nationalism at pace. One thing that’s stood out to me is just how much consistent, deliberate work has always gone into constructing Canada, both literally and figuratively, and how that’s been put to use in advancing policy agendas. As extraordinary as the current moment feels, it has analogues in our history, a reminder that we’ve been somewhere like here before.

In recent months, we’ve entered a frenetic time of nation-making — less a flow, perhaps, than a flood. Threats from Donald Trump to Canadian sovereignty and economic well-being have led to a nationalist surge and a debate over what Canada is and what it ought to be. Accompanying that debate are questions over what we should do to preserve and grow the civic nation, the collective that the scholar Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community,” a group of people who feel certain shared bonds despite the fact they’ll never know or meet most of their compatriots.

Today, like in decades past, we are asking should Canada build? How much? And what? Is our “Canadian-ess” — a social construction, but one with real-word effects — bound up in infrastructure projects? The welfare state? The armed forces? Diversity? Achievements in sport? Insipid coffee? Three mining companies in trench coat? Not being American?