How Trudeau and the Liberals set out to destroy Canada

World War II veteran and Canadian patriot Richard Field writes:

Hello again to all our friends in politics.

In this article at Canada Free Press I attempt to counter the present defeated Federal Liberal Party’s idea that they were once upon a time at the “center” of the political spectrum, with Conservatives (CPC) on the right, Liberals (LPOC) in the center, and the Socialists (NDP) on the left.

My contention is that ever since the Pierre Trudeau regime, the Liberals have demonstrated by their policies and actions that if their assertion were true that were at the center, where they think most Canadians were, then that center was a deep dark evil third dimensional pit. My analogy is that Trudeau led them into the pit where they are now being destroyed for the evils they have perpetrated upon our Country.

Most of us are sick and tired of the Liberals’ constant listing of their achievements—healthcare, multiculturalism, linguistic equality, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the new flag, protection for minorities and the severing of our deep and abiding attachment to our British-Canadian traditions, fundamental laws, and principles.

The truth is that it was Trudeau and his Montreal Francophone elite cohorts plus his compliant Liberal Anglo acolytes that really had the evil “Hidden Agenda” with which they always smeared the Conservatives, especially the Reform Party type Conservatives from Western Canada and now part of the CPC. Far from building a modern Canada, these extremists set out to destroy it. They have almost succeeded.

The article can also be found on my blog.

All the best, ladies and gentlemen, till next time.

Dick

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hechtman writes from Quebec:

Richard Field has more of the story right than wrong. The Trudeau Liberals weren’t all that far to the right of the NDP of the time. On some issues, they were to the left of the NDP of today. The joke the Liberals used to tell in those days was “An NDPer is just a Liberal in a hurry.”

I’ve started to get interested in this part of Canadian history, Trudeau’s years in power but also the Liberal party in the decade before. A lot of what divided the NDP and the Liberals back then was religion (or at least religious background) rather than ideology. The Liberals were open to Catholics, and of course French Quebec is all Catholic. On the other hand, the NDP comes out of the same Scots Protestant tradition as Ian Paisley and the Orange Lodges.

The Liberals’ electoral math for most of the 20th century was, “A majority of Quebec plus a majority of Ontario equals a majority of Canada.” That meant a few things. As Richard Field said, it meant a certain amount of pandering to Quebec soft nationalism even while resisting the hard variety. It also meant that if the Liberals could sweep Ontario as well, with the help of the immigrant vote, they could safely ignore all of Western Canada.

The late 1950s and early 1960s were one of the rare periods where the Liberals were out of power. It was at that time, when they were planning their comeback, that they invented multiculturalism. Not a lot of people know this. I didn’t know it until recently. Multiculturalism originally started as an election campaign strategy. It only became a governing philosophy ten years later when the Liberals were in power having racked up all these obligations to the immigrants whose votes they courted.

The parallels are easy to see. In the 1950s, Liberal candidates started the practice of communicating with immigrant voters in their own language. In the 1970s, the Liberal government began communicating with immigrant citizens in the same way. Even today, the CBC broadcasts “Hockey Night in Canada” in Punjabi

Paul T. writes from Toronto:

What Dick Field overlooks is truly the elephant in the room—the fact that both deference to Quebec nationalism, and fealty to an open-door immigration policy, have become standard features of both the Liberal and the Conservative parties (along with gay marriage, “reproductive rights” and opposition to the death penalty). While he takes a couple of passing swipes at Red Tories, Field basically lets the Conservatives off the hook. (It’s equivalent to giving the Republican Party a pass because, hey, they’re not Democrats!). In fact, if memory serves, the Conservatives took the Liberal immigration ceiling of 250,000 yearly and raised it to 300,000. Field also doesn’t make any attempt to connect the dots between developments in Canada, the U.S,. and Europe. Clearly there has been a massive cultural shift throughout the West since the 1960s, affecting all mainstream political parties. But, for Field, there is basically one villain—Trudeau (and his enabler, Pearson)—who took this green and pleasant land and wrecked it. That liberalism was simultaneously taking over the U.S., the UK etc. doesn’t seem to have occurred to him, or to have any particular significance for him.

Finally, from a traditionalist point of view, I’m not sure that Quebec separatism is a bad thing, any more than Southern secession was necessarily a bad thing. Real conservatives are at least willing to ask whether French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians are obliged to share a common destiny. It’s the rudimentary or primitive conservative who reflexively insists that “the [Canadian] Union must and shall be preserved.” Anyway, if he’s so worried about Liberal-backed French conspiracies to take over Canada, showing Quebec the gate would seem to be an obvious and elegant solution.

LA replies:

First, Mr. Field’s subject is Canada, not the whole West. Second, it is simply a fact that Trudeau transformed Canada more than any other single political leader transformed any Western country over the last 50 years.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 20, 2012 09:30 AM | Send