Canadians seem not to recognize the undeniable fact that this country is on the verge of (temporarily) becoming an objective failure. For all of our history, most Canadians have had some degree of unease about being subordinate to the British and out-sized by the Americans, and prior to that, in the case of the French-Canadians, about being abandoned by the French and then ignored or disparaged by them. When France was ejected from Canada after nearly 250 years, Voltaire dismissively referred to New France as, “A few acres of snow.” But we have been a successful country, until recently. Prior to this century, the only major wars we engaged in aside from NATO and United Nations missions were the two world wars, the Korean War and the Gulf War, all of which were just wars in which Canada was not itself threatened, sought nothing, but fought with distinction for the cause of freedom throughout the world. We were, along with Australia and next only to the United States, the most prosperous people in the world. We had a strong currency, a growing economy, low crime rates, attracted capital from all over the world, were probably the most racially unprejudiced country in the world, welcomed skilled immigrants from everywhere and built great projects that impressed the world, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, the TransCanada pipeline and the Montreal World’s Fair in 1967.
