It’s time for Canada to stand for more

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/02/2025 (241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a young Manitoban, born in Alberta, I developed a healthy dislike of then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (PET) in the 1970s and ’80s. At grad school in Ontario, I enthusiastically ambushed unwary colleagues with incisive arguments for Western separation from a country run entirely for the benefit of so-called “central” Canada.

Western alienation fuelled by the National Energy Program generated my favourite bumper sticker: “Let the Eastern b—tards freeze in the dark.” That sentiment led directly to Preston Manning and his Reform Party, morphed slightly into the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper (having swallowed and expelled any progressive elements), and now underlies the shorter bumper stickers of Pierre Poilievre’s right-wing variant.

Old attitudes die hard. As a westerner, listening to Justin Trudeau’s “one big Canada” speeches, I instinctively still muttered “you mean Ontario and Quebec,” under my breath.

Today, however, that rabid opposition to Trudeau the Younger reflects a more intolerant age, not a smarter one. The political gene pool in Alberta these days would have made my Western separatist friends cringe, hearing Premier Danielle Smith offer her latest befuddled solutions to everything. The Alberta-bound Conservative brain trust simply can’t offer an intelligent alternative to a Liberal vision for Canada (whatever that might turn out to be) — and Ontario and Quebec especially need to beware of whatever the CPC proposes.

But now that I am certainly older, and perhaps wiser, I have come to respect PET for decisions he made back in 1969. Responding to criticisms of his major reform of the Criminal Code, he proclaimed, as prime minister, that “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”

I have listened in vain for that same principled, steely resolve in his son’s words, on many similarly difficult topics today. Love him or hate him, few Canadians were as indifferent to Pierre as they now are to Justin.

While I never voted for PET, I respected the fact he had the guts to lead, and even the arrogance to flip the bird at his opposition. He had reasons for what he did, and — even if those reasons were at times also self-serving for himself and the Liberals — they did not come from taking a knee before anyone, especially an American president.

Considering the eagerness of the current U.S. president to not only insert the state into the bedrooms of the nation, but also into the pants of its citizens, I can only imagine — wistfully — the scornful, intemperate explosion of a younger Pierre Trudeau in response. There would be no doubt what he thought about the personal freedom of Canadians to choose or express their own sexual orientation or gender identity, no question about whether it was safe to be who you are, or love whomever you wish, in Canada.

While PET was blamed for fostering divisions in Canada through heavy-handed multiculturalism and enforced bilingualism, we are better today because he had a bigger vision of an inclusive Canada 50 years ago, and the guts to campaign for it.

Now, when we need strong, inclusive, determined and principled leadership, we get instead what pundits think we want to hear, distilled into the shallowness of bumper stickers, sound bites and video clips.

The world, and Canada, is in crisis, but you would never know that from the dispassionate and careful speeches of our supposed (or wannabe) political leaders. Worse, as was said long ago, where there is no vision, the people perish. Literally.

This Valentine’s Day, there will be a lot of worried people in the United States, those who do not fit the white, binary, cisgender and heterosexual norms that are being manifested by Trumpites across the American landscape. In a world where even Hallmark Christmas movies risk being slammed as “woke,” we are seeing — in fast-forward — what it looks like when difference is weaponized by the holders of political power.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ (CMHR) new exhibit, Love in a Dangerous Time: Canada’s LGBT Purge is a timely and direct reminder that Canada has similar demons of its own to confront. Nor are they safely confined to the past: Canada’s conservative bumper-sticker crowd offers Trump-lite versions of the same ignorance and prejudice to Canadians today, with promises of more to come, if they are elected.

To be clear, these struggles are not just about sexual identity, but about an acceptance of difference. When we are divided against each other, those who have power keep it — and it is always the power of elites on display, not the power of ordinary people.

When we consider the needs of our world today — the existential threats that will determine whether our children live long or die hard — those differences become irrelevant.

Canada can stand for better, and has before. Back in 1969, Pierre Trudeau’s government also opened our doors to Americans fleeing, not just the draft, but a culture of intolerance, discrimination and war.

We should do the same today.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.