What? There’s such a thing as Canadian political philosophy? Who knew!
Scoff is you must, but Canada does indeed have a political culture quite different than that of the United States. I was quite surprised to learn this when I took a number of courses in political science when I went back to university in 2018. I had always though of Canada as USA Lite. But the more I learned about Canadian political philosophy, the more it appealed to me. And in my proposed book, I will probably add a chapter on Canadian political philosophy? Why? Because I’ve come to the conclusion that Canada may be, or is at least close to being, the ideal state.
The genesis of my interest came from the political science professor I had for most of my courses, Ron Dart, at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Dart is Canada’s foremost scholar on and advocate of Red Toryism. That is conservatism which sees a significant role for the state in society. He was a huge fan and promoter of the political philosophy of Canada’s most famous Red Tory, George P. Grant.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not a Red Tory. But Dart’s classes and his personal interest in Red Toryism led me on a path of discovery that went far beyond where I was before. But let’s start with Grant.
I took a fourth year, largely self-directed course on Grant with Professor Dart which included reading all six of Grant’s books. All fairly short, but each packed with intriguing arguments. Combined, they presented a fairly comprehensive look at Grant’s philosophy. And I ended up writing a 25 page term paper comparing the philosophies of George Grant and Ayn Rand which I called George Grant and Ayn Rand: Convergences and Divergences.
Grant’s most famous book is Lament for a Nation, a powerful lament at the defeat of Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker at the hands of Liberal Lester Pearson. In the book, there is a paragraph that exemplifies the essential difference between Canada and the United States. He wrote about their sense of difference from the Americans that Canada’s founders felt:
It was an inchoate desire to build, in these cold and forbidding regions, a society with a greater sense of order and restraint than freedom-loving republicanism would allow. It was no better defined than a kind of suspicion that we in Canada could be less lawless and have a greater sense of propriety than the United States. The inherited determination not to be Americans allowed these British people to come to a modus vivendi with the more defined desires of the French. English-speaking Canadians have been called a dull, stodgy, and indeed costive lot. In these dynamic days, such qualities are particularly unattractive to the chic. Yet our stodginess has made us a society of greater simplicity, formality, and perhaps even innocence than the people to the south. (Grant Lament 68-69)
There’s a reason Canadians are known for being excessively polite, eh!
Interestingly enough, there is a new book that came out last year that argues that there was a symbiosis between the conservative politics of Diefenbaker and the liberal politics of Pearson that forged modern Canada: The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson, and the Making of Modern Canada. I managed to snag a copy at a second hand book store for just seven dollars recently and it is next on my reading list.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Professor Dart argued for the theory that Canada was forged out of Red Toryism and one of our assigned readings was a remarkable paper by Canadian political scientist Gad Horowitz at the University of Toronto. “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation” appeared in 1966 in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. In it, Horowitz builds on a foundation laid by American political scientist Louis Hartz in his book The Founding of New Societies. Hartz argued that when new societies, such as Australia, Canada, the United States and others were founded, their founders were usually an offshoot of the mother country with a much narrower political focus than the mother country as a whole. So while Britain evolved into a state where socialism under the Labour party vied for power with the Conservative and Liberal parties, the early emigrants to the United States were steeped in Lockean liberalism, hence socialism never developed as a viable political philosophy in the United States. A contributing essay to the book from Canadian political scientist Kenneth McCrae argued that Canada followed a similar path and was Lockean liberal to the core.
Horowitz, however, offered a different take. That reflected in the quote from Grant cited above. He argues that, while there certainly was a strong liberal element to Canada, the influx of United Empire Loyalists from the United States after the American Revolution leant a “Tory touch” to Canada’s founding. And there is a close link philosophically between Red Toryism and socialism. Hence Canada has a viable socialist party which has occasionally actually taken power in some Canadian provinces, though never federally. This thesis became known as the Hartz/Horowitz theory of Canada’s founding.
Discussing this with a libertarian friend, he recommended a book called The Once and Future Canadian Democracy: An Essay in Political Thought by Janet Ajzenstat, a professor at McMaster University. Ajzenstat argues that the Hartz/Horowitz theory is bollocks. Canada was founded as a solidly Lockean liberal country. I read the book avidly and followed it up with her even better book, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament. Those books became the basis for a class presentation I did called A Short History of Canadian Confederation.
It also led me to a book called Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? edited by Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, a professor at Athabasca University. Each co-authored a chapter and each had two separate chapters. The book also reprinted Horowitz’s essay and included four essay by other authors.
Smith offers a very different take on Canada’s founding than either the Hartz/Horowitz thesis or Ajzenstat’s Lockean liberal thesis. He notes recent scolarship that “call(s)d into question the long-standing perception of John Locke as the fountainhead of Anglo-American political culture.”
Smith contrasts what he calls civic humanism with a commercial spirit that held “the view of the state as important not so much as a means of political participation and fulfillment of political personality, but as a means of ensuring economic development.”
This had implications not just for Canada but for the United States. Smith’s thesis pits the civic humanism of Thomas Jefferson against the commercial ambitions of the Federalism of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton “ which included a vision of America as a great centralized commercial and military empire bound together by credit, British investment, a healthy system of public finance including a national bank, a standing army, and a powerful executive.”
Smith includes a remarkable quote from Jefferson denouncing the corruption he observed in England:
Commerce and corrupt government have rotted them to the core. Every generous, nay every just sentiment, is absorbed in the thirst for gold. I speak of their cities, which we may certainly pronounce to be ripe for despotism, and fitted for no other government. Whether the leaven of the agricultural body is sufficient to regenerate the residuary mass, and maintain it as a sound state, under any reformation of government, may well be doubted.
The battle between Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Anti-Federalists ended up with what the United Stats is now, an imperialist power with a mammoth government, huge debt, and military interventionism worldwide.
In Canada, in this struggle between commercial capitalism versus the petit-bourgeoisie “what finally did emerge in 1867 very much represents a fulfillment of the historical Tory desire for a strong united commercial state.”
Smith concludes that Canada’s first Prime Minister
John A. Macdonald obtained most of what Alexander Hamilton wanted in 1787. This included a strong central government that not only would possess the political offices that would mute political discontent and provide political stability, but would, at the same time, vastly enhance public credit and provide the capital to underwrite commercial expansion across a continent.
One of the chapters in Canada’s Origins, “Durham and Robinson: Political Faction and Moderation,” reflects substantially the view I will argue for in my book. More on that another time.
Links of Interest
A Short History of Canadian Confederation – in three parts. Presents the case that Canada was founded on Lockean liberalism.
The Fragmentation Theory of Colonial Politics: The Case of Canada – presents the Hartz/Horowitz paradigm in some detail.
Comparing Different Takes on Canadian Political History – discusses both the Lockean liberal and Hartz/Horowitz view of Canada’s founding before going on to discuss Smith’s civic humanism versus the commercial state thesis.
Index to The Pendulum – I’ve put together an index to this blog with short descriptions of each issue.