Published in Overview (National Citizens' Coalition), January 1997

Farewell to the Canadian Way
by
Pierre Lemieux

 

"This used to be a pretty decent country," said David Sommerville (of the National Citizens Coalition) when we met in Whistler, B.C., last summer. Indeed, it used to be, if not the best country in the world as Jean Chrétien naïvely boasts, at least one of the most supportable ones. Only faint appearances remain.

Perhaps there existed such a thing as the "Canadian way" of conceiving social and political relations, of resolving differences and conflicts. It was characterized by trust, tolerance, reasonability, and a certain invisibility of the armed power of the state (at least in peacetime).

Canada 30 years ago

Canadians did not suffer from a French-like, strong administrative state which accustoms people to be distrustful cheaters. They were not submitted to the kind of powerful central enforcement agencies that developed in the U.S. after the Civil War, and are now culminating in Waco, Ruby Ridge, the drug war, and moral witch hunts. For a time, they even avoided the demise of time-honored common law rights and the new British idea that peaceful citizens may be criminalized under the pretense of fighting criminals.

Remember Canada 30 years ago? Everybody old enough has his own anecdotes about how life was easy-going, and how a peaceful individual was confident against any power-to-be. In the early seventies, just a few miles North of "Toronto-la-pure," U. of T. Hart House farm was a high ground of nudism. In Moncton, N.B., after I had brought nude pictures of my girlfriend to be developed, the shop owner phoned me to say that some of the pictures were in violation of the Criminal code. "Don't move," I said indignantly, "I am going to pick up the negatives," which I then had printed at a neighboring shop.... Before going camping to Cape Breton Island, I bought a rifle at Eaton's.

Normally, people only heard of government when they got their first driver's license, and at tax time. For the rest, we wrote just about anything on bureaucratic forms, and nobody cared. With no ID papers and few stringent bureaucratic controls, an individual could not be followed from cradle to grave.

At roughly 60% of their present level, taxes were not exactly unknown 30 or 40 years ago (they were already much higher than what modern American or French revolutionaries had fought against), but ordinary people did not feel they were unbearable. The tax bureaucracy was still relatively powerless, non intrusive and keen on maintaining the fiction of voluntarily paid taxes.

How could individual liberty be preserved in a country with a government-trusting citizenry, no revolutionary tradition, no bill of rights? Perhaps the secret lies in Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and in Canadian mores, in the combination of traditionally reasonable laws and the frontier mentality of North America.

Tales of administrative tyranny

In any event, not much is left of the Canadian way. Each new session of the federal or provincial parliaments swells the flood of laws creating new crimes, reversing the burden of proof, imposing new bureaucratic requirements and controls, reinforcing what Tocqueville called "administrative tyranny," and making peaceful individuals ever more vulnerable to it. Just one example of this general trend: the 1991 firearm controls (Bill C-17) created hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of criminals among peaceful Canadians (just walk in farm houses and look at the "non safely stored" shotguns); the recent Bill C-68 will manufacture still more criminals.

Anthony Comstock, the late nineteenth-century American bureaucrat who led a witch hunt against pleasure, has immigrated to Canada. Canadian customs seize what they ludicrously define as "pornography." In English Canada like in the U.S., I suspect that a photo lab technician may well call the cops if he gets an erection looking at your photographs. (In Québec, he is more likely, in the Canadian way, to make a second set of prints for his personal use!)

Look at the poor Ontarians. The Ontario Provincial Police is apparently waging a purity war on the Internet (Globe and Mail, December 14, 1996). It has taken time, and been a difficult uphill battle, but politically correct Toronto has finally lived up to its Puritan reputation. Its anti-smoking ordinance reminds one of the Nazi slogan: "German women don't smoke."

Tales of resistance

Over the past few years, I have come to resent more and more intensely the daily meddling of political authority in my life. Mind you, I am a descendant of the coureurs des bois. So, I have had more than one brush with different arms of our administrative tyranny, like the Québec racket of health insurance, the minions of the Department of Motor Vehicles, the federally created firearm bureaucracy, or customs cops ("What have you been doing out of the country?" -- "It's none of your business."). A few of these fights are documented on my Web site (at http://www.pierrelemieux.org).

Now, when I receive registered threats from the provincial or federal tax bureaucracies and I finally have to send them checks, I include a letter explaining that I bow to their protection racket only because they are the ones who have the guns. More often than not, Québec bureaucrats and politicos don't reply; the feds usually do (with the notable exception of former chief tax cop David Anderson).

A recent reply from a federal tax bureaucrat, dated December 24, is a touching attempt to maintain the appearances of the Canadian way. The gentleman spends two pages explaining that the Department of Revenue only applies tax laws decided by the Department of Finance (nobody is responsible, of course), that tax collection is a delicate matter, that they don't want to push me into financial difficulties (sorry, folks, too late), and that I should not hesitate to phone the assistant chief of something.

They fail to realize something. There is no moral, reasonable way -- no "Canadian way" -- to seize half of what the people earn and, then, to use these moneys to harass the hapless citizen. The Canadian way cannot survive the properly totalitarian responsibilities now assumed by government. The Canadian way is incompatible with Pierre-Elliot Trudeau and Alan Rock. Armed do-gooders were bound to change this country in such a way that it is unrecognizable from what it was 30, or even ten, years ago.

A revolution brewing?

Canadians are now wards of the state, irresponsible individuals who have to be taken care of and told how to behave. Whatever remains of their sentiment of individual dignity will, more often than not, express itself in tax cheating, underground transactions, and resentment towards society in general. We are becoming a nation of form fillers and petty cheaters. With their typical short time horizon, politicos -- both the federal ones and their provincial accomplices -- are fast destroying this country.

Can we still save the Canadian way? Politicos don't even want to hear the question. Two years ago, a group of young Québec libertarians was refused a hearing by both the House of Commons and the Senate Committees on C-68. A few months ago, I requested to appear before a National Assembly Committee holding "public" hearings on a new road bill. "Of course, they will hear you," a doctor friend of mine told me, "they have to maintain the fiction that their system is democratic." Well, the Committee turned down my request.

I must admit, though, that the Official Opposition had me testify at the recent hearings of a House of Commons Committee on the Tobacco Bill. I delivered a very simple, bilingual message: "Fichez-nous la paix, leave us alone!"

A dissident who tries to preserve the Canadian way is very vulnerable. It is now impossible to live a peaceful and dignified life -- not to say a dissident's life -- without violating some laws. Stupid laws used to be enforced more sensibly in Canada than, say, in the United States. But the Canadian way is fast receding before the sheer volume of laws and administrative controls, and our blind imitation of the Americans. Alan Rock is just a junior Janet Reno.

Young people might wonder how I myself succeeded in living 49 years without getting a criminal record. The answer is that I spent part of my life in another Canada.

Let this country's statists be warned -- and let my readers pardon my Delphi-oracle pretensions. Just as I was the first atheist in my Québec childhood town, the first jogger in Toronto, perhaps the first pornographer and sexual harasser in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, the first libertarian in Québec, the first dissident with a personal Web site, or just as I am now the first Quebecer in 25 years not to carry a health insurance card, I may also be among the first Canadian revolutionaries who are not going to take it any more.