Canadian nationalism
The Canadian Tories have historically exemplified this formulation of nationalism in their opposition to free trade with the United States, stemming from a fear of economic and cultural assimilation.
Although radical French-speaking reformers in the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837 supported the creation of a new Québécois republic, a more accurate portrait of French-Canadian nationalism is illustrated by such figures as Henri Bourassa during the first half of the twentieth century.
Nationalists, along with pro-British loyalists, were opposed to the idea of free trade or reciprocity for fear of having to compete with American industry and losing sovereignty to the United States.
This issue dominated Canadian politics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the Tories taking a populist, anti-free trade stance.
[4] The National Policy also included plans to expand Canadian territory into the western prairies and populate the west with immigrants.
His government believed that this would cure Canada's ills and unemployment, which had been caused by a growing deficit and a terrible economic recession during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Other historians robustly dispute the view that World War I undermined the hybrid imperial-national identity of English-speaking Canada.
[11] In the federal election of 1917 he was also instrumental in opposing the Borden government's plan for conscription and as a result assisted the Laurier Liberals in Quebec.
This Quebec sovereignty movement gained traction through the Quiet Revolution and burst on the Canadian scene in the latter half of the twentieth century.
In 1970, radical sovereigntists under the FLQ sparked the October Crisis when they kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross in an effort to further the cause of Quebec sovereignty.
[12] It prohibits the wearing of religious symbols by certain public employees in positions of authority and grandfathers in those who were already in office when the bill was introduced.
[13] The government has justified both of these measures, which are strongly opposed in the English-speaking provinces, as necessary to preserve the secularism and the French language that are central to Québécois nationalism.
Created by a former Liberal Minister of Defence, Paul Hellyer, the CAP has failed to attract significant attention from the electorate since that time.
In spite of attracting thousands of new members to a declining party he was unsuccessful in taking over the leadership and preventing the merger with the former Canadian Alliance.
They point to threats allegedly posed to Canada's environment, natural resources, social programs, the rights of Canadian workers and cultural institutions.
Even in Quebec, long a hotbed of secessionist sentiment, a large majority has emerged that expresses pride and loyalty toward Canada as a whole.
Canada has even been described as post-national, a description that some critics have argued runs counter to current trends in Europe and the United States.
