Resolving the Internal Contradiction?

Here is a "totally radical" thought. Maybe we are about to stop being the parasitic kingdom when it comes to national defense. Maybe.

It may well be that the logic of opposing Missile Defense in Canada (in the Rest of Canada -RoC) will bring us back to the realization that we need to defend ourselves. No, I am not saying that this is what the Liberals were themselves thinking, nor am I saying that it is now their conviction (we all know that Liberals have no convictions).

Allow me to dream for a moment or two. The National Post today reports from a COMPAS poll suggesting that Canadians are opposed to MD, but support the principle of it. This would suggest to me that there is support for the notion of defending oneself, but perhaps Canadians are not so willing to rely so much on Americans (for a whole variety of reasons but I am not suggesting that it is out of some virtue like courage) to do it for us. Maybe, to speak in Marxian terms, the internally contradicting stupidity of our anti-americanism is beginning to resolve itself.

The Post says: "There is also a dwindling belief the United States would help defend Canada against an international attack, the poll suggests." Well, if there is support for a defense strategy, and no desire to enter into one with the Americans, we may be saying that we are going to do it ourselves. Could it be that Canadians are re-entering the land of the vertebrate?

Here, I separate (uh, that word) Quebec and the RoC because in Quebec, the logic goes the other way (if logic one can call it). There, there may be support for a defense strategy but to their minds that is all one actually needs to be defended. In Quebec, it goes from the need to having a defense strategy (so that more bilingual bureaucrats can be hired at DND), to realizing that the US is not going to do it for us, to the final conclusion, perhaps, that Hockey needs to return pronto. One does not need to do anything tangible about defense (see poll results for Quebec below).

Mr. Dithers' statement about American "intrusion" into our sovereign space may well be a calculated result of their reading of similar data in the RoC. Closing the democratic deficit may have come to mean governing by public opinion poll. And here the problem springs. The poll has different results in Quebec than in the RoC.

Only in Quebec is the opposition to missile defense unshakeable, according to the COMPAS poll. In that province, respondents reject the program by a ratio of three to one. Mr. Winn suggested Quebec has a long history of opposing military programs, dating back to the Boer War.

There we go. And more than just numbers support this reading of La Belle Province's disposition.

So, here is where I awake from my dream, alas. The whole thing's just plain ol' political opportunism. A case of the minority government in power positioning itself to get more support in Quebec in preparation for the next election; a case of a Liberal leader unwilling to face the Quebec caucus' whining about adoption of an "unpopular" policy.

As much as I would like to see a national shift here, there is mostly only continuity. But if we separate the country [for analytical purposes in this case], we are still left with the question: Is the RoC developing a spinal cord about defense? Maybe!