Despite the stalling tactics of certain Democrat governors, the U.S. is gradually moving toward restoring business as usual and rebooting the economy after a much-overrated “pandemic.” Canada, however, remains in lockdown, printing money it does not have to offset the closing down of industry and commerce, and sinking ever deeper into the economic doldrums. The mint is working overtime in the U.S. as well, but America is a dynamic nation with vast manufacturing capacity, fewer regulations and a pro-active president, giving it a high survivability index.
Canada is a different kettle of piranhas. Its fiscal condition even prior to the onset of the COVID epidemic was already in red alert with mounting debt, a supine economy, an oppressive and totally unnecessary carbon tax superposed upon an already taxed-to-death population, the flight of both capital and manufacturing to the U.S., steadily increasing unemployment, an idle petroleum industry, a stupefying narcissist for a prime minister, and a government policy directed toward “social justice” initiatives rather than toward a sober and robust effort to revive a moribund country.
I have recently heard from a valued friend who runs a B&B. He is thinking of selling his business and leaving the country, possibly for the Dominican Republic (where, as it happens, another Canadian friend now cheerfully makes his home). The entrepreneurial spirit does not thrive in Canada. My friend feels the time has come to take drastic measures if he is to protect his savings and retirement income from being effectively wiped out. An astute and published commentator on national affairs, he is convinced that taxes are about to rise exponentially to pay for an extended lockdown, that although money is being printed real wealth is not being created, that Canada is heading for receivership, and that the Canadian dollar, already trading far below par, will soon be worth little more than fifty cents on the American dollar. One no longer has confidence that we are intelligently governed or that personal solvency is a reliable proposition.
In an open letter addressed to Conservative Party interim leader Andrew Scheer, Gordon Miller, director of the advocacy group Canadians for Language Fairness, would agree with my friend’s assessment. Miller writes: “It is very clear that our hospitals are not being overrun. Moreover, there are important medical treatments not being performed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Now, with this overextended process meant to ‘flatten the curve’, well past its best before date, governments at all levels continue restricting our fundamental freedoms. Our economy was seriously damaged by this government prior to COVID-19. Now, more businesses are going under despite the enormous amounts being spent to ‘ease the pain’. Clearly, we cannot expect this Liberal government to open Canada for business again anytime soon.” Miller continues that we must “open up our country before we kill many more people through the impact of permanent loss of jobs, businesses going under and a major increase in poverty,” and concludes epigrammatically, “This is the curve that now needs to be flattened.”
What is actually being flattened is our prospect for the future. The City of New Westminster, former capital of the province of British Columbia, boasts a grotesque retail hub called Plaza 88 that stands as a metaphor for the Canadian experience. Designed by architect Graham McGarva, its exterior wall is disfigured by a series of colored panels spelling out in Morse Code the city’s name and its Chinese equivalent Yi Fao. It also features in three-foot-high aluminum letters the legend “In Making Canada A Tented Canopy Set Upon A Hill,” a fragment of a poem written by McGarva, who also regards himself as a poet.
The inscription is apt. It is, obviously, meant to suggest the phrase “A city upon a hill” with its resonant implications, deriving from Matthew 5:14 and famously adapted by John Winthrop, the 17th-century governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A city set upon a hill evokes the severe and noble ideal of justice, liberty, probity and righteousness. A tented canopy suggests a rather different paradigm, namely the primitive archetype of innocence, festivity, a weekend camping out with one’s buddies. The first is built to last, the second to be dismantled. The first is a mature conception, the second a childish fantasy. A city set upon a hill may, at least theoretically, withstand the buffets of political and economic weather. But a tented canopy is a rather different story. The recent COVID storm has battered the canopied tent practically to shreds, though it was already sagging pretty badly.