So what is happening in the Great White North

I’ve been invited to say something about Canada’s upcoming national election. That’s like asking me what I think of the Ice Capades. 

At the moment, I’m ensconced in the Land of the Fee and the Home of the Depraved, so I figure I can more easily spout off about my homeland. For when it comes to elections, the contrast between here and there is extreme. 

In America, politics is a matter of fighting to the death. Up north, nobody running in an election ever dares to even raise their voice. For better or for worse, Americans own themselves, barbarity and all. Canadians don’t know what there is of themselves to own besides a desperate need to go along to get along without causing any upset or controversy.

Ah yes, controversy. The dreaded “C” word is the kiss of death in the Great White North, connoting a moral depravity that has no place in polite society. Canadians shun controversy like they do liberty and banish those who cause it into the twilight zone.

Trust me, I know this from personal experience. Years ago, I was sliced and diced by the United Church of Canada for speaking about all their dead little Indian kids. As part of my public evisceration, I was accused by church leaders of committing the unpardonable sin of “causing controversy and division in the Body of Christ”.

It wasn’t the falsity of their claim that bothered me as much as its banality.

Clearly, in their outrage my clerical Inquisitors had forgotten about the guy they claim to revere, that shit-disturbing loose cannon named Jesus. But the United Church’s droll finger-pointing at me as a perceived temple trasher was not so much pharisaic as quintessentially Canadian. For orderly worship goes along with orderly government and neat, orderly minds.

That’s why Canucks tiptoe around elections carefully avoiding serious disagreements, preferring to keep their so-called political discourse mediocre, bland, and blah.

That said, it’s been six years since the last changing of the palace guard in Ottawa, and not much has changed. The bloated Liberal porker at the trough is tired and spent, and its Conservative counterpart is licking its chops in anticipation of the looming hog fest, since they’re leading the Liberals in the polls by more than twenty percent. But it’s all essentially meaningless because their system is fraudulent from top to bottom.

Every Canadian politician, like every judge, soldier, and cop, takes the same oath of allegiance to one man - the Clown with the Crown over in London - and not to the Canadian people or to a Constitution. That’s the way “subjects” behave in Canada’s pseudo-democracy, which explains some of Canadians’ wired-in submission to authority and dread of self-reliance.

Even when it’s explained to them that their elected Member of Parliament is not accountable to them at all but to a stupid, inbred foreign monarch, Canadians keep treasonously voting away their authority. Because the alternative would be for them to govern themselves as a Republic, which in Canada is like asking a still-suckling infant to get up and leave Mom and Dad.

I’ve experienced this up close and personal, since for the past decade I’ve helped to lead the public campaign to establish a constitutional Republic in Canada.

Like kids peering warily off the edge of a tall diving board, the participants in our grassroots assemblies at first seemed timidly in favor of taking the plunge by swearing Republic citizenship and passing their own laws outside so-called ‘crown’ jurisdiction. But when it came the time for them to enforce those laws and demonstrate their independence as free citizens of the Republic of Kanata, everyone backed off.

Instead of actively reclaiming themselves and the nation, even the most committed member of our Assemblies would ask worriedly, “Is what we’re doing legal?”, “Will I get in trouble?” and “Will I lose my pension and health benefits if I join the Republic?” Thanks to that cowardice, most of our Republic Assemblies collapsed and its members scurried back to the dead zone of the status quo. The mental habits of serfdom are hard to break.

Part of the problem is that Canadians have never gone through the violent catharsis of a civil war or a revolution by which a people find themselves, lose their mental chains, and establish their own identity. Economically and politically, Canada has always been a dependency of some empire: first France, followed by Britain, then America, and now China. It’s small wonder that Canadians cling to outdated feudal institutions like “crown” law and governance, for dependency is all that they know. Is it an accident that over ninety percent of Canucks live within fifty miles of America?

“Canadians always feel the need to belong,” said my American father to me once. “But Americans are always trying to break free from restraints. Canadians trust government and Americans fear it. It’s a completely different psyche.”

I’ve deliberately not mentioned the politicians who are contending the October 21 Canadian election. For there is barely a hair’s breadth of difference between the policies and actions of all the parties in Parliament, from “left” to “right”.

In the former camp, the tepidly “socialist” New Democratic Party and centrist Green Party each hover around fifteen percent of the popular vote, their success completely dependent on the fate of the Liberals. Meanwhile, the ultra-right Peoples Party is doing a Trump lookalike performance to scoop up discontented Tories, especially among westerners. And the nominally separatist Bloc Quebecois has long since abandoned its goal of Quebec independence and accommodated itself to the federalist status quo.

More to the point, none of these parties have challenged China’s encroachment or tried to revoke the Foreign Investment Protection Act (FIPA) that removes all restrictions on Chinese investment and even allows China to station its troops on Canadian soil! Accommodation, dependency, and treason are the order of the day in Canadian politics.

Canada is quickly becoming a client state of China, which is now Canada’s chief trading partner. One would think that this fact would alarm Americans and their own political performers. But so far, neither Harris nor Trump have mentioned the very real threat of the rising Chinese superpower and its rapid buying-up of North American resources and infrastructure. It is as if a deep freeze has gripped the political landscape on both sides of our border, preventing us from confronting the Asian dragon in our living room.

As America goes, so goes Canada. But the reverse is also true. China is doing precisely as General Sun-Tzu advises in The Art of War, and that is to divide your stronger enemy and internally weaken it so that the enemy collapses without having to fight it. Embroiled in a proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine, with Republicans and Democrats at each other’s throats and a Chinese-dominated regime on its northern flank, America is perfectly placed to be taken down by Beijing without a military confrontation. The present elections in Canada and America should be judged in that geo-political context.

At the end of the day, when it comes to its politics, I have to go along with Billy Bob Thornton’s description of Canada as being “like mashed potatoes without the gravy”; or, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “There’s just no there there.”

Canadians weren’t always passive and dull. My great-great-great grandfather Philip Annett, an Ontario farmer and blacksmith, was one of many patriots who during 1837 took up arms against the British crown and was nearly hanged for it. But even then, as Philip noted in his journal,

“Our neighbours, although armed and ready, seem more concerned about their little plots of land than their new nation.”

Old habits die hard. But as Canada is increasingly squeezed like a lemon by the Chinese superpower, Canadians must put aside the playthings of infancy, starting with monarchy and rule by decree. Canadians must boycott the October 21 federal election and its powerless Parliament and instead practice self-governance within a new Republic.

Or, as Oliver Cromwell said in 1649 right before chopping off the head of another King Charles,

“A king is not of God’s making but of corrupt human invention, and is a loathsome burden on the dignity, liberty, and happiness of a free people. Servitude and freedom cannot coexist in our nation. You must choose.” 

The author (right), Kevin Annett, M.A., M.Div., is of dual American and Canadian citizenship and is a leader of the movement to establish a constitutional Republic in Canada. He is an award-winning clergyman, scholar, author, and activist who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his quarter-century campaign to expose and prosecute genocide by Church and State in Canada and abroad. His websites include www.republicofkanata.org, www.murderbydecree.com and www.bbsradio.com/herewestand.

Kevin is the author of a popular series known as The American Crisis, written in the spirit of its namesake by Thomas Paine to revive the hearts and sharpen the minds of a struggling people. These articles can be viewed at www.republicofkanata.org under Breaking News.