HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Your post about the Canadian lady MP who serially misses votes in the Commons, citing maternal obligations as an excuse, caught my eye.  Canada is emphatically not some northern America that differs only in still having the Queen.  Canada is quite different from the United States, and Canadians – who don’t always love their messy superpower neighbour to the south – are at pains to keep it that way.  When Canada beat the United States in overtime to win the 2010 Olympic hockey gold medal, the national rejoicing was as much over whom the “patriot sons” had beaten as the fact they were champions.  The curious case of Sana Hassainia exemplifies the problems of over-diverse Canada, and by extension the West overall, in microcosm.

As many Canadians — including almost all opinion-formers — perceive the United States as aggressive and over-interventionist and Americans as arch-conservative (at least relative to most Canadians east of the Prairies and west of the Rockies), there has been a post-1960s national tendency to react against the Yanks with a social liberalism that verges on the manic.  America under current management is quickly catching up, though.  And Canada has exported some of the poisoned fruits of her new liberalism to America and the rest of the West.

Multiculturalism as government policy and racial diversity as a national goal were both pioneered by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau — one of the most destructive politicians any Western nation has produced; I always wondered if he wasn’t in the pay of the KGB — in the 1970s.  Canada will be wrestling with Trudeau’s divisive (especially in Quebec, his native province) legacy and his wholesale assault on Canada’s British heritage and traditions for decades yet.  That is, if Canada survives as Canada at all.  William Buckley used to joke that he would rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty.  Being governed by Trudeau’s Liberals was very much how I imagine government-by-Harvard-faculty would be.

Canada used to have two major political parties, the Conservatives (who have undergone many name changes and become more liberal over the years) and the Liberals (who have undergone no name changes and become more liberal over the years).  But Canada being Canada, the very liberal Liberals weren’t liberal enough for some Canadian liberals.  In 1961, some of those Canadian liberals went full-socialist and formed the New Democratic Party (NDP).  The NDP is an explicitly social-democratic party and more powerful than any third party has been in the United States.  It has at times governed British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario – a huge prize – and perhaps other provinces as well.  Today it is the official opposition in the federal Parliament where Sana Hassainia plays truant.  The NDP, as are the Liberals, is maniacally pro-immigration.  That everything traditionally Canadian is doomed to be demographically drowned should immigration continue at current levels is of no concern whatever, except as something to welcome and celebrate.  To put it in American perspective, imagine a third party well to the left of today’s Democrats that is a real force in national politics.  Yikes.

Which leads to serial absentee MP Sana Hassainia, who “represents” a riding that not long ago was mostly Catholic Quebecois countryside and is today a diversity-“enriched” Montreal exurb.  Hassainia is an immigrant from Tunisia, married to one Amine Kochlef, presumably another immigrant from the Dar al-Islam.  Hassainia was elected as a member of the NDP.  But in addition to strong views about the duties of motherhood and being a MP, Hassainia also has strong views about the Middle East.  Hassainia gets away with her antics because she is subject to no party discipline: she left the NDP because, at least with respect to those beloved oppression-fetishes of the Left, the Palestinians, even the NDP was not liberal enough for her.  Last year, Hassainia broke with the NDP over its insufficiently pro-Palestinian stance.  (Let’s not ask, for the moment, why one’s view of Arab-Israeli irritations is a critical issue in Canadian politics…)  The NDP’s leader tries to maintain a “principled and balanced approach” to the Middle East, so he says, and the NDP’s Middle East position is that it favours “peace.”  Facially neutral, factually pro-Palestinian.

Hassainia and Kochlef also illustrate another Canadian peculiarity: the hostility of many Quebecois to the rest of Canada, something Trudeau greatly exacerbated with a variety of wrong-headed policies.  Quebec used to be reliably Liberal, and fairly in synch with the rest of the country; Trudeau generated such irritation in his home province that since his time as Prime Minister Quebec has been governed by the explicitly separationist Parti Quebecois.  In addition to French-only language legislation that promptly drove businesses from Montreal to Toronto and swiftly led to Toronto’s passing Montreal as Canada’s largest city and financial and business nexus, the PQ demanded a local option with respect to immigration.  Not that the PQ oppose immigration, althogh they claim to stand for the preservation of a French Quebec.  The PQ demand, which succeeded, was that Quebec be able give preference to Francophone immigrants.  As there are not many Frenchmen eager to move to Quebec anymore, that has led in practice to an influx of Haitians, West Africans and (e.g., Hassainia and Kochlef) Middle Easterners.  Good move…

The irony of Quebec is that the British conquest of Quebec in 1759 and her subsequent confederation into Canada spared Quebec the ravages of the French Revolution.  Until about 1970, when the Cultural Revolution did its work in Canada as everywhere else in the West, one could say Quebec was more traditionally French than France herself; certainly more Catholic.  And now Quebecois are represented in their federal Parliament by such as Sana Hassainia.  Come to think of it, Quebec really is getting more like today’s France…

So both who Sana Hassainia is and what she represents (I don’t mean her parliamentary riding) are just more examples of the existential confusion of the West in the throes of Revolution.  Canada may be further along the road to multicultural dissolution than the United States, but not by much.

— Comments —

Jane writes:

I am an American living in western Canada. It is hard to overestimate how thoroughly secular this culture is.  Quebec, where this female politician lives, is known throughout Canada to be a province full of entitlements. For example, the government subsidizes childcare to an extreme degree.  In Quebec, all parents regardless of income pay just $15 a day for childcare, and the State pays the rest.  This is a not-very-subtle way to really discourage stay-at-home mothers. If your careerist counterparts can pay so little for childcare, they have much more disposable income.  It is hard to compete as a one-income family. This drives up the price of everything else, including housing.  Canada has an incredibly high cost of living.  Politicians in my province, British Columbia, are also promising this benefit. Working parents are thrilled with the idea.  I wonder what this subsidy if passed will do to Vancouver, which already has the second highest housing value in the world (second to Hong Kong).  Meanwhile stay-at-home parents get no subsidy at all.  Also the government gives millions in extra funds and support to day care centers.  Meanwhile, wholesome things are not subsidized in any way.  The cost of food here is through the roof.

I feel that Canadian policies are subsidizing the lifestyle choice of putting children in [institutional] care.  Even their generous maternity leaves insure this.  In Canada, mothers generally get one year paid leave, which is commendable.  Canadians are very proud of this. But even this benefit encourages working mothers. The vast majority of mothers do return to work after their leave is up. They are made to feel that one year is sufficient, because everybody does it.  In the states the lack of leave can actually create a positive result — mothers are so horrified at leaving their babies after three months that they quit their job (as I did) rather than return to work so early.

I will be donating to your blog.  It provides me a valuable service –of making me feel I am not alone in my views.

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