In the fall of 1967, the editors of Canadian Dimension published an open letter calling for a broad alliance of socialists and liberals built on shared concern about growing American encroachment. In both tone and sentiment, this clarion call for a nationalist popular front reflected an emerging view on the parts of the left that the threat of US domination was so profound that ideological disagreements of all kinds should, at least temporarily, be set aside.
One political science professor, however, respectfully demurred. Replying to the editors in a letter published in the following month’s issue of Dimension, a young Ed Broadbent concurred with their suggestion that the United States threatened Canada’s economic and cultural independence. Nonetheless, he asserted that their proposed remedy — working side by side with liberals — was doomed to fail.
In making his case, Broadbent argued forcefully that liberalism and socialism (or social democracy, as he interchangeably described it throughout his career) were distinct philosophies committed to ends so radically different that cooperation on the basis of shared nationalism was both incoherent and impossible. Real independence, he believed, would be equally incoherent unless it served the higher goal of building an egalitarian, socialist Canada. (“Socialism,” he writes, “not nationalism or liberalism is the sole justification for wrenching Canada free from American domination.”)
Broadbent’s second point of objection was that socialists concerned about the looming threat of American economic and cultural domination already had an organization with which to pursue their shared goals in the New Democratic Party — for which he was soon to run as a federal candidate in the newly-created riding of Oshawa-Whitby.
— Luke Savage
An Open Letter to Canadian Nationalists
The majority of Canadians are nationalist; most of us want to preserve our country’s independence, but we are a confused and frustrated majority. We want to do something about the relentless erosion of our national sovereignty and the accelerating Americanization of our economic and cultural life. But we do not know exactly what to do or how to do it. We have not been able to mobilize ourselves to bring the process of absorption to a halt.
Trade and investment are the economic ties that bind Canada to the United states. These are the instruments of continentalism. They’ve made of Canada a regional economy within North America – a satellite economy which cannot avoid depression and inflation emanating from the metropolis, an economy which can be influenced only marginally by the government of Canada.
But the problem is not merely one of foreign investment and trade dependence. For with the dominant presence of the American branch plants and with the American monopolization of non-agricultural trade, come American values, American tastes, American ways of life and thought, American laws, and American foreign policy. There is no reason to fear political annexation, but total economic and cultural integration is not only threatening; it is happening.
We are Canadian nationalists because we are not satisfied with being uncomfortable satellite of the United States. A miniature replica of the Great Society is not our vision of the future of Canada. We are anxious to diminish the economic and cultural influence of the United States in order to preserve the possibility of building in this country, a society which is better than the great society. We nationalists are not a cohesive, homogeneous group. We are of different ages, we live in different regions, we adhere to different ideologies, we have different visions of an independent Canada and how it can ultimately be achieved; some of us speak English, others French. For many of us, nationalism combines a distaste for what the United States is — violence and obsessive consumptionism at home, obsessive militarism and anti-communism abroad — with a strong desire to create a socialist democracy in Canada. Other nationalists wish to maintain an independent Canada because they feel that in the areas of foreign policy, civil liberties and race relations, the United States has betrayed its own liberal ideology; they feel that Canada could come closer to achieving the liberal society.
Canadian nationalists differ from each other in many important ways. But we have this in common: we are persuaded that a Canada independent from the United States is desirable; we are persuaded that current government policy is permitting Canada to drift ever further into the American society. If we cannot agree on a common minimum programme to Halt the tide of integration and if we cannot create a vehicle for promoting that program, then it is likely that none of our visions of the future, they will be realized. We will all be smothered by America. The Advocates of closer integration with the United States are much less numerous than, but they are far better organized. There are entrenched in big business, in the daily press, in government, in party organizations and in the academic profession. They operate through the influential Canada-American Committee and the Private Planning Association. These are the only research and policy organizations that are continuously concerned with this question. They issue statements and finance studies that are designed to show that continentalism is desirable and that an independent Canada is impossible.
It is clear that there is a powerful alliance for continentalism operating in this country. To mobilize the majority nationalist sentiment in Canada, we propose the formation of an alliance for independence. It would be politically non-partisan and would cross racial, regional and class lines to include all Canadians who wish to preserve their country’s Independence.
What would be the tasks of a movement for independence? First, to formulate a program of specific measures, acceptable to all nationalists, and aimed at bringing to a halt, the ubiquitous absorption of Canada into the American society: second, to press for the implementation of this program and to expose and oppose the advocates of continentalism and their schemes for integration with the United States; third, to conduct continuous research into the problems of Canada-US relations. The common minimum program, as we see it, would fall into two categories: economic and cultural. The economic program would be a battery of specific legislative measures designed not to reverse the tide of integration, but simply to hold back the tide; the underlying principle of the cultural program would be the subsidization of Canadian cultural production on a scale very much larger than anything contemplated at the moment. By cultural production, we mean, not simply the elite arts, but everything that can be published, performed, or broadcast.
The specific content of these programs can emerge only from the representative organs of a nationalist movement. The first task, therefore, is to reach an agreement on the mechanics of the organization. We invite all who are interested to make known their views on this crucial question of organization. Once an independence movement has been formed and once it has formulated a common minimum program, there will be many ways in which it could exert continuous pressure for independence: petitions, lobbies, cross-country hearings, seminars, national assemblies, regular publications, ad hoc policy statements, organization within political parties and voluntary associations, and so on. A Canadian independence movement would have to give high priority the establishment of a research institute which would engage in continuing study of all aspects of US-Canada relations and propose programs for a viable independent Canada.
The writers of this letter are unregenerate socialists but we are convinced that all Canadians who are concerned about the issue of independence must temporarily sink their differences and concert their action on this issue. We need not agree on everything, but we must agree on a common minimum program now, if our partisan and ideological strife is to have any significance in the future.
– Gad Horowitz, C. W. Gonick, G. David Sheps
Canadian Dimension, May/June 1967
Against Liberal-Socialist Common Front on Canadian Nationalism
“An Open Letter to Canadian Nationalists” signed by messrs. Gonick, Horowitz, and Sheps in the May-June issue of Dimension is a good example of a political appeal which is bound to fail — and ought to fail — in its objective, i.e. the uniting of diverse groups for concerted nationalist action leading to Canadian independence. The diverse groups I have in mind are two principal intellectually oriented ideological sectors of Canadian society: socialists and liberals (I regard the conservative fringe to be both a fringe, and in the crunch, liberal-bourgeois).
In their letters the authors make the sensible assumption that the United States is the chief threat to Canadian independence; they also rightly indicate that the two aspects of our polity that are threatened, political sovereignty and a potentially non-bourgeois culture, are interconnected and have their main source in the ascendant position of American capitalism vis a vis Canada. Neither liberals or socialists, however, should be persuaded that their proposed solution — nationalist movement transcending ideological differences — is the answer to their particular requirements.
The Canadian intellectual liberal who also regards himself as a nationalist should, if he takes his liberalism seriously, i.e. if his goal is democratic capitalism for all (not simply Canadians), abandon his nationalism and actively work for the complete integration of Canada and the United States. The authors rightly contend that the immediate sources of displeasure for Canadian liberals with American society is the latter’s failure to achieve liberal goals in foreign policy, civil liberties, and race relations. Insofar as Canadian liberals are concerned about this failure it seems to me they should want further integration with the United States so that they could directly involve themselves with their American counterparts in building a truly liberal multi-racial society in North America instead of creating a smug northern enclave. In addition such a move would bring directly to Canada, what presumably all liberals wish, the world’s most dynamic capitalist enterprises.
This last point also suggests further liberalization to the authors’ proposed nationalist movement: why should a Canadian liberal follow the authors’ advice and work side by side with socialists to break the influence of American capitalism, when the result could well be a democratic socialist Canada? The fact is notwithstanding minor temporary common desires, e.g. the new flag, serious liberals and socialists do not have shared “visions of a future Canada” as the authors of the manifesto clearly suggest. The consistent liberal is committed to private ownership of the means of production and to what this necessarily entails: inequality, irresponsible decision-making power in the hands of corporate directors and/or owners, and minimal government. The liberal wants these — as the socialist does not — and has them now in Canada. Why should he put them in jeopardy by helping socialists improve their position?
This leads us to the socialist objections to the authors’ scheme which can be summarily stated:
(1) why work with intelligent liberals when long-range objectives conflict? Indeed, because there are more liberals about why form the proposed co-operative study and research groups when the inevitable result — even in the short-run period of “nationalist” cohesion — will be that the issues studied and the solutions proposed will almost certainly reflect the liberals not the socialists ultimate interests. The now almost defunct exchange for political ideas in Canada and the University League for Social Reform are good recent examples of this unhappy fact. A number of Canadian socialist academics at the recent annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association established a Socialist Scholars Committee whose function will be to promote socialist research in Canada. One of the main reasons leading to this act was the failure (in the view of its founders) of the ULSR and EPIC to seriously concern themselves with Canadian problems from a socialist perspective. One of the aims of the socialist scholars committee is to rectify this situation, unencumbered by the presence of liberals.
(2) ‘unregenerate socialists”, as the authors describe themselves, already have the New Democratic Party a viable political institution — I would say the only significantly viable one — which can be moved in a socialist direction. Those concerned about the fate of socialism in Canada should now focus their attention and activity on the NDP. There is little doubt that unconscious liberals within the party are having increasing influence. Socialists should not spread themselves too thinly by trying to create a potentially regressive mixed-ideological nationalist movement, but rather should use their intelligence and energy within the NDP to minimize both the liberal drift of the party and the increasing emphasis on nationalism (I do not say nationalism should be entirely abandoned). Outside of party politics they should persuade Canadians by means of carefully-researched policy recommendations and coherently argued ideology that socialism not nationalism or liberalism is the sole justification for wrenching Canada free from American domination. Canadian Dimension has recently played an important role in this extra-party activity. I hope it will continue to do so in the future.
J. E. Broadbent,
Department of Political Science
York University
Canadian Dimension
September/October, 1967
