page’6 April 15,1986

NATIONALISTS SET OUT
TO SAVECANADA

When Mel Hurtig received
an honorary degree ‘from
Wilfred Laurier University at
the school’s fall graduation,
several people approached
him at the reception preced-
ing the ceremony armed with
copies of a book for him to

sign.
Book signings are not
uncommon for Mel Hurtig.

But this time Hurtig was
signing copies of a book he
didn’t write. He published it.
And, it wasn’t a regular book;
it was the three-volume
Canadian Encyclopedia.

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For many, Mel Hurtig has
become the face of Canadian
nationalism. With the public-
ation of the Canadian
Encyclopedia last fall, Hurtig
attempted to create a more
complete picture of the
Canadian identity than exists
on paper anywhere else.

At the same time, he has
continued the fight to make
Canadian. nationalism a force
to be reckoned with ‘on the
polititical scene. Last March,
he founded the Council of
Canadians (COC), to continue
where the Committee for an
independent Canada (CIC),
which he also helped found,
left off in 1981.

That the COC was born
only a few months after the
Conservatives swept to power
was no coincidence. They
voyage of the Polar Sea, Star
Wars, and-most importantly-
talk of free trade with the
United States have presented
Canada with concrete chal-
lenges to its sovereignty. The
resurgent nationalist move-
ment is rallying around these
challenges.

The federal government
appears to be feeling the
ground-swell of nationalistic
feeling in Canada.

During the voyage of the
U.S. icebreaker Polar Sea
through the Northwest
Passage (waters claimed as
Canada’s own) last August,
Mel Hurtig sent Brian
Mulroney a gelegram calling
the | government’s — meek
protest ‘‘a shocking  ab-
dication of your responsi-
bilities to the citizens of
Canada.’’

A few days later two
University of Alberta students
representing the COC and
two Inuit representatives buz-
zed the American icebreaker
in a small plane, dropping
protest leaflets and Canadian
flags onto its deck.’’

The government appeared

reprinted
from the

to get the messge. It later
announced the construction of
a new polar icebreaker to beef
up Canada’s arctic presence.

The COC is also trying to
establish a presense among
students. Jane Hurtig, a
third-year political science
student at Carleton Univer-
sity, helped set up the

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campus chapter which she is

now president of, last
October.
She says the Council’s

popularity is» growing. Her
chapter (which is autononous
from the national organiz-

ation) already has 80 mem-
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Legend has it the CIC was
born on February 3, 1970,
over lunch at the King
Edward Hotel in Toronto. The
three who hatched the idea
were Walter Gordon, a former

finance minister in Lester
Pearson’s cabinet in the
sixties, Peter C. Newman,

© then editor of the Toronto Sun

and later editor of Maclean’s
and Abraham Rotstein, an
economist at the University of
Toronto.

Rotstein, now 56, has since
decided the word processor is
mightier than the committee,
and has decided to sit out the

COC era. But, he’s still as
committed — to economic
nationalism as he was 15
years ago.

In an office overflowing
with books and papers at U of
T’s Massey College, Rotstein
recalls the mood of the times
in wang the CIC sprang up.

by Beckers and Stech

 

 

 

> member,

bers.

While ‘only Carleton and
the University of Ottawa have
campus chapters at present,
Dalhousie, McGill and the
University of Calgary are also
forming chapters. There are
11 city chapters across the
country.

The COC alls _ itself
non-partisan, but it’s hard to
avoid a liberal image, with
prominent Liberals like
Opposition house leader Herb
Gray and prominent New
Democrats like national NDP
president Marion Dewar as
members.

But Jane Hurtig protests
that ‘‘the COC isn’t anti-
Conservative, it’s anti-conti-
netnalist. If the Liberals were
in power, the COC would not
fold.’’

She points out that Peter
Pollen, leader of the B.C.
Conservative party, is a
but she admits
having trouble finding
Conservative speakers for her
club. She suspects many
Conservatives agree with the
COC’s platform, but aren’t in
a position to do so publicly.

If the COC is to establish
itself as truly representative
of Canadian sentiment, not
just the theories of an
intellectual elite, it will léarn
from the experience of the

“There was
climate, ’’
the time of

an activist
he recalls. That was
the Vietnam
movement, it was after the
blacks...the age of Aquarius,
the swinging sixties and early
seventies, the period of the
teach-ins... There was much
bubbling and ferment going
on in society, and to some
extent, we were one off-shoot
of that particular time.’’
Nationalism matured in the
intervening years. For
Rotstein, today’s nationalist
movement is a low key affair.
‘‘There isn’t that sense of

confrontation, or self-right-
eousness.”’
The CIC founder were

determined, says Rotstein, to
arouse and_ focus public
opinion on the policy makers,
‘to, late in the day, save
something (of Canada) that
was going to be saved.”’

The CIC’s peak member-
ship of 10,000 couldn’t fill a
decent sized’ stadium-but it
was vocal.

It included notables like
publisher Jack McClelland,
Le Devoir editor Claude Ryan,
former federal Conservative
party president Dalton Camp
and radical economist Mel
Watkins. '

The Committee fought. for
the creation of the Canada
Development Corporation

Dine

(cdc) in 1971, the Foreign
Investment Reviedw Agency
(FIRA) in 1973, Petro-Canada
in 1975, and the National
Energy Program (NEP) in
1980. It was at the forefront of
the fight to stop the
Mackenzie Valley Pipeline in
1977.

But while members claimed
a large part of the credit for
getting the federal govern-
ment to adopt these national-
‘ist policies, Rotstein plays
down the committee’s role.

It was as much a child of
the times as a shaper of
certain policy,’’ he offers.
‘But it was perhaps the
articulation of certain cross-
currents which were there in
the population as a whole.’’

Canadian nationalism has
usually been strongest when
threats to it were the
greatest.

“‘l see it (nationalism) as a
counter-movement, not a
movement,’’ says Rotstein.
“It’s a responsive movement
to stresses and strains within
the society, and when. these
stresses that come with the
threat of foreign domination
grow, nationalism is a natural
reaction to limit that take-
over.”’

Foreign control of the
Canadian economy was peak-
ing in the early 1970's.
Foreign-owned firms, four-
fifths of them American,

controlled 37 per cent of
industrial

Canadian output.

2 cactii and three nines

alists left for the 1980s? Ask a
nationalist who has_ lived
through

But by the 1970s, nationalist
activism was abating. Unem-
ployment and _ inflation had
risen steadily throughout the
decade and nationalism was
relegated to a minor concern.
The state inervention that
nationalistic endeavours like
Petro-Canada and FIRA had
become a source of discontent

and criticism.
The CIC disbanded _ in
August, 1981. Committee

officials at the time said most
of its objectives had been
achieved, but its dissolution
was due as much to the
group’s irrelevance to quie-
scent Canadians as any sense
of achievement.

What sort of legacy have
the 1970s nationalists left for
the 1980s? Ask a nationalist
who haslived through it all,
and ask in a place where it’s
possibly the most dangerous
to be committed to anything-
the Canadian political area.

Herb Gray is such .a
survivor. An MP. since 1962,
he made his mark leading the
Task Force on Foreign
Ownership from 1970 to 1972,
which led to the creation of
FIRA.

When the Liberals returned
to power’ after the ~ 1980
election, Herb Gray got the
industry portfolio in the new
cabinet. Gray set about
rejuvenating FIRA, which had
come under criticism for let-
ting most foreign investment
into the country unscreened.

But Gray’s vigour was not
appreciated, especially by
American business people,

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Canada’s economy had and
still has, the highest degree
of foreign ownership in the
industrialized world.

The pro-Americanism — of
Pearson’s government in the
1960s, built on a liberal image
of John F.  Kennedy’s
America, had given way to a
mistrust of America the
oppressor after the Vietnam
debacle and the civil unrest of
the alte 60s. Watergate
compounded the image soon
afterwards.

Public suspicion of the
United States was growing. A
1959 poll found 19 per cent of
Canadians thought U.S.
investment had been bad for
Canada. By 1978, the

percentage had risen to 55
per cent.” ,
But by the 1970s, nation-.

 

 

 

 

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by the less nationalistic Ed
Lumley. The difference in
FIRA’s review record was
marked: the number of reject-
ed applications fell by two-
thirds.

Gray sees a change
attitude towards Canadian
nationalism. ‘‘It’s become
than a trendy subject for
discussion...it’s taken as a
given by a large number of
people.’’ he says. He credits
for policies of previous Liberal
governments with raising a
sense of nationalism in most
Canadians--a cause-and-effect
relationship CIC _ loyalists
would likely have expressed
the other way around.

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