The Role of Canadian Social Policy and Identity
In Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, the author, Michael Adams, head of the Environics polling company seeks distinctions between Canadians and Americans using polling research performed by his company as evidence. Critics of the idea of a fundamentally "liberal Canada" such as David Frum argue that the Canadian drive towards a more noticeably leftist political stance is largely due to the increasing role that Quebec plays in the Canadian government (three of the last five elected Prime Ministers have been Quebecers, four if one includes Ontarian born Paul Martin). Quebec historically was the most conservative, religious and traditional part of Canada. Since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, however, it has become the most secular and social democratic region of Canada. However, it is noteworthy that many Western provinces (particularly Saskatchewan and British Columbia) also have reputations as supporting leftist and social democratic policies. For example Saskatchewan is one of the few provinces (all in the West) to reelect social democratic governments and is the cradle of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and its successor the New Democratic Party. Much of the energy of the early Canadian feminist movement occurred in Manitoba.
By contrast, the Conservative provincial government of Alberta has frequently quarrelled with federal administrations perceived to be dominated by "eastern liberal elites." Part of this is due to what Albertans feel were federal intrusions on provincial jurisdictions such as the National Energy Program and other attempts to 'interfere' with Albertan oil resources.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Identity
Famous quotes containing the words role, canadian, social, policy and/or identity:
“Mental health data from the 1950s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isnt surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crows feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Were definite in Nova Scotiabout things like ships ... and fish, the best in the world.”
—John Rhodes Sturdy, Canadian screenwriter. Richard Rossen. Joyce Cartwright (Ella Raines)
“The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment ones own growing inner self.... The minds dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of ones own solitude, that solitude whose final form is ones confrontation with ones own mortality.”
—Harold Bloom (b. 1930)
“A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.”
—Walter Lippmann (18891974)
“The adolescent does not develop her identity and individuality by moving outside her family. She is not triggered by some magic unconscious dynamic whereby she rejects her family in favour of her peers or of a larger society.... She continues to develop in relation to her parents. Her mother continues to have more influence over her than either her father or her friends.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)