Chris Selley: Carney's bizarre fixation with calling us 'European' makes no sense

National Post

10 hours ago

On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said — not for the first time — that Canada is 'the most European of non-European countries.' He said it in May, too, in France; and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said it as well, in an interview with BBC. So it's obviously a deliberate talking point. What's weird about it is that Carney and Joly offer no explanation. They just say it as if it's an established fact that all Canadians accept — which they obviously would not.
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'I want to ensure that France and the whole of Europe works enthusiastically with Canada, the most European of non-European countries,' Carney said Monday in Paris. 'Canada is a reliable, trustworthy and strong partner.'
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It's not conspicuously incorrect; it's just an odd thing to say, even (or maybe especially) when deliberately currying favour on his European tour. Canada is certainly one of the countries outside Europe that's most superficially reminiscent of Europe, along with New Zealand and Australia. But there really aren't many such countries, and none of them are much like Europe at all. (That's to the extent Europe, from Lisbon to Bucharest to Helsinki or Moscow — to say nothing of the small towns and rural areas in between — can be considered one thing.)
It has been fascinating to watch people on social media earnestly appreciate Carney's remark. Many point to our gun-control laws, our universal health care and our robust social-safety net. But that's not how we're 'like Europe'; that's how we're not like the United States. Europe in general has stronger gun control than we do. Many European countries have more robust social safety nets. And they all have universal health care, as do all developed nations other than the U.S. — in many cases more universal, efficient and effective than in Canada.
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Indeed, I suspect what most people heard when Carney said 'most European' was yet another variation on 'not American.'
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'Not American' is the bedrock so much Canadian nationalism, and never more so (in my lifetime at least) than during the age of President Donald Trump. Dismal as it can be, there is nothing unnatural about it. Mice are always going to resent their elephant neighbours.
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But mice often find ways of co-operating with their elephant neighbours. For all their historic troubles, Irish and British citizens are free to live, work, study and receive full government services in both countries — independently of the European Union. On Monday came news that London-born David 'The Edge' Evans, guitarist for the oppressively Irish U2, had only just taken out Irish citizenship at the age of 62. He hadn't needed to, and didn't have to.
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New Zealand and Australia have a similar agreement (though a much friendlier history, of course). And the European Union is the ultimate example. Minnows like Malta and Cyprus swim freely with sharks like Germany and France, and many more minnows at least theoretically aspire to jump in the pool: Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina.