The Dangers of ‘Take Back Canada’
Photo Credit: (Winnipeg Free Press / Google Images)
Written by: Jessi Gilchrist
The election of Erin O’Toole as the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada has raised many eyebrows. Formerly viewed as a CPC moderate, O’Toole won the race for party leadership by appealing to the far right factions of the party’s voting base with a promise to “take back Canada.” O’Toole has made clear that one of the targets from which the Conservatives must take back Canada is Justin Trudeau. But who else is on the ‘Take Back Canada’ hit list?
There has been a lot of talk surrounding just what this slogan really means. For Conservatives, the slogan presents a strong ‘Canada First’ message. But for many, the slogan raises some serious questions and concerns:
Take back Canada from whom?
Back to when?
Back to what?
By what means?
These concerns are not unfounded. Nostalgia is a dangerous thing in politics. For many, Take Back Canada shows too close an affinity to the Make America Great Again movement south of the border that has only spiraled further and further to the far right. Like the MAGA movement, O’Toole’s platform suggests a need to return to a past era when Canada was truly great. But the truth is that this so-called era of greatness was rife with inequalities rooted in colonialism.
Erin O’Toole has claimed to be “serious” about Indigenous reconciliation. But the colonial assumptions embodied within his new slogan should give us some serious pause. Set in its context, it is clear that O’Toole’s winning slogan provides anything but support for meaningful reconciliation. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The rally call to Take Canada Back has emerged as a reactionary response to the Land Back movements that have brought the need to recognize Indigenous sovereignty into Canada’s spotlight.
More than five years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for Canada to repudiate concepts that have been used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples. For centuries, the so-called Doctrine of Discovery has given legitimacy to the colonial dispossession of sovereign Indigenous Nations on the basis that European Christian peoples have an inherent right to take land, use it productively, and ‘civilize’ the people within it. The Doctrine of Discovery has been widely condemned as the foundational justification for genocide. Yet, this ideology has continued to shape life in Canada. All we need to do is look at the various land claims and sovereignty violations to see its legacy. It is an ideology that, if anything, the Take Back Canada movement seeks to reinforce.
The timing of O’Toole’s slogan is no coincidence. The urgency of reconciliation has perhaps never been more obvious than in 2020 as Canada has witnessed Wet’suwet’en solidarity protests, the marginalization of Indigenous communities during COVID-19, and the intensifying suicide crisis in Canada’s North. The CPC leader’s platform decisively attacks Indigenous-led efforts to decolonize Canadian society. O’Toole claims that “the ‘Shut Down Canada’ blockade movement […] threatened our future prosperity even before the pandemic did.” When O’Toole calls to Take Back Canada, there can be little doubt that he has his fingers pointed at Indigenous land defenders.
The call to Take Back Canada suggests that Truth and Reconciliation has gone too far – that Canada must be taken back from those it was taken from. Ironically, the slogan could almost appear as a call for decolonization – Let us take back Canada for those to whom it originally belonged -- if it were not touted by an old white men who refuses to admit that systemic racism exists. It paints resistance to ongoing colonial power structures as “mob rule” and uses instances of “lawlessness” to play into colonial narratives that it is the settlers’ responsibility to take land and power to instill law and order. The slogan reinforces the intruder-settler castle narrative on a national scale.
The Take Back Canada initiative also targets efforts to decolonize Canada’s history. Canada is a settler-colonial society that desperately needs to reconcile with its violent past. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action demand acknowledgment of the history of colonialism in Canada and its painful legacy. But, this is a measure with which O’Toole fundamentally disagrees.
The new CPC leader has repeatedly highlighted the perceived need to “defend our history” against “attacks from cancel culture and the radical left.” On September 1, Erin O’Toole tweeted a video where he claims, “we will not build a better Canada by defacing or erasing our history.”
O’Toole is absolutely right. We will not build a better Canada by erasing Canada’s history of colonialism. But removing statues of the founding fathers of genocide does not erase history, it forces us to reconsider the historical figures that we chose to glorify and commemorate. Unfortunately, this is not what O’Toole means when he raises concerns about Canada’s history.
O’Toole’s call to take back Canada’s history is rooted in a nostalgia for Canada’s colonial past. While protestors across the country tear down statues of Canada’s violent and racist first Prime Minister, O’Toole exalts the architect of Canada’s residential school system. The new CPC leader frames his Great Country Initiative with a quote by Sir John A. MacDonald: “We are a great country and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.” This quote promotes plain and simple social Darwinism -- an ideology that has not only been used to justify the imperial project at large, but also the atrocities of the Holocaust.
To recognize the dangers of Take Back Canada is not to simply cry ‘bad Conservatives’. Canada is a democracy. It is important that Canada’s party politics represent a political spectrum meaningful to Canadians. A conservative party does have a place here. But it has become overwhelmingly clear in 2020 that there are some issues upon which we cannot simply claim a ‘difference of opinion’ and divide along party lines. Recognizing systemic racism and genocidal consequences of settler colonialism is not a political stance – these are facts. But when O’Toole calls for Conservatives to Take Back Canada, his targets are not simply the ‘corrupt Liberals.’ He takes aim at those who would dare to critique the violent foundations upon which Canada was built and those who seek to address its legacy.
Take Back Canada also reveals a dangerous trend in Canadian Conservatism: that reactionary and nostalgic tenants are gaining widespread support. The slogan’s message does not suggest a policy-making process based on an analysis of how the future of Canada ought to look. Instead, it indicates a harsh reaction against developments in society and a nostalgia for a time when the settler-colonial status quo was not called into question. It calls for regression against social progress. We know from history that combining reactionary politics with nostalgic worldviews does not turn out well.
The Take Back Canada movement shows us how what Carol Anderson has referred to as “White Rage” operates in the Canadian context. It speaks to the discomfort of white men and women who are experiencing societal and cultural challenges to their supremacy and privilege. The call to Take Back Canada has been triggered by the discomfort of white settlers reacting to instances of Indigenous resistance and advancement.
Erin O’Toole is not all wrong. There should be a widespread movement that recognizes the need to take back Canada, a movement that recognizes from whom the land we call Canada has actually been taken and to whom it should be returned, Indigenous nations.
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