I | INTRODUCTION |
Canada, federated country in North America, made up of
ten provinces and three territories. Canada is a vast nation with a wide variety
of geological formations, climates, and ecological systems. It has rain forest,
prairie grassland, deciduous forest, tundra, and wetlands. Canada has more lakes
and inland waters than any other country. It is renowned for its scenery, which
attracts millions of tourists each year. On a per-capita basis, its resource
endowments are the second richest in the world after Australia. See
Canada: Land and Resources.
Canada is the second largest country in the
world but has about the same population as the state of California, which is
about 4 percent of Canada’s size. This is because the north of Canada, with its
harsh Arctic and sub-Arctic climates, is sparsely inhabited. Most Canadians live
in the southern part of the country. More than three-quarters of them live in
metropolitan areas, the largest of which are Toronto, Ontario; Montréal, Québec;
Vancouver, British Columbia; Ottawa, Ontario; Hull, Québec; and Edmonton,
Alberta.
French and English are the official
languages, and at one time most Canadians were of French or English descent.
However, diversity increased with a wave of immigration in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries that brought in people from many other European nations.
This trend continues into the 21st century: Canada is one of the few countries
in the world that still has significant immigration programs. Since the 1970s
most immigrants have come from Asia, increasing still further the diversity of
the population. See Canada: People.
Canada’s prosperity and diversity have
encouraged a variety of artistic pursuits. Most major cities have symphony
orchestras, opera companies, classical and modern dance groups, and live
theater. Canadian popular musicians have built highly successful careers both in
Canada and in the world at large. Canadian writers have also gained worldwide
recognition, as have painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and architects. To nurture
Canadian arts, the government has imposed quotas on foreign content in Canadian
media.
Canada has impressive reserves of timber,
minerals, and fresh water, and many of its industries are based on these
resources. Many of its rivers have been harnessed for hydroelectric power, and
it is self-sufficient in fossil fuel. Industrialization began in the 19th
century and a significant manufacturing sector emerged, especially after World
War II (1939-1945). Canada’s resource and manufacturing industries export about
one-third of their output. While Canada’s prosperity is built on the resource
and manufacturing industries, most Canadians work in service occupations,
including transportation, trade, finance, personal services, and government.
See Canada: Economy.
Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a
constitutional monarchy. The federal, provincial, and territorial legislatures
are all directly elected by citizens. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
is recognized as the queen of Canada. She is the official head of state. The
queen is represented in Canada by the governor-general and ten lieutenant
governors. Canada's constitution guarantees equality under the law to all of its
citizens. Powers of the federal and provincial governments are spelled out
separately under the constitution, but over the past 50 years they have
increasingly cooperated in programs that provide a wide range of social services
to the public. See Canada: Government.
Canada’s indigenous peoples (original
inhabitants) are often called First Nations or Indians (see Native
Americans of North America). The name Canada comes from a word meaning
“village” or “community” in one of the indigenous Iroquoian languages.
Indigenous peoples had developed complex societies and intricate political
relations before the first Europeans, the Vikings, arrived in the 11th century.
The Vikings soon left, but more Europeans came in the 16th century and were made
welcome because they brought manufactured goods and traded them for furs and
other native products. However, the Europeans settled down and gradually
displaced the indigenous peoples over the next 250 years. This process of
dispossession has left a legacy of legal and moral issues that Canadians are
grappling with today. See Canada: History.
European settlers came in a series of waves.
First were the French, followed by the English, and these two groups are
considered the founding nations. France lost its part of the territory to
Britain in a war in 1760, but most of the French-speaking colonists remained
(see French and Indian War). Their effort to preserve their language and
culture has been a continuing theme of Canadian history and has led to a
movement to become independent of the rest of Canada.
Modern Canada was formed in an event that
Canadians call Confederation, in 1867, when three colonies of Britain merged to
create a partially independent state of four provinces. Since then, six more
provinces and three territories have been added. Canada achieved full
independence in 1931 but continues to belong to the Commonwealth of Nations, a
voluntary association of countries with ties to the United Kingdom.
II | LAND AND RESOURCES |
Canada’s physical characteristics have
heavily influenced the course of its development. It is a very large country
(only Russia is larger) composed of several distinct regions that are often
separated from each other by natural barriers. Canada has an abundance of
natural resources, such as forests, minerals, fish, and hydroelectric power.
These resources have encouraged Canadians to focus their economic development on
the export of raw materials. Conservation of these resources has become a
national priority.
Canada is a country of difficult terrain;
much of its area is underwater, rocky, marshy, mountainous, or otherwise
uninhabitable. Settlement has therefore been concentrated in the areas that are
more level and have the better soils. The northern climate, with its long
winters, has encouraged the population to settle in the south, where
agricultural and living conditions are most favorable. The vast majority of
Canadians live within 320 km (200 mi) of the American border.
A | Extent |
Canada occupies nearly all of North America
north of latitude 49° north and east of longitude 141° west. It has an area of
9,984,670 sq km (3,855,103 sq mi), of which 7.6 percent or 755,180 sq km
(291,577 sq mi) is covered by fresh water such as rivers and lakes, including
part of the Great Lakes. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the
northeast by Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, which separate it from Greenland; on
the east by the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by the United States; and on the
west by the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. Cape Columbia, a promontory of Ellesmere
Island, is the country’s northernmost point; the southernmost point, 4,600 km
(2,900 mi) away, is Middle Island in Lake Erie. The easternmost and westernmost
limits, which are separated by 5,500 km (3,400 mi), are respectively Cape Spear,
Newfoundland and Labrador, and the greater part of the border with Alaska.
Long distances and a challenging physical
environment make transportation and communication across the country very
difficult. This reality has made it a challenge for Canadians to maintain a
sense of nationhood.
B | Natural Regions |
Six general landform regions are
distinguishable in Canada: the Appalachian Region, the Great Lakes and St.
Lawrence Lowlands, the Canadian Shield, the Great Plains, the Canadian
Cordillera, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
B1 | Appalachian Region and Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands |
Eastern Canada consists of the
Appalachian Region and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands. The
Appalachian Region embraces Newfoundland Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
Prince Edward Island, and the Gaspé Peninsula of Québec. This region is an
extension of the Appalachian mountain system (continuations of the Green
Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire) and of the
Atlantic Coastal Plain.
The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands
are a generally level plain that includes southern Québec and Ontario. This
region has the largest expanse of good farmland in eastern and central Canada.
The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands also contain the so-called
manufacturing heartland of Canada, along the corridor from Windsor, Ontario, to
Québec City. Ontario and Québec provinces together account for 76 percent of
Canada’s employment in manufacturing and two-thirds of the nation’s
manufacturing shipments.
B2 | Canadian Shield |
The Canadian Shield is the largest
region, extending from Labrador to Great Bear Lake, from the Arctic Ocean to the
Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River, and into the United States west of
Lake Superior and in northern New York. This region of ancient granite rock is
sparsely covered with soil and deeply eroded by glacial action. It includes all
of Labrador (the easternmost part of the mainland), most of Québec, northern
Ontario, Manitoba, Nunavut Territory, and part of the Northwest Territories,
with Hudson Bay in the center.
B3 | Great Plains |
Bordering the Canadian Shield on the west
are the Great Plains, an extension of the Great Plains of the United States.
About 1,300 km (about 800 mi) wide at the U.S. border, the region narrows to
about one-quarter of that size west of Great Bear Lake and widens again to about
500 km (about 300 mi) at the mouth of the Mackenzie River on the Arctic Ocean
coast. Within the Great Plains are the northeastern corner of British Columbia
province, most of Alberta, the southern half of Saskatchewan, and the southern
one-third of Manitoba. This region has the most fertile soil in Canada.
B4 | Canadian Cordillera |
Canada’s westernmost region, the Canadian
Cordillera, embraces the mountains west of the Great Plains. The region belongs
to the vast mountain system extending from the southernmost extremity of South
America to westernmost Alaska. The Canadian Cordillera has an average width of
about 800 km (about 500 mi). It includes part of western Alberta, much of
British Columbia, the Inuvik Region and part of the Fort Smith Region of
Northwest Territories, and practically all of Yukon Territory.
The eastern portion of the Canadian
Cordillera consists of the Rocky Mountains and related ranges, including the
Mackenzie, Franklin, and Richardson mountains. Mount Robson at 3,954 m (12,972
ft) is the highest summit of the Canadian Rockies, and ten other peaks reach
elevations of more than 3,500 m (11,500 ft). To the west of the Canadian Rockies
are numerous isolated ranges, notably the Cariboo, Stikine, and Selkirk
mountains, and a vast plateau region. Deep river valleys and extensive tracts of
arable land are the chief features of the plateau region, particularly in
British Columbia.
Flanking this central belt on the west
and generally parallel to the Pacific Ocean is another great mountain system.
This system includes the Coast Mountains, which are an extension into British
Columbia of the Cascade Range of the United States, and various coastal ranges.
The highest of these, the Saint Elias Mountains, are on the boundary between
Yukon Territory and Alaska. Among noteworthy peaks of the western Canadian
Cordillera is Mount Logan, which at 5,959 m (19,551 ft) is the highest point in
Canada and second highest mountain in North America. Others are Mount Saint
Elias at 5,489 m (18,008 ft), Mount Lucania at 5,226 m (17,146 ft), and King
Peak at 5,173 m (16,972 ft). All are in the Saint Elias Mountains.
B5 | Canadian Arctic Archipelago |
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago is a
collection of islands north of Hudson Bay and between the Beaufort Sea and Davis
Strait. All but the southern tip of Baffin Island are above the Arctic Circle.
The archipelago is a complex region including mountains, uplands, plateaus, and
lowlands. There are three main subareas: the Innuitian region, the shield
territories, and the Arctic lowlands.
The Innuitian region, in the far north,
consists of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. The northernmost of these, Ellesmere
and Axel Heiberg islands, are almost entirely mountainous and glacier-covered.
The Sverdrup Islands to the southwest are lowlands, forming a basin between the
Queen Elizabeths and the plateaus of the Parry Islands.
The second major part of the archipelago
is an extension of the Canadian Shield and includes most of Baffin Island, Devon
Island, part of Somerset Island, and the southeast tip of Ellesmere. This is
mainly granite bedrock that has been uplifted and folded into mountains.
The Arctic lowlands make up most of the
remainder of the archipelago. These lowlands extend from the Arctic coastal
plain in the far west through the interior lowlands of Banks Island. They
include most of Victoria Island, Prince of Wales Island, and King William
Island.
The archipelago has a cold, dry Arctic
climate. Much of the region is covered by glaciers or polar deserts composed of
gravel and other unconsolidated material. The sparse vegetation is mainly
lichens and mosses.
C | Geology |
The Canadian Shield, which occupies the
eastern half of Canada’s landmass, is an ancient craton (stable
continental platform). It is made of rocks that formed billions of years ago
during the Precambrian Era of Earth history and includes granites, gneisses, and
schists 2 to 4 billion years old. It became the nucleus of the North American
crustal plate when Earth’s crust first experienced the tectonic forces that
drive continental drift (see Plate Tectonics).
In the Paleozoic Era (about 540 million to
250 million years ago), large parts of Canada were covered by shallow seas.
Sediments deposited in these seas formed the sandstone, shale, and limestone
that now surround the shield. During the Cambrian and Silurian periods of the
Paleozoic Era, layers of rocks were formed that appear as outcroppings in Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador, along the St. Lawrence
valley, and on the shores of Lake Ontario. Flat beds of Paleozoic and younger
rocks extend westward across the Great Plains through the provinces of Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The rocks in these areas contain valuable deposits of
oil and gas.
In the Canadian Cordillera, the rocks
were subjected to tectonic forces generated by the collision of the North
American plate with the Pacific plate. In the ensuing upheavals, which began
during the Cretaceous Period (about 145 million to 65 million years ago),
mountain ranges rose throughout the Canadian Cordillera. The easternmost of
these ranges, the Rocky Mountains, run from Canada south through Montana,
Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. They were built by uplifting and folding of
sedimentary rocks and, to a lesser degree, by volcanic activity. The strata
composing them range in age from the Paleozoic Era to the Tertiary Period (about
65 million to 1.8 million years ago) and contain valuable deposits of metals as
well as fossil fuels.
During the Pleistocene Epoch (about 1.8
million to 11,500 years ago), nearly all of Canada was covered by vast ice
sheets that extended into the northern United States. As these ice sheets moved,
they profoundly modified Canada’s landscapes, creating many thousands of lakes
and extensive deposits of sand, clay, and gravel. See also Ice Ages.
D | Soils |
Canada’s largest area of high-quality
farmland is a formation of rich dark brown and black prairie, or grassland,
soils that run from southern Manitoba west across Saskatchewan and into Alberta.
The gray-brown soil of the St. Lawrence valley and the Great Lakes is also good
farmland. Only about 5 percent of Canada’s land is suitable for raising crops,
however; the remainder is too mountainous, rocky, wet, or infertile.
Large areas of Canada are covered by boggy
peat that is characteristic of the tundra and adjoining forest areas. This land
is generally infertile and frequently mossy. In the Arctic regions, most of the
soil is classified as permafrost, meaning that at least 80 percent of the ground
is permanently frozen. The freeze-thaw action that occurs in the more southern
parts of the permafrost zone frequently causes so-called patterned ground
features, such as polygonal rings of stones, ice wedges, and pingos (ice
domes).
E | Rivers and Lakes |
Canada contains more lakes and inland
waters than any other country in the world. In addition to the Great Lakes on
the American border (all partly within Canada except Lake Michigan), the country
has 31 lakes or reservoirs of about 1,300 sq km (about 500 sq mi) in area.
Canada’s two largest lakes are Superior and Huron, at 82,100 sq km (31,700 sq
mi) and 59,600 sq km (23,000 sq mi), respectively. About one-third of Lake
Superior and about three-fifths of Lake Huron are in Canada.
The largest lakes wholly within Canada
are Great Bear, at 31,790 sq km (12,270 sq mi), and Great Slave, at 28,570 sq km
(11,030 sq mi), both in the Northwest Territories. Each of these immense lakes
is larger than either Lake Erie or Lake Ontario. Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, at
24,390 sq km (9,417 sq mi), also compares in size with Lake Erie and is much
larger than Lake Ontario. Other very large bodies of freshwater are Lake
Athabasca and Reindeer Lake in Saskatchewan and the Smallwood Reservoir in
Newfoundland and Labrador. Also significant in size are Nettilling Lake on
Baffin Island, Lake Winnipegosis and Lake Manitoba in Manitoba, Lake Nipigon and
Lake of the Woods in Ontario, and Lake Melville in Newfoundland and
Labrador.
Canada’s two greatest rivers are the St.
Lawrence, which drains the Great Lakes and empties into the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, and the Mackenzie, which empties into the Arctic Ocean and drains a
large part of northwestern Canada. While the St. Lawrence is the largest river
in Canada in volume of water discharged at its mouth, the Mackenzie is the
longest. Through its tributary, the Peace River, and tracing to its source in
the Finlay River of British Columbia, the Mackenzie is 4,241 km (2,635 mi) long
and is one of the longest rivers in the world. The St. Lawrence and the
Mackenzie are the second and third largest rivers by volume of discharge,
respectively, in North America.
Other large Canadian rivers in terms of
both length and discharge are the Yukon, flowing from Yukon Territory across
Alaska into the Bering Sea; the Nelson-Saskatchewan system, flowing across the
Great Plains into Hudson Bay; the Churchill, also flowing into Hudson Bay; and
the Fraser and the Columbia in British Columbia. Other significant regional
rivers are the Saint John, emptying into the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick; the Churchill, in Newfoundland and Labrador; and the many
rivers flowing into the St. Lawrence from the shield, including the Ottawa, the
Saguenay, and the Saint-Maurice. All these rivers are navigable for at least
some of their length, but only the St. Lawrence and Mackenzie are used for
commercial navigation.
In general, all rivers and lakes in Canada
have value as sources of water for agricultural, industrial, urban, and
recreational uses; but some have more specific commercial uses. The St. Lawrence
Seaway and the Great Lakes together form an important transportation network for
eastern Canada, allowing oceangoing vessels to travel deep into the heartland.
The Great Lakes are used to transport bulk materials, such as grain and iron
ore, and have been important for the industrial development of the St.
Lawrence-Great Lakes region.
Many of the rivers emptying into the St.
Lawrence are also important producers of hydroelectric power. In contrast, the
rivers of the Arctic drainage basin have little commercial importance. Although
the Mackenzie is navigable for most of its length and has been used for
transportation, its isolation limits its usefulness. The rivers draining into
Hudson Bay are important primarily as power sources, particularly the Nelson in
northern Manitoba and the La Grande in northern Québec. The fast-flowing rivers
draining into the Pacific, such as the Fraser, are particularly suitable for
power generation. They are also crucial for the salmon fishing industry, but
these two uses are not compatible. For this reason, hydroelectric development
has been prohibited on the Fraser.
F | Coastline |
The coast of the Canadian mainland, about
58,500 km (about 36,350 mi) in length, is extremely broken and irregular, with
alternating large bays and peninsulas. Canada also has numerous coastal islands,
with a total island coastline of about 185,290 km (about 115,130 mi). Off the
eastern coast the largest islands are Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward,
and Anticosti. Off the western coast, which is fringed with fjords, are
Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. Hudson Bay contains
Southampton Island and many smaller islands. The Canadian Arctic Archipelago
contains many large and small islands, the largest of which are Baffin,
Ellesmere, and Victoria.
The importance of the coastline lies in
the access it provides to marine resources. Canada has jurisdiction over
resources in the oceans that are within 200 nautical miles (230 mi/370 km) of
its shores. It has exclusive rights to the resources within that zone, including
fisheries and oil deposits. The most important oil sources at present are the
Hibernia Oilfields off Newfoundland and Labrador and the Sable Island reserves
off Nova Scotia.
The coastline is also important because
it provides many natural harbors that have been developed into ports. Ocean
ports handle much of Canada’s international trade and provide a significant
portion of local and regional coastal economies. Of course, the commercial value
of the coastline varies with location; the southern coasts and their ports, such
as Vancouver and Victoria in the west and Halifax in the east, are much more
important than similar locations in the north, which are icebound much of the
year. Finally, coastlines in Canada are very scenic and attract visitors from
around the world.
G | Climate |
Because of its size, Canada has a great
variety of climatic conditions. Part of the mainland and most of the Canadian
Arctic Archipelago are within Earth’s north frigid zone; the remainder of the
country lies in the northern half of the north temperate zone. Climatic
conditions range from the extreme cold of the Arctic regions to the moderate
temperatures of more southerly latitudes. Average summer temperatures range from
8°C (46°F) in the far north to more than 22°C (72°F) in some parts of the far
south. Average January temperatures range from -35°C (-31°F) in the far north to
3°C (37°F) in southwestern British Columbia. Similarly, precipitation ranges
from near-desert conditions of less than 300 mm (12 in) per year in the far
north to very wet conditions of more than 2,400 mm (more than 90 in) in parts of
the west coast. Therefore, there is no single Canadian climate, but rather
several regional climates.
In the Atlantic provinces, the ocean
lessens the extremes of winter cold and summer heat but also causes considerable
fog and precipitation. The Pacific coast, which is influenced by warm ocean
currents and moisture-laden winds, has mild summers and winters, high humidity,
and abundant precipitation. In the Canadian Cordillera, the higher western
slopes of certain uplifts, particularly the Selkirks and the Rockies, receive
sizable amounts of rain and snow. The eastern slopes and the central plateau
receive little precipitation. In the eastern Canadian Cordillera, the chinook, a
warm, dry westerly wind, makes winters substantially less severe in the Rocky
Mountain foothills and adjoining plains. The Prairie provinces (Alberta,
Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) are marked by the most extreme ranges of summer heat
and winter cold in Canada. Eastern Canada (Ontario and Québec), which also has
great variations in heat and cold, is the snowiest region in Canada.
Climate has been a factor in the
development of Canada because people have settled where temperatures are warmest
and agricultural growing seasons longest. Climate also influences vegetation,
producing, for example, the rain forest of coastal British Columbia. Southern
Ontario and southwestern British Columbia have the mildest climates and greatest
population densities in Canada. In contrast, the central and northern regions
are sparsely populated. The permafrost region in the north poses great
challenges for settlement and development. Yukon Territory, the Northwest
Territories, the Nunavut Territory, northern Québec and Labrador, and the far
northern areas of Ontario and Manitoba are all affected by this condition.
Houses, roads, runways, and pipelines require special, expensive adaptations.
Water and sewage lines are especially troublesome to maintain. Permafrost also
makes mining and other forms of development more difficult and environmentally
damaging. Disruption of the environment through development can induce
thermokarst, the formation of thaw lakes into which buildings can
sink.
H | Plant Life |
The flora of the entire northern part of
Canada is Arctic and sub-Arctic (see Tundra). The tree line—the northern
limit beyond which trees cannot grow—extends roughly from the mouth of the
Mackenzie River to Hudson Bay, just north of Manitoba’s northern border, and
continues east from Hudson Bay at approximately 58° north. The tree line is
simultaneously a climatic, soil, vegetation, and cultural boundary. It divides
the zone of Arctic climate and permafrost, which is the traditional homeland of
the Inuit, from the sub-Arctic zone of intermittent permafrost and stunted
forest, which was the northern limit of the Athapaskan and Algonquian
peoples.
South of the tree line, eastern Canada was
originally thickly forested, primarily with coniferous trees. The typical
vegetation of southern Ontario, southern Québec, and the Maritime provinces (New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) is mixed coniferous and
deciduous forest. The only part of Canada dominated by deciduous forest is
southernmost Ontario, bordering Lakes Erie and Ontario. Point Pelee on Lake
Erie, at roughly the same latitude as the northern border of California, is
known for its variety of deciduous trees, including southern species found
nowhere else in Canada, such as the Kentucky coffee tree.
The Prairie provinces are largely treeless
as far north as the Saskatchewan River system; prairie grasses, herbage, and
bunchgrasses are the chief vegetation. Short grasses dominate the dry belt known
as Palliser’s Triangle in the southeast portion of the prairie region; an arc of
tall grass extends north and west, and this is in turn surrounded by parkland,
or mixed grass and mainly deciduous forest.
North of the Saskatchewan River is a broad
belt of conifers known as the boreal forest. This belt includes Newfoundland and
Labrador, the regions south and east of Hudson Bay, and lands extending westward
to the Rocky Mountains. Spruce, tamarack, and poplar are the principal species.
The dry slopes and valleys of the Rocky Mountains support thin forests, mainly
pine, but the forests increase in density and the trees in size westward toward
the region of greater rainfall. On the coastal ranges, especially on their
western slopes, are dense forests of mighty conifers, principally spruce,
hemlock, Douglas and balsam firs, jack and lodgepole pines, and cedar.
Canada’s extensive coniferous forests
constitute the plant life that is most important to its economy. This living
resource provides valuable raw products, manufactured products, and thousands of
jobs. The coastal and interior forests of British Columbia are the largest and
most valuable portion, containing about 35 percent of the country’s timber
value. The smaller trees of the boreal forest are used across Canada for pulp
and paper. The southeastern mixed zone in the Maritimes also supports a lumber
industry. The natural vegetation of Canada also has commercial value as a
tourist attraction.
I | Animal Life |
The animals of Canada are similar to those
of northern Europe and Asia. Among the carnivores are several species of the
weasel family, such as the ermine, sable, fisher, wolverine, and mink. Other
representative carnivores are the black bear, brown bear, lynx, wolf, coyote,
fox, and skunk. The polar bear is distributed throughout the Arctic; the puma is
found in British Columbia. Of the rodents, the most characteristic is the
beaver. The porcupine, the muskrat, and many smaller rodents are numerous, as
are hares. Gophers are found in the Great Plains.
Several varieties of Virginia deer are
native to southern Canada; the black-tailed deer occurs in British Columbia and
parts of the Great Plains. This region is also the habitat of pronghorns. The
woodland caribou and the moose are numerous and widely distributed, but the
Barren Ground caribou is found only in the far north, which is also the habitat
of the musk ox. Elk and bison (often called buffalo) are found in various
western areas. Bighorn sheep and Rocky Mountain goats are numerous in the
British Columbia mountains. Birds are abundant and diverse, and fish are
numerous in all the inland waters and along all the coasts. Reptiles and insects
are scarce except in the far south.
Many animal species in Canada are
threatened with extinction as urban, agricultural, and industrial uses envelop
and pollute natural environments. Some species have already become extinct, such
as the passenger pigeon, the sea mink, and the Dawson caribou. Among the
endangered animals are the whooping crane, swift fox, peregrine falcon,
beluga (white whale), and the spotted owl. Furthermore, some animals are
threatened by illegal hunting; for example, an illegal market in bear parts used
in some Asian medicines has had a severe impact on black and grizzly bear
populations. In 2005 there were 345 animal and aquatic species categorized as
“at risk” in Canada. In contrast, some of Canada’s animals have adapted very
well to new environments and have become so numerous as to be considered pests
in some areas. Others have been brought back from the brink of extinction by
conservation efforts.
Except for fish, native animals are no
longer of much economic importance in Canada. Although beaver, bison, sea otter,
and whale were once hunted to virtual extinction, they are now either protected
or largely ignored as an economic asset. Canada still has a fur industry, but
the demand for furs has lessened substantially. Hunting for sport, however,
generates a certain amount of income across Canada. Also, a growing number of
people participate in other recreations related to wildlife, such as
birdwatching, whale watching, and nature photography; all of these generate jobs
and income.
J | Natural Resources |
Canada is richly endowed with valuable
natural resources that are commercially indispensable to the economy. Most are
specific to one region or another; for this reason separate resource-based
economies have tended to develop across Canada. The country has enormous areas
of fertile, low-lying land in the Prairie provinces and bordering the Great
Lakes and St. Lawrence River. Profitable agricultural economies have developed
in both of these regions. Canadian forests cover 31 percent of the country’s
land area and abound in commercially valuable stands of timber, especially in
British Columbia, Québec, northern Ontario, the northern Prairie provinces, and
the Maritimes.
Canada’s extensive mineral resources
provide valuable exports and also supply domestic industries. Five of the
country’s six major regions contribute to these resources. The Québec portion of
the Appalachian Region has the world’s largest reserves of asbestos, along with
deposits of copper and zinc. The Canadian Shield is a rich source of metals such
as nickel, copper, gold, uranium, silver, aluminum, and zinc. Minerals from the
shield helped fuel the manufacturing development of southern Ontario and Québec.
The Great Plains region is rich in reserves of crude petroleum and natural gas;
these are concentrated in the Prairie provinces, particularly in Alberta. These
fuel deposits are responsible for the dynamic energy-producing economy of these
provinces. The Great Plains region also has deposits of nonfuels, such as
potash, gypsum, and salt. The western Canadian Cordillera provides copper, lead,
zinc, molybdenum, and asbestos, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago provides
zinc and lead. Increasingly important to the mining industry, the Canadian
Arctic Archipelago features the world’s northernmost base metal mine, the
Polaris mine, on Little Cornwallis Island.
The river and lake systems of the country
combine with topography to make hydroelectric energy one of the permanent
natural assets of Canada. Here British Columbia and the shield provinces are
particularly well endowed. As with other natural resources, much of the energy
is exported.
The wildlife of the country is extensive
and varied and attracts tourists from around the world, but it is the fish
stocks that have the greatest economic value. The cod stocks off the eastern
coast provided export revenue and livelihoods for Atlantic Canadians for
centuries. In the early 1990s, however, this fishery experienced a sudden
collapse due to overfishing and other factors and has not recovered. Other
edible fish and shellfish are present in Atlantic coastal waters but do not
represent the same commercial value as cod. In the Pacific region, the various
salmon species are the most important fish resource, although many other
varieties of fish and shellfish are also economically significant. Finally,
freshwater fish in Canada’s numerous lakes and rivers are a source of food and
revenue for many local communities.
K | Environmental Issues |
The Canadian environment is being altered
by many human activities. The growth of industries and urban areas has caused
air quality to decline, raising concerns among many people about the effects of
fossil fuel use, acid rain, and global warming. Urban growth has reduced
agricultural lands and has become a major issue near large urban centers,
especially in the Windsor-Montréal corridor of Ontario and Québec and in the
Fraser River valley adjoining Vancouver. Waste management in urban areas is also
a growing environmental problem, and many communities are having problems siting
waste facilities and reducing the volume of waste generated.
Outside cities, agriculture, forestry,
fishery, hydroelectric development, and mining have increasingly met with
controversy over their effects on environmental quality and loss of wilderness
areas. In agriculture, global competition has intensified, leading to lower
prices for many agricultural products. Farmers have tried to stay competitive by
adopting practices, such as the use of chemical fertilizers, that degrade the
natural resource base. In other resource industries, notably forestry and
fishing, concern has been expressed that historical and current rates of
extraction threaten the viability of the resources. Thus government resource
management policies are under more scrutiny than ever before.
Since the 1970s the federal and provincial
governments have required an environmental impact assessment for new projects,
such as mines, pulp and paper mills, and irrigation projects. At first these
reviews were not very demanding and were not universally applied, but they
became more stringent over time. In 1995 federal laws were passed making such
reviews universal. The legislation mandates that all projects on federal land,
using federal funds, or run by federal agencies must be reviewed to determine
their impact on the environment. Most provinces now have legislation requiring
environmental assessments of projects within their jurisdiction.
K1 | Sustainable Development |
Increasingly, federal and provincial
governments in Canada have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a
standard. Sustainable development has been defined by the World Commission on
Resources and Development to mean development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising future generations. The World Commission, of which
Canada is a member, was created by the United Nations. In 1987 it produced an
influential report, Our Common Future, on environment and economic
development. Two of the report’s recommendations in particular were taken up by
Canada: establishing roundtables (policy groups of people with diverse
backgrounds) and increasing the amount of protected land. The federal government
and most provincial governments established roundtables on the economy and the
environment.
In 1990 the Canadian government
established the Green Plan, which emphasized more monitoring of the environment,
tighter environmental regulations, and the restoration of damaged areas, and set
a goal of protecting 12 percent of the country’s land by placing it in parks,
special resource management zones, ecological reserves, and other designations.
By 2001 Canada had reached 10 percent, although only 6 percent of all land was
defined as “strictly protected.”
Most government ministries dealing with
land and resources are continuing to emphasize sustainable development. The
provinces, which control most of Canada’s public land, are protecting more of
it. Many provinces have made a commitment to increase their allocation of land
for parks, wildlife reserves, and other ecosystem protection zones. Decisions to
protect more land have frequently pitted urban-based environmental activists
against rural communities whose residents rely on the resources that will be
protected.
As people have become more concerned
about protecting the environment, policymakers have begun to make decisions
about resource management by considering both the needs of human activities and
those of ecosystems. In Ontario remedial action plans have been established to
clean up industrial pollution in the Great Lakes.
Decisions regarding the management of
resources have often led to political conflict and lawsuits. Alternative methods
of resolving these conflicts are increasingly being promoted. One method is
mediation, in which an intermediary helps the opposing sides resolve a problem.
In Ontario a joint agency was set up to make recommendations to the provincial
government on land allocation and resource management in the Temagami region
north of Toronto. The agency included representatives of government, indigenous
peoples, and the general public.
In several provinces the process for
making decisions about resources has been broadened to include different groups
of people. In part, this is the result of indigenous peoples’ demands for more
input into the process, but it also reflects demands by the general public to be
included in decisions that directly affect them. The trend is particularly
strong in fisheries, forestry, and wildlife management. For example, local
communities are becoming more involved in forest management through programs
such as the Community Forests Initiative in Ontario and Forest Renewal BC in
British Columbia. In addition, several provinces have begun forestry education
programs for indigenous peoples and have sought ways, including shared
management of public lands, to increase indigenous involvement in forest and
land management.
K2 | Fisheries Management |
Licenses for sport fishing are usually
distributed by the provincial or territorial governments, which retain the
revenue collected. Many provinces put these revenues into fish conservation
projects. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for
regulating, developing, and conserving Canada’s commercial fisheries, although
it delegates part of the management of freshwater fisheries to the provinces
through federal-provincial agreements. The department also conducts research and
represents Canada in international agreements on fisheries management and marine
research. There are management problems involving other countries on both the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
In the international waters of the
Atlantic Ocean the fisheries are regulated by an international body called the
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), whose member states include
Canada, the United States, and the countries of the European Union (EU).
Disputes involving NAFO are worked out in international negotiations and through
the United Nations. Canada controls fishing within 200 nautical miles (230
mi/370 km) of its shores, and NAFO recognizes Canada’s right to enforce its
regulations to protect fish stocks that are partly within and partly outside
this limit. Not all countries respect this right, however, and international
tensions sometimes flare.
On the Pacific coast, salmon spawned in
Canadian streams are caught by American fishing boats and also as an incidental
(unintentional) catch in trawl nets and drift nets operated by Japanese,
Koreans, and Taiwanese. Issues between Canada and the United States are dealt
with under the Canada-United States Pacific Salmon Treaty, signed in 1985. The
two nations, however, have not always agreed on how the treaty should be
implemented. Issues with other nations are handled through an international
organization, the North Pacific Anadromous Fisheries Commission, which promotes
the conservation of salmon and other anadromous fish (fish species that
migrate between rivers and the ocean) on the high seas. Trade sanctions are
applied to countries that break its rules.
Controversy has also surrounded the
Atlantic seal fishery. Protesters from several nations objected to the
harvesting of whitecoat harp seal pups, which they charged was done in a cruel
manner. It was banned in the 1980s, and today only harp seals that have molted
their white coats—and are therefore considered mature—are harvested.
K3 | Forest Management |
As of 2001, the federal government owned
about 42 million hectares (about 104 million acres) of forest. The provinces
owned about 243 million hectares (600 million acres) or 81 percent of the
forests south of latitude 60° north (the northern border of British Columbia,
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba). The remaining 19 percent was reserved for
national parks or held privately. The provinces are responsible for managing
their public lands and the timber on those lands.
Increasingly, policymakers are
recognizing the intangible benefits of forests. These include recreational
pursuits such as park visitation, birdwatching, nature photography, hunting,
hiking, and canoeing. Forests are also recognized as important reserves of
scientific information and habitats for wildlife, as well as important to water
and soil conservation, air quality improvement, and maintenance of biological
diversity (including both genetic diversity and ecosystem diversity). In
recognition of these benefits, commercial logging is not permitted on about 5
percent of the productive forestland; this land is set aside in parks and other
reserves. Several provinces have made commitments to set aside more forested
lands in parks and reserves. Reforestation efforts are also an important aspect
of the government’s forest management programs.
K4 | Wildlife Management |
Wildlife is an important component of
the Canadian heritage. More than 90 percent of Canadians participate in
wildlife-related activities, such as nature photography, wildlife watching, bird
feeding, hunting, fishing, and subsistence use (obtaining food). In addition,
many visitors come to Canada to view wildlife, especially birds and large
mammals. Canada still has important wildlife populations, including a large
proportion of the world’s stock of mountain sheep, wolves, and grizzly bears,
but many animal populations have shrunk or even disappeared. These losses are
due in part to overhunting in the days before hunting restrictions and in part
to habitat loss, which continues to this day.
Wildlife is a natural resource and
therefore falls under provincial jurisdiction. However, the Canada Wildlife Act
of 1973 enables the federal government to work with the provinces on wildlife
conservation and research. The act gives the federal government special
responsibilities to protect and manage marine species and certain migratory
birds and to conserve wildlife and habitat of national or international
importance. Endangered species and those that migrate across provincial or
national boundaries are covered by the act, as are wetlands that provide
waterfowl habitat. The federal Canadian Wildlife Service works with provincial
wildlife agencies to establish annual revisions of hunting seasons and catch
limits, undertake ecological research, coordinate national efforts to protect
wildlife and habitat, and manage wildlife areas and bird sanctuaries.
In addition, some indigenous peoples
have a special interest in wildlife, largely because it is important to their
way of life. Contemporary treaties—covering most of the Yukon, Northwest
Territories, and Nunavut—have provided indigenous peoples with a direct say in
wildlife management in Canada’s north.
III | PEOPLE |
The estimated population of Canada in 2008
was 33,679,263. At the time of the last census in 2001, the official population
was 30,007,094, compared to about 28.8 million in 1996. The population growth
rate from 1994 to 2003 was 1 percent per year; this was the eighth highest rate
among the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), a list that makes up the most developed industrial countries
of the world. Two-thirds of this growth was due to immigration. Canada’s liberal
immigration program accepts newcomers from nearly every other country in the
world.
Most Canadians live in cities, and most of
the cities are close to the country’s southern border. The largest urban centers
are in Québec and Ontario provinces, or central Canada, where almost two-thirds
of the people live. Most of the population is ethnically British or French,
although other European countries are well represented, and indigenous peoples
are the majority in the north. French and English are the official languages,
although the people who speak English as their mother tongue outnumber those
whose mother tongue is French by about 2.5 to 1. Roman Catholics, who include
most French-speaking people, are the most numerous religious group, followed by
the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church. Immigrants are a growing
minority, particularly those from Asia, and have been changing the face of
Canada’s largest urban areas. See also Ethnic Groups in Canada.
Canadians have a high literacy rate and a
number of top universities. The standard of living is one of the world’s
highest, although one in seven households lives in poverty. Violent crime is low
compared to other North American societies but has been rising.
A | Population Characteristics |
A1 | Demographic Trends |
Canada is a nation of people who came
from somewhere else. All but the indigenous people arrived there within the past
400 years, most within the past few generations. For that reason most Canadians
still feel some attachment to their old homelands. The majority of the
population is of European descent, but the proportion of Asians is increasing.
Nearly 60 percent of all immigrants in the decade from 1991 to 2001 came from
Asia, and Chinese is the fastest-growing mother tongue in Canada. As ethnic
groups intermarry, however, ethnic identities are becoming more blurred; more
than one-third of Canadians report multiple ethnic origins. Indigenous peoples
make up about 3 percent and blacks about 2 percent of the population.
Immigration is important to maintaining
Canada’s population. The current childbearing generation has smaller families
than earlier generations: The fertility rate (average number of children born
per woman) is 1.6. At the same time, older people are living longer, so that the
average age of the population is higher. In 2008 Canada’s rate of natural
increase was 0.28 percent, resulting from a birth rate of 10.7 per 1,000 persons
and a death rate of 7.9 per 1,000. There is a downward trend in the birth
index—in 1981 it was 15.3—and the likely end result will be zero growth or
population loss. For this reason the Canadian government decided in the 1980s to
compensate for the low birth rate by allowing more immigration.
A2 | Distribution of Population |
Although Canada has a very low
population density of 3.7 persons per sq km (9.6 persons per sq mi), this is a
misleading statistic. Actually the population is highly concentrated, with about
three-quarters of all Canadians living within about 300 km (about 200 mi) of the
U.S. border. Canadians are further concentrated into about 25 metropolitan
areas. Overall, according to the 2001 census, a total of 79.7 percent live in
urban areas (communities of 1,000 people or more). The percentage of urban
dwellers has remained relatively stable since 1971.
There is also a regional dimension to
population distribution in Canada. In 2005 about 62 percent of Canadians were
concentrated in Québec and Ontario. Nearly all of the rest lived in the other
eight provinces: 17 percent in the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and
Saskatchewan; about 7 percent in the Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland and
Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and about 13
percent in British Columbia. The Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, and
Nunavut were sparsely inhabited, with only about 0.3 percent of the country’s
total population.
During the last quarter of the 20th
century the Canadian population shifted westward. British Columbia and Alberta
were beneficiaries of this movement and enjoyed growth rates well above the
Canadian average. However, Ontario continued to be the most populous and
economically vibrant province.
A3 | Population Centers |
The largest urban centers of Canada are
found mostly in the southern parts of Ontario and Québec. They are ranked
according to the population of their Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs). A CMA is
a geographic area that contains the main labor market of an urban zone—that is,
the area from which at least 25 percent of the residents commute to work at jobs
in the core built-up area. As of 2006 the largest CMAs in Canada were as
follows. Toronto, Ontario (5,406,300), is the country’s leading financial and
manufacturing center and one of the most ethnically varied cities in the world;
its local government provides services in some 70 languages. Montréal, Québec
(3,666,300), a major manufacturing and commercial center, is the world’s largest
French-speaking city outside France. Vancouver, British Columbia (2,236,100), is
a scenic, rapidly growing commercial, transportation, and forest-products
manufacturing center.
Ottawa, Ontario, the hub of the
Ottawa-Hull metropolitan area (1,158,300), is the national capital and an
emerging center of high-technology research. Calgary, Alberta (1,107,200), is
the headquarters of Canada’s petroleum industry and an important farm trade
center. Edmonton, Alberta (1,050,000), a petroleum and farming center, is the
capital of Alberta and site of the West Edmonton Mall, one of the world’s
largest indoor malls.
Québec City (723,300), founded in
1608, is the capital of Québec province, with a well-preserved center that has
been listed as a World Heritage Site. Hamilton, Ontario (716,200), is the
principal center of Canadian steel production. Winnipeg, Manitoba (706,700), is
a major wheat market and railroad hub. London, Ontario (465,700), is an
industrial and commercial city. Kitchener, Ontario (463,600), is a manufacturing
center that forms the hub of Canada’s so-called technology triangle, an economic
region comprising the cities of Cambridge, Guelph, Kitchener, and Waterloo. St.
Catharines, Ontario, in the St. Catharines-Niagara metropolitan area (396,800),
is a center of agricultural and industrial production. Halifax, Nova Scotia
(382,200), is a seaport and the economic center of the Atlantic region.
B | Languages |
Canada is officially bilingual, and all
services provided by the federal government are available in English and French.
The selection of Ottawa as the national capital, located on the Ontario-Québec
border, reflects the long-standing political and cultural importance of the two
founding nations. The 2001 census reported that just 1.5 percent of Canadians
lack the ability to speak at least one of the official languages; 18 percent of
Canadians are fluently bilingual. The majority, 57 percent, reported English as
their mother tongue in 2006, while 22 percent reported French and 20 percent
declared a nonofficial language. Some of the most prevalent nonofficial
languages in Canada are Chinese, Italian, German, Punjabi, Spanish, Portuguese,
and Vietnamese.
Historically, the indigenous peoples of
Canada spoke dozens of different languages. More than 50 are still recognized
today. Almost all fall into groups of related languages traceable from a common
ancestral tongue. The largest such group is the Algonquian; Cree, an Algonquian
language, is the most significant indigenous language in Canada today. Other
large groups are Dene (also called Athapaskan), Iroquoian, Siouan, Salishan,
Wakashan, Tsimshian, and Inuit-Aleut (Eskimaleut). There are also three
indigenous languages of British Columbia—Kootenay, Haida, and Tlingit—that are
not clearly related to any other known tongue. See also Native American
Languages.
C | Ethnic Groups |
C1 | Ethnic Composition |
The ethnic composition of the Canadian
people is diverse. Historically, the Canadian population has been dominated by
those of British and French origins. At the time of the 1996 census these two
groups made up about 35 and 25 percent of the country’s population,
respectively. Ethnic data collection processes were changed for the 2001 census,
however, allowing respondents to list multiple ethnicities, including
“Canadian.” Under this method the most popular ethnic background checked was
Canadian (39.4 percent of respondents), followed by English (20.2 percent),
French (15.75 percent), Scottish (14.3 percent), Irish (12.9 percent), and
German (9.25 percent). Among those respondents that checked only one ethnicity,
the leading categories were Canadian (37 percent), English (8 percent), French
(6 percent), Chinese (5 percent), German and Italian (4 percent each), and Irish
and Scottish (3 percent each).
The majority of French-speaking
Canadians live in Québec, where they make up about 70 percent of the population,
although only 29.6 percent of the province’s residents identified themselves as
ethnically French Canadian in the 2001 census. Significant numbers of this
ethnic group also live in Ontario and New Brunswick. The remaining French
Canadians are thinly scattered through the rest of Canada, but there are a few
concentrations, such as the Saint Boniface district of Winnipeg.
While French Canadians form a cultural
group based on their language, history, and religion, British Canadians do not.
The four nationalities of the British Isles—English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish—all
had different histories, belonged to various religions, and developed different
cultural traditions and beliefs. While an economic elite of white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants, mostly of English and Scottish background, has dominated the
business and industry of every province, even Québec, they are a minority of
British Canadians.
The ethnic population trends and
settlement patterns have been heavily influenced by Canadian immigration policy.
The policy during the early 20th century, a time of vigorous western settlement,
focused on Europeans. As a result, the proportion of European Canadians in the
Prairie provinces is especially high. More recently, Asian immigration has
coincided with the growth of the largest metropolitan centers—Toronto, Montréal,
and Vancouver—and thus Chinese Canadians and Indo-Canadians are most visible
there. See also Ethnic Groups in Canada.
C2 | French Canadians |
Four-fifths of French Canadians live in
Québec province. Many, if not most, of them regard Québec as the center of their
society and culture, and their effort to preserve it has led to a movement of
French Canadian nationalism that has taken several forms. Surrounded by an
English-speaking society and living in an economy dominated by an
English-speaking elite, the Québécois (French-speaking residents of
Québec) made a concerted effort beginning in 1960 to increase their control of
Québec affairs. A nationalist provincial government revamped the educational
system, provided aid to small businesses, and took control of some industries,
all with the objective of increasing Québécois’ control of the economy.
Many Québécois nationalists have gone
further: Some support a separatist movement that seeks independence for the
province; others advocate a more moderate alternative, keeping Québec in Canada
but giving it more powers than the other provinces. The English-speaking
minority in Québec is opposed to its separation from Canada. The other provinces
also oppose it and are also generally against the more moderate
alternative.
Both the Parti Québécois, the party
elected in 1993 to govern Québec, and the Bloc Québécois, the party elected the
same year to represent the province in Canada’s Parliament, are officially
dedicated to separation. This situation has intensified the historical mistrust
between French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians, a legacy from the time
when English speakers in Canada focused solely on their own interests (see
Canada: Laurier). Emphasis on French Canadian culture and aspirations
has also damaged the Québécois’ relations with other minorities in the province.
Among these are indigenous peoples, who have lately begun to pursue their own
rights and political powers.
C3 | Indigenous Peoples |
Indigenous peoples, designated in the
census as “Aboriginal,” made up about 3.3 percent of Canada’s inhabitants at the
beginning of the 21st century. They live across Canada in every province and
territory, with about 45 percent concentrated in the Prairie provinces,
according to the 2001 census. Less than half of Canada’s indigenous peoples live
on reservations (or reserves). In the Arctic and sub-Arctic, where the climate
has discouraged permanent European settlement, indigenous peoples are the
majority. They divide themselves into nations, each with a traditional
territory, language, and culture. The groupings and homelands have changed over
time. For example, the Bearlake only became a nation in the 20th century; the
Neutral and several neighboring nations were broken up in the 17th century; and
the Sioux did not arrive in Canada until the 19th century.
The federal Indian Act recognizes four
categories of indigenous people: Status Indians, who are registered on an
official roll; Inuit; Métis, people of mixed European and indigenous heritage;
and non-Status Indians, people of indigenous descent who are not on the official
roll. For administrative purposes, indigenous peoples in Canada are also divided
according to band. A band is the smallest indigenous political unit; there are
about 600 bands in Canada, corresponding roughly to local indigenous
communities.
The indigenous peoples speak many
different languages, engage in different cultural processes, pursue economic
well-being in diverse ways, and have created a variety of governing systems. Yet
they have historically shared many characteristics and conditions of life. The
land continues to have social and cultural significance for a large proportion
of them. Their relation to the land has not been well understood by European
Canadians.
Land and resource development has had
social costs for indigenous people, particularly those living in the north. In
the first place, it often destroys fragile physical environments. With the loss
or reduction of traditional hunting and fishing lifestyles comes damage to
indigenous identities and self-esteem. Furthermore, the economic benefits of
development mostly accrue to developers rather than local people. Even where
indigenous Canadians have negotiated a share in the profits, economic benefits
tend to be only temporary while the social problems associated with a rapid
influx of people and money are often of longer duration.
Tensions have sometimes erupted into
violence. The most serious confrontations have occurred in Oka, Québec, and
Gustafson Lake, British Columbia, where armed standoffs with police lasted many
days. Smaller incidents, such as blockades across access roads to resource
sites, are becoming more common. Problems are generally related to disagreements
over land use and ownership. The situation is unlikely to improve until land
negotiations between governments and indigenous peoples are complete.
The Canadian government, through the
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), administers the
Indian Act and other legislation relating to Status Indians. The department is
responsible for meeting the federal government’s treaty obligations, negotiating
with Status Indian communities regarding increased autonomy for these
communities, supporting indigenous people’s economic development and
self-sufficiency, and negotiating with them to resolve their land claims.
DIAND has begun transferring to
indigenous reserves the responsibility of managing their own affairs. These
communities now control the majority of all funding from Indian and Inuit
Affairs, one of the four programs within DIAND. The program provides funds for
housing; education; economic development; child, family, and adult care
services; and other social services, including initiatives to prevent family
violence and substance abuse.
Since 1986 the Canadian government has
negotiated with indigenous communities to develop self-government. The first
communities to do so created their own local political entities, which have
municipal status and are accountable to an indigenous electorate. This model,
however, is not accepted by all indigenous peoples. Some indigenous
organizations have demanded a much broader set of powers that would recognize
their inherent right to be self-governing, independent of the jurisdiction of
the provinces.
In November 1992 Ottawa and the Inuit
of the eastern Arctic signed a comprehensive agreement to resolve outstanding
grievances. This agreement also authorized the new territory of Nunavut, which
was created in 1999 from the eastern part of the Northwest Territories. In 2001
almost 90 percent of the people in Nunavut were Inuit (Nunavut is the
Inuit word for “our land”). The territory became the first large political unit
in North America with an indigenous majority. It is governed by its own
legislative assembly, territorial court, and civil service.
C4 | Blacks |
Blacks, or African Canadians, have
never been a major segment of the country’s population, but their history is
interesting. Although King Louis XIV of France authorized the importation of
slaves from the West Indies in 1689, few were brought to Canada or Acadia. Some
refugees from the American Revolution (1775-1783) brought slaves north with
them, and a greater number of blacks came as free persons, many of them having
won their freedom by fighting for the British side in that conflict. Nova Scotia
abolished slavery in 1787, as did Upper Canada (Ontario) six years later; their
actions set precedents for the British Empire. When British troops burned
Washington, the U.S. capital, in the War of 1812 (1812-1815), they brought back
to Halifax many slaves who had sought refuge with them. Escape to Canada meant
freedom, and thus it was a major destination of the so-called Underground
Railroad, a network of secret routes by which U.S. abolitionists spirited slaves
out of the American South. They transported many slaves into Canada,
particularly to Chatham and Sarnia in Ontario. See also Slavery.
Blacks in Canada have generally been
equal under the law, although Nova Scotia and Ontario formerly had legally
segregated public schools, and the schools for blacks were often poorly funded.
Traditionally, blacks have been employed in jobs that pay low wages. They remain
among the poorest and worst educated of Canada’s citizens. Since an upsurge of
civil rights activism in the 1960s, blacks have pressed for improvement of their
condition, and their leadership has been enhanced by the addition of educated
black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. Some urban black communities in
Canada have had protests over police mistreatment of black people in recent
decades, including in Toronto, Montréal, and Halifax.
C5 | Immigrants |
Immigrants accounted for about 18
percent of Canada’s population in 2001, and immigration has been a key force in
the country’s growth since the beginning of the colonial era. For most of
postcolonial history Canada’s immigration policy favored people of European
descent. This practice was replaced in the 1960s by new rules classifying
immigrants into three groups: refugees fleeing political persecution, family
members of Canadian citizens, and independent immigrants (sometimes called
“economic immigrants”). The last group is admitted under a point system, where
they are allocated points for level of education, experience in the labor
market, facility in one or both official languages, and so on. Those with enough
points are allowed to become permanent residents and, three years later,
Canadian citizens. The policy is designed so that half of Canada’s immigrants
are family members or political refugees and half are economic immigrants.
Immigration to Canada often reflects
international developments and trends. During the 1990s, for example, immigrants
from Hong Kong accounted for 15 to 20 percent of all immigration to Canada in
most of those years. This movement was related to the widespread concern in Hong
Kong over the return of the colony to China in 1997. In 2004, 48.6 percent of
Canada’s 235,824 new immigrants came from Asia and the Pacific Rim, 21 percent
from Africa and the Middle East, 17.8 percent from Europe and the United
Kingdom, 9 percent from South and Central America, and 3.2 percent from the
United States. During the same year the top ten source countries for immigrants
to Canada (in order) were China, India, Philippines, Pakistan, the United
States, Iran, the United Kingdom, Romania, Korea, and France.
The federal government is required to
consult the provinces each year on immigration policy. The government is also
required to set an annual target figure for immigration, although it has been
common in recent years to plan in five-year stages. In the early 21st century
the targets were set at between 220,000 and 245,000 immigrants annually. Because
of Canada’s low birth rate and aging population, some government officials
pushed for raising the yearly target up to 1 percent of the Canadian population,
or about 325,000 people per year.
Arriving immigrants require settlement
services. These are provided by provincial and municipal governments and a
variety of nongovernmental organizations. Much of the funding for these programs
comes from the federal government. Services include temporary accommodation,
language classes, and employment counseling.
The overwhelming majority of newcomers
settle in cities, which has altered the ethnic compositions of large Canadian
cities such as Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver. Each of these cities has a
different immigrant profile: Persons arriving from French-speaking countries are
most likely to settle in Montréal, those from Latin America in Toronto, and
those from the Pacific Rim in either Toronto or Vancouver. Certain resources in
these cities have become strained, particularly the school systems. It is
common, for example, for entire elementary classrooms in some parts of Vancouver
to consist of recent immigrants from Asian countries. Beyond the cost of
providing instructional programs in English as a second language, these cities
are faced with the challenge of integrating diverse cultures. A number of
problems have arisen, such as immigrants’ complaints of discrimination. Although
some Canadians have pressured the government to cut back the annual immigration
target, immigration is generally well supported.
In response to requests by various
cultural groups, the Canadian government established a multicultural policy in
1971 that recognizes the changing composition of the Canadian population. This
policy was intended to acknowledge the contribution of all groups that make up
Canada and to signal that there is no official culture into which everyone is
expected to assimilate. In 1972 a new position was added to the federal cabinet:
the minister of state for multiculturalism. The federal Human Rights Act, passed
in 1977, made discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, or ethnic origin
illegal. In 1982 these rights were included in the new constitution, and in 1986
a program was established to ensure that minorities have equal access to federal
employment.
D | Religion |
Most Canadians are Christians (about 75
percent in the 2001 census), although a rapidly growing number have no religious
affiliation (16 percent). The remainder practice non-Christian Eastern
religions, Judaism, indigenous traditions, or other forms of belief such as the
New Age movement. The Roman Catholic Church is by far the largest single
denomination, representing 43 percent of the Canadian population in 2001;
approximately half of Roman Catholics live in Québec. The great majority of
French Canadians are Roman Catholics. The next two largest denominations in 2001
were the United Church of Canada (10 percent), formed in the 1920s through a
merger of Methodists, Congregationalists, and most Presbyterians; and the
Anglican Church (7 percent). Other significant religious affiliations in Canada
were Baptist (3 percent); Muslim (2.0 percent); Lutheran (2.0 percent);
Protestant (1.9 percent); Presbyterian (1.4 percent); Pentecostal (1.2 percent);
and Jewish (1.1 percent). Immigration from eastern and southern Asia in recent
years has also brought increasing numbers of Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs.
Most religious groups are widely
distributed across Canada, but some communities are concentrated in specific
areas. For example, the Mennonites, the Hutterites, and the Ukrainian Orthodox
are mainly located in the Prairie provinces, the majority of Latter-day Saints
(Mormons) reside in Alberta, most Hindus live in Toronto, and most Sikhs live in
Vancouver. In each of these cases, religious communities have created visible
landscapes that add to the distinctiveness and variety of Canadian places. In
Vancouver, for example, there are several Sikh temples that are each large
enough to accommodate more than 1,000 worshippers at a service. The Vancouver
area also has thriving Indo-Canadian shopping areas that specialize in
traditional products of the Punjab, the district in India where Sikhism
originated.
E | Education |
The educational systems in Canada derive
from British, American, and—particularly in the province of Québec—French
traditions. Students in Québec are taught in French unless specific conditions
apply, for example, if their parents were taught in an English-language school
in Québec. English is the principal language of instruction in other provinces
and the territories, but there are exceptions. Many of New Brunswick’s schools
are French-language schools, reflecting the high proportion of French Canadians
in the province as well as the official policy of bilingualism there. French
immersion programs, where students are taught almost completely in French, are
also popular in many parts of the country.
E1 | Administration |
The earliest Canadian schools date
from the early 17th century and were conducted by French Catholic religious
groups. Higher education began in 1635 with the founding of the Collège des
Jésuites in the city of Québec. It was not until the transfer of Canada from
French to British jurisdiction in 1763 that an educational system began to
emerge that augmented church schools with secular public schools and private
schools. When the dominion was created in 1867, education was defined as a
provincial responsibility, and it has remained so ever since.
There is no central ministry of
education in Canada. The federal government steps in only for special
populations outside normal provincial jurisdiction, such as inmates of federal
prisons, the families of Canada’s armed forces, and indigenous peoples on
reserves. Increasingly, indigenous groups are acquiring more control over their
local educational programs.
Although education is administered by
the government, churches frequently play an integral role in its delivery.
Church-run schools that are alternatives to the secular system of elementary and
secondary schools exist in all provinces and territories. Typically these
schools receive state funding if they agree to teach the regular curriculum; in
addition, they offer extra language and/or religion courses.
The vast, sparsely settled areas of
Canada present special problems in delivering education. Initially, governments
and religious groups established residential schools, especially for indigenous
children, but these were never popular. The indigenous peoples saw them as a way
for white society to dominate indigenous cultures. Eventually these schools were
closed. A less centralized system emerged, which increasingly has been augmented
with correspondence programs and more recently with educational television,
teleconferencing, and Internet programs. Some of the more successful distance
education technologies, such as those developed by the Knowledge Network in
British Columbia, have been exported to other provinces and countries.
Canadian educators are increasingly
occupied with the issue of funding current education programs while budgets are
shrinking. Almost all provincial governments have adopted deficit reduction
strategies that make money increasingly less available for schools. At the same
time, schools must meet a number of demands. Many schools are faced with large
numbers of immigrant children requiring language training. In Toronto and
Vancouver, the two cities with the greatest ethnic diversity in Canada, more
than half of all students in the regular school system did not learn English as
their first language. In poor neighborhoods, the schools provide free or
subsidized meals to many children.
Schools are also facing a demand for
sophisticated and expensive technological training to equip students for the
future. At the individual school level, parents are demanding and receiving a
greater say in policy-making and program choices. In response, provincial
governments have attempted to deliver education services more efficiently by
consolidating school districts and collaborating with other provinces.
E2 | Literacy |
By world standards, Canada has a high
literacy rate. Complete illiteracy—the inability to read or write at all in any
language—is very rare in Canada, at just 3 percent of the adult population.
However, there is a greater level of functional illiteracy—the inability to read
well or to understand what is read. Illiteracy is more likely to be found among
the elderly and poor of Canada. Programs to combat illiteracy are offered by the
National Literacy Secretariat, which promotes and supports organizations
dedicated to adult literacy training.
E3 | Elementary and Secondary Schools |
Education is compulsory for children
from age 6 or 7 to age 15 or 16, depending on the province they live in, and it
is free until the completion of secondary school studies. Participation in the
school system is almost universal. After the period of mandatory education is
completed, participation decreases. In 2001 some 85 percent of adults had high
school degrees.
E4 | Universities |
Canada’s large universities were
established in the 19th century, beginning with McGill University in 1821. Since
World War II (1939-1945), higher education has expanded. Many new institutions
have been founded, and the older universities have increased in size, scope, and
influence. The federal and provincial governments fund the university system in
Canada, including sectarian institutions, and students pay only a small portion
of the cost. Universities are still the predominant institutions offering higher
education, but the number of nonuniversity postsecondary institutions,
particularly community colleges, has increased sharply in recent decades.
Nursing education, formerly
concentrated at special schools attached to hospitals, has been transferred to
universities and community colleges. Similarly, teacher training has been
shifted from specialized institutions to universities.
Among the country’s larger
universities are the following: the University of Alberta (1906) and the
University of Calgary (1945), in Alberta; the University of British Columbia
(1908) and Simon Fraser University (1963), in British Columbia; the University
of Manitoba (1877); the University of Moncton (1864) and the University of New
Brunswick (1785), in New Brunswick; Memorial University of Newfoundland (1925);
Acadia University (1838) and Dalhousie University (1818), in Nova Scotia;
Carleton University (1942), McMaster University (1887), the University of Ottawa
(1848), the University of Toronto (1827), the University of Waterloo (1957), and
York University (1959), in Ontario; the University of Prince Edward Island
(1834); Concordia University (1974), Université Laval (1852), McGill University
(1821), the Université de Montréal (1876), and the Université du Québec (1969),
in Québec; and the University of Saskatchewan (1907).
F | Way of Life |
The complex regional and cultural
composition of Canadian society means that there is no single Canadian way of
life, but certain generalizations can be made. Perhaps the clearest is that
Canada shares with the United States, most European countries, and Japan a high
standard of living relative to the remainder of the world. Most Canadians are
well housed, fed, and clothed. Canadians also enjoy an advanced, efficient
health care system that is universally available to all citizens and landed
immigrants (immigrants who are allowed permanent residence in the country)
regardless of their location, income, or social standing. In fact, recent
opinion polls have shown that Canadians see this system of socialized medicine
as a defining characteristic of their national identity.
Generally, Canadians devote the highest
portion of their income to housing. Most own their homes, and the majority
reside in single-family detached homes. Housing quality is generally high, and
only about 1 percent live in units defined by government agencies as crowded.
However, housing quality is not as high in rural and northern areas as it is in
Canada’s cities. Problems are especially prevalent on Indian Reserves (lands set
aside for Status Indians). Housing in the Arctic region poses special problems;
permafrost can cause foundations to shift and makes providing water and sanitary
services difficult. Frequently, aboveground insulated utility systems are the
only feasible solution.
The nature of Canadian households has
changed considerably over the past quarter-century. With the liberalization of
divorce legislation in the late 1960s and changing social attitudes about
marriage, the number of single-parent households and common-law unions has
increased.
Canadian eating habits are also being
transformed. Concern for better health has led to a small decline in total meat
consumption; Canadians are also spending more on fruits, vegetables, pasta, and
other complex carbohydrates. Canadians, especially those in the larger cities,
have also acquired more cosmopolitan tastes. The range of foods and beverages
available is far greater than ever before, and includes dishes from Ethiopia,
Thailand, Latin America, and a variety of Chinese regions. Still, many
traditional regional eating habits have been retained, such as the distinctive
diets of the Inuit and other indigenous groups, and the French-influenced
cuisine of Québec.
Although lacrosse was Canada’s first
national game, ice hockey is its most popular sport. At the professional level,
there are six National Hockey League (NHL) teams in Canada, including two of its
most venerable, the Montréal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Canadian
Football League was created in 1956. Baseball has been played in Canada since at
least 1838, and a Canadian professional league was established in 1876. The
Montréal Expos became Canada’s first major league baseball team in 1969. The
Toronto Blue Jays began play eight years later and became one of the sport’s
most successful teams, attracting more than 4 million fans in a single season
and winning the World Series twice (1992 and 1993). After years of declining
attendance, however, the Expos franchise moved to Washington, D.C., in 2005 to
become the Washington Nationals. Two Canadian teams joined the National
Basketball Association (NBA) in the 1990s: the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver
Grizzlies. The Grizzlies subsequently relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, in
2001.
Canada consistently produces Olympic
medal winners in a variety of sports, including ice hockey, rowing, track and
field, and, most notably, ice skating. A large and growing number of ordinary
Canadians regularly participate in sporting leagues, fitness classes, and
individual exercise.
G | Social Issues |
G1 | Poverty |
While Canada is affluent by world
standards, approximately one in eight Canadian families lives below the level of
income deemed necessary to provide a decent standard of living. The most
commonly cited measure of poverty in Canada is the one used in the annual
Statistics Canada survey. Statistics Canada defines low income based on the
share of income an average person or family devotes to food, clothing, and
shelter needs. Adjustments are made for family size and for rural or urban
location. By this standard in 2003, 12.3 percent of families and 38 percent of
unattached individuals were deemed to have low incomes. Among families, low
income was especially prevalent in single-parent households. More than half the
families headed by single mothers had low incomes, and about 18 percent of
Canada’s children were living in families with low incomes. Among all Canadians,
elderly women were the most likely to have low incomes (19.1 percent).
Incomes are also considerably below
normal among indigenous peoples in Canada, who earn less than half the Canadian
average. While Ottawa has special responsibility for indigenous people, the
reserves have some of Canada’s worst social conditions. There, poor housing and
chronic unemployment are a way of life for many. Among indigenous peoples,
suicide is closely linked to the problems associated with poverty, such as
alcohol abuse, family violence, and family disintegration. In some communities
where these problems are especially acute, the rate is more than 10 times the
national average. Suicide has become the leading cause of death among indigenous
teenagers and young adults. Poverty underlies indigenous peoples’ struggles for
land and self-government.
Poverty is also prevalent in cities.
However, while each Canadian city has its skid row of bars, rooming houses, and
relief agencies, there are few large areas of poverty. In fact, many declining
neighborhoods have been redeveloped for middle-class residents in recent years.
Government-funded housing projects have also been dispersed throughout most of
the larger metropolitan areas, rather than concentrated. As a result, poverty
rates in many suburbs are no longer appreciably different than in urban core
areas.
G2 | Crime |
The issue of crime is highly visible
in the Canadian media. In 2004 there were 946 violent crimes (attacks on the
person, abduction, and robbery) and 3,990 crimes against property per 100,000
Canadians. There were 2 homicides for every 100,000 people the same year. In
comparison, in the early 1990s the homicide rate was 0.6 in Japan, 0.9 in
Britain, 9.9 in the United States, and 17.2 in Mexico. Generally, crime rates
fell during the 1990s.
Concern about crime in Canada was
heightened in 1989 when a man used an assault rifle to murder 14 women enrolled
in the engineering program at the École Polytechnique in Montréal.
More-stringent gun control legislation was proposed soon after the incident but
did not become law until 1995. The legislation banned a number of assault
weapons, further limited the legal use of handguns, and required that all
handguns and rifles in Canada be registered. These regulations have drawn vocal
public criticism from rural areas and certain lobby groups but are widely
supported by the general population. The number of violent crimes involving
firearms declined about 7 percent in Canada in 1995, but it is unclear whether
any of this drop was attributable to the new law.
IV | ARTS |
Canada is a relatively young country and
is still forging a cultural identity that is distinct from those of its European
founding nations and the United States. Establishing a national culture is made
difficult by a strong tendency within Canada toward regional forms of cultural
expression. Furthermore, many different cultures must be accommodated within the
national identity. Thus it is more appropriate to speak of Canadian cultures
rather than a single national culture.
A | Indigenous Art |
The indigenous peoples had a rich
artistic tradition long before European colonization. Many native forms of
expression, such as dance, woodcarving, soapstone sculpture, and decorative
handicrafts, were highly developed and are still practiced. The artistic power
of indigenous art, with its strong attachment to nature and spiritual values,
has had a great impact on postcolonial Canadian culture and remains an important
element today. A recent renaissance of indigenous art is exemplified by the
sculptures by Bill Reid of the Haida nation, which have been shown around the
world. Inuit carvings are highly valued by collectors and critics alike. See
also Native American Art.
B | Colonial Art |
In the colonial period, culture was
heavily influenced by French and British models. Colonists brought their culture
with them and tried to reproduce it in the new land. Simplified and practical
versions of European styles of architecture, craftsmanship, and music date from
this period. Colonists were also confronted by new landscapes and new peoples,
producing a strong urge to describe and portray them. Thus colonial writing and
painting about Canada were largely documentary, including explorers’ accounts of
their travels, missionaries’ reports, and naturalistic portrayals of landscapes
and ways of life. Typical of these are paintings of the St. Lawrence valley in
the 1840s by Cornelius Krieghoff, paintings of the Métis people by Paul Kane,
and literary descriptions of pioneer life by Susanna Moodie. All of this early
art was infused by European sensibilities.
C | Nationalism and Government Support |
After Canada became a nation in 1867, a
new nationalist sentiment appeared in public art. The country’s history and
institutions became the subject of monumental and heroic artworks. Prominent
examples include the architecture of the Parliament buildings built in 1867 and
the National Gallery of Canada constructed in 1880; sculptures on historical
monuments and war memorials; and paintings such as The Fathers of
Confederation, painted by Robert Harris in 1883. The Confederation Poets of
the late 19th century tried to show that Canadian topics, such as the plight of
the indigenous peoples, could be the subject of poetry. However, most artistic
expression in Canada was still dominated by European models. Québec artists in
particular, such as poet Louis Honoré Fréchette, strove to maintain and promote
French culture in the face of English dominance. Painting, as well as
French-language literature and music, tended to celebrate the rural and
religious values of the Québec people. The culture of other regions also often
expressed a strong sense of place. Such small-town attitudes were the subject of
humorous works by essayist Stephen Leacock.
A real break from tradition and
regionalism came in the 1920s, when the Group of Seven introduced revolutionary
new techniques and concepts to painting, as well as a strong commitment to a
national perspective. The group rebelled against the conservative art then being
produced in Canada and shifted emphasis away from slavish imitation of nature
toward bold, colorful expressiveness. Also at this time Emily Carr in British
Columbia was painting nature in a new personal style that expressed the themes
of the Pacific landscape and was strongly influenced by the Northwest coast
style of indigenous art.
In the postwar period from the 1940s
through the 1960s, Canadian culture truly began to expand and respond to new
influences, such as the media theories of writer Marshall McLuhan and the
liberation manifesto of Les Automatistes, a group of painters in Québec. McLuhan
stimulated interest in the use of multiple media, which engage all the senses to
create what he called “mosaic patterns” of meaning.
Renewed nationalism was also a factor as
Canadians began to channel government funds to invest in their own culture. The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, founded in 1936, provided a forum for artists
across the country. The Canada Council was established in 1957 to fund artistic
endeavors and became a crucial agent in supporting creativity. Support for
Canadian culture has also come from such prizes as the Governor General’s
Literary Awards, instituted in 1936. The film industry was nurtured by the
National Film Board of Canada, an advisory board that became a producer of
highly acclaimed short films, and by Telefilm Canada, a producer of
feature-length films. Programs to support the Canadian publishing industry were
also implemented in the postwar period.
The result of these initiatives was an
explosion of artistic opportunities. New ballet and modern dance companies
emerged, including the National Ballet of Canada in 1951; theatrical festivals
were established, particularly the Stratford and the Shaw; and new orchestras
and music festivals were created. Support for the arts continued through the
1980s but began to decline in the 1990s.
D | Architecture |
Canadian architects have generally
participated in global trends in architectural styles. In the 1930s they adopted
the modern International Style of cubic forms, austere surfaces, and large
windows. In the past few decades they have helped to define the Post-Modern
movement, returning to historical elements such as classical motifs and
19th-century decorations. Interesting examples of vernacular, or folk,
architecture—architecture designed by everyday people for everyday
purposes—abound throughout the country. So-called significant buildings, those
that exemplify particular movements or set new styles, are largely to be found
in Canada’s metropolitan areas, especially Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and
Ottawa-Hull.
Many influential architects practice in
Canada, but Arthur Erickson and Moshe Safdie are probably the best known.
Erickson’s dramatic designs began to achieve prominence in the early 1960s after
his proposal for the Simon Fraser University campus was selected; he is also
well known for the University of Lethbridge, the Museum of Anthropology at the
University of British Columbia, Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, and the Canadian
Embassy in Washington, D.C. Safdie’s career was established with his innovative
design of Habitat at Expo ‘67 in Montréal, and he has since worked in a variety
of international settings, including Israel, Iran, Mexico, and Singapore. Aside
from Habitat, his principal contributions to Canada have been in important civic
structures, particularly the in Ottawa and the Canadian Museum of Civilization
in Hull, Québec. See also Canadian Architecture.
E | Writers, Artists, and Musicians |
The field of Canadian literature is large
and complex, and includes voices from the various regions and many cultural
groups of the country. Notable Canadian poets include Irving Layton and Dorothy
Livesay. Children around the world have enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, by
L. M. Montgomery, a 1908 novel set in rural Prince Edward Island. Hugh
MacLennan, Robertson Davies, and Margaret Laurence set new standards for
Canadian fiction in the mid-20th century. Other important writers have followed,
such as Margaret Atwood, Gabrielle Roy, Anne Hébert, Marie Claire Blais, and
Alice Munro. Many have drawn on their experiences as immigrants or members of
minority groups in their fiction: Mordecai Richler (Jewish), Michael Ondaatje
(Sri Lankan), and Neil Bissoondath (Caribbean) are just a few examples. See
Canadian Literature.
The earliest works of visual art in North
America were produced by indigenous groups. European colonists introduced their
artistic traditions almost as soon as they settled in the land that became
Canada. The defining moment for post-Confederation Canadian art, however, is
generally acknowledged to have been the formation of the Group of Seven in
Toronto during the 1910s and 1920s. The post-Impressionist images of elemental
nature created by these painters have inspired generations of Canadian
artists.
Other distinctly Canadian schools were
the Canadian Group, the Contemporary Art Society, Les Automatistes, and Painters
Eleven. The Canadian Group, formed in Toronto in 1933, practiced regionalist
painting, which took daily life as its subject matter. The Contemporary Art
Society was formed in Montreal in 1940 to produce experimental work based on
Parisian models. Among this group was Paul-Émile Borduas, who developed a
spontaneous, abstract painting style. Les Automatistes, who emulated his style,
formed around him after 1945; they included the renowned abstract expressionist
painter Jean Paul Riopelle. Painters Eleven, including Jock Macdonald, William
Ronald, and Harold Town, was formed in Toronto in 1953 to produce abstract works
in the cubist tradition. There are thousands of artists now at work in Canada,
producing paintings, sculptures, and other media of great variety. Among the
best-known are Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Greg Curnoe, and Bill Reid. See
Canadian Art.
Pianist Glenn Gould is probably Canada’s
most widely recognized classical musician, particularly for his innovative
interpretations of Bach. In the 1990s, guitarist Leona Boyd and opera tenor Ben
Hoeppner were among the more visible Canadians on the international stage. In
the past, Canadian popular-music artists looked to the United States as the
primary market for their music; in fact, several, such as Paul Anka, Neil Young,
and Joni Mitchell, immigrated to the United States. By the 1970s, however,
Leonard Cohen, Anne Murray, and other artists demonstrated that it was possible
to reach an international audience from a Canadian base. A thriving Canadian
popular-music industry emerged in the 1980s and 1990s; a few particularly
well-known Canadian performers are Bryan Adams, Céline Dion, k.d. lang, Shania
Twain, and Alanis Morissette.
F | Theatrical and Musical Institutions |
The performing arts in Canada are
supported by government and private grants. The National Arts Centre in Ottawa,
which opened in 1969, has a resident symphony orchestra and both French and
English theater companies. Visiting opera and dance companies perform there, and
in summer its terraces along the Rideau Canal are the scene of band
concerts.
A number of major theater, opera, dance,
and musical groups are found in the large cities; these groups also tour the
provinces and travel abroad. The chief theatrical centers are the cities of
Québec, Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver. The theaters of these cities make an
effort to present new Canadian plays as well as imports and classics. Among the
principal dance companies are the National Ballet of Canada, the Royal Winnipeg
Ballet, and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montréal. The Toronto Dance Theatre,
Les Ballets Jazz in Montréal, and a number of small companies present modern
dance. The prominent orchestras include the Montréal Symphony, the Toronto
Symphony, and the Vancouver Symphony.
There is also a thriving film industry in
Canada that is bolstered by popular film festivals—the Toronto International
Film Festival, Montréal World Film Festival, and Vancouver International Film
Festival—as well as state support through Telefilm Canada. Canadian-born Norman
Jewison, a prominent director in the U.S. film industry, has helped support
Canadian filmmaking. Other well-known Canadian directors include Atom Egoyan,
Denys Arcand, and François Girard.
G | Libraries and Museums |
The federal government’s National Museum
Policy of 1972 provides subsidies to regional and local museums and has
encouraged and supported the growth of museums throughout the country. Canada
has more than 2,000 museums, archives, and historic sites, the most important of
which are in the national capital region. These include the Canadian Museum of
Civilization in Hull, Québec, which celebrates Canada’s multicultural heritage;
and, in Ottawa, the Canadian Museum of Nature (formerly the National Museum of
Natural Sciences), the National Museum of Science and Technology, and the
National Gallery of Canada. The last exhibits European art, a growing collection
of Asian art, and a large body of work by Canadians.
The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has
collections of art, life and earth sciences, and materials typical of Canadian
culture. Among more-specialized museums are Upper Canada Village, a restoration
of 18th- and 19th-century buildings in Morrisburg, Ontario; the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Museum in Regina, Saskatchewan; and the Royal British Columbia
Museum in Victoria, which contains important displays of indigenous
artifacts.
The National Library of Canada, in
Ottawa, issues the national bibliography and maintains union catalogs of the
collections of more than 300 other libraries. The Canada Institute for
Scientific and Technical Information, also in Ottawa, is the center for the
dissemination of scientific and technical data. Provinces and cities have their
own libraries. Particularly outstanding university libraries are those of the
universities of Toronto, British Columbia, and Montréal.
H | Festivals |
Canadians and visitors enjoy summer
festivals, such as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario; the Shaw
Festival at Niagara-on-the-lake, Ontario; and Cultures Canada, a series of
multicultural events in Ottawa. Local traditions are preserved in a wide variety
of events, including the Highland Games on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia; the
Sherbrooke Festival de Cantons in Québec City, celebrating French Canadian
culture and cuisine; the Ukrainian Festival in Dauphin, Manitoba; and Discovery
Day in Dawson, Yukon Territory. There are also a number of music festivals in
Canada. Montréal is known for its jazz festival, and Toronto and Winnipeg for
their folk music festivals. In the fall, “Fringe Festivals” in Winnipeg,
Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria showcase new theatrical performances.
V | ECONOMY |
Canada has an advanced economy, and the
majority of its citizens enjoy a high quality of life by world standards.
Historically, much of this wealth has been generated through the extraction and
processing of natural resources, especially fish, furs, timber, minerals, and
farm produce. Increasingly, however, manufacturing and service activities have
been added, and Canada now has one of the most complex economies in the world.
Canada is also highly integrated into the global economy through trade, with
more than a third of its GDP dedicated to exports.
The Canadian economy has grown more rapidly
than those of most other developed countries since the recession of the early
1990s. This success is due to several factors, including low inflation, low
interest rates, and a low Canadian dollar (with respect to other major
currencies), all of which helped exports to grow. However, this growth has not
generated as many jobs as analysts expected. Canadian businesses have found ways
to increase their output by introducing more-efficient methods of production
rather than hiring more workers. Also, the role of government in the Canadian
economy has declined, and with it the number of jobs in the public sector. In
early 2006 Canada’s unemployment rate was 6.6 percent.
From 1990 to 2003 the Canadian economy grew
an average of 3.28 percent per year, reaching a GDP of C$857 billion, which
represented a per-capita income of C$27,080. By 2003 Canada had achieved the
second highest budget surplus and the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio of any Group of
Eight (G-8) nation. The proportion of GDP accounted for by federal government
expenditure decreased from 15.7 percent in 1994 to 11.5 percent in 2003.
Employment growth in Canada’s manufacturing industries began to slow in the late
1990s, while employment in the service industry saw a strong increase. By 2003
three out of four Canadians worked in service industries, including the fields
of health care and public administration.
A | Labor |
The Canadian civilian labor force numbered
17.3 million in 2005. The participation rate of men in the labor force reached a
postwar high in 1981 of 78.7 percent and declined to 72.9 percent by 2005. The
participation rate of women, on the other hand, has risen steadily to about 62
percent in 2005. In part, the shift toward a more gender-balanced labor force is
the outcome of the women’s movement, but it is also a reflection of wider
economic change, especially the growth of the services sector. The vast majority
of workers in goods-producing industries continue to be men, while women
outnumber men in finance, business, and community and personal services; the
numbers of men and women in trade and public administration are roughly equal.
In general, women work fewer hours than men (women hold almost 70 percent of all
part-time jobs) and are paid less; in 2003 men in full-time, full-year
employment earned C$39,100 on average, while women averaged less than two-thirds
that amount (C$24,800).
In 1999 the Canadian government and the
Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), one of Canada’s largest unions,
reached a pay-equity settlement to end a 16-year dispute. The settlement was one
of the largest in North American history. In the dispute, the PSAC accused the
federal government of discriminating against women by paying lower salaries for
female-dominated jobs, including secretaries and librarians, than for
male-dominated jobs of “equal value,” involving comparable education, demands,
and responsibility. The federal government agreed to distribute about $C3.6
billion in back pay among some 230,000 past and present public service workers,
primarily women.
The number of self-employed Canadians has
risen substantially in recent decades, from 7 percent of the labor force in the
1970s to more than 14 percent in 2005. Many choose self-employment as a way to
achieve greater independence; for some, however, it is a last resort when
opportunities for regular employment are scarce.
Jurisdiction over labor matters is split
between the federal and provincial governments, and legislation therefore varies
across the country. Minimum standards are established by the Canada Labour Code,
but provinces enact further rules. Canada also has federal and provincial laws
that prohibit child employment, provide for maternity leave, guarantee the right
to collective bargaining, require paid holidays, and require equal pay for men
and women.
Labor unions have existed in Canada since
at least 1827. There have been several periods when labor problems were acute,
notably a period after World War I (1914-1918) that culminated in more than 300
strikes during 1919. The most famous of these, the Winnipeg General Strike,
brought that city to a halt for six weeks and ended in bloodshed as the police
fired live ammunition into a crowd of demonstrators.
Until recently, union membership in Canada
had been highest in goods-producing industries; this has changed with the growth
of the services sector. In 2004, 30.5 percent of all paid workers and 75.5
percent of public sector employees were members of unions, about twice the rates
of the United States. There is a central coordinating body, the Canadian Labour
Congress, that represents most unions at the national level. Many Canadian
unions are linked to larger international groups, especially the American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. See also
Labor Unions in Canada.
B | Agriculture |
Agriculture is not as important to the
Canadian economy as it was in the 19th century, but it continues to be the
mainstay of several regions and is a significant source of export income. In
early 2006 there were 229,400 farms in Canada, averaging 295 hectares (729
acres) in size. Some 340,000 men and women worked in agricultural jobs in 2005,
representing 2.1 percent of the total labor force. This is down from 430,000 and
3.2 percent in 1995. The annual value of farm output amounted to C$38.3 billion
in 2001. Because of Canada’s abundant production and relatively small
population, it is a leading exporter of food products; these account for 16.7
percent of goods exported, compared with 0.5 percent for Japan, 5.5 percent for
Mexico, and 7.3 percent for the United States.
Farm life is changing considerably as
farmers adjust to new trends. One trend is consumer preference for foods with
lower fat content, which has changed demand for specific products. For example,
there is less demand for cream and more demand for vegetables. Also, government
has reduced its subsidies to the industry, making it necessary for farmers to
introduce more profitable crops and more livestock production, which is
generally more profitable. These changes have contributed to the decline of
full-time farming, as more and more the majority of family-farm income comes
from sources off the farm.
Farms in Canada are about equally divided
between crop raising and livestock production. Wheat is the most important
single crop, and the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan
form one of the greatest wheat-growing areas of the world. As of 2003 Canada was
the seventh largest producer of wheat in the world. One-half of Canada’s wheat
is grown in Saskatchewan. Total wheat production in 2006 was 27.3 million metric
tons. In recent years, prairie farmers have sought to diversify their crops to
minimize the effects of bad crop years or reductions in the price of wheat. Thus
they have increasingly shifted from wheat to other grains and oilseeds. After
wheat, the largest cash receipts from field crops are obtained from canola,
vegetables, barley, maize, potatoes, fruits, tobacco, and soybeans.
Canada’s agricultural sector is in two
major parts. The first, dominated by grains and livestock, is geared to the
export market, and farmers receive international prices. The second is sold
within a protected Canadian market. These products, mainly dairy products and
poultry, are regulated by provincial marketing boards that allocate quotas to
individual farmers to preserve the farming sector and to match supply with
demand. As a result, Canadian consumers pay a premium for poultry and dairy
products. The future of marketing boards is in doubt, however, due to a recent
agreement of the member countries of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT), which included Canada, to open agricultural markets to full global
competition. GATT, now succeeded by the World Trade Organization, was an
international body that promoted and enforced trade laws and regulations. It
worked to minimize preferential trade agreements between countries and other
barriers to international trade.
Livestock and livestock products are
growing in importance within the Canadian economy. Beef cattle ranching is a
specialized industry in the west, especially in the dry grasslands of southern
Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 2006 Canada had 14.8 million cattle, compared to 97
million in the United States.
In 2003 the Canadian cattle industry was
damaged when a cow in Alberta tested positive for bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease. The discovery caused
several nations, including Japan and the United States, to ban the importing of
Canadian cattle. The ban was finally lifted in mid-2005, but not before costing
the industry an estimated C$7 billion in lost sales.
In 2004 Canada had 14.7 million hogs and
919,000 sheep. Ontario and Québec ranked highest in dairy products, poultry
farming, and egg production. Québec produced the vast majority of the maple
products, and Ontario produced most of the nation’s tobacco crop. Fruit farming
is primarily found in Ontario, British Columbia, and Québec.
C | Forestry |
Forest products contribute significantly
to regional and rural economies. The forest industry as a whole employs about
360,000 people directly and supports around 1 million jobs overall. It is
estimated that the full range of forestry activities—from logging, through
manufacturing, to trade in wood products—generates roughly 1 in 15 Canadian
jobs. It is Canada’s largest nonurban employer, with activities concentrated in
British Columbia, Québec, and Ontario. The industry accounted for about 3
percent of Canada’s GDP and 11 percent of all goods exported in 2003.
Canada’s forests make up about 10 percent
of the world’s total forest area. Despite heavy harvesting by early settlers,
forests, mainly coniferous, still cover 31 percent of the country’s land area. A
national forest inventory is conducted every five years by Forestry Canada, the
federal forestry agency, in cooperation with provincial and territorial
agencies. Most of the forestland is owned and managed by the provincial and
federal governments.
Canadian wood products are among the
finest in the world: Canadian softwood lumber is made up of long fibers that
provide a high strength-to-weight ratio, and Canadian pulp is known for strong,
light-colored paper products. Canada is the world’s largest producer of
newsprint and exports the vast majority of it. The United States is the world’s
second largest producer but uses nearly all of its output domestically. Canada
is also the world’s second largest producer of pulp, the third largest producer
of sawn lumber, and the world’s largest exporter of softwood lumber.
In 2002 the United States imposed trade
sanctions on softwood purchases from Canada, accusing the government of
illegally subsidizing lumber companies and other unfair practices. Although U.S.
restrictions and duties were reduced in subsequent years, the dispute cost
Canadian lumber producers billions of dollars and damaged relations between the
two countries. In April 2006 the two countries announced an agreement resolving
the long-running dispute.
The annual allowable cut for a forested
area is the amount of timber that can be harvested each year without diminishing
the long-term sustainability of the forest. There is uncertainty in many parts
of the country over whether the current harvest rates are sustainable. Regional
supplies vary considerably, and some local shortages have been identified.
D | Fisheries |
Commercial fishing in Canada dates back
nearly 500 years. Fishing occurs in ocean waters, inland lakes, and rivers, and
though the industry has declined as the number of fish has decreased, Canada
remains one of the world’s largest exporters of fish and seafood. Canada’s fish
catch in 2005 was 1.26 million metric tons. Over 75 percent of the catch is
exported, which is just over 1 percent of the total value of goods exported.
Canadian fish and seafood are sold to many countries, but the primary markets
are the United States, Japan, and the European Union. In 2003 exports of
Canadian fish to the United States accounted for 72 percent of total fish
exported.
Cod, herring, crab, lobster, and scallops
have been the most important exports from the Atlantic coast, and halibut and
salmon from the Pacific coast. There is also a commercial freshwater fishery in
Ontario, focused on Lake Erie. Commercial sport fishing industries have been
developed throughout Canada.
Fisheries were a mainstay of economic life
in Atlantic Canada. By 1992 the total value of Canada’s Atlantic fisheries
reached C$984 million annually. In 1993, however, the Canadian government
imposed an unprecedented two-year ban on the commercial fishing of cod in the
northern fishery, extending from southern Labrador to the northern Grand Banks,
because of a drastic decline in fish stocks. This was formerly one of the
richest areas on the Atlantic coast. The fishing ban later was extended
indefinitely because of the near-extinction of the fish. Initially the federal
government provided emergency assistance payments, in addition to unemployment
compensation, to fishers, processing workers, and boat owners. A more
comprehensive compensation plan, a voluntary job retraining program, and a
regional development program followed.
The causes of the near-extinction of cod
have been much debated. Some blame environmental factors. The Canadian
government, however, points to the increasing use of larger, more sophisticated
boats and foreign intrusion on the fishery. In the century before 1950, fishers
worked in small boats using hand-operated equipment and took about 250,000
metric tons a year from the Atlantic waters off Newfoundland and Labrador. After
1950 Canadians increased their catching capacity by using larger, longer-range
vessels with new nets, power equipment, and electronic navigation. Modern
European vessels also moved in. In 1968 the northern cod catch peaked at 800,000
metric tons.
In 1977 Canada extended its fishing zone
to 200 nautical miles (230 mi/370 km) to protect stocks, and for a few years
scientists believed that the cod stocks were recovering. However, foreign boats,
especially Spanish and Portuguese, began fishing just outside the zone limit in
1986, and by 1991 they accounted for more than a quarter of the cod caught in
the region. In 1989 scientists realized that the foreign boats were depleting
the northern cod stocks. By 1992 the Canadian government introduced new
conservation measures and stricter enforcement to protect small fish and
spawning stocks. These measures proved insufficient, however, leading to a total
collapse of the fishery and the imposition of the ban. It has yet to recover.
The British Columbia fishery on the
Pacific coast is an important economic contributor. Five species of salmon are
the mainstay of the fishery. Other fishes caught in Pacific waters are herring,
halibut, cod, sole, and a variety of shellfish. In British Columbia and Yukon
Territory, indigenous Canadians are eligible to fish as part of their aboriginal
rights—rights they retain as the original owners of the land. Some indigenous
people also fish in the commercial industry, and what they take there is in
addition to what they are allocated under aboriginal rights.
Canada and the United States share the
Pacific salmon resource under the 1980 Pacific Salmon Treaty, which took 15
years to negotiate. The treaty’s goals are to conserve stocks and to distribute
salmon equitably. Each country is allowed a catch proportional to the share of
salmon spawning in its rivers. These proportions are sometimes the subject of
disputes between the Canadian and U.S. fishing industries.
E | Furs |
In many ways, the fur industry created
Canada. Much of pre-Confederation history revolves around the competition
between the French and British for control of the profitable fur trade. But by
the late 20th century demand for fur had declined, and the income of indigenous
trappers had suffered severely. Canada’s remaining fur farms are mainly
concentrated in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Québec, and British Columbia. Trapping is
carried on primarily in northern Canada; Ontario, Québec, Alberta, Saskatchewan,
and Manitoba are the main producers of wildlife pelts. See also Fur Trade
in North America.
F | Mining |
Mining in Canada has a long history of
exploration and development. The country is one of the world’s leading producers
and exporters of minerals such as uranium, zinc, potash, nickel, elemental
sulfur, asbestos, cadmium, platinum, gypsum, copper, lead, cobalt, titanium, and
molybdenum. Much exploration and development activity in Canada is now devoted
to diamond mining, especially in the Northwest Territories, the Prairie
provinces, and the Canadian Shield.
Fuel minerals—oil and natural gas—are also
important to Canada’s mining industry. In 2004, 842 million barrels of crude oil
and 183 billion cu m (6.5 trillion cu ft) of natural gas were produced, much of
which was exported.
Oil and gas production is centered mainly
in Alberta. Pipelines transport Alberta’s crude oil and natural gas to the
industrial centers of eastern Canada, to British Columbia, and to the
northwestern and midwestern United States. In addition, oil and gas are shipped
to refining centers throughout Canada and to the United States.
Environmental and social concerns have
caused uncertainty for the mining industry. The degradation of water quality by
mine wastes, in particular, has led federal and provincial governments to
regulate mine operations. In 1992 the Mining Association of Canada responded by
establishing the Whitehorse Mining Initiative, a broad agreement to increase the
level of environmental responsibility in the industry. The initiative was
developed together with indigenous groups, environmentalists, and
representatives of labor unions and government.
Another source of uncertainty in the
industry is the denial of access to lands where mining claims are staked, or
where bodies of ore are known to be located. For example, in British Columbia
the creation of new parks, such as Tatshenshini-Alsek near Alaska, has closed
large areas to mining. The land issues raised by the indigenous peoples have
held up mining operations for years while ownership of the rights is being
negotiated or litigated.
G | Manufacturing |
Manufacturing is a key component of the
Canadian economy, employing about 15 percent of the country’s workforce and
accounting for 17 percent of the GDP and around 75 percent of goods exported.
Manufacturing supports many other sectors of the economy by purchasing their
outputs and supplying them with products. Manufacturing is highly sensitive to
broader economic trends, especially changes in the level of consumer spending.
Early manufacturing in Canada, before the
mid-19th century, was localized and was in support of resource production. Boats
were built in Atlantic Canada, for example, and farm machinery in southern
Ontario. Modern industrialization, in the form of mass production, began on a
small scale in mid-19th-century Montréal and gathered momentum in the 1870s.
Canadian manufacturing was spurred by rapidly increasing resource production,
the introduction of electrical generating capacity, population expansion, and
the two world wars. The greatest growth in facilities and output, however,
occurred after World War II (1939-1945) as consumer spending increased and most
countries reduced their tariffs.
By the beginning of the 21st century,
Canada’s manufacturing sector was in the midst of profound technological change.
Investment in high-tech machinery and equipment had become essential for
businesses to compete in the rapidly changing world economy. The introduction of
new, more advanced machines was expected to improve productivity and reduce the
number of workers in the manufacturing sector.
G1 | Transportation Equipment |
Canada’s chief manufacturing industry is
transportation equipment, especially automobiles and auto parts. This sector
makes up almost one-quarter of the total value of the country’s manufacturing
output. In recent decades, the transportation equipment industry has evolved
toward a single continental market in North America. This is due primarily to
Canada’s smaller market, which makes Canadian branch plants inefficient. In the
1960s the governments of Canada and the United States, together with executives
of the automobile industry, negotiated the Canada-United States Automotive
Products Agreement, which removed Canadian import tariffs as long as automakers
produced as many cars in Canada as they sold in Canada. The signing of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the mid-1990s further unified the
market.
The result of these pacts has been a
continental integration of auto production, where particular models are built in
local plants and distributed throughout North America. This integration has led
to a more efficient industry but has also meant that events that occur in one
part of the North American auto industry affect the entire continent. A
protracted strike at a parts plant in Ontario, for example, can cause the
closure of assembly plants in Ohio, and vice versa.
G2 | Other Manufacturing |
Other significant manufacturing sectors
include food processing, paper products, chemical products, primary metal
processing, petroleum refining, electrical and electronic products, metal
fabricating, and wood processing. Many of these manufactures rely on Canada’s
vigorous resource industries. Unlike the motor vehicles and other consumer
products industries, which are highly localized in the heartland, resource
processing is much more widely distributed across the country.
G3 | U.S. Investment |
U.S. involvement in Canadian
manufacturing began in the late 19th century, notably in the 1880s after the
Canadian government imposed higher trade tariffs. U.S.-owned firms built branch
plants to serve the Canadian market and thereby avoid the tariffs involved in
exporting their products to Canada. This process accelerated in the 20th
century.
Concern over foreign ownership prompted
the Canadian government to establish the Foreign Investment Review Agency (FIRA)
in 1974. The agency was charged with scrutinizing investment from abroad and
ensuring that it benefited Canada. FIRA never turned down an application, but
did require modifications in many cases. U.S. interests continue to dominate
foreign investment in Canada, making up about two-thirds of the total in the
early 21st century.
H | Energy |
As a large country rich in natural
resources, Canada’s energy industry is one of the biggest in the world. Each
year the country produces much more energy than it consumes, making it a
significant exporter of this resource, especially to the United States. In 2003
Canada’s annual output of electricity was 566 billion kilowatt hours, of which
59 percent was provided by hydroelectric plants, 12 percent by nuclear power
plants, and 27.28 percent by conventional thermal plants using fossil fuels.
Wind-generated energy is the fastest-growing sector of the industry.
H1 | Hydroelectric Power |
Endowed with many fast-flowing rivers,
Canada is the world’s leading producer of hydroelectricity, the
electrical energy produced by falling or running water. Most of the country’s
hydroelectric output is generated in the provinces of Québec, Ontario,
Newfoundland and Labrador, and British Columbia. One of the largest
hydroelectric complexes in North America is located on La Grande Rivière, near
James Bay in Québec. It has three hydroelectric stations, and is owned and
operated by the public utility Hydro-Québec. Its total capacity is about 10
million kilowatts. The powerhouses on La Grande Rivière constitute the first
phase of a larger planned hydroelectric project (see James Bay Project).
Churchill Falls, in the Labrador region of Newfoundland, is another major
Canadian hydroelectric facility.
H2 | Nuclear Power |
Since the early 1950s Canada has sought
to use its abundant resources of natural uranium to generate electricity through
nuclear reactions. The first nuclear power plant, a demonstration station at
Rolphton, Ontario, was completed in 1962. A large nuclear energy plant was
opened at Pickering, Ontario, in the early 1970s. In addition, a large complex
of nuclear facilities on the Bruce Peninsula, in Ontario, is owned and operated
by Ontario Power Generation. In 2006 Canada had 18 nuclear facilities; the
majority of nuclear generation occurs in Ontario. The proper disposal of spent
fuel is a research priority in Canada.
H3 | Thermal Power |
Thermoelectric energy—electricity
produced by heat or burning—remains an important source of power in Canada. A
large portion of this type of energy is generated in Alberta, which has
extensive coal, oil, and natural gas resources. The second largest share is
generated in Ontario, mainly using coal imported from the United States. The
remainder is principally generated in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, using
local coal supplies. Due to environmental concerns, most plants are introducing
methods to reduce pollution. The chief pollution problem has been acid rain, in
which airborne byproducts of the burning combine with moisture in the air to
form toxic sulfuric and nitric acids, which then rain down on and destroy
vegetation. Another serious environmental concern is this industry’s growing
production of greenhouse gases, a major contributor to global warming. From 1990
to 2001, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 18 percent. See also
Fossil Fuels; Greenhouse Effect.
I | Foreign Trade |
Canada has just 0.6 percent of the world’s
population, but accounts for 4 percent of total exports in world trade. Exports
have always been important to Canada’s economy. In the early colonial period,
the leading Canadian items of export were fish and furs. During the 19th
century, timber became the staple export item. With the improvement of railway
lines early in the 20th century and settlement of the prairies, wheat became the
chief item of export. The contribution of mineral products to Canadian exports
also accelerated in the early 20th century as metal resources in the Laurentian
and Canadian Cordilleran regions were exploited. Gradually, manufacturing
industries emerged and now produce more than three-quarters of Canada’s
exports.
Most of Canada’s foreign trade is with the
United States, which typically buys about four-fifths of Canada’s exports and
supplies about three-quarters of its imports. A large portion of this trade is
made up of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts. Because so many corporations
operate on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, much of the trade between the
two nations actually consists of transfers within firms. Trade between Canada
and Mexico is growing rapidly, but the total amount is still quite small.
Canada also has significant export trade
with other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, the
Netherlands, and China. Canada’s major export commodities are transportation
equipment, machinery, mineral fuels, wood products, electrical equipment,
metals, and agricultural and fishing products. Leading imports include
machinery, transportation equipment, communications and office equipment
(especially computers), and other consumer goods.
Trade between Canada and the United States
is the largest bi-national flow in the world. In 1989 the Canada-United States
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect, a pact that removed the trade
barriers between the two countries. In 1994 the FTA was expanded into the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which included Mexico in this free trade
zone. The effects of NAFTA on the Canadian economy have been hotly debated since
its passage. Manufacturing employment grew in the late 1990s but then declined
in the early 21st century. In a large, developed economy such as Canada’s it is
difficult to attribute these types of economic changes to a single factor, such
as trade policy.
Since World War II (1939-1945) Canada has
been at the forefront of the movement to reduce tariff barriers. Canada emerged
from the war with the industrial capacity to supply consumer products that the
world needed; another incentive was the feeling that trade barriers had partly
contributed to both world wars. Canada was a founding member of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1948 (reorganized as the World Trade
Organization in 1996) and has since helped initiate other agreements with
nations from around the world. The most important are the Caribbean Agreement of
1986; the FTA, 1988; the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group of 1989;
and NAFTA, 1994. See also Foreign Trade; Free Trade; Globalization.
J | Currency and Banking |
The unit of currency in Canada is the
Canadian dollar, which consists of 100 cents (C$1.10 equals US$1, 2006 average).
The Bank of Canada, which was founded in 1935 and is owned by the federal
government, has the sole right to issue paper money for circulation.
Most foreign-owned and major domestic
banks in Canada have their head offices in Toronto, and a few are based in
Montréal. Trust and mortgage loan companies, provincial savings banks, and
credit unions also provide banking services. Securities exchanges operate in
Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver. See also Banking;
Money.
K | Transportation |
K1 | Water Transport |
Since the earliest explorations, water
travel has been important to Canada. The St. Lawrence-Great Lakes navigation
system extends 3,769 km (2,342 mi) from the Gulf of St. Lawrence into the center
of the continent. The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 contributed
greatly to industrial expansion, but the seaway is declining in significance
with the growth of intermodal transport, which integrates water, rail, and road
shipments. Vancouver and Halifax especially have capitalized on intermodal
shipment and are the seaway’s strongest competitors. The ports of Vancouver,
Sept-Îles, Montréal, Port-Cartier, Québec, Halifax, Saint John, Thunder Bay,
Prince Rupert, and Hamilton handle most of the shipping cargo.
Canada does not have a large merchant
marine, and the great majority of Canadian overseas trade is carried in ships of
other countries. Canadian merchant vessels of 100 gross registered tons (GRT) or
more numbered 927 in 2007, with a total GRT of 2.8 million. Most ships of
Canadian registry operate along the coast, on the St. Lawrence Seaway, or on the
Great Lakes Ships called lake carriers, or “lakers,” are built in eastern Canada
specifically for the Seaway-Great Lakes traffic. Typically long and flat, they
are sized to the dimensions of the seaway locks and include innovations such as
the self-unloading carrier.
K2 | Railroads |
Rail transportation has been crucial to
the formation of Canada but has declined in recent decades, due chiefly to the
popularity of motor vehicles (trucking). The two major railways are the Canadian
National (CN), formerly a federally owned corporation, and the Canadian Pacific
Railway (CPR). Their declining revenues led Ottawa to create a combined
passenger network, VIA Rail, in 1977. However, revenue from passenger service
was not sufficient to cover the costs of the service, and in 1990 half the
routes were closed. However, the government is legally bound to operate a
passenger rail service across western Canada because that was a condition of
British Columbia's entry into the Confederation in 1871.
The profitability of freight service has
also been declining, although less severely. These problems stem largely from
special rate structures legislated by Ottawa in 1897 as part of the Crow’s Nest
Pass Agreement and later negotiations. In essence, the CPR received a grant to
pay for laying track through Crowsnest Pass in the Rockies, and in return agreed
to charge low rates for hauling grain. These rates were intended to remain in
effect forever. As the CPR’s costs went up over the years and the so-called Crow
rate did not, profits sank and it was difficult to make improvements to the
line. The rate limits were partly abrogated in 1983 and fully removed in 1996.
At the same time, many of the rules regulating the rail system were relaxed,
allowing the railroads to better integrate their operations with marine and
truck transportation companies in the emerging intermodal system. See also
Railroads.
K3 | Roads |
Canada has one of the world’s best
highway systems; good roads are essential to a country of such wide spaces,
scattered people, and geographic barriers. The increasing use of these roads,
however, coupled with reduced government expenditures, has led to a
deterioration in their quality.
The national highway system in Canada
carries about a third of all road traffic in the country. The Trans-Canada
Highway, completed in 1962, stretches from St. John’s, Newfoundland and
Labrador, to Victoria, British Columbia. In 2003 there were 561 registered
passenger vehicles for every 1,000 Canadians, compared with 441 in Japan, 451 in
Britain, and 465 in the United States.
K4 | Air Transport |
Canada’s largest airline, Air Canada,
maintains a broad network of domestic and international routes. Air travel is
particularly important in the far north because the widely scattered communities
of the region are not connected by road or rail and water transport is limited
to the brief summer periods. The busiest airports in Canada are Lester B.
Pearson International in Toronto, Vancouver International, Trudeau and Mirabel
in Montréal, and Calgary International.
L | Tourism |
Canada’s variety of seasons and scenic
attractions draws large numbers of tourists from around the world. There are
many festivals, including spring blossom festivals in the Annapolis Valley of
Nova Scotia and the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, the Ottawa Festival of
Spring, and the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. The Niagara Grape and Wine
Festival and color tours in central Ontario and the Laurentian Mountains of
Québec are autumn attractions. Cosmopolitan cities such as Vancouver, Montréal,
and Toronto draw millions of visitors annually to their many cultural
attractions.
Visitors are also drawn to Canadian
wilderness areas. In the winter the abundant snowfall supports a number of
world-class skiing centers, especially in the Canadian Cordillera region. Many
terrestrial and marine areas have been preserved in their natural state as
national parks, and each of the provinces and territories also has set aside
land as provincial or territorial parks.
Tens of thousands of Canadian businesses
cater to tourists. More than two-thirds of tourist revenues come from Canadians
themselves. The vast majority of foreign tourists come from the neighboring
United States. U.S. visitors made up about 75 percent of all foreign tourists in
Canada in the early 21st century.
VI | GOVERNMENT |
Canada is a federation governed under a
parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. Governmental powers in
Canada are divided between the central or federal government and the provincial
and territorial governments. Territories have less autonomy from the federal
government than provinces have. Canada is governed under the constitution of
1982, which gathered the previous constitutional acts into a single framework
and added a charter of rights and freedoms. It also provided for what Canadians
call “patriation”—giving the Canadian government total authority over its own
constitution. Previously, the British North America Act of 1867 and subsequent
laws had given the British government some authority over Canada’s
constitution.
With the exception of electoral officers,
all Canadian citizens over the age of 18 are eligible to vote. All eligible
voters except those currently serving time in correctional facilities are
eligible to run in elections. Voters must be resident in the riding
(electoral district) where they cast their ballot. Voter turnout for national
elections is generally high, with 70 percent or more of eligible voters
participating.
Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch of Britain,
is recognized as the queen of Canada. The queen is represented in Canada by the
governor-general, whose powers are largely ceremonial. The chief executive is
the prime minister, who is answerable to a legislature. The Canadian Parliament
is answerable to the citizens at elections that are held, at most, five years
apart. Judges are appointed by the federal and provincial governments.
Traditionally there were two dominant
Canadian national political parties, the Liberal Party and the Progressive
Conservative Party. They stood for the liberal and conservative sides,
respectively, of political thought, although their positions varied widely. Each
had a counterpart in the provincial governments, but these were loosely
connected and differed with the national party on major issues. The two parties
were of comparable strength, with one forming the government and the other the
official opposition in Parliament, until 1993. In that year the Progressive
Conservatives were defeated so resoundingly that their future was in doubt. A
sectional party, the Bloc Québécois of Québec, won the second highest number of
seats in Parliament and became the official opposition. In 1997 they were
replaced in that role by another sectional party, the conservative Reform Party
(later folded into a new party called the Canadian Alliance), based mainly in
the western provinces. In 2003 the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian
Alliance merged to form the Conservative Party.
Since World War II the federal government
has greatly increased the social services—such as subsidized medical care,
pensions, and family allowances—that it provides its citizens. The provincial
governments have generally cooperated, but not without fear that the traditional
powers exercised by the provinces are being eroded. That fear is especially
great in Québec, where it is compounded by fear of domination by the
English-speaking majority of the country.
In foreign policy, Canada was allied with
the non-Communist powers during the period of world tension called the Cold War
and contributed troops to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an
alliance formed to counter the threat of Communist aggression. However, Canada
has not aspired to be a major military power. A strong supporter of the United
Nations, it devotes its military largely to providing peacekeeping forces for
that body in hot spots around the world.
A | Constitution |
Under the British North America Act of
1867, the central government had considerable power over the provinces. However,
amendments to the act and changes brought by practical experience have increased
the scope of authority of the provincial governments. Considerable tension
continues to exist between Ottawa and the provincial governments concerning the
proper allocation of power. The most important current constitutional issue is
the status of Québec, which seeks more autonomy. When the constitution was
patriated in 1982, the Québec premier refused to sign it because he did not
think the terms were fair to Québec. Subsequent attempts to induce Québec to
ratify the constitution, in 1990 and 1992, foundered because of opposition from
other provinces. This impasse has fueled the Québec separatist movement, and in
1995 a referendum that could have led to Québec independence very nearly passed,
receiving 49.4 percent of the vote. See also Constitution of Canada;
French Canadian Nationalism.
A1 | Federal-Provincial Division of Powers |
The central government of Canada
exercises all powers not specifically assigned to the provinces. It has
exclusive jurisdiction over administration of the public debt, currency and
coinage, taxation for general purposes, organization of national defense, fiscal
matters, banking, fisheries, commerce, navigation and shipping, energy policy,
postal service, the census, statistics, patents, copyright, naturalization,
aliens, indigenous peoples’ affairs, marriage, and divorce. Among the powers
assigned to the provincial governments are authority over education, hospitals,
provincial property, civil rights, taxation for local purposes, regulation of
local commerce, and the borrowing of money. Some of these may be allocated to
the municipal level at the discretion of the provincial government. With respect
to certain matters, such as immigration and agriculture, the federal and
provincial governments have concurrent jurisdiction.
The provinces and territories control
the establishment and operation of local units of government within their
borders. The categories and functions of local governmental units vary from
province to province, depending on population density and local custom. In
densely populated areas, such as southern Ontario, the system of local
governmental units includes counties, districts, cities, towns, villages, and
townships. Large metropolitan areas may have regional governments comprising
several local governments. Certain powers, such as transit and regional
planning, are the responsibility of the regional government, although each local
unit usually retains powers of local self-government, with responsibility for
local public services. Unincorporated rural districts are usually administered
by the provincial or territorial government.
A2 | Charter of Rights and Freedoms |
The Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms, added to the constitution in 1982, guarantees to citizens fundamental
freedoms, such as freedom of conscience and the press. It also guarantees the
right to vote and seek election, as well as rights to move throughout Canada, to
enjoy security of person, and to combat discrimination. It also specifies the
equality of the French and English languages. The charter changed the Canadian
political system by enhancing the power of the courts to make or unmake laws
through judicial decisions. It also contains the so-called notwithstanding
clause, which allows Parliament or the provincial legislatures to designate an
act operative even though it might clash with a charter provision. The charter
applies uniformly throughout Canada although the province of Québec has never
signed the constitution.
B | Federal Government Organization |
The Canadian Parliament consists of three
parts: the governor-general, the Senate, and the House of Commons. Commons,
which is popularly elected, contains about three times as many members as the
appointed Senate. The prime minister and the Cabinet are members of Parliament,
usually of the House of Commons.
B1 | Head of State |
Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch of
Britain, is the queen of Canada. She is the official head of state and is
represented in Canada by the governor-general and in each province by a
lieutenant governor. The governor-general is appointed by the reigning monarch
on the recommendation of the prime minister of Canada. Traditionally,
English-speakers alternate with French-speakers as governor-general. The length
of term is usually five years.
The governor-general’s role is largely
ceremonial; he or she summons, suspends, and dissolves Parliament, gives royal
assent to bills that have passed Parliament, authorizes treaties, commissions
officers in the armed forces, gives honors such as the Order of Canada, and acts
as host to visiting heads of state. He or she has the constitutional right to be
consulted and to give advice and thus receives regular visits from the prime
minister and government officials.
Officially the governor-general
appoints the prime minister and the cabinet ministers. However, he or she must
adhere to the advice of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons
(the larger chamber of Parliament) in appointing the prime minister and must
follow the prime minister’s wishes in appointing the Cabinet. While holding no
political power, the governor-general has considerable symbolic power. As the
governor-general is above politics, the post serves as a unifying symbol for all
Canadians.
B2 | Executive |
The executive head of government is the
prime minister, generally the leader of the party with the most seats in the
House of Commons. Canada’s parliamentary system is modeled on that of Britain
(see British Parliament), where the prime minister must be elected from a
local riding (district) like any other member of the House of Commons.
The prime minister derives his or her executive position by being head of the
party, which in most cases votes as a bloc. This is unlike the American system,
for example, where the chief executive (the president) is elected separately. In
cases where no one party has a majority in Commons, the governor-general chooses
the leader most likely to win support from other parties. If a prime minister
resigns as leader of the party before an election, the new party leader
automatically becomes prime minister until an election can be held.
The responsibilities and powers of the
prime minister are far reaching. He or she sets the policy of the government and
determines what legislation should be passed. Through the Cabinet, he or she
controls all the functions of the federal government, including budget
allocations. The prime minister names the cabinet ministers (who are then
officially appointed by the governor-general) and also recommends appointees to
the civil service, Senate, and judiciary.
The length of term of the prime
minister is at most five years, but he or she generally calls an election before
then. There is no restriction on the number of terms a prime minister may serve;
William Lyon Mackenzie King was prime minister for 13 consecutive years and
served two other separate terms. The prime minister may, however, be removed at
any time by a vote of no confidence in Parliament—that is, a declaration by the
majority of the members that they no longer support the prime minister. A
no-confidence vote forces the prime minister either to resign or to call a
general election.
The Cabinet consists of as many as 40
members, most of whom are ministers presiding over the various departments of
the federal government, such as finance, immigration, labor, or health. They are
supported by civil servants headed by a deputy minister. Some members of the
Cabinet may be ministers without portfolio, who are not assigned to a
department. Although they have no formal legal power, cabinet ministers exercise
considerable authority to make and enforce regulations in their various
departments through orders issued by the governor-general. The prime minister
generally selects his or her Cabinet from party members sitting in Commons, but
he or she may also draw them from other parties or the Senate.
B3 | Senate |
The members of the Senate are
appointed, nominally by the governor-general but in effect by the prime
minister. Once appointed, a senator may stay in office until age 75. Appointment
to the Senate is considered an honor and is frequently granted for political
service in the national or provincial government. To be appointed, a senator
must own a certain amount of property, be over the age of 30, and reside in the
province he or she represents.
Senators are appointed on the principle
of regional representation. There is a total of 105, but four more or eight more
can be added under exceptional circumstances as long as they are drawn equally
from Québec, Ontario, the Maritimes, and the western provinces.
The Canadian Senate is more closely
related in function to the British House of Lords than to the United States
Senate. It has the power to initiate legislation, except for finance bills, but
mainly acts as the chamber of “sober second thought,” scrutinizing the
legislation initiated in the House of Commons. It has the right to amend or
delay passage of bills passed by Commons. It also has the power to veto bills
but rarely exercises it. Another important function of the Senate is the Special
Senate Committee, through which social and economic issues important to the
country are thoroughly investigated, often leading to changes in government
policy.
B4 | House of Commons |
Members of Commons are directly elected
by the Canadian voters. There is no uniform interval between national, or
general, elections, but by law they must be held at least once every five years.
Each province and territory is divided into ridings, and each riding elects one
member. The total number of seats is reapportioned periodically on the basis of
the national census. Currently the House of Commons has 308 members. If a seat
becomes vacant between general elections a by-election is held in that riding to
fill the open seat.
To qualify for election to the House of
Commons, a candidate must be a Canadian citizen and at least 18 years of age.
But, unless he or she runs as an independent, a candidate must go through a
nomination process at the party level first. A candidate or member does not have
to live in the riding he or she represents, but most do.
In practice, the House of Commons is
the key legislative branch, the place where most important bills are introduced;
all money bills must originate in Commons. The prime minister and most of the
Cabinet are members of Commons. Tradition decrees that if a government loses the
support of a majority of Commons, it must surrender power or call a general
election. Therefore, members of the party in power rarely vote against
government policies. Dissent within the party is expressed in private meetings
or party caucuses, but the party usually presents a solid front in
Parliament.
All political parties in the House of
Commons that do not support the government are known collectively as the
opposition. The minority party with the most seats in Commons is known as the
Official Opposition and has special privileges. The leader of the Official
Opposition is one of the most important and visible figures in the House of
Commons. In the Canadian parliamentary system it is the duty of the opposition
to oppose the party in power. Government programs and bills submitted to
Parliament are subject to close scrutiny and criticism by members of the
opposition. The prime minister and his Cabinet must be ready at all times to
explain and defend the government’s program or actions to the opposition.
C | Judiciary |
The legal system in Canada is derived
from English common law, except in Québec, which has a civil-law system based on
the French civil law, which has been the basis of French law since 1804. The
federal judiciary is headed by the Supreme Court of Canada, made up of a chief
justice and eight associate judges, three of whom must come from Québec. It sits
in Ottawa and is the final Canadian court of appeal for all civil, criminal, and
constitutional cases. The next highest tribunal, the Federal Court of Canada, is
divided into a Trial Division and an Appeal Division. It hears a variety of
cases, including those involving claims against the federal government.
Provincial courts are established by the provincial legislatures and, although
the names of the courts are not uniform, each province has a similar three-part
court system. Judges of the Supreme Court and the Federal Court and almost all
judges of the higher provincial courts are appointed by the federal
government.
D | Provincial Government |
Canada comprises ten provinces, each with
a separate legislature and administration. The government of each province is
similar in structure and function to that of the national government. The
monarch is represented in each province by a lieutenant governor, who is
appointed by the governor-general on the recommendation of the prime minister.
The functions of the lieutenant governor, like those of the governor-general,
are primarily ceremonial. Each province has a unicameral, or single-chamber,
legislature, called the legislative or provincial assembly. It is elected at
least once every five years but may be dissolved at any time. The provincial
legislature functions in much the same way as the House of Commons.
The head of the provincial government is
the premier, who is appointed by the lieutenant governor after his or her party
wins a general election. The premier’s role is similar to that of the prime
minister in Ottawa. He or she must be able to control a majority in the
legislature. The premier appoints an executive council, or Cabinet, whose
members must be members of the legislative assembly and serve as heads of
provincial departments. They function in provincial affairs as cabinet members
do in national affairs.
The Yukon Territory and the Northwest
Territories are administered by Ottawa through the Department of Indian Affairs
and Northern Development. The chief executives are commissioners, appointed by
the federal government and assisted by local councils. The commissioner for the
Northwest Territories resides at Yellowknife, and the commissioner for the Yukon
at Whitehorse. The Yukon Territory has an elected legislative council. The
council for the Northwest Territories is composed of both elected and appointed
members; the majority are elected. In both territories the commissioner and
council have legislative powers similar to those of provincial governments. A
few areas of government, such as natural resources, are still controlled by
Ottawa. The commissioner of each territory acts according to instructions from
the federal Cabinet or the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development.
A third territory, Nunavut, was created
in 1999 out of the Northwest Territories and encompasses about 2 million sq km
(about 772,000 sq mi) of the eastern Arctic. Nunavut has its own government,
similar to the other territories. This is the only large jurisdiction in North
America with a majority of indigenous people, and in effect it constitutes
indigenous self-government.
E | Political Parties |
The strongest national political parties
in Canada during the 20th century were the Progressive Conservative Party and
the Liberal Party. The third party with a tradition of national support was the
New Democratic Party (NDP). The Progressive Conservatives generally favored an
unfettered market, fiscal responsibility, and limits on state power. The
Liberals are generally associated with the center of the political spectrum,
which means that they advocate greater government involvement in the economy;
they have also been traditionally seen as the party most open to
immigration.
The smaller NDP, which emerged from
Canadian labor and protest movements, supports programs to increase social and
economic equality. The NDP claims to represent ordinary people. Although never
achieving national power, the NDP has from time to time held the balance of
power and used it to support the Liberals; it has also led the provincial
government at various times in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and
Saskatchewan.
In the 1993 election only the Liberals
maintained their political base, while the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP
waned in significance. Two new parties arose that cut into their traditional
support. The Bloc Québécois (BQ) was formed to protect Québec interests and
promote Québec sovereignty. It acts to a large extent as the federal arm of the
provincial separatist party, the Parti Québécois. The BQ has no support outside
Québec and no desire to form the federal government. To its own surprise, the
collapse of the Progressive Conservatives and NDP in 1993 left the Bloc
Québécois for a time in the position of the official opposition in Canadian
Parliament. Its original leader, Lucien Bouchard, left the party to become the
premier of Québec. The BQ will cease to exist if Québec gains independence; it
will likewise decline if serious interest in Québec separatism disappears.
In contrast, the Canadian Alliance, the
successor to the Reform Party and originally an expression of western
dissatisfaction with federal control, came to express right-wing conservative
ideals. It supported reducing taxes and governmental functions and opposed
concessions to Québec. In the 1997 election it increased its standing in the
west, replacing the Bloc Québécois as the official opposition in Parliament. Led
by Stockwell Day, the Canadian Alliance gained an even larger share of seats in
the 2000 election and retained its position as the official opposition. However,
the party failed to attract many voters from central or eastern Canada.
In 2003 the Progressive Conservatives and
the Canadian Alliance merged to form a new party known as the Conservative
Party. Led by Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party became the official
opposition in Parliament. A small group of former Progressive Conservatives
rejected the merger and formed a breakaway political party known as the
Progressive Canadian party. In elections held in early 2006 the Conservative
Party won the most seats in Parliament and formed a minority government, with
the Liberals becoming the official opposition party.
F | Social Services and Health Care |
All levels of government share the
responsibility for social welfare in Canada. The chief federal agencies
responsible for social service programs are Health and Welfare Canada and Human
Resources Development Canada. The latter agency administers comprehensive income
maintenance programs, such as the national pensions, old-age security, and
unemployment insurance (known officially as the Employment Insurance program).
Nationwide coordination is considered to be necessary for these programs. The
federal government also provides services for indigenous peoples and veterans,
and it provides block grants to provincial governments to help cover their
expenditures in health, education, and public assistance.
Canada’s health system has successfully
provided health services to all people regardless of income for many decades.
Canada’s infant mortality rate, at 5 per 1,000, is one of the lowest in the
world. Vaccination programs have brought diseases such as polio under control.
Canadians have one of the highest life expectancies in the world and a generally
high level of health throughout their lives. Most Canadians consider their
health-care system a sacred trust.
However, the Canadian health-care system
is being squeezed on the one hand by rising costs and on the other by reductions
in government funding. Costs are increasing for a variety of reasons: an aging
population, increasing poverty, higher expectations for health services,
population growth in some provinces and cities, intractable diseases such as
cancer, newer ones such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and
higher-cost treatment procedures. Governments concerned with deficit reduction
are looking for ways to reduce costs; user fees for certain services, billing
for extra physician visits, and private clinics have been suggested. Canadians
are worried, however, about creating a two-tier system where the wealthy would
have better access to health care than the poor, which has become a serious
issue in the United States.
The problem of rising health-care costs
is particularly acute for the Canadian federal government, as it covers a larger
percentage of total medical costs than the U.S. government—69 percent of all
health-care spending comes from the federal government in Canada versus 45
percent in the United States. Overall Canadian federal government spending rose
from C$81.8 billion on health care in 1998 to more than C$130 billion in 2004,
an increase of 59 percent. The 2004 total represented slightly more than $C4,000
for each man, woman, and child in the country.
The Child Tax Benefit, Employment
Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan, and the Canada Health and Social Transfer
(CHST) program are the chief forms of federal welfare service. The Child Tax
Benefit is a monthly stipend paid to low- and modest-income families with
children to help cover the costs of child maintenance. Employment Insurance
provides income for up to a year, in the event of job loss, to workers who
receive a salary or an hourly wage. The Canada Pension Plan supplies retirement
and disability income and survivors’ benefits to older workers, keyed to the
amount of their lifetime earnings. It is supplemented by Old Age Security and
the Guaranteed Income Supplement, which are paid to people over 65 regardless of
how much they earned. The CHST program provides money to the provinces to
administer programs for health care, higher education, social assistance, and
other social services.
The administration of welfare services is
mainly the responsibility of the provinces. Municipalities and other local
entities actually provide the services, generally with financial aid from the
province. Provincial governments also have the major responsibility for
education and health in Canada, with municipalities assuming authority over
matters delegated to them by provincial legislation. The provinces spend about
30 to 35 percent of their total budgets on health care and about 17 percent on
social services.
State-funded medical health insurance was
first enacted in Saskatchewan in 1947 by the provincial government. A national
system was established with the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act
of 1957 and the Medical Care Act of 1966. In 1984 the Canadian Parliament
consolidated these acts into the Canada Health Act. Under that law, the
provinces must ensure that their health care systems meet the following
criteria: (1) public administration—the health insurance plans must be
administered by a public authority accountable to the provincial government; (2)
comprehensive benefits—the plan must cover all medically necessary services
prescribed by physicians and provided by hospitals; (3) universality—all legal
residents of the province must be covered; (4) portability—residents must
continue to be covered if they move or travel from one province to another; (5)
accessibility—services must be made available to all residents on equal terms,
regardless of income, age, or health needs. Private health insurance companies
also operate in Canada, providing coverage for services beyond the regular
system, such as ambulance fees and private hospital rooms.
The incidence of most diseases in Canada
is similar to that in other developed countries. There are no diseases unique to
Canada. The leading causes of death in 1997—the most recent year for which
complete statistics are available—consisted of cancer, 27.2 percent; heart
disease, 26.6 percent; and cerebrovascular diseases, 7.4 percent. Infectious
diseases are fairly rare, although incidence varies between socioeconomic
groups. Tuberculosis, for example, once thought to be under control in Canada,
is now widespread in indigenous communities and other vulnerable populations,
such as homeless people and those who are more than 65 years old. There were
1,628 new or relapsed cases of tuberculosis reported in 2003.
Attention also has focused on AIDS in
recent years. The first known case in Canada was recorded in 1982. Since then
there have been an estimated 20,000 cases of AIDS in the country. Despite
improved drug and therapy programs, the number of persons living with human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—the virus that causes AIDS—is rising, from an
estimated 40,000 in 1996 to 56,000 in 2002. The death rate of individuals with
AIDS declined during the 1990s as new medications were introduced, but stopped
dropping late in the decade as the virus developed resistance to them. See
also Health Care System in Canada.
G | Defense |
As a country of nearly 33 million people,
Canada is not a central military power. A special joint Senate and Commons
committee reaffirmed in 1994 that Canada’s existing defense policy is to oversee
and protect Canada, survey and control Canadian airspace and coastal waters, and
participate in multinational security operations. Canada spends 6 percent of the
federal budget on its armed forces, which are intended to evolve toward greater
flexibility, mobility, and affordability.
The Canadian Forces are unified rather
than being divided into separate branches, as with the U.S. military. The head
of the armed forces is the chief of the defense staff, who reports to the
civilian minister of national defense. Under the defense staff are three major
commands, organized by function: the air, maritime, and land force commands.
Military service is voluntary, and there has been no conscription in Canada
except for brief periods during the two world wars. Conscription measures were
unpopular and were soon repealed.
Canada was a founding member of NATO in
1949, and until 1994 Canada had air and land forces stationed in Europe to
support NATO. Canada also participates jointly with the United States in the
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which coordinates the air and
space defense of North America. Canada is a leading peacekeeping nation,
regularly sending service personnel to participate in United Nations
peacekeeping or supervisory operations.
Occasionally the armed forces have been
used in domestic affairs. The most notable of these incidents occurred during
the October Crisis of 1970, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau deployed the
armed forces to prevent terrorist activity in the province of Québec. The army
has also intervened in various protests by indigenous peoples in recent
decades.
In the 1990s Canada reduced its military
expenditures. Funding for the armed forces peaked in the early 1990s, at which
time the military employed more than 120,000 people both in and out of uniform.
By 2005 the numbers had dropped to 63,700 for regular forces and 22,000 for
reserves. Funding actually rose during the same period, however—from C$11.3
billion in 1994 to C$13 billion in 2005, although inflation plays a role in the
increase.
In general, the military does not have a
high profile in Canada. Military affairs have had little impact on politics
since the conscription controversy of World War II (1939-1945). In the mid-1990s
a public inquiry into misconduct on the part of Canadian peacekeeping soldiers
in Somalia revealed several cases of abuse of foreign civilians, including the
murder of a Somali man. During the investigation, officers and department
officials were accused of trying to cover up the incident and of tampering with
evidence, and the result was the disbanding of the Airborne Regiment involved
and the resignations of two succeeding chiefs of the defense staff. A new
minister of defense was appointed, and his decision to terminate the inquiry
before its completion was criticized by many.
H | Foreign Policy |
Foreign policy is coordinated by Canada’s
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The country uses its
influence to encourage democracy, the protection of human rights, free trade,
and peaceful resolution of conflicts. These objectives generally coincide, but
occasionally choices must be made among them. For example, Canada participated
in economic sanctions against South Africa during the era of apartheid, placing
the issue of democracy above that of trade. In the 1990s, however, Prime
Minister Jean Chrétien declared that the most effective way to promote
democratic movements and human rights was through increased trade, a policy that
drew criticism from some groups but was supported by the business
community.
The policy has also frustrated some of
Canada’s allies. The United States, especially, disapproves of Canada’s
continuing trade with Cuba in the face of a U.S. embargo of that country.
Tensions rose between the two countries in 1996 when the United States tried to
enforce its Helms-Burton Act, which barred entry into the United States of
certain foreign persons doing business in Cuba. Canada retaliated by passing the
Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, forbidding Canadian companies from
observing U.S. embargoes. Since the late 1990s the United States has backed off
on enforcing Helms-Burton against Canadian firms. Trade between Canada and Cuba
remained strong into the 21st century, and in 2005 Canada was Cuba’s
third-largest trading partner.
Tensions between the United States and
Canada over foreign policy were renewed in 2003 over the unilateral decision of
U.S. president George W. Bush to invade Iraq and oust the regime of Saddam
Hussein. Canada urged the United States to work through the United Nations (UN)
and rejected Bush’s unilateral approach. Canada’s refusal to send troops to Iraq
angered the Bush administration. See also U.S.-Iraq War.
Foreign aid, including money, goods,
expertise, and emergency relief, is also an important part of Canada’s foreign
policy. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was formed in 1968
to manage Canada’s foreign aid program, which annually provides billions of
dollars in aid to developing countries. The International Development Research
Centre, set up in 1970, funds research into possible adaptations of science and
technology for use in the developing world.
Canada has always had a strong role in
the United Nations (UN), the umbrella organization for international cooperation
and problem resolution. Canadian leaders have expressed the belief that
cooperation and consensus among nations are the best hope for the future. Prime
Minister Lester Pearson’s mediation in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and his proposal
for an international peacekeeping force won him the Nobel Peace Prize and
boosted the role of peacekeeping forces around the world. Canada supports the UN
in many ways: as a major financial contributor; as a participant in many UN aid
organizations; and as a contributor to the world’s peacekeeping troops. Canada
has also supported a number of UN-led military interventions—for example, in the
Korean War (1950-1953) and in the Persian Gulf War in Kuwait (1991)—but
advocates earlier involvement to prevent active fighting. Canada also sent
troops in support of the UN effort to protect Kābul, the capital of Afghanistan,
after the United States invaded and toppled that nation’s Taliban regime in
retaliation for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Canada belongs to a variety of major
international organizations. One is the Commonwealth of Nations, which developed
gradually after World War I (1914-1918) as former British colonies gained their
independence. Others include NATO (1949) and NORAD (1957). Canada has
enthusiastically supported the international associations for world peace and
cooperation, first the League of Nations (1920-1946) and then its successor the
United Nations (UN), of which Canada was a charter member in 1945. Other
international groups that Canada has joined are the International Monetary Fund
(1944), World Bank (formally the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, 1944); World Trade Organization (formerly General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, 1948); Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(1961); L’agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique (1970); G-7 Summit
(1976); Organization of American States (1989); and Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation organization (1994).
VII | HISTORY |
Canada’s human past begins with the long
tenure of the indigenous societies, followed by the 500-year collision between
those peoples and the newly arrived Europeans. European colonization gave way
after 1867 to the era of the Canadian nation-state. In the 20th century Canada
became one of the world’s small group of wealthy, highly industrialized,
technologically advanced, and heavily urbanized democracies. Yet regional
tensions, ethnic rivalries, global pressures, and the powerful neighboring
presence of the United States continued to challenge Canada’s political unity
and cultural identity.
A | First Inhabitants |
A1 | Prehistory |
The indigenous peoples say they have
been in Canada as long as the landscape itself. Evidence of their presence dates
from the time when the land reappeared from under the great ice sheets that
covered most of the country during the Pleistocene Ice Age at its peak about
18,000 years ago.
Dry land, largely ice-free, linked
Asia and Alaska during the Pleistocene Epoch. Most anthropologists believe
Canada’s first immigrants used this isthmus, a natural land bridge called
Beringia, to migrate into North America at least 15,000 years ago. Some scholars
believe the earliest migrants arrived much earlier, perhaps 30,000 years ago or
longer. These first people seem to have been nomads who hunted mammoth, bison,
and caribou. They expanded their range as the ice sheets retreated. As the
climate stabilized and northern North America developed its modern ecological
zones, such as tundra, forest, and prairie, the hunters adapted to local
conditions. See also First Americans.
Other migrants from Asia came later,
perhaps as recently as 4,000 years ago, bringing new languages and different
types of tools and weapons. Distinct cultures and nations developed throughout
Canada. They comprised at least 11 separate language groups with hundreds of
individual languages and a variety of ways of living.
A2 | Indigenous Peoples in 1500 |
In 1500, on the eve of regular
European contact, there may have been 300,000 people living in Canada, although
some estimates run much higher. More than half were clustered in two regions,
southern Ontario and the Pacific coast. Despite divisions due to distance,
language, and culture, trade networks stretched far across the continent, as did
diplomatic alliances, rivalries, and warfare. Each nation had its own myths,
heroes, and spiritual practices, but they all shared a reverence for nature and
a sense of the spiritual presence in all living things.
The societies of the Algonquian
language family, the most widespread in North America, extended from the
Atlantic coast to the Rockies. Groups on the Atlantic coast made extensive use
of fish and coastal marine life. Most Algonquian speakers, however, were
hunter-gatherers: They hunted deer and other large animals, and gathered nuts
and wild grains. They lived in small bands of related families, in the forest
that stretches across Canada from west to east. Some moved into the Great Plains
to make their living by hunting bison.
Another language group, the
Athapaskan speakers, were also hunter-gatherers. They lived mainly in the
northwestern forest, but some groups lived on the plains, along with some
Algonquian and Siouan groups. These plains people wintered in sheltered river
valleys and followed the bison herds. They planned and executed well-organized
drives to stampede bison over cliffs. From the bison they got not only food but
also clothing, tools, and many other necessities. These societies began their
golden age in the mid-1700s when they got horses, imported to North America via
Mexico. With the new mobility that horses provided, mounted bison hunters such
as the Blackfoot and Plains Cree flourished on the Great Plains.
On the tundra, the Arctic coast, and
Arctic lands lived the Inuit, who developed ingenious inventions to help them
survive in one of the world’s most forbidding climates. The Inuit lived in small
bands as hunters, with a diet almost wholly of sea animals, although some
followed the caribou herds. They spoke a common language, in several dialects,
that spread eastward from Alaska to Greenland barely a thousand years ago. It is
part of the Eskimo-Aleut language group, which has branches in Siberia and thus
is the only indigenous language group with a clearly identified Asian
connection.
The temperate rain forest of the
mountainous Pacific Northwest was the most densely populated part of indigenous
Canada and had the greatest diversity of languages. Speakers of at least five
distinct language groups lived here. The coastal nations were blessed with
abundant food sources, particularly salmon, and lived in substantial, permanent
towns of elaborately decorated cedar-plank houses. They produced sophisticated
works of art, the most famous of which were the totem poles that decorated
houses and proclaimed the lineages of their owners. They traveled, raided, and
hunted whales in large, oceangoing canoes. These were complex societies
consisting of chiefs, nobles, commoners, and slaves.
Another area of large populations and
complex societies was the woodlands of the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence
valley, inhabited by Iroquoian-speaking peoples. About 500 AD the Iroquoians began growing corn,
beans, and squash. Once established, agriculture supported much larger
populations than hunting and gathering. The Iroquoian farmers lived in large,
fortified towns surrounded by cornfields. Some groups formed rival confederacies
known as the Huron, Neutral, and Iroquois (or Five Nations, later Six Nations).
Each confederacy had its own elaborate political systems and ceremonies. See
also Native Americans of North America; Native American Languages; Native
American Religions.
B | European Contact: 985-1600 |
B1 | The Viking Voyagers |
Viking colonists of Iceland and
Greenland were the first Europeans known to have reached North America. They
began to visit the northeast coast of Canada about ad 985, when they settled Greenland.
Leif Ericson of Greenland sailed west about ad 1000 to a place he called Vinland and
built a settlement there. This may have been L’Anse aux Meadows, a place on the
island of Newfoundland and Labrador where remains of a Viking village were found
in the 1960s. Although the colony did not last long, Viking contact with
indigenous people may have been widespread on the northeast coast. This contact
seems to have been marked by conflict despite some evidence of trading
exchanges. Contact with North America had ceased entirely by the time Europe
lost contact with Greenland in 1410.
B2 | Search for the Northwest Passage |
Later in the 15th century, Europe’s
seafarers began extending the range of their voyages. John Cabot, an Italian in
the service of England, renewed contact with northern North America when he
sailed to Newfoundland in 1497. Cabot sought a Northwest Passage, a westward sea
route to the wealthy empires known to exist in Asia. He was soon followed by
Portuguese and other explorers who were seeking a water route to Asia through or
around North America. In 1576 Martin Frobisher sailed to Baffin Island. In 1585
John Davis found and named Davis Strait. In 1610 Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson
Bay. Hudson was marooned there by his mutinous crew, and Sir Thomas Button’s
unsuccessful search for him (1612-1613) confirmed that there was no western exit
from the bay. Well into the 18th century, however, hopeful explorers looked for
navigable rivers that might form a water route if connected by short portages.
All of these explorations helped to map Canada and bring its natural resources
to the attention of people in Europe.
In 1534 King Francis I of France
dispatched explorer Jacques Cartier to seek empires similar to the wealthy ones
that Spain had recently conquered in Mexico. Cartier explored the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, but he found no such empires. In 1535 he traveled the St. Lawrence
River as far as the Iroquoian town of Hochelaga (the present site of Montréal)
and confirmed that the river offered no sea route to Asia. Cartier’s men spent
the winter at Stadacona, an Iroquoian village where Québec City now stands.
Cartier brought back a name for the country, Canada, which seems to mean
“village.” In 1541 he led a larger colonization venture that was also
unsuccessful.
B3 | First Commercial Ventures |
Whale oil, cod, and furs brought a
steadier, less publicized stream of European sailors to Canada. From the early
1500s until after 1600, Basques, people from southern France and northern Spain,
came each year to Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence to hunt whales. English,
French, Spanish, and Portuguese fishers came to catch cod on the shallow,
bountiful Grand Banks off the Atlantic coast, often drying the catch on the
shores. The fishing industry led to several attempts to start colonies in
Newfoundland and elsewhere. Few endured, although the fishing season regularly
brought a throng of fishers to some harbors. In 1583 English adventurer Sir
Humphrey Gilbert arrived at busy St. John’s Harbour in Newfoundland and found it
crowded with boats.
Although Spanish and Portuguese boats
shared the harbor with the English, Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for England. In
the 1600s, after the Spanish and Portuguese quit fishing in the Grand Banks,
permanent English communities grew up around Newfoundland’s Avalon peninsula,
and French communities grew up on the island’s south coast. About the same time,
whalers and fishers began to develop a trade in furs with indigenous nations
they met along the coasts. Europe’s hatters discovered that beaver hair, when
shaved and matted into a stiff felt, was the finest hat-making material
available. The Canadian fur trade, destined to be the backbone of the economy
for some 200 years, was born. See also Fisheries; Whaling.
B4 | European-Indigenous Relations |
For several hundred years, there were
few European settlers across much of Canada, and thus there were few conflicts
between them and the indigenous peoples over control of the land. Trading
relations, rooted in the fur trade that eventually spread across the continent,
were often more important. The fur trade changed indigenous societies by adding
new European goods to their way of life, encouraging them to concentrate on
trade with the newcomers, and often leading them into new alliances or conflicts
based on trade. But trade rarely put the indigenous nations under European
domination. Missionaries, who often accompanied the early traders, tried to
convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity but were frequently disappointed
by their lack of success. So long as the indigenous societies remained
independent, they rarely showed great enthusiasm for European religions. For
centuries after the arrival of Cabot, most of them retained control over their
contacts with Europeans.
In these early years, disease was the
greatest effect of European contact. The Europeans brought with them diseases
that were unknown in North America, and the indigenous people lacked immunity to
them. The result was devastating epidemics that ran through the Americas long
before any Europeans moved inland to report them. The population began to
decline as soon as the Europeans arrived. Some scholars have estimated that the
Mi’kmaq lost 90 percent of their population between 1500 and 1600.
As contact moved gradually north and
west, so did epidemics. Great Plains nations suffered devastating epidemics in
the late 1700s; the Pacific Northwest suffered similar catastrophes in the
mid-1800s; and many Inuit groups were hard hit by illnesses as they came into
regular contact with Europeans in the 20th century. Indigenous populations in
Canada declined continuously from about 1500 to about 1930.
C | New France: 1600-1763 |
When the French government saw the
potential value of the fur trade, the fishing industry, and other resources of
northern North America, it began to take more interest in the region, which came
to be known as New France. New France would eventually comprise Canada (the area
drained by the St. Lawrence), Acadia (now the Maritime provinces), the island of
Newfoundland (shared unwillingly with the English), and later Louisiana (the
valley of the Mississippi River). France claimed and defended this vast area as
its possession. For the most part, however, indigenous inhabitants continued
their way of life unaffected by French laws or customs, and they dealt with the
French primarily as allies and as customers for their furs. The French claim was
contested by the English, who tried persistently to divert the fur trade or to
occupy parts of the territory.
C1 | Early Years |
To confirm its claims to North
American territory, France needed to build permanent forts and settlements. But
settlements were expensive, and in order to pay for them, commercial colonizers
sought a monopoly on the fur trade. Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts, acquired such
a monopoly from the king of France, and in 1604 he established a post in Acadia.
In 1608 Samuel de Champlain, an explorer hired by de Monts, founded a settlement
at Québec on the St. Lawrence River. Champlain, who became the champion of
French colonization, understood that a monopoly of the inland fur trade could be
better protected there, where the river narrowed, rather than at sites on the
open coast of Acadia. Consequently, French colonization began to focus on the
St. Lawrence valley. Eventually, Champlain convinced Cardinal Richelieu, chief
minister to King Louis XIII, of the importance of North America. In 1627
Richelieu organized the Company of One Hundred Associates to develop and
administer New France.
To maintain his settlement and
develop the fur trade on the St. Lawrence, Champlain had to form alliances with
the local Algonquian nations and their inland allies, the Huron confederacy.
These indigenous allies brought the furs to Québec, and with their assistance
Champlain was able to travel widely and to map eastern North America from
Newfoundland to the Great Lakes.
Under the company, the Canada colony
continued to grow after Champlain died at Québec in 1635. More settlements were
founded, notably at Trois-Rivières (1634) and Montréal (1642). However, the
colony remained small in population and dependent on the fur trade. Fur traders
also maintained a small French presence in Acadia, and in the 1640s a small,
settled Acadian community took root around Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal) on
the Bay of Fundy.
In the 1640s New France was unable to
aid its ally, the Huron confederacy, in a war with the Iroquois. After the
Iroquois defeated and scattered the Huron in 1649, New France’s fur trade was
devastated, and Montréal and Québec were exposed to attack. The colony survived,
however, and the fur trade rebounded after the Ottawa, Ojibwa, and other
Algonquian nations replaced the Huron as French allies and suppliers. New
France’s trader-explorers also began to venture inland from Montréal in search
of new sources of furs. Two of them, Médard Chouart, sieur des Groseilliers, and
Pierre Esprit Radisson, explored the west side of Lake Superior in the
1650s.
C2 | Development of the Colony |
In 1663, when New France still had
barely 3,000 people, Louis XIV’s finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert
abolished the One Hundred Associates, ending the era of company rule.
Thenceforth, New France was a royal province ruled from Québec by a
governor-general, who commanded the military forces and symbolized royal
authority. In addition, an intendant oversaw colonial finances, justice,
and daily administration. Both officials reported to the Minister of Marine in
the king’s court, since all French colonies were administered by the naval
department. An appointed Superior Council advised the governor and acted as a
supreme court, but there were no elective bodies in the government of New
France.
With royal support, the defenses of
New France were improved. The Carignan-Salières regiment, a veteran military
force of 1,200, arrived in 1665 and waged a campaign against the Iroquois. This
campaign led to a peace settlement with the Iroquois. About 400 members of the
Carignan-Salières regiment stayed on in Canada as settlers. During the first
decade of royal rule, the monarchy also subsidized immigration from France,
notably of some 700 unmarried women, who were later called filles du roi
(daughters of the king) because the king paid for their transportation and
dowries. Their arrival helped balance the male-female ratio, which had been
overwhelmingly male. Thereafter immigration from France was slight; the 10,000
settlers reported on the 1681 census became, by natural increase, the ancestors
of almost all the French-speaking Canadians of today.
Soon after the peace settlement with
the Iroquois, New France acquired a permanent garrison of colonial troops.
Soldiers for the colony came from France, but they were commanded by what became
a hereditary aristocracy in New France. Military officers explored new
territory, built forts, and participated in diplomacy, trade, and warfare with
the indigenous peoples.
C3 | Trade and Exploration |
In 1664 Colbert organized a new
company, the Company of the West Indies, to hold the fur trade monopoly. As a
settled rural population developed in the St. Lawrence River valley, the fur
trade moved westward and northward. After 1670 there was a new competitor in the
fur trade. In that year, King Charles II of England granted a trade monopoly in
the area of Hudson Bay to a London group, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC).
However, the fur trade merchants of Montréal were able to compete successfully.
They combined the fur trade with exploration and missionary work. Louis Joliet
and Father Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi River, and
René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, reached the Gulf of Mexico in
1682.
Illicit traders called coureurs de
bois (woods rangers) and licensed ones called voyageurs pushed
northwest toward the prairies. Some remained there, adopting indigenous ways of
life and marrying indigenous women. Around 1700, King Louis XIV authorized
development of a chain of forts linking the St. Lawrence to Louisiana, a colony
newly founded at the mouth of the Mississippi. Some fur traders and their
mixed-blood families formed communities of farmers and traders around these
forts and posts. Their descendents became the Métis (French for “mixed
people”).
C4 | French Colonial Society |
C4a | Religion |
The Roman Catholic Church was a
powerful element in colonial society. Although France had many Protestants at
the time, its official religion was Roman Catholicism, and this was the form of
Christianity that France desired to spread in North America. Thus Protestants
were prohibited from settling in New France, and Roman Catholic religious
organizations were charged with maintaining and spreading the Catholic faith.
The first religious organization to send missionaries to New France was the
Franciscan Récollet group, who arrived in 1615. In 1633 they were replaced by
the richer, better-organized Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. As the church
gradually reoriented itself to serving the settler community, members of the
Ursulines, an organization of nuns (women devoted to the religious life)
came in 1639 to start schools for girls. Sulpician priests, who ran seminaries
to educate future priests, arrived in 1657.
Bishop François de Laval, who had
led the colonial church since 1659, established the Diocese of Québec in 1674.
It was supported by mandatory tithes, which took the form of taxes levied on the
farmers’ produce. Religious bodies ran hospitals and schools and often owned
large estates called seigneuries. New France, however, was never abundantly
supplied with clergy. Though the people were overwhelmingly Catholic, rural
communities might see a priest only a few times a year.
C4b | Land Tenure |
New France developed as a largely
rural society, as farmers cleared land along the St. Lawrence and adjacent
rivers. These farmers, called habitants, held their land under the seignorial
system. Land in New France was granted in the form of seigneuries to large
landlords, or seigneurs, who in turn granted acreages to farming families. In
return the farmers had to pay annual dues to the seigneur in the form of
produce, labor, or sometimes money. New France’s farm families lacked export
markets—they were hundreds of miles from the ocean—and so they produced mainly
for themselves rather than for sale. The members of large farm families worked
together to raise wheat, vegetables, and livestock. As younger family members
grew up and married, they cleared new land. The farmers had little opportunity
for formal education, but they lived better than did most peasants in France at
the time.
Seignorial lands usually brought
little income to their owners, and owning seigneuries did not confer noble
status. However, land ownership was another sign of prestige for the colonial
elite. Few seigneurs lived on their estates or gave them close attention. Most
seigneurs lived in the towns, and many had careers as military officers.
C5 | French and British Rivalry |
C5a | Territorial Disputes |
In the 1680s New France was again
at war with the Iroquois, partly over control of the fur trade but also as an
offshoot of war between France and England. The English and their Iroquois
allies attacked the settlements on the St. Lawrence in King William’s War
(1689-1697), but New France now had a permanent garrison and could strike back.
New France’s soldiers, notably Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d’Iberville, raided the
frontiers of New York and New England with their indigenous allies and seized
most of the English trading posts on Hudson Bay. After almost a decade of
guerrilla warfare, the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) merely confirmed each country’s
possessions before the war, even returning Acadia, which the English had
captured, to the French. In 1701 the Iroquois made a comprehensive peace with
New France and sought to remain neutral in future conflicts between the two
countries.
In 1702 a new war, Queen Anne’s
War, broke out between France and Great Britain (a new union of three countries
headed by England). By the Peace of Utrecht that ended the war, France was
compelled to yield its land in Newfoundland, although it kept seasonal fishing
rights on the north side (the French Shore), and its claims to Hudson Bay. The
Acadian mainland was also ceded to Britain. However, the French kept their forts
and trading posts on the north side of the Bay of Fundy, maintaining that this
was Mi’kmaq land that had never become part of Acadia. The Acadians who lived
under British rule became the neutral French, tied to neither the French nor the
British, but always distrusted by the British. They and the Mi’kmaq were the
only people living in the colony, which the British called Nova Scotia, until
the seaport of Halifax was founded in 1749.
France kept Cape Breton Island and
Île Saint Jean (now Prince Edward Island), organizing them as the colony of Isle
Royale. After 1713 the French fishing industry focused on Cape Breton Island,
where the fortified town of Louisbourg was founded that year. Louisbourg soon
became a successful fishing and trading port as well as a military base. In the
peaceful decades that followed, New France continued to grow and prosper, from
18,000 people in 1713 to 40,000 in 1737 and 55,000 in 1755. Most of these people
lived in the long-established farming communities of the St. Lawrence valley,
the heartland of New France.
C5b | The Fur Trade |
Fur trade forts dotted the
continent, and Montréal’s merchants continued to control the lion’s share of the
fur trade, which grew and spread westward. The French approached the fur trade
differently than the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). The French went into the back
country to collect furs, but the HBC generally preferred to establish posts at
shipping ports and let the indigenous trappers bring their furs to the posts.
Although the HBC made a generous profit, its trade was often intercepted
upstream by Montréalers who met the trappers on their home ground and bought the
best of their furs.
The French fur trade operations
were extended far to the west by military officer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes,
sieur de La Vérendrye, and his sons. They explored almost to the Rocky Mountains
in the 1730s and 1740s and established a string of fur trading forts. The fur
traders who followed them established routes along the Saskatchewan and Missouri
rivers. The French forged alliances, based on the trade, with the indigenous
peoples of the west, and this meant that French soldiers, traders, and
missionaries could move with relative ease across the continent. But since the
indigenous nations trapped and traded the pelts and European hatters processed
them, the fur trade never provided work for more than a few hundred French
colonists.
C5c | The French and Indian War |
With the outbreak of the French and
Indian War, Britain began a relentless attack on France’s colonies. The conflict
began in the Ohio Valley, where traders from the 13 colonies were beginning to
settle. This British expansion threatened Louisiana’s links with the rest of New
France. The British also threatened the French on the Atlantic coast. In 1755
Britain rounded up and deported some 7,000 Acadians, destroying the century-old
Acadian society of Nova Scotia.
The Acadians were replaced by
settlers from New England, who occupied the productive diked farmlands that the
Acadians had created by the Bay of Fundy. Some of the deported Acadians were
sent to France, and some eventually went to Louisiana, where their present-day
descendants are known as Cajuns. Some retreated to the woods to avoid being sent
away and settled farther north on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. After 1764 the
British allowed some deportees to return, and in the last part of the 18th
century a few came back to join the refugees in these new settlements.
For several years New France’s
forces, led by the experienced French general the Marquis of Montcalm, held
their own against the large and very costly assault by British forces. In a
global military contest, Britain was compelled to devote one-seventh of its
army—20,000 soldiers—to face down a few thousand French troops, supported by
militia and indigenous allies, in North America. But Louisbourg fell in 1758,
and its population was deported to France. In 1759 three British armies pushed
toward the St. Lawrence heartland. After a summer-long siege of Québec, the
young British general James Wolfe won the battle of the Plains of Abraham and
captured the city. Montréal fell the following summer and New France came under
British rule.
The conquest did not end all the
fighting. The final stage was a widespread indigenous campaign in the spring of
1763, under Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa, against the western posts where British
garrisons had recently replaced the French. Most of these posts were in the
southern and western territories of Canada that now form the states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The indigenous nations of the area
resented the 13 colonies’ westward expansion onto their lands, and joined the
uprising to force them back. However, they were unable to sustain their attack
or to sever British supply lines.
D | British North America: 1763-1841 |
By the Treaty of Paris in 1763, New
France with its 65,000 settlers (except western Louisiana) was ceded to Britain.
At that point, what is now Canada comprised the British colonies of Québec, Nova
Scotia, Newfoundland, and Rupert’s Land. Québec was the new name for the colony
of Canada, which had reached from Labrador to Missouri but was now reduced to
the lower St. Lawrence valley. Nova Scotia comprised all of what had been Acadia
and Île Royale, and Newfoundland included Labrador. Rupert’s Land, which was the
name for the Hudson Bay drainage area, continued to be a monopoly of the
Hudson’s Bay Company.
King George III of Britain sought to
pacify Pontiac’s allies with his Royal Proclamation of 1763, which recognized
indigenous sovereignty with certain qualifications. It committed Britain to
negotiating treaties with the indigenous peoples to acquire land before allowing
settlers to move in. The land between the Appalachian Mountains and the
Mississippi River, including Canada outside the lower St. Lawrence valley, was
set aside as a reserve, the so-called Lands Reserved for the Indians. This
angered people in the 13 colonies, who felt they were being deprived of rights
to western land that had been given or implied in their original colonial
charters.
D1 | Consolidating British Rule |
When Britain conquered New France, it
expected to impose British institutions, including a colonial assembly that
would be open only to Protestants. Military governors James Murray and Guy
Carleton found that policy unworkable. In 1774 by the Québec Act, Britain agreed
to preserve a regime with no elective institutions. The Québec Act entrenched
the old French civil law and the seignorial system of landholding and officially
recognized the Roman Catholic Church, including its right to impose tithes. By
shoring up the society of French Québec, the Québec Act helped reconcile its key
leaders—the church and the seigneurs—to British rule. The Québec Act also
restored to Québec the land between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, which had
been included in the lands reserved for the Indians. This helped preserve
Montréal’s fur trade and encouraged the indigenous nations to form alliances
with the British.
All of the northern colonies were
theoretically under the authority of Britain’s governor-general at Québec City,
but in practice there were few links among them. Each colony continued to
develop in isolation from the others. In Newfoundland, English and Irish
settlements had been growing during the 18th century. By the end of the century,
Newfoundlanders, rather than fishing fleets from England, caught most of the cod
that was exported to Europe and the Caribbean. Newfoundland was not entirely
British after 1763, however; France kept fishing rights on the north and west
coasts and acquired the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon as a base for its
fishing fleets.
Nova Scotia attracted only a few
settlers from New England and Britain, but its capital, Halifax, became
important as a military base and seaport. Halifax was the site of the first
newspaper in what is now Canada (1752) and of the first elected assembly (1758).
After 1770 migration from the highlands of Scotland produced a substantial
Gaelic-speaking minority in Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island (called Saint
John’s Island until 1799) became a separate colony in 1769.
In Québec the population grew,
commerce expanded, rural villages developed, and prosperity increased, but
French-speaking society, particularly rural society, continued largely unchanged
from the days of French rule. The world of most French colonists continued to
center on the farm and the parish. There were few schools, and most of the
colonists were unable to read and write. Rural prosperity aided the seigneurs,
who for the first time could hope to live as country gentlemen on the dues paid
by the habitants. The English-speaking population, most of whom were involved in
trade, government, or the garrisons, lived mainly in the towns.
D1a | The American Revolution |
Removal of the French threat, which
eliminated the need for British military protection, encouraged the 13 colonies
to grow away from their ties to Britain. Barely 15 years after the conquest of
New France, these colonies took up armed resistance to British rule, and the
American Revolution began. In 1775 American forces harassed Nova Scotia and
invaded Québec. They did not win the support of the Nova Scotians, who still
depended on British connections. The Americans seized Montréal and besieged
Québec City in the winter of 1775 to 1776, but they found little support, and
British forces drove them out early in 1776. For the rest of the war, Britain
used the forts and seaports of the northern colonies as springboards for its
campaigns against the Americans.
The American Revolution created not
one but two new nations in North America. When the independence of the United
States of America was confirmed in 1783, the northern part of British North
America, the future Canada, was left to the British Empire.
D1b | Loyalist Immigration |
The British were immediately
confronted with a dramatic increase in population. Some 40,000 Loyalists—people
from 13 colonies who were loyal to Britain—came as refugees during and
immediately after the revolution (see United Empire Loyalists). Others,
called late Loyalists, arrived in subsequent years. Some of the Loyalists were
former members of the urban elite of the 13 colonies, but most were ordinary
farmers or townspeople. A tenth of the Loyalists in Atlantic Canada were blacks,
mostly escaped slaves who had joined the British cause. Part of the Iroquois
confederacy that had allied itself with Britain also joined the migration.
Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant, founded an Iroquois community on the Grand River
north of Lake Erie.
Britain supported Loyalist refugees
for several years and provided them with generous land grants in British North
America. Almost overnight, Loyalists tripled the population of Nova Scotia.
Their arrival caused two new colonies to be carved out of Nova Scotia: New
Brunswick and Cape Breton Island (reunited with Nova Scotia in 1820). In Québec,
which received about 10,000 Loyalists, Governor Frederick Haldimand decreed that
the English-speaking newcomers should not be merged into the French communities.
At his direction, most Loyalists in Québec migrated in 1784 to new settlements
on the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, creating the nucleus of the future
Ontario.
D1c | The Constitutional Act of 1791 |
Loyalist leaders soon joined
British merchants of Québec City and Montréal in agitating against the Québec
Act. It did not provide the British legal institutions, legislatures, and
systems of land tenure that the Loyalists and others of British background
expected. In response, in 1791 Britain divided Québec into two colonies, Lower
and Upper Canada, and gave a new constitution to each. In mostly French Lower
Canada, French civil law, the rights of the Catholic Church, and seignorial land
tenure were preserved. In mostly English Upper Canada, Protestant churches,
particularly the Church of England, were favored, and English laws and land
tenure were installed.
D1d | The War of 1812 |
In 1812 the United States declared
war on Britain, which was again fighting a global war against France. Both
Britain and France had confiscated U.S. ships that were attempting to trade with
the other side. The United States declared war on Britain and invaded Upper
Canada.
American leaders expected success
rather than a repeat of 1775, because most Upper Canadians had only recently
come from the 13 colonies. They were wrong. Britain’s professional army, with
the support of the colonial militias and indigenous allies led by Tecumseh of
the Shawnee, inflicted a series of defeats on the large but ill-trained American
invasion forces. In 1812 British general Isaac Brock secured the Canadian
frontier at Niagara and captured Detroit.
There was no direct threat to
Atlantic Canada because its nearest U.S. neighbors, the New England states,
largely opposed the war. In fact, Nova Scotian shipowners enjoyed a bonanza;
their vessels went on privateering expeditions, capturing and confiscating
American ships. The Americans never effectively threatened Lower Canada. They
attempted to capture Montréal in 1813, but the attempts were blocked by British
victories at Crysler’s Farm and Châteauguay. However, the 1813 American naval
victory at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie renewed the threat to Upper Canada, whose
survival depended on command of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. American
forces occupied parts of the colony and burned its capital, York (now Toronto),
but got little support from the inhabitants.
When the war ended in 1815, the
attempted American conquest had been defeated. The war had strengthened
anti-American feeling, particularly in Upper Canada, and increased the belief
that British North America had a separate destiny. See also War of
1812.
D2 | Expansion |
D2a | The Fur Trade and Western Exploration |
Bringing all of the northern
regions under British rule did not stop the fur trade competition between
Montréal and Hudson Bay. The French merchants of Montréal were joined by and
gradually replaced by Scots. Gradually the Montréalers formed a cartel, the
North West Company (NWC). Competition from the Nor’Westers, as the NWC people
were called, forced the HBC to move inland from its posts on the bayshore, and
the companies fought a fierce, costly battle from 1775 to 1821. The rivalry
accelerated exploration of the west as fur traders sought new routes and
suppliers. Nor’Wester Sir Alexander Mackenzie followed the Mackenzie River to
the Arctic Ocean in 1789, and in 1793 he reached the Pacific. Nor’Wester Simon
Fraser reached the mouth of the Fraser River, near modern-day Vancouver, British
Columbia, in 1808. David Thompson, who followed the Columbia River to its mouth
in 1811, mapped much of western Canada for the NWC.
The fur trade shaped development on
the Pacific coast. Sea otters, which bear one of the world’s finest furs, ranged
along that coast from Alaska to California. Russian and Spanish traders
exploited this resource, but Britain pushed them out of what is now British
Columbia after explorations by its captains James Cook (1778) and George
Vancouver (1792). In a brief period, the fur traders nearly exterminated the sea
otter, although a few survived in Alaska.
The enmity of the companies colored
the history of western settlement. Assiniboia, the first colony west of the
Great Lakes, was begun at Red River in Rupert’s Land in 1812. It was the project
of a major HBC stockholder, Lord Selkirk. The North West Company saw it as an
HBC attempt to block their east-west trade route, which ran through Red River.
The Métis, mixed-blood offspring of fur traders and indigenous people, already
had communities in Red River; they sided with the Nor’Westers. The colony’s
first governor, Miles Macdonell, set the tone when he issued restrictions on
trade. In 1816 the second governor, Robert Semple, and 20 men were killed in a
gunfight with Métis while trying to enforce the restrictions. Other violence
occurred as the HBC and NWC vied for dominance.
In 1821 the competition between the
fur trade companies ended when the NWC merged into the HBC. The HBC took over
the NWC’s trading area and also administered the Oregon Country, claimed by both
Britain and the United States (see Northwest Boundary Dispute).
Montréal’s fur trade dwindled as Hudson Bay became the major shipping point for
furs going to Europe. The HBC came to dominate British interests on the Pacific,
developing a network of trading forts. In 1843 the HBC built Fort Victoria (now
Victoria, capital of British Columbia) on Vancouver Island as its Pacific
headquarters. As population grew around the forts, HBC administrators, notably
Sir James Douglas, later known as the father of British Columbia, played
important roles in making the transition to colonial government. Gradually the
fur trade’s role in the Canadian economy faded, although a commercial fur trade
continued in the west and north.
D2b | Immigration and Settlement |
At the beginning of the 19th
century a flood of immigrants came to British North America from England,
Scotland, and Ireland. Probably a million people migrated from these countries
to British North America between 1815 and 1850. By the 1840s, British North
America had 1.5 million people: 650,000 in Lower Canada, 450,000 in Upper
Canada, and more than 300,000 in Atlantic Canada. About half the immigrants were
English, but Irish immigrants became more numerous than English in the 1830s,
and particularly after 1845, when famine struck Ireland. Scots immigration
increased when tenant farmers in the Scottish Highlands were evicted from their
land to allow large-scale sheep farming. The immigrants from Ireland and
Scotland included both Catholics and Protestants, and Catholics became a sizable
minority in all the English-speaking colonies.
People who had acquired land and
wanted to establish colonies recruited other immigrants. Lord Selkirk encouraged
immigration not only to Red River, but also to Prince Edward Island and Upper
Canada. The Canada Company, a land company chartered by the British government,
sought settlers for the large tract of Upper Canada that it acquired in 1826.
Most people, however, came on their own. They risked the dangers of the passage
and periodic outbreaks of shipborne cholera (particularly in 1832) and typhus
(1847).
The greatest number of these
immigrants settled in Upper Canada, which was considered “a good poor man’s
country” because immigrants willing to work hard for a generation or more could
acquire potentially valuable farmland. Upper Canada became the fastest-growing
part of British North America. Atlantic Canada also attracted many immigrants,
though fewer went to Newfoundland than to the other colonies. In Lower Canada,
immigration caused the English-speaking population to grow in Québec City, the
Ottawa River valley, Montréal, and the Eastern Townships (east of Montréal).
French Canadians, however, remained the largest ethnic group in Lower
Canada.
Immigration made the colonies more
British. It also made the indigenous nations minorities in most areas east of
the Great Lakes. Land cession treaties gave them small reserves, but the hunting
rights and other guarantees made to them in these treaties were rarely
respected. Few immigrants went far west or north, and the indigenous nations
remained dominant in the vast HBC lands. On the plains, the mounted hunting
societies, who did not depend on the fur trade, lived independently on the
still-abundant bison. The Red River colony continued, but the additions to its
population were chiefly Métis, who were proud of their role as a new people
different from both the indigenous peoples and the Europeans. There was little
contact with the colonies to the east before midcentury. Then, however, as Upper
Canada’s farm population grew, some of its leaders began considering the west as
potential space for expansion.
D2c | Timber and Gold |
Britain continued to be important
to the economic development of its North American colonies, supplying trade
opportunities and investment. During its wars with France, Britain was cut off
from its timber sources in Europe, and it turned to British North America for
timber. Timber production became a vital industry, and wood quickly replaced
furs as the leading export of British North America. The timber trade encouraged
shipbuilding, and by midcentury Atlantic Canada was building and operating a
long-distance sailing fleet. Merchants prospered in Halifax and Yarmouth, Nova
Scotia; Saint John, New Brunswick; St. John’s, Newfoundland; and other
seaports.
The Fraser River gold rush of 1858
brought new settlers and new interest to the Pacific coast. The colony of
British Columbia was formed that year out of the HBC territory, and in 1866 it
incorporated the colony of Vancouver’s Island (the old name of Vancouver
Island), which had been created in 1849. Its settlers, a mix of British,
Canadians, and Americans, with a few Chinese, had begun to ship timber, salmon,
and coal, as well as gold, from the colony, but they were still outnumbered by
the indigenous population of the coast.
D3 | Political Changes |
D3a | Growth of Self-Government |
The act of 1791 established
assemblies, in both Upper and Lower Canada, that were representative in that
most adult males could vote in elections for these bodies. Britain conceded that
its colonists were entitled to representative institutions, but it did not want
a repeat of the American Revolution. It was widely believed among the British
that the revolution had resulted from allowing too much independence in the 13
colonies. Britain therefore wanted to bind the British North Americans more
securely to the British Empire—the group of dominions, colonies, and other
territories around the world that owed allegiance to the British crown—by
establishing a colonial elite similar to the powerful British landed
aristocracy. To that end, Britain balanced the power of elected assemblies with
the authority of the governor-general and lieutenant governors from Britain, who
were assisted by an appointed legislative council for each colony. The council
members were drawn from the elite (English speakers in Upper Canada, and both
English and French speakers in Lower Canada).
Ties to Britain were fostered by
feelings of rivalry toward the United States. Edward Winslow, a Loyalist founder
of New Brunswick, believed that his province would be “the envy of the United
States.” John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, welcomed
American settlers because he believed that Upper Canada would show them that the
British system of government was superior to American republicanism. Even in
French-speaking Lower Canada, the church and the aristocracy accepted British
rule. The rural population in Lower Canada also had no wish to be assimilated by
the alien Americans, since its way of life seemed protected under British
rule.
D3b | Radicals and Reformers |
A colonial aristocracy never
developed in British North America. Most colonists were small farmers, fishers,
or artisans. In an increasingly commercial society, commerce was a more
important source of wealth and influence than land, and egalitarian values were
much more strongly entrenched in Canada than in Europe. The appointed councils,
as intended, dominated government in all the colonies; however, most Canadians,
who criticized them as self-seeking cliques of officeholders, did not accept
them as leaders. Council members tried to fend off their critics by pointing to
the prosperity and growth achieved under British rule and equating change with
disloyalty and Americanism.
Two groups—radicals and
reformers—opposed the autocratic rule of the appointed councils. The radicals
looked to American and French political models and called for republican
institutions, elections for all public offices, and the overthrow of all forms
of privilege and inequality. By the mid-1820s, the fiery Scots-born Upper
Canadian journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie was the most vigorous
advocate of the radical platform. The more moderate reformers defended British
institutions and ties to the British monarchy and empire. They campaigned for
responsible government, meaning a parliamentary system where the monarchy’s
advisers in each colony would be picked from, and responsible to, an elected
legislature. Prominent reformers included Anglo-Irish lawyer W. W. Baldwin in
Upper Canada, French Canadian journalist Étienne Parent in Lower Canada, and
journalist Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia.
D3c | The Rebellions of 1837 |
In Lower Canada, the movement for
political change threatened to become a revolution. Lower Canada’s farming
economy suffered from overcrowding and soil exhaustion. French Canadian society
was threatened with a decline in living standards and gradual impoverishment.
Ethnic conflict exacerbated this economic challenge. French Canadians were
concentrated in the hard-pressed countryside while British immigrants dominated
the towns, where they controlled commerce and industry and had the ear of
government. Continued immigration threatened French Canadian predominance, even
in the countryside.
French Canadian lawyers,
journalists, and others blamed French Canada’s problems on British domination.
They warned that French Canadians would become merely the impoverished servants
of British commercial interests and argued that the solution lay in a French
Canadian nation. Nationalism, an almost unknown concept in the 18th century,
became a powerful factor in Lower Canadian politics.
Lower Canada’s assembly became the
center of conflict between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians. The
assembly was dominated by the Patriote Party, which was supported by French
Canadian voters and led by French Canadian middle-class professionals. Some
English-speaking reformers also supported it. The assembly, however, was
constantly opposed by the British governors and their appointed councils. In
1834 the assembly requested fundamental changes, embodied in a document called
the Ninety-Two Resolutions. Britain rejected the Ninety-Two Resolutions in 1837
and authorized the governor to override the assembly almost entirely. Mass
protests were called and soon turned into armed rebellion. See Rebellions
of 1837.
Patriote leader Louis Joseph
Papineau, a seigneur who wanted to preserve or restore many aspects of
traditional French Canadian society, was a reluctant revolutionary who soon fled
across the border to exile in the United States. But radical urban professionals
and disgruntled rural peasants joined forces against British rule. In November
1837 they defeated British soldiers at Saint-Denis, but about two weeks later at
Saint-Eustache, the British prevailed in a fierce conflict in which several
hundred were killed or wounded. Within a few days after that battle, the British
military dispersed all the rebel forces. The constitution was suspended, and
British control in the colony was soon restored. In November 1838 a second brief
outbreak, organized by Patriote exiles in the United States, was also
quelled.
Armed rebellion also broke out in
Upper Canada. In elections called in 1836 by a new governor, Francis Bond Head,
supporters of the government had won a majority of the assembly seats. Radicals
lost hope for peaceful change. Amidst a brief economic downturn that made times
hard for Upper Canadian farmers, William Lyon Mackenzie called on his supporters
in rural Upper Canada to march on Toronto in December 1837. Head had sent the
local garrison to Lower Canada, but loyal citizens quickly defeated the small,
ill-organized rising, with only one death in the fighting around Toronto.
Mackenzie and many supporters fled to the United States and attempted to foment
further risings from a base on Navy Island in the Niagara River.
E | The Union Period: 1841-1867 |
E1 | The Durham Report |
Defeat shattered the radical cause in
both Lower and Upper Canada, but the outbreak of rebellion also discredited the
office-holding cliques and the constitutions of 1791. The beneficiary was the
moderate approach of the reformers, which had been overshadowed during the
rebellions. John George Lambton, Lord Durham, a British reformer sent as
governor-general in 1838, condemned the ruling elites of the Canadas and urged
that responsible government be implemented. Durham was alarmed by ethnic
conflict in Lower Canada, where he said he found “two nations warring in the
bosom of a single state.” He concluded that assimilation of the French Canadians
was the only solution to ethnic strife.
The British government soon acted on
Durham’s report. In 1841 the Act of Union (1840) created the province of Canada,
which had two sections—Canada West (which had been Upper Canada) and Canada East
(Lower Canada). French Canadians protested because English-speaking Canada West
was given as many legislative seats as French-speaking Canada East, which had a
larger population. In addition, English was to be the only official language.
The arrangement was designed to advance Durham’s goal of assimilation, but his
recommendation for responsible government was not implemented. Governors-general
sent from Britain were expected to seek the support of the elected assembly but
did not depend on it.
As it turned out, however,
assimilation failed and responsible government triumphed. Reformers from Canada
West and East, led respectively by Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte
LaFontaine, joined forces in a coalition that overrode ethnic divisions and
showed that success in Union politics depended on bicultural support. Baldwin
and LaFontaine repeatedly insisted that the governors-general take the
assembly’s advice in making official appointments. When one governor-general
refused, in 1843, the two men resigned and dissolved the administration.
Finally, in 1847, Britain sent out a new governor-general, Durham’s nephew Lord
Elgin, with instructions to appoint a Canadian government supported by the
majority party in the assembly and to approve its policies whether he liked them
or not. Responsible government was achieved when Baldwin and LaFontaine returned
to office in 1848.
Joseph Howe’s reform party had
already won the same victory in Nova Scotia earlier in the year. Responsible
government soon followed in New Brunswick in 1854, in Prince Edward Island in
1851, and in Newfoundland in 1855. Britain retained authority for foreign
affairs, defense, and other matters and still appointed the governors, but
British North America had full local self-government with one of the broadest
electoral franchises in the world. All men could vote provided they held
property worth a certain amount, and most of them qualified. However, the secret
ballot was rare until the 1870s, the universal vote for adult males came only
gradually, and women had no vote until 1917.
Although there were many political
factions, two broad party coalitions developed throughout the colonies.
Reformers or liberals, nicknamed Grits in Canada West and Rouges in Canada East,
promoted universal education, individual rights, and the interests of farmers
and small-business owners. Conservatives, called Tories in Canada West and Bleus
in Canada East, built a coalition that combined loyalty to Britain and respect
for tradition with a willingness to use state power to support capitalist
enterprise. Conservative allies John Alexander Macdonald, who later became the
first prime minister of Canada, and George-Étienne Cartier, a Patriote rebel
turned railroad lawyer, were the most successful politicians of the period.
E2 | Nineteenth-Century Society |
E2a | English-Speaking Society |
The Union period saw great changes
in British North America. Population growth continued and was particularly rapid
in Canada West. Commerce and industry encouraged urban growth. The cities, and
colonial society generally, came to be dominated and defined by a confident,
prosperous middle class.
The first Canadian passenger
railroad was built near Montréal in 1836, and in the 1850s thousands of
kilometers of track and telegraph lines were laid. The Reciprocity Treaty of
1854 reduced customs tariffs and increased trade between British North America
and the United States.
The midcentury period was Atlantic
Canada’s golden age, when it prospered from building wooden ships and sailing
them in overseas trade. British North America’s shipping fleet was exceeded only
by those of Britain and the United States. Shipyards all over the region
produced a quarter of the British Empire’s merchant fleet and helped launch
careers like that of Sir Samuel Cunard, the Halifax-born founder of the Cunard
shipping line. The merchant elite, with ties to London, Boston, and other major
cities, became wealthy and supported schools and universities. Nova Scotia saw
itself as the cultural capital of British North America.
Most of the English-speaking
population was proud of its connection to the British Empire and wished to
maintain it, although aspiring at the same time to move from colonial status to
greater self-rule. It was generally believed that hard work, industrialization,
and attention to commerce would inevitably achieve the progress that would bring
this about. The symbol of the era to English speakers was Britain’s monarch,
Queen Victoria (reigned 1837-1901), whose personal stability and moral
uprightness seemed to personify British virtues.
Protestant churches were important
in English-speaking society; most people belonged to the Church of England, the
Methodists, or the Presbyterians. The churches provided social services, a role
that the state had yet to take on. Middle-class citizens embarked on moral
crusades to defeat the liquor traffic, protect the Sabbath, eliminate
prostitution and gambling, ban lewd literature, and improve the moral education
of schoolchildren and the poor.
Women of English-speaking society
in that era were expected to restrict themselves to domestic concerns. They were
excluded from most fields of commerce and higher education as well as from
politics. Men and women were expected to operate in so-called separate spheres.
This meant, however, that women had great authority in the home and over the
young, and also in defining public morals and social standards. Women gradually
came to dominate elementary teaching and many areas of social and charitable
work, and they were crucial leaders and supporters of religious campaigns and
temperance crusades. See also Women’s Rights.
E2b | French-Speaking Society |
Under responsible government,
French Canadians had the voting power to ensure the status of the French
language and to continue the Catholic Church’s control of education in Canada
East. Thus the union that was intended to assimilate French Canada actually
protected its individuality. More municipal and local governments were formed,
and these governments invested in expanded public education, transportation, and
other public services. The seignorial system was abolished, and the old French
civil law modernized.
During the Union era, French
Canada’s rural crisis began to ease. Farm communities became better connected to
markets, and farmers began to shift into mixed commercial farming and dairying.
A migration to the cities, to frontier areas, and to New England relieved rural
population pressure. The Catholic Church greatly expanded its social action and
its political influence. Under dynamic leaders like Ignace Bourget, bishop of
Montréal from 1840 to 1885, the church for the first time was abundantly
provided with French Canadian clergy. They developed schools, hospitals, and
other social services that were elsewhere run by the state. Education and
literacy for the first time became widely available to rural French Canada. The
church, however, was very slow to accept social change. It fought hard to
control French Canada’s cultural life and to discredit the secular ideas of the
radicals of 1837, such as separation of church and state. Reformist ideas
survived, however, among supporters of the minority Rouge party.
F | Building the Nation: 1867-1929 |
F1 | Confederation |
F1a | Developing the Plan of Union |
Serious discussion of a union of
all the British North American colonies began in 1864 with a proposal to unite
the three Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island. Delegates from the legislatures of the three colonies agreed to discuss
union at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. At the last minute, delegates from
the province of Canada joined them.
The Canadian decision to attend
resulted from a political crisis over representation in Canada’s assembly.
Canada West’s Reform Party, led by journalist George Brown, objected to Canada
West’s having no more legislative seats than Canada East had. Canada West had
grown much larger than Canada East, and the Grits demanded representation by
population. Canada East, fearing the power of an English-speaking majority,
refused to accept this. Thwarted, Brown proposed federalism: Canada East and
West would become separate provinces, either in a loose union between them or in
a federation of all of British North America. In June 1864 Brown’s Grits joined
the Tories, led by Macdonald, and the Bleus, led by Cartier, in a three-way
coalition pledged to explore those options. The Charlottetown meeting in
September gave the coalition the chance to propose a British North American
union to the Maritime colonies.
The plan, which came to be called
Confederation, fired the imaginations of the delegates at Charlottetown. The
potential for a transcontinental nation and a national destiny inspired
enthusiasm. The delegates agreed to meet again at a larger, longer meeting in
Québec in October 1864. At this Québec Conference, delegates of Canada, New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland approved the
Seventy-two Resolutions, which were a draft constitution for Confederation. The
Québec Conference proposed a centralized federation, with most powers granted to
a central government responsible to a parliament. However, there would be
provincial governments with specified powers over property, language, education,
religion, and generally all matters of local concern. Special protection for
religious and linguistic minorities reassured the French Canadian leaders in
Canada East. The status of the monarch of Britain as the head of state and the
ceremonial status of the governor-general were preserved unchanged.
Confederation did not confer full
national independence, for Canadian opinion still favored a link to Britain as a
guarantee against American domination. Britain retained control of foreign
affairs and could theoretically veto Canadian legislation. Nevertheless Canada’s
status as a dominion—a locally autonomous state within the British Empire—became
the model for the future evolution of the British Commonwealth of Nations as a
partnership of equals.
F1b | The Approval Process |
The Seventy-two Resolutions had to
be ratified by the colonial assemblies and then voted into law by Britain’s
Parliament. Confederation was debated vigorously in the colonies from 1864 to
1867. It was popular in Canada West but more controversial in Canada East. The
Rouges accused Cartier and his allies of betraying French Canada, but most
politicians and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Canada East supported
Confederation. It was quickly approved by the joint assembly of Canada.
Confederation was also
controversial in the Atlantic colonies, where many were reluctant to join a
union that Canada East and West were sure to dominate. The assemblies of Prince
Edward Island and Newfoundland refused to ratify the Seventy-two Resolutions. In
New Brunswick, vigorous opposition forced elections that were won by candidates
opposed to Confederation. However, the anticonfederate government could offer no
persuasive alternative to a federal union. Raids in 1866 by Fenians,
anti-British rebels based in the United States, created a sense of crisis and
national solidarity, and the same year New Brunswick reelected the government of
Confederation supporter Samuel Leonard Tilley. In Nova Scotia, opposition to the
Seventy-two Resolutions was led by Joseph Howe, and at first the province
refused to ratify Confederation. However, as New Brunswick committed to
Confederation, the Nova Scotia assembly voted to send delegates to the London
conference where Canadians worked with British officials to draft a final
version of the Resolutions to submit to Parliament. The colonial delegates made
some small changes to the resolutions, and the result was the British North
America Act, which was passed by the British Parliament. On July 1, 1867, the
Dominion of Canada, with four provinces—Québec (formerly Canada East), Ontario
(formerly Canada West), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia—came into being. Ottawa
was chosen as the national capital.
Macdonald was appointed as the
first prime minister of the Dominion, and an election was set for August.
Macdonald’s coalition, into which he had drawn many of the advocates of
Confederation, won the election. Nova Scotia overwhelmingly supported
anti-Confederation candidates, however, and it appeared for a while as if Nova
Scotia might attempt to secede. Macdonald negotiated with Howe, and the danger
of secession was removed in 1869 when Howe, acknowledging that Britain would not
repeal confederation, joined Macdonald’s government.
In 1871 Macdonald participated,
under British supervision, in negotiating the Treaty of Washington on
Canadian-American relations. The treaty acknowledged that Canada would remain
closely allied to Britain but that this allegiance would not pose a threat to
American interests. Britain withdrew its last garrisons from Canada in 1871,
confirming that the British Empire would not challenge the supremacy of the
United States in North America.
F2 | Completing the Design |
F2a | Territorial Expansion |
Westward expansion was an early
Canadian priority. In 1869 the Hudson’s Bay Company agreed to sell to Canada its
northern territories—Rupert’s Land and The North-Western Territory—which
together became the Northwest Territories. This new territory made Canada, with
just 3.7 million people, one of the world’s largest nations in land area. The
traditionally autonomous Métis of Red River, who had never been consulted,
resisted annexation. They feared that they would lose their land and be
overwhelmed by farmers migrating west from Ontario.
They organized in the Red River
Rebellion to protect their land rights, their way of life, and—for the
French-speaking Métis—their language and religion. Louis Riel, a young Red River
Métis educated in Montréal, declared a provisional government for the Red River
area and blocked the arrival of Canadian officials. Negotiations resulted in Red
River entering the Confederation as the province of Manitoba, and the French
language, Catholic education, and other rights were protected. The Canadian
government promised to reserve 566,580 hectares (1.4 million acres) of land for
the Métis.
However, when British troops
established Canadian authority in Red River, anti-Métis feeling was so strong
that Riel was obliged to go into exile. Waves of immigration from Ontario soon
made the Métis a minority in Manitoba, and the newcomers were hostile to them.
In addition, most of the land grants that had been promised to the Métis were
delayed by the government. As a result, many of the Métis who were bison hunters
migrated farther west to the Saskatchewan River valley.
Confederation soon expanded in the
west, east, and north. British Columbia agreed to join after Canada committed to
building a railroad to the Pacific coast within ten years. It became the sixth
province in 1871. On the east coast, Prince Edward Island became the seventh
province in 1873. Britain transferred the Arctic Archipelago to Canada in 1880,
completing the Canadian territory except for Newfoundland and Labrador, which
remained separate until 1949. Also in 1880, land was taken from the Northwest
Territories to enlarge Manitoba. In 1912 Manitoba received another grant of
land, and the remainder of the Northwest Territories on the south and east of
Hudson Bay was divided between Ontario and Québec.
F2b | Treaty Making |
In 1873 Canada created the
North-West Mounted Police, now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or Mounties,
to help administer the territories and keep order there. Treaties were
negotiated with the indigenous nations with the intention of opening the Great
Plains to agriculture. Eleven numbered treaties were signed with the indigenous
nations across Canada between 1850 and 1929, opening their lands to occupation.
In general, the treaties provided some material compensation for transfer of
lands to Euro-Canadians and provided for the establishment of reserves across
the country. However, there were lapses in coverage: In British Columbia,
treaties covered only a few small places, while in the Northwest and Yukon
territories, treaties were not signed at all.
The once nomadic peoples of the
plains were crowded into reserves. The reserve lands were allotted by headcount.
The government typically was to provide schools, farm tools and agricultural
assistance, and fishing and hunting rights as these had previously been enjoyed.
Governments intent on assimilating the indigenous peoples honored few of these
commitments. In some areas, for instance, the reserves were smaller than
promised or were never provided at all. By 1901 Canada’s indigenous peoples
numbered about 100,000, barely 2 percent of the country’s population, and they
were confined to reserves everywhere outside the far north. See also
Native Americans of North America.
F2c | Railroad to the Pacific |
Building the transcontinental
railroad became the great challenge of the Confederation. The first attempt
collapsed in the Pacific Scandal of 1872 and 1873. Macdonald was driven from
office after he was found to have accepted campaign funds from Montréal
financier Sir Hugh Allen in exchange for the railroad contract. The election
that followed made Alexander Mackenzie, a Liberal from Ontario, the new prime
minister. Mackenzie’s Liberals were lukewarm about the railroad commitment and
its huge costs, particularly during the economic recession of the mid-1870s.
Macdonald and the Conservatives returned to power in 1878, the economy improved,
and the railroad advanced.
The Canadian Pacific Railway, a
private company supported by generous federal land grants and other assistance,
was incorporated in 1881 to complete the project and operate the railroad. A
dynamic American general manager, William C. Van Horne, pushed the rails across
the plains, through the Canadian Shield, and into the previously unsurveyed
Rockies. Particularly in British Columbia, laborers imported from China dug the
tunnels, built the trestles, and laid the track, enduring deadly hazards at low
pay. The transcontinental line was completed in 1885. In 1886 the Canadian
Pacific extended the line 32 km (20 mi) from Port Moody and founded the Pacific
coast metropolis of Vancouver as a new western end point.
F2d | The Northwest Rebellion (1885) |
A second Métis rising, the
Northwest Rebellion, flared up in 1885, not in Manitoba but among newer Métis
settlements in the Saskatchewan valley farther west. Settlement was moving west
from Manitoba and catching up with the Métis who had moved there; once again
they feared being overrun and dispossessed. They summoned Louis Riel back from
exile to help defend their interests. Riel, driven by dreams of founding a
French-speaking, Catholic religious empire, led Métis fighters in a brief war
against Canadian authority. His general, veteran bison hunter Gabriel Dumont,
defeated the Mounties at Duck Lake and drove them from Fort Carleton.
Like the Métis, the Cree and other
Plains indigenous nations were struggling with poverty, loss of independence,
and the loss of the great bison herds. Indigenous leaders, notably
Pitikwahanapiwiyan (or Poundmaker) of the Cree and Isapo-muxika (or Crowfoot) of
the Blackfoot, foresaw the result of armed conflict and sought to avoid it.
However, a few renegades of the Cree nation joined in the rebellion, attacking
settlers and Canadian forces.
Canada rushed troops westward on
the new railroad, and the Métis were overwhelmed at the battle of Batoche, May
12, 1885. Riel was tried for treason. He rejected an insanity defense and was
hanged in November 1885. The Métis defense of their community’s rights in the
West elicited the sympathy of many people in Québec, and Riel’s execution
spurred French Canadian resentment against English Canadian dominance in the
Confederation. See also French Canadian Nationalism.
F2e | Growth of Provincial Power |
Prime Minister John A. Macdonald
was committed to a strong central government, but he was unable to prevent
provincial governments from challenging his view of the British North America
Act. Oliver Mowat, premier of the province of Ontario between 1872 and 1896,
asserted provincial sovereignty against federal efforts to subordinate the
provincial governments to Ottawa. In a series of rulings on the BNA Act, the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London (a British court to which
Canadian cases could still be appealed) mostly supported Mowat’s interpretation.
Federal powers to overrule provincial governments rapidly faded from use,
ensuring the provinces an important place in Canadian political life.
Mowat did not fight his campaign
alone. Honoré Mercier, premier of Québec from 1887 to 1891, linked provincial
rights with French Canadian nationalism. He promoted Québec’s provincial
government as the defender of the French Canadian nation within Canada. He also
promoted French Catholic colonization of frontier areas of Québec and northern
Ontario as an alternative to emigration and assimilation in New England. In 1887
Mercier called a conference of provincial premiers, and at this conference
Mercier, Mowat, and three more of the seven provincial premiers demanded
transfer of power to the provinces. Federal-provincial rivalries became an
essential part of Canadian politics.
F3 | Growth and Development |
F3a | Industrial Growth |
Except for the five-year
interruption of the Mackenzie government, Macdonald was prime minister from 1867
to 1891. Nation building and loyalty to monarch and empire were the trademarks
of his later administrations. In 1878 his Conservative Party introduced the
National Policy. This was a package of tariffs, or taxes on imports from abroad,
designed to make them more expensive and thereby give a price advantage to
Canadian manufacturers. Gradually the term was broadened to cover all of
Macdonald’s nation-building activities, including western expansion, railroads,
and immigration. The policy also included links, both symbolic and practical,
with Britain and the empire. The Conservatives used “National Policy” as a
slogan into the 1930s.
All parts of Canada hoped to
benefit from industrial development. The new cities on the CPR track, like
Vancouver and Winnipeg, wanted products to ship by rail. The Atlantic provinces
were looking for new industry because their golden age of shipbuilding was
declining as steel and iron ships replaced wooden ones. Some industrial projects
did develop in Nova Scotia, but the main areas of industrialization were
southern Ontario and Montréal. Industry grew rapidly in these areas, and
population shifted from rural areas to cities. Many central Canadian industries
became national enterprises, shipping their products west and east on the new
railroads. Eaton’s, a Toronto department store, became a national retailer. The
Massey-Harris Company of Toronto became the largest corporation in Canada and
the largest farm-implements firm in the empire.
Montréal had been the economic and
financial capital of Canada, but now Toronto challenged it in its new role as a
center of industry. The spread of industrial capitalism also saw more Canadians
become wage-earning urban workers, who organized to improve their situation.
Wage labor and labor rights movements were not new to Canada. Skilled tradesmen
such as printers, coopers, and bakers had begun organizing as early as the
1830s; and in the 1840s workers on canal-building projects had rioted for better
conditions. During the 1870s labor organizations began to campaign for the
nine-hour workday. The first Canadian law legalizing labor unions was passed in
1872. The Trades and Labour Congress linked unions across Canada in the 1880s.
At the same time, the radical Knights of Labor sought to unite all workers
regardless of skill, sex, or race, with the exception of Chinese immigrants,
whom they barred from their ranks. In 1894 Labour Day—the first Monday in
September—became an official national holiday. See also Labor Unions in
Canada.
In 1896 gold was discovered in the
Klondike region of Yukon Territory, and by 1897 thousands of people rushed there
to search for gold. This was just one economic bonanza for Canada at the turn of
the 20th century. Industry and commerce expanded in central Canada, and the
country’s vast mineral wealth and hydroelectric power resources were being
rapidly developed. As small-scale manufacturing evolved into large corporate
enterprises, Canada acquired a new class of millionaires. Railroads sprouted
everywhere; eventually there were three competing transcontinental rail systems,
the Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern, and National Transcontinental.
F3b | Immigration |
As prosperity increased,
immigration also grew. Late in the 19th century, new arrivals had barely
exceeded those leaving Canada, most often for the United States. In the first
decade of the 20th century, however, more than a million people came and stayed.
The population grew 34 percent from 1901 to 1911, and another 22 percent—to 8
million—by 1921. The great majority of the immigrants came to the
English-speaking areas of Canada.
The immigrants came partly from
Britain and the United States, but for the first time Canada recruited large
numbers from eastern Europe. They left their homes to escape poverty and
political strife, and were attracted to Canada by promises of free land made to
them by Canadian recruiters. They crossed the Atlantic on steamships run by the
Canadian Pacific and often headed west on immigrant trains to settle on the vast
tracts of farmland that the Canadian Pacific had been granted by the government.
They lived in sod huts, broke the prairie soil, and planted Marquis wheat, a new
variety that Canadian government scientists had developed for prairie
conditions. Settlement expanded across the prairie lands, and two new provinces,
Alberta and Saskatchewan, were created out of the Northwest Territories in
1905.
Many Canadians, however, feared and
resented the presence of non-British foreigners. A powerful backlash developed
against them, as it did against the Asian immigrants to British Columbia and the
Jewish, Italian, and other migrants to the eastern cities. For instance, a head
tax was imposed on Chinese immigrants in the 1880s, which prevented most Chinese
men from bringing their families to Canada. During World War I (1914-1918),
wartime fears were added to existing suspicions, and thousands of aliens were
interned. In addition, aliens from enemy countries who had been naturalized
after 1902 were stripped of the right to vote.
F4 | Canada and the Empire |
F4a | Laurier |
Prime Minister Macdonald died in
office in 1891, and his Conservative Party was swept from power in 1896. The new
prime minister was Wilfrid Laurier, a charming, cultivated Québec lawyer who
liked to say “sunny ways” were better than stormy conflicts. Laurier shrewdly
took over popular Conservative policies, including the National Policy tariffs
and strong imperial ties. His prediction that “the 20th century belongs to
Canada” summed up the bright prospects of his early years in office.
Even with a French Canadian prime
minister, imperial sentiment thrived in Canada at the turn of the 20th century.
Since Confederation, Britain’s political empire and its economic power in the
world had grown greatly. Many British Canadians believed it was Canada’s destiny
to help fund that empire. When the South African War, or Boer War (1899-1902),
broke out, the imperialists were eager for Canada to fight alongside Britain.
Laurier’s decision to support only limited, mostly volunteer participation by
Canadians annoyed imperialists, but it also provoked nationalist opinion in
Québec, now led by Henri Bourassa. See also French Canadian
Nationalism.
Bourassa, a grandson of Louis
Joseph Papineau, advocated a pan-Canadian, bicultural nationalism. Threatened by
the growing imperialism of British Canada, he broke with Laurier’s Liberals and
came to express French Canadian opposition to the policies of the
English-speaking majority. In the Manitoba Schools controversy of 1896, Laurier
had accepted Manitoba’s renunciation of guarantees made to its French population
in 1870. Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905 on an English-only
basis. Immigration was expanding the use of English, not French, in Canada, and
“equal rights” campaigners opposed any protection for French minority
communities in Canada. Such events reinforced Québec’s sense that only in Québec
was the French language and culture respected. Imperialists, meanwhile, found
Laurier insufficiently imperial. In 1910 they denounced his decision to build a
small Canadian navy instead of contributing to Britain’s Royal Navy.
Laurier’s Liberal Party returned to
its free-trade roots in 1911, when the United States proposed mutual cuts in
tariffs and customs duties, known as reciprocity. The election that followed was
a disaster for Laurier. Prominent American politicians hailed reciprocity as a
step to the annexation of Canada. Concern over American ambitions reinforced
imperial sentiment among British Canada. With his free trade denounced as a
threat to jobs and to the empire, Laurier was rejected in British Canada, even
as Bourassa undermined his base in French Canada. The Conservative Party won the
1911 election, and Robert Borden became prime minister.
F4b | World War I |
Although Canada had governed its
own domestic affairs since the 1840s, it had no independent foreign policy when
World War I began in August 1914. Britain’s declaration of war on Germany meant
that the entire empire, including Canada, was at war. The strength of the
imperial tie was demonstrated in Canada’s ready response. After a massive
recruiting effort, the first contingent of 32,000 men went overseas in October.
In April 1915 the Canadians suffered 6,000 casualties and endured the war’s
first poison-gas attack at Ieper, Belgium. Canada increased its commitment to
150,000 men. In 1916 Borden promised a half-million-man Canadian army, all
volunteers, from a population still under 8 million. Canadian soldiers achieved
notable victories, particularly at Vimy Ridge in the spring of 1917. Canada’s
army was overwhelmingly English-speaking but included some French Canadian
units, notably the distinguished 22nd Battalion. Many Canadians also served in
the Royal Flying Corps (a separate Royal Canadian Air Force was created in
1918). The small Canadian navy served mostly in home waters.
As the war went on, it began to
demand enormous efforts not only from Canadian army recruiters, but also from
industry and agriculture. The government coordinated industrial production for
military needs, and scandals erupted over corruption and war profiteering. To
help pay for the war, the federal government introduced the first Canadian
income tax as a “temporary” measure in 1917. The war effort encouraged social
changes, too. Women took over men’s places in industry and agriculture. Women’s
groups often supported the war effort vigorously. In 1917 women secured the
right to vote in federal elections if they had close relatives in the armed
forces; in 1918 they got that right without restriction. In the provinces, women
gained the vote between 1916 (Manitoba) and 1940 (Québec). See also Woman
Suffrage.
The war provoked increased tension
between English- and French-speaking Canadians. Henri Bourassa had helped elect
Borden’s government, but the nationalists and the imperialists were odd allies.
Québec became increasingly cool to what seemed to be an imperial crusade rather
than a Canadian cause. Relations became worse in 1917 when national conflict
arose over Ontario’s attempt to limit French education for its French-speaking
minority.
Borden, meanwhile, was demanding
more Canadian participation in planning and directing the imperial war effort.
With so many Canadians fighting and dying, deference to British authority became
difficult to support. Gradually Canadian forces were consolidated into a
Canadian Corps with Canadian commanders, answering to the Canadian government.
To achieve and hold that authority,
however, Canada had to provide the troops, and the army could not recruit enough
volunteers to meet its needs. In 1917 Borden proposed forming a coalition
government with the opposition Liberal Party in order to introduce military
conscription. Most of the English-speaking Liberals joined the coalition; most
of the Québec Liberals, including Laurier, did not, and the Liberal Party was
split. Helped by the votes of soldiers and their newly enfranchised female
relatives, the coalition won the 1917 wartime election, and conscription began
early in 1918.
Although conscription provided few
troops for the war effort, it split the country. It was overwhelmingly unpopular
in Québec, where there was massive resistance to military service. It left a
lasting conviction in Québec that in a crisis the English-speaking majority
would ignore French Canada’s views, no matter how strong they were. Meanwhile
the Canadian Corps, commanded by Canadian general Arthur Currie, helped
spearhead the final advances of Britain and its allies before an armistice ended
the war in November 1918. See also Canadian Forces.
F5 | Postwar Reorganization |
Canada had entered the war as part of
the British Empire, but the huge commitment and terrible losses—60,000 Canadians
died—strengthened its sense of nationhood. Thus Canada insisted on acting as a
sovereign power in treaty negotiations after the war and in the new
international body, the League of Nations. In 1926 the British government
acknowledged the equality of the dominions with Britain itself, and in 1931 the
British Statute of Westminster confirmed that Canada was a sovereign state.
There were some leftover details: Canadian Supreme Court decisions could be
appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until 1949, and Canada
had no procedure for amending its own constitution (which was an act of the
British parliament) until 1982. Canada and Britain remained economically and
politically linked, but Britain and the empire grew less effective as
counterweights to American influence.
After the war, Britain began to lose
its preeminence in world affairs, and the United States replaced it as the
largest foreign investor in Canada. Most of the American money was direct
investment: the purchase of Canadian companies or the establishment of branch
operations of American companies.
American cultural influence also
expanded with the increasing popularity of film, broadcasting, and other mass
media. In reaction to American influence, Canadians established the publicly
owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the 1930s. The CBC operated
French-language and English-language networks in radio and later in television.
Canadian achievements in art (notably the Group of Seven landscape painters), in
science (the discovery of insulin), and in other fields spurred Canadian
national pride.
The 1920s, which were called the
Roaring Twenties in the United States, did not roar in Canada. There was no
surge of prosperity. There were difficulties in absorbing soldiers and
converting industry from war production. One result was growing industrial
unrest. General strikes erupted in several cities, particularly Winnipeg, which
was rocked by a violent labor conflict in 1919.
The disturbances of the postwar years
provoked wild fears that Canadian democracy would be overthrown in favor of
Russian communism or socialism, both of which would drastically redistribute
wealth. Both doctrines did gain small footholds among workers and immigrants.
This in turn intensified negative feelings toward the labor movement and
foreigners in some segments of Canadian society.
In Atlantic Canada, attempts at
industrialization had failed to stop the economy’s slide that began with the
decline of shipping and shipbuilding, and the region was now relatively worse
off than the rest of the country. Underemployment and labor unrest were
constant, particularly in the coal and steel industries of Cape Breton Island.
Residents, complaining that confederation unfairly favored central Canada,
founded the Maritime Rights movement, which sought to revive Atlantic Canada by
changes to transportation, industrial, and tariff policies.
Vancouver and the resource economies
of western Canada benefited from the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, which
increased Pacific shipping. Prosperity eluded many westerners, however,
particularly on the prairies, and the prairie-based Progressive Party arose to
argue that while central Canada got cheap access to western resources,
westerners paid high prices for manufactured goods from central Canada. This was
because the manufactures, protected from outside competition by tariffs, went
for relatively high prices, while the prairie products—which were primarily food
and raw materials—had no such price supports.
The key political figure of the 1920s
was William Lyon Mackenzie King, leader of the Liberal Party, which formed a
government in 1921. King was the first Canadian party leader chosen by an
American-style convention, in which ordinary party members had a voice in
choosing their leaders. Formerly leaders had been chosen in party caucuses,
where the party’s members of Parliament chose and deposed leaders among
themselves. King was a master politician who dominated national politics for
almost 30 years. His wish to avoid international commitments and his resistance
to imperialism were widely shared in postwar Canada. Although he was from
Ontario and never learned French, he was acutely conscious of the support from
Québec that kept his government in office. King was one of the first prominent
Canadians not to accept a knighthood, and after 1935 Canadians ceased to be
entitled to British honors.
G | The Pursuit of Well-Being: 1929-1968 |
G1 | The Depression |
When the Great Depression, the
worldwide hard times of the 1930s, began in 1929, world trade was cut by half.
Markets for Canada’s resource industries, such as mining, timbering, and wheat
farming, declined rapidly. In addition, foreign investors invested less money in
Canada. The collapse spread throughout the economy, and by 1933 a third of the
Canadian workers were unemployed. Factories went out of business or ran far
below capacity. People who were still working faced uncertain prospects and deep
wage cuts, though the cost of living fell even faster.
Canada had few welfare programs, but
15 percent of all Canadians applied for the relief that was offered. Because the
provinces ran the welfare programs, nationwide coordination to attack the
problem was lacking. Perhaps the worst situation was on the prairies. Not only
did wheat prices fall by two-thirds, ruining many farmers who were already
burdened by debt, but a prolonged drought made agriculture difficult or
impossible for much of the decade. Things were little better in the rest of the
country, and thousands of workers drifted across the country seeking work or
food. Canada closed its doors to immigrants for the first time in centuries, and
even deported non-Canadians who were on relief.
G1a | Remedies and Reactions |
King’s Liberal Party government did
little to relieve the depression, and it was defeated in the election of 1930.
The new prime minister, Conservative Richard B. Bennett, was a wealthy Alberta
lawyer. Bennett at first expected the depression to be cured by the business
cycle, a cycle in which an economic downturn is ordinarily followed in a few
years by an upturn. He promised to deal harshly with social protest. He sought
to create jobs by securing preferential tariffs from Britain, which gave some
help to agriculture and the timber industry but not to the manufacturing sector.
Bennett became deeply hated by many depression victims. Automobiles without
engines, pulled by horses because their owners could not afford gasoline, were
called Bennett buggies. Unemployed men, collected into work camps in British
Columbia, launched the On to Ottawa Trek in 1935 to confront Bennett and inform
the nation of their need for better conditions. Bennett denounced them, and
police broke up the march in Regina, Saskatchewan. Bennett then ordered the
arrest of the leaders, which precipitated a riot in which a constable was killed
and several dozen persons injured.
There were several political
responses to the depression. Communist and other revolutionary movements, mostly
banned, flourished underground. Socialist movements from earlier decades united
in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Led by Methodist minister J.
S. Woodsworth, the CCF in 1933 issued its Regina Manifesto, in which it proposed
that major industries be nationalized, or put under government control, and that
a welfare state be established with unemployment insurance, health and welfare
programs, and pensions for all workers. The CCF became an influential third
party in federal politics; it also became a force in provincial politics,
particularly in the west. Another clergyman, evangelical preacher William
Aberhart of Alberta, launched Social Credit, a political movement that blamed
the depression on the financial system. The Social Credit Party did not reject
capitalism but proposed state regulation of prices and an increase in the money
supply to boost purchasing power.
The federal government moved slowly
into the social welfare field by starting to pay large percentages of the
provinces’ costs for old-age pensions and unemployment relief. Then in 1935,
with an election coming up and his popularity at a low ebb, Prime Minister
Bennett launched the Bennett New Deal. This program was modeled on its American
counterpart (see New Deal). It was designed to help the economy recover
by investing in projects that provided work for the unemployed and by providing
benefits for the jobless. It proposed minimum wages, maximum hours of work, and
unemployment insurance. However, Bennett’s New Deal proposal did not prevent a
crushing defeat for the Conservatives in the 1935 election.
After Bennett left office, the
courts ruled that most of his New Deal was unconstitutional. While the national
government had the power to raise revenue, they said, only the provinces had the
authority to intervene in the economy or launch social programs. The
constitutional bar to federal aid programs left many citizens deeply frustrated
with the Canadian political system. In 1937 King appointed the Rowell-Sirois
commission of inquiry, which recommended shifts in federal and provincial powers
to address the problem. The increase in federal power was heatedly opposed by
Québec premier Maurice Duplessis, a French Canadian nationalist, and Ontario
premier Mitchell Hepburn, a strong provincial-rights advocate.
G2 | World War II |
Although the economy stopped its
decline about 1933, it did not recover completely until the outbreak of World
War II in 1939. When World War II broke out between the Allied powers and the
Axis powers, led by Germany, Canada entered the war grudgingly but with a
widespread sense that it could not be avoided. King’s government insisted that
Canada control its own war effort, and King at first hoped that the training of
aircrews and the production of arms might be Canada’s main contributions. Both
King and his powerful Québec lieutenant, Ernest Lapointe, promised that there
would be no conscription for overseas service.
However, a Canadian all-volunteer
army went to Britain, and with the tide of Axis victories in 1940, the Canadian
commitment grew. The Canadian navy joined in the battle to defend Atlantic
convoys against submarine attack. Canadian pilots and aircrews defended Britain
and joined in a bomber offensive against the parts of Europe occupied by the
Axis. Meanwhile, in 1940 and 1941, Canadian-American agreements on the defense
of North America and the financing of the war effort marked the end of Canada’s
policy of relying on the British alliance to avoid American influence.
The issue of conscription soon came
up again. With recruits urgently needed, King’s government held a plebiscite in
1942, asking to be released from its no-conscription pledge. The
English-speaking majority consented; Québec did not. Although King was under
pressure from the Conservatives to begin conscription immediately, he delayed
and fired his pro-conscription defense minister, Colonel J. L. Ralston. When
conscription was eventually introduced in late 1944, it remained unpopular in
Québec, but King’s obvious reluctance to impose it had eased the crisis. As in
World War I (1914-1918), few conscripts served overseas.
At home, industry and capital were
mobilized to support the war effort, many products were rationed, and women
returned to a booming labor force. After Japan entered the war in 1941,
thousands of Japanese Canadians were interned and moved inland from Canada’s
Pacific coast. The government seized their assets and sold them.
As the war spread across the world,
the Canadian army fought unsuccessfully to defend Hong Kong against Japanese
attack in 1941 and to seize the German-held French seaport of Dieppe in 1942.
Canadians fought in Italy in 1943 and 1944, and participated in the D-Day
landings and the liberation of northern France and the Low Countries in 1944 and
1945. Naval and air forces continued grim struggles at sea and over Europe.
Between 1939 and 1945, 42,000 Canadians died in the war.
The war strengthened Canada’s
economy. Factories were dedicated to building tanks, guns, ships, and aircraft,
notably fighter planes and Lancaster bombers. Canada’s war production program
was guided by C. D. Howe, the federal minister of munitions and supply, who
imposed a system of central planning, with wage and price controls. At war’s end
Howe headed the Department of Reconstruction, converting the economy back to a
free-enterprise system. Canada entered the postwar era with a much more diverse
manufacturing capacity than it had had in 1939.
G3 | Postwar Prosperity |
G3a | The Welfare State |
William Lyon Mackenzie King
continued in power after the war, retiring in 1948 as Canada’s longest-serving
prime minister. His Liberal Party stayed in power until 1957. During this period
Canada moved toward vigorous federal intervention in the economy, following the
theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who proposed that government
spending should be used to create jobs when business investment was
insufficient. Job creation and prosperity became state commitments, and many new
social programs such as tax incentives, veterans’ benefits, and family
allowances (support payments to families with children) were introduced. The way
had been paved for public acceptance of these programs during the war, when the
federal government had begun some of them under its sweeping authority for
wartime economic measures.
These programs were developed
partly to help the Liberal Party hold off left-wing challenges. The socialist
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), particularly, was innovative in
devising social programs. The first government formed by the CCF was the
provincial government that was elected in Saskatchewan in 1944. Led by Premier
Thomas C. 'Tommy' Douglas, Saskatchewan pioneered several social policy
initiatives, particularly Medicare, a system of universal government-funded
medical insurance. Medicare was introduced nationwide in 1966.
G3b | Growth and Urbanization |
Fearing postwar depression, Canada
got a boom instead. Pent-up demand from the war and the depression started a
long period of sustained economic growth. With the rest of the world devastated,
Canada and the United States had unparalleled opportunities in world trade.
Canada attempted to rebuild its old trade network that had focused on Britain
and Europe, but Canadian-American economic integration grew stronger,
cross-border trade increased, and more American investment flowed into Canada.
Both manufacturing and resource industries grew, and the discovery of oil in
Alberta gradually made that province one of Canada’s wealthiest. Organized labor
grew and its power increased. During the 1950s more than 30 percent of Canadian
workers were unionized. See also Labor Unions in Canada.
Industrial growth was matched by
population growth. In 1949 Newfoundland and Labrador, until then a British
dominion separate from Canada, chose in a hotly contested referendum to become
Canada’s tenth province. Immigration, mostly from Europe, and the postwar baby
boom (a great increase in the birthrate) raised Canada’s population by 50
percent, from 12 million to 18 million, between 1946 and 1961. By 1961 Canada,
which had been 70 percent rural around the start of the century, had become 70
percent urban. Widespread home ownership and automobile ownership gave families
an independence they had not had before. Suburban sprawl became a feature of
urban life as the proliferation of automobiles made long-distance commuting
possible.
Television became available to most
homes and imported, to an even greater extent than before, the popular culture
of the United States. Canadians who feared the loss of their culture voiced
their protests again as they had in the 1930s, and Canadian governments sought
to promote Canadian culture and national identity as a counterweight to the
American influence. Thus in the 1960s the federal Board of Broadcast Governors
decreed that 55 percent of the television programming should have Canadian
content. The Canada Council was founded in 1957 to support arts and culture in
Canada. The deepening integration of the Canadian and American economies was not
directly addressed, however, beyond some limited controls on foreign
investment.
G3c | International Activities |
Following the war, Canada took an
active role in international relations. Canada joined the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a military alliance founded in 1949 to defend Europe
against Communist attack. The North American Air (later Aerospace) Defense
Agreement, signed in 1958, confirmed American involvement in defending North
American airspace over Canada. Canada contributed forces to the United Nations
campaign to defend South Korea in the Korean War (1950-1953).
In 1950 Canada began foreign aid
programs for underdeveloped nations as part of the Colombo Plan, launched by the
Commonwealth of Nations to attack the poverty that was thought to breed support
for communism. Canadian diplomat and politician Lester Pearson won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1956 for organizing a peacekeeping force to defuse the Suez
Crisis. Peacekeeping became a frequent assignment for Canadian forces as Canada
sought status in world affairs as a so-called middle power: too small to be a
great power, but large enough and strong enough to act as an intermediary in
world affairs.
G3d | Diefenbaker and Pearson |
After running the national
government continuously since 1935, the Liberal Party was defeated by the
Progressive Conservatives (the new name for the Conservatives) in 1957. The new
prime minister, John Diefenbaker, was a crusading country lawyer from
Saskatchewan who built his campaign on growing resentment over the long
dominance of the Liberal Party and the arrogant Canadian establishment. He also
urged economic development of the far northern regions. An orator and a fighter
for social justice and the ordinary citizen, Diefenbaker appealed to Canadian
national pride. His disorganized administration, however, alienated potential
allies and faced frequent crises. His government fell in a 1963 election contest
with the Liberals under Pearson. The chief issues were Canada’s role in NATO and
Diefenbaker’s opposition to the building of nuclear weapons bases in
Canada.
Pearson’s achievements as prime
minister included new and expanded social programs and a new, distinctive
Canadian flag, the red maple leaf. Pearson’s Liberals never had a majority in
the House of Commons but survived because opposition was divided. Among the new
opposition parties was the New Democratic Party (NDP), formed in 1961 by a
merger of the socialist CCF and Canadian labor organizations. The NDP campaigned
for public ownership of key industries, wider social programs to promote
economic equality, and controls on foreign (particularly American) investment.
First led by former Saskatchewan premier Thomas Douglas, the NDP became a
long-lasting third party competing with the Liberals and Progressive
Conservatives.
G4 | Social Change |
G4a | French Canadian Nationalism |
During Diefenbaker’s time as prime
minister, French Canadian nationalism moved into a phase that came to be called
the Quiet Revolution. This was a transition, almost explosive in its suddenness,
from traditional, rural, church-oriented values to full participation in modern,
urban, secular values.
Political leader Maurice Duplessis,
premier from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959, staunchly defended the old
belief that preservation of a traditional rural society was the best way to
protect French Canada from British and secular influences. Religion and
agriculture, not government, were considered the vital defenses. The Roman
Catholic Church held a special role: Its priests, nuns, and other religious
figures ran educational, health, social, and cultural programs that were
government-run in the rest of Canada. The church’s educational curriculum was
weak in science and technology, and the percentage of graduates from secondary
schools was low.
Through support of the church and
his party’s control of political patronage, Duplessis maintained the status quo
until his death in office in 1959. Even though Québec had by that time become an
urban industrial society, English-speaking Canadians, many of whom considered
French Canadians to be backward, dominated public life in Canada. Even in
Montréal, Québec’s largest city, English predominated in commerce and among the
leaders of business and industry.
In 1960 a new Liberal government
led by Jean Lesage took power in Québec promising to make French Canadians
“masters in their own house.” Lesage planned to use state power to promote
better education, health care, public industries, and French Canadian culture.
The state replaced the church as the guardian of Québec society, and the role of
the church in operating secular institutions like schools and hospitals plunged
dramatically. A ministry of education was established to modernize the
curriculum and make postsecondary education more broadly available through a new
system of community colleges.
The government of this new Québec
was also determined to secure new powers and reduce the role of the federal
government within the province. The Liberals, particularly under Premier Robert
Bourassa (1970-1976, 1986-1994), worked to revise the federal system to better
accommodate French Canadian aspirations.
A variety of opinions emerged in
Québec over French Canadian aims. Premier Daniel Johnson (1966-1968), whose
Union Nationale party governed between Lesage and Bourassa, called for a new
Canadian constitution with special status for Québec as the homeland of one of
the two founding peoples. Other movements were formed to advocate complete
separation from Canada. One group, the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ),
resorted to terrorism to achieve that end. Meanwhile, René Lévesque, formerly in
Lesage’s Cabinet, left the Liberals and founded the Parti Québécois (PQ) to seek
sovereignty-association. This was envisioned as a union in which Québec would be
an economic partner with the rest of Canada but otherwise Québec would be fully
independent. In the 1970 provincial election, the PQ won the support of almost a
quarter of the voters.
In the October crisis of 1970, the
terrorist group FLQ kidnapped a Québec politician, Pierre Laporte, and a British
diplomat, James Cross, and demanded the release of FLQ members who were in jail.
The Canadian government rejected the kidnappers’ demands and invoked the War
Measures Act, which authorized mass arrests and the deployment of army troops in
the streets of Montréal. The murder of Laporte by his kidnappers added to the
crisis. Cross was released by his captors in December in exchange for their safe
passage to Cuba, and Laporte’s killers were later tracked down, arrested, and
convicted of murder. The violence discredited the FLQ’s revolutionary approach
to Québec nationalism, and the independence movement united behind the PQ’s
approach.
Québec’s demand for increased
provincial powers was mirrored elsewhere in Canada. Other provincial leaders
claimed the right to acquire any new constitutional powers Québec might receive.
Western Canada, increasingly prosperous but still lacking the political clout of
Ontario or Québec, resented Ottawa’s preoccupation with central Canadian
concerns. Challenges to the growing power of the federal government mounted in
the provinces, but several federal-provincial constitutional conferences to try
to resolve these issues, notably in 1964 and 1971, ended in deadlocks.
G4b | New Voices of the Sixties |
The independence movement in Québec
was only one social revolution among many in Canada in the late 1960s. There, as
elsewhere in the developed world, youth culture and youth protest flourished,
minorities asserted their rights, and women worked to transform their place in
society. Women moved rapidly into the workforce, into higher education, and into
feminist political and social campaigns against sexism and gender inequality.
The National Action Committee on the Status of Women, a federation of women’s
organizations, was formed in 1971 to lobby for abortion rights, equality
legislation, and other feminist issues.
In the 1960s Canada also opened
immigration to new racial and ethnic communities from southern Europe, the
Caribbean, Asia, and much of the world. Concentrating in the cities, immigrants
changed the face of urban Canada, producing a dynamic mix of peoples in
communities that had long been dominated by people of British or French origin.
In 1971 the federal government officially recognized multiculturalism as a
characteristic of Canada. Native Canadians, the poorest and most marginalized
Canadians throughout the century, had also begun a demographic and cultural
renaissance. Native organizations started to assert political demands rooted in
ancient and long-neglected treaty rights. See also Ethnic Groups in
Canada.
In the midst of these growing
tensions, Canada hosted a remarkably lively and successful commemoration of the
centennial of Confederation in 1967. Its highlight was the successful world’s
fair, Expo ‘67, in Montréal.
H | National Unity: 1968-2000 |
H1 | The Trudeau Years |
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a Québec law
professor and longtime opponent of special status for Québec, entered federal
politics in 1965 to promote French power in Ottawa. He argued that a bilingual,
bicultural Canada could provide full scope for the aspirations of French
Canadians without the need of new provincial powers. Trudeau succeeded Lester
Pearson as leader of the Liberals in 1968 and led his party to electoral triumph
soon after; he held the prime minister’s post almost continuously from 1968 to
1984 and received massive support from Québec voters even when they elected
nationalists to govern the province.
Trudeau promoted French Canadians
within the federal civil service and increased the spending of federal money in
Québec. In 1969 his government passed the Official Languages Act, which made
Canada officially bilingual. The act required federal agencies to offer
bilingual services coast to coast. Some English-speaking Canadians resented this
assertion of French culture as much as they did Québec’s political demands for
greater provincial power. See also Royal Commission on Bilingualism and
Biculturalism.
H1a | Economic Problems |
Trudeau came to power intending to
modernize government and reform the constitution, but he soon found his agenda
hijacked by economic troubles. Both inflation and unemployment rose, and
expensive social and economic programs had led to large and continuing budget
deficits despite high taxes. Canada’s economic problems were compounded when the
price of oil increased dramatically during the oil crisis of 1973. The crisis
was provoked when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
which included many of the major oil-producing nations of the world, cut back on
production. In an effort to shield Canadians from high oil prices, Ottawa tried
to control sales of oil. The province of Alberta, a large oil producer, resented
these efforts. Westerners also resented federal investment in depressed regions,
particularly Atlantic Canada and Québec.
H1b | Québec Referendum |
In 1976 Québec elected René
Lévesque’s PQ as its provincial government. During the campaign, the PQ had
pledged to consult the province in a referendum before implementing its policy
of sovereignty-association. The PQ government introduced both social programs
and nationalist measures. Rejecting bilingualism, the PQ legislated French as
Québec’s sole official language. French quickly challenged English as the
language of commerce. The shift was particularly dramatic in Montréal, which had
long been dominated by its English-speaking minority. In 1980 the promised
referendum took place. Québec voters were asked to decide whether the province
should negotiate with Ottawa toward achieving sovereignty-association. However,
the vote was 60 percent against and 40 percent in favor. See also French
Canadian Nationalism.
H1c | A New Constitution |
Trudeau, who had promised a new
constitutional deal during the referendum, moved in with his own constitutional
agenda: “patriating” the British North America Act (BNA Act) passed by the
British Parliament in 1867. Patriation would make the BNA Act a Canadian
constitution that could be amended by Canadians. Trudeau also promised to add a
Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the constitution. Trudeau’s constitutional
package offered none of the additional powers the provinces had been seeking,
but both patriation and the charter were popular. Trudeau achieved both in 1982
despite the opposition of the government of Québec. For Québec sovereigntists,
the patriation of the constitution against Québec’s will and without meeting its
demands for greater powers became an added grievance. See also
Constitution of Canada.
H1d | Contemporary Indigenous Relations |
One new element in the Constitution
Act of 1982 (as the patriated BNA Act was renamed) stated that “existing
aboriginal and treaty rights are recognized and affirmed.” This acknowledgment
of aboriginal rights showed the gains that had been made by indigenous Canadians
in the 1960s and 1970s. However, these existing rights were neither listed nor
defined; the extent of indigenous rights largely remained to be negotiated.
In the 1960s the federal government
had favored abolition of the Indian Act and rejection of most indigenous claims
upon Canada. In 1973, however, a Supreme Court of Canada ruling (known as the
Calder case) suggested that courts would recognize the existence of
aboriginal land titles. Canada thereupon declared its readiness to negotiate
agreements that would recognize indigenous land titles and rights of
self-government. In 1975 the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement, which
permitted massive hydroelectric development by the government of Québec, granted
substantial powers of self-government to the Cree of the James Bay region in
exchange for a massive surrender of land. See also James Bay
Project.
Further support for indigenous
rights to self-government came in 1977 with a report by Judge Tom Berger on
pipeline construction in the Mackenzie River valley. Berger advised against any
such development until indigenous claims had been settled. His advice was widely
influential.
In recent decades the fundamental
aims of indigenous organizations have been to resist assimilation into Canadian
society and to defend the autonomy and cultural integrity of indigenous groups.
They seek public sympathy by publicizing the poverty, injustice, and
marginalization suffered by most indigenous Canadians, frequently appealing to
international tribunals and world opinion. In the 1990s this strategy was
successful in deterring the government of Québec from proceeding with James Bay
II, a second stage of hydroelectric development in the north.
Failures to respond to indigenous
grievances also resulted in several episodes of armed indigenous resistance to
Canadian authority. In 1990 Mohawks resisted the development of land they
claimed as indigenous property near Oka, Québec. Heavily armed Mohawks
confronted police and troops for months before surrendering.
Indigenous bands and federations
(notably the Assembly of First Nations, founded in 1982) have pursued legal
actions and government-to-government negotiations seeking recognition of
self-government and settlement of land claims. These negotiations have been most
successful in the Northwest Territories. Large land settlements were made with
the Inuit of the Mackenzie Delta in 1984 and Inuit of the eastern Arctic in
1992.
In the 1980s the Canadian
government pledged to transform the Northwest Territories into new regions: One
to be called Nunavut, with the Inuit majority, and the other probably Denendeh,
with a Dene majority. In each, the indigenous residents would have broad powers
of self-government. Nunavut achieved separate territorial status on April 1,
1999, but plans for Denendeh have moved more slowly.
In 1996 the federal government
received the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the result of
a five-year study of indigenous life. Its 400 recommendations covered almost
every aspect of indigenous life, calling for new federal departments, an
independent tribunal for land claims, and an indigenous parliament to be called
the House of First Peoples. The C$30 billion price of the reforms, to be spread
over 15 years, received a cool reception from the cost-cutting Liberal
government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. In 1997, however, the government
offered an apology and compensation for abuses suffered by generations of
indigenous children in publicly funded residential schools. See also
Indian Treaties in Canada.
H2 | The Continuing Constitutional Debate |
Pierre Trudeau retired in 1984.
Partly because his party had not been able to improve the economy, the
Progressive Conservative Party soon swept into power, led by Brian Mulroney, a
bilingual Québec lawyer. Mulroney had built support in Québec, traditionally a
Liberal stronghold, by recruiting nationalists when sovereignty-association
seemed unlikely to be achieved. He made national unity a high priority and
sought to amend the new constitution so that Québec could accept it.
Working closely with Québec premier
Robert Bourassa, Mulroney negotiated the Meech Lake Accord, a package of changes
to the constitution. This agreement between the federal and provincial
governments was signed in June 1987. It gave all the provinces substantial new
powers and gave Québec the undefined but potentially large powers of a “distinct
society.” The constitutional changes seemed assured of passage because all the
provincial premiers supported the accord.
However, all the provincial
legislatures had to ratify the accord within a three-year period. Opposition
soon emerged as public debate focused on the weakening of federal authority in
Canada, on the distinct-society clause, and on complaints that the agreement had
been reached during closed-door negotiations that were undemocratic. Trudeau
spoke out from retirement to condemn the accord as a surrender of vital federal
powers. Indigenous leaders, who had been campaigning for expanded
self-government, protested their exclusion from the process. When the
governments of three provinces changed in elections, the required unanimous
consent of the provinces was lost. Ottawa worked desperately to save the accord,
but a last-minute vote in the Manitoba legislature was blocked on a procedural
technicality by an Ojibwa-Cree member, Elijah Harper. Newfoundland and Labrador
also failed to ratify the accord. Time ran out, and the Meech Lake Accord died
in June 1990. In Québec the failure of the accord was widely interpreted as a
rejection of Québec itself, and support for sovereignty surged.
The Mulroney government tried again,
this time with widened public consultation and increased participation by
indigenous leaders. The result was the Charlottetown Accord, which was endorsed
by the premiers in 1992 and presented for ratification in a national referendum.
However, Québec nationalists rejected this new accord as inadequate to Québec’s
needs, and the new accord also failed to satisfy the growing aspirations of many
groups and regions in the rest of Canada. It was defeated both in Québec and
elsewhere. The PQ returned to power in Québec in the provincial election of 1994
with renewed determination to achieve sovereignty-association.
H3 | The Conservative Alternative |
The Mulroney government advocated a
different approach to Canada’s economic problems. It advocated turning away from
government intervention, which it argued had been unable to defeat persistent
unemployment and inflation. Mulroney’s government reduced public management of
the economy, even in areas where state ownership had been seen as vital.
Railroads were closed or sold, and the publicly owned airline and oil companies
were sold to private investors. Spending on Canadian cultural programs,
including the CBC, was cut back, and taxes on corporations were reduced.
Mulroney’s government also reduced
its investment in developing depressed regions, a Trudeau priority that it
condemned as expensive, wasteful, and ineffective. The cuts hit hard in Atlantic
Canada, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador. The end of the 1980s saw the
collapse of Newfoundland and Labrador’s cod fishery, which had been the mainstay
of the province’s economy since the 16th century. Both overfishing and changes
in ocean climate were blamed for the decline in the cod population. A moratorium
on fishing was imposed in 1992 along with a temporary program of assistance to
fishery workers.
Mulroney’s economic agenda was capped
in 1987 with the negotiation of a Canadian-American free trade treaty. Canada
and the United States were already intimately linked economically, and each was
the other’s largest trading partner. Free trade was strongly supported by
business but denounced by others as an avenue for greater American domination of
the Canadian economy. Approval of the free trade agreement, delayed in the
Canadian parliament, became the foremost issue during the 1988 election. The
Progressive Conservatives won the election, and in 1994 free trade was expanded
to include Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Early
results seemed to confirm predictions that Canadian productivity and exports
would benefit; in 1995, for example, exports of goods grew by 16 percent and
imports by 11 percent. It remained uncertain to what extent the treaty would
prohibit Canada from implementing social programs that could be interpreted as
subsidies to commerce and, therefore, as interferences with free trade.
H4 | Return of the Liberals |
Brian Mulroney retired in 1993. He
had become unpopular and was attacked for imposing new taxes, particularly the
unpopular Goods and Services Tax, and for failing to reduce the deficit, solve
economic problems, or end the constitutional crisis. His former allies among the
Québec nationalists formed a new party, the Bloc Québécois, to work in federal
politics for the independence of Québec. Alienated westerners turned to the
Reform Party, a new conservative movement led by Preston Manning of Alberta.
Mulroney’s successor, Kim Campbell, Canada’s first woman prime minister, was
overwhelmingly defeated by the Liberals in the 1993 national election after just
four months in office. Her Progressive Conservative Party, which had been a
force in national politics since Confederation, won only two seats in the
295-seat House of Commons. The New Democratic Party, usually Canada’s third
party, fared almost as badly, winning just nine seats.
Québécois Jean Chrétien, a veteran
politician and former member of Trudeau’s governments, led the new Liberal Party
government. The Liberals continued many of the Progressive Conservatives’
economic and social policies, including NAFTA, and, to the dismay of many of
their supporters, sought to balance the federal budget rapidly. Chrétien cut
spending while maintaining tax rates and supported private rather than public
enterprise as the key source of economic growth. Governments dedicated to free
enterprise took power in Alberta in 1993 and in Ontario in 1995, and both cut
government spending and taxation significantly.
Chrétien’s government remained
popular in its early years while its opposition was divided into a Québec bloc,
a conservative western bloc, and mere fragments of the Progressive Conservatives
and the New Democratic Party. Unemployment remained high, however. Chrétien’s
failure to fulfill a promise to scrap Mulroney’s Goods and Services Tax damaged
his reputation for honesty. The country’s reputation as an international
peacekeeper was marred by scandals over the behavior of Canadian troops in
Bosnia and Somalia. Above all, the Chrétien government remained vulnerable to
constitutional crisis as sentiment for sovereignty remained high in Québec.
In 1995 Québec premier Jacques
Parizeau, a hard-line separatist, held the province’s second referendum on
sovereignty. Even though there was widespread anger in Québec over the failure
of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, defeat was expected. However,
Lucien Bouchard, the head of the Bloc Québécois, entered the campaign and
revitalized it. Bouchard’s passionate speechmaking and his promise of undefined
ties with Canada after achieving sovereignty gave the pro-sovereignty side a
late surge. The referendum was rejected by the barest margin: Less than 1
percent divided the no votes (50.4 percent) from the yes votes (49.6 percent).
Parizeau resigned, and Bouchard succeeded him as premier of Québec. Bouchard’s
determination to continue the pursuit of sovereignty challenged Chrétien’s
federal government, which had hoped that a clear victory in the referendum would
enable it to focus on other issues. Québec’s own economic difficulties forced
Bouchard to sideline the sovereignty issue, however. See also French
Canadian Nationalism.
Chrétien’s Liberal government was
elected to a second term in June 1997, but it received a reduced share of the
vote and won a bare majority of the 301 seats in the newly expanded House of
Commons. The opposition remained divided. The Reform Party, with strong support
in western Canada, became the official opposition. Its leader, Preston Manning,
continued to advocate a much reduced federal government, greater provincial
autonomy, and free-enterprise principles. The Bloc Québécois still held most of
Québec’s seats. The Conservatives began to rebuild their popularity, and the NDP
grew slightly.
In October 1997 nine provincial
premiers (all but Québec’s) proposed a new constitutional offer to Québec, known
as the Calgary accord. With a separatist government still in power in Québec,
however, Chrétien’s federal government preferred to emphasize economic issues. A
decade of spending cuts and taxation, coupled with prosperity and low interest
rates, finally brought 20 years of federal budget deficits to an end, and
persistently high unemployment rates began to fall slowly.
In 1998 Jean Charest, a popular young
Québécois who had revived the federal Progressive Conservative Party, was
persuaded to become leader of Québec’s provincial Liberal Party. The move made
him leader of the federalist forces in Québec. Despite Charest’s efforts, in
provincial elections held later that year the Parti Québécois was reelected as
the dominant party in Québec, and Charest became the opposition leader.
In 1998 the Supreme Court of Canada
issued an important ruling on the legal status of any bid by Québec to secede
from Canada. The court declared that Québec does not have the right of
unilateral secession, meaning that secession must be agreed to by the federal
government and therefore cannot occur simply at the will of the separatist
government. The ruling obligated the federal government to negotiate regarding
secession if a clear majority of citizens in Québec voted to secede on a clear
question of whether they wanted to secede. However, the ruling lacked a
definition of what would constitute a clear majority or a clear question.
In an effort to clarify these issues
the Chrétien government introduced the so-called clarity bill, which formally
passed into law in June 2000. Under the law, negotiations may occur only if the
federal House of Commons has determined that the referendum question was clear
and that secession was supported by a clear majority. The law also specifies
that secession may not occur until a constitutional amendment governing the
process is negotiated and adopted. See also French Canadian
Nationalism.
On April 1, 1999, a large region of
the Northwest Territories officially became the separate territory of Nunavut,
the first Canadian territory or province with a majority indigenous population.
Paul Okalik, a young Inuit lawyer, became Nunavut’s first territorial premier.
VIII | THE 21ST CENTURY |
Chrétien’s Liberal Party held firmly
onto power in the November 2000 election, increasing its parliamentary
delegation to a comfortable majority. Jean Chrétien, who called the election
just three and a half years into his five-year term, became the first Canadian
leader since World War II (1939-1945) to win a third consecutive majority
government. Chrétien gambled that a strong budget surplus and high ratings for
his government in public opinion polls would bolster support for his party. The
Liberals gained seats in eastern Canada and Québec, reducing the power of the
Bloc Québécois. The Canadian Alliance won additional seats in western provinces,
solidifying its position as the main party on the right.
Facing a Liberal Party convention and a
vote of confidence on his leadership in February 2003, Chrétien expressed his
desire in January 2002 to continue leading the party. Seven months later,
however, Chrétien announced his decision to retire. The end came when he fired
Finance Minister Paul Martin, his long-term rival for Liberal Party leadership,
in June 2002. The move backfired as Liberal Party members of parliament came to
Martin’s defense and called on Chrétien to step down. Chrétien resigned as
Liberal Party head, and therefore, as prime minister, in December 2003. Martin
succeeded him as Canada’s 21st prime minister.
Beginning in 2003 Canada moved toward
permitting homosexual marriages. In June of that year Chrétien and the Canadian
cabinet approved a new policy to legalize same-sex marriages. The same month the
Ontario Court of Appeal declared that the federal government’s existing
definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman discriminated
against homosexuals and violated the equal rights provisions of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The effect of the ruling was to immediately make
same-sex marriages legal in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. In July
2005 the Canadian Senate passed a bill making same-sex marriage legal throughout
the country. Canada became the fourth nation to enact such a law and the first
outside of Europe. See also Marriage.
A | Rise of the Conservatives |
In December 2003 members of the
Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance approved the merger of
the two parties to form the Conservative Party, which became the official
opposition party in Parliament. In March 2004 the Conservative Party selected
Stephen Harper as its leader.
Martin and the Liberals lost their
parliamentary majority in elections held in June 2004, but the party retained
control of the government. The party was plagued by a growing corruption
scandal, however, as evidence emerged that officials in Chrétien’s government
had funneled millions of dollars in federal money into their own party’s coffers
in the late 1990s. Over the next year Conservative Party leaders charged
Martin’s government with involvement in the scandal and called for new
elections, finally forcing a confidence vote in May 2005. The Liberals narrowly
won the vote, 153-152, with the tiebreaking vote cast by House of Commons
Speaker Peter Milliken, a Liberal.
A government report released in
October 2005 provided new details about the scandal and the Liberal Party’s role
in it. The revelations prompted another confidence vote in Parliament in late
November. The Liberal government lost the vote this time, 171-133, resulting in
new elections.
In the elections, held in January
2006, the Conservatives led all parties by capturing 124 seats in the House of
Commons. The Liberal Party won 103 seats while the Bloc Québécois (BQ) won 51,
the New Democratic Party (NDP) won 29, and there was 1 independent winner. The
Conservative victory ended 12 years of Liberal Party rule in Canada and made
Harper the country’s 22nd prime minister.
Harper identified lowering taxes and
increasing governmental accountability and efficiency as important priorities
for his new government. Because the Conservatives lacked a parliamentary
majority, however, the party could be forced to compromise on its legislative
agenda to avoid political gridlock and maintain power.
This article, except for portions of
the History section, was contributed by Daniel J. Hiebert and Maureen G. Reed.
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