In 1956, the Pile-Line Debate was a
signal example of failure to legitimize power.
The Liberals openly announced that our resource were at the disposal of
continental capitalism. The use of
closure expressed the Howe administration’s contempt for the “talking shop”. So
much did they identify their branch-plant society with the Kingdom of Heaven that
they did not pay sufficient attention to the farmers or the outlying
regions. Such regions existed for them
as colonies of Montreal and Toronto. The
Conservative victory [under Diefenbaker in 1957] was accomplished by local businessmen
who felt excluded from their own country by corporate capitalism. Young men, ambitious for a life in politics,
could not turn to the Liberal party, where the positions of power were well
secured by the old pros. The Liberal’s
policy of satellite status to the United States, and their open attack on the
British at the time of Suez, annoyed the residual loyalties of older Canadians.[1]
… It soon became
evident that their [Conservative party] objections to the Pipe Line had only
been constitutional. They did not object
to the control of public resources by private and foreign capitalists, but
simply to the way Howe had pushed that control through Parliament.[2]
George Grant, Lament
for a Nation (1965)
[1]
George Grant, Lament for a Nation. The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism.
(Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), p. 11.
[2] Ibid., p. 19.
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