Canada is a mockery for importing 700,000 barrels of oil a day in eastern Canada while being unable to move oil from Alberta to eastern markets
The issue of pipelines is a key in Canada’s latest crossroads of national seriousness. The country didn’t arise from an anti-colonial revolution, like others in the Americas, or from a unique cultural homogeneity like Norwegians, Finns, Israelis and Czechs.
It was a group of British-settled or occupied territories strung along the American border and hastily put together when the U.S. emerged united at last and with the greatest army and generals in the world after its Civil War, and unencumbered with any affection for the British Empire.
John A. Macdonald, the great and racially tolerant founder of the country, and George-Étienne Cartier and George Brown, conceived the only transcontinental, bicultural, parliamentary confederation in the history of the world, and secured its approval by squabbling colonial legislators in what are now four provinces (Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), and by the British Parliament.
Benjamin Disraeli was chancellor of the Exchequer, deputy prime minister and leader of the House of Commons in a government officially led by the Earl of Derby, who as colonial secretary had completely misjudged the issue of responsible government in Canada after the 1837 rebellion.
Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone, in the midst of their great rivalry of more than 35 years (during which they served as prime minister and chancellor a total of 13 times) had little knowledge of Canada, were skeptical about its survival, and Gladstone generally thought the Empire was nonsense anyway.
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