You can love your country and still think it’s broken

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Canada is broken.

That was true before U.S. President Donald Trump started threatening Canada with tariffs and annexation, and it’s true now.

We can’t build things in this country. We can’t defend ourselves. We’ve lost control of our immigration system. Our violent crime rates are getting worse. Our courts are overburdened. Our productivity is poor. Child poverty rates are creeping up. Food bank usage has reached record highs. Housing costs are exorbitant. Canadians can’t get timely health care, or health care at all. And yet our spending is out of control. We can argue about the semantics, but that sounds pretty broken to me.

The wave of Canadian pride that Mr. Trump has inadvertently provoked with his threats against Canada has somewhat obscured our attention to these facts. Indeed, there’s a palpable shift in the country’s mood from just six months ago, when an Ipsos poll found that 70 per cent of Canadians believed that our country was “broken.” But a foreign threat and a common cause has now united us, so we’re wrapping ourselves in the flag, pledging to buy Canadian when possible, and booing the American national anthem at sports games. This is not a bad thing, especially considering the identity crisis Canadians have collectively suffered from for the last decade or more.

But we should resist the impulse – and indeed, the imploration – that we overlook our crippling structural deficiencies in service of an imaginary Team Canada front. It’s a tough thing to do; Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who enjoyed a 25-point lead over the Liberals until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned and Mr. Trump decided to target his closest ally, is finding he now has to pivot his approach. His former message – “Everything in Canada is broken” – isn’t right for the current climate, so he’s shifted to “Canada first,” and has softened the “broken” talk to one of Canada’s potential: “We need a prime minister who will put Canada first – our workers, our businesses, our economy, our borders, our military,” Mr. Poilievre said during his rally on Saturday. “And we must be able to stand on our own two feet, no longer helplessly dependent on the Americans.”

Politics is a sound-bite sport, which is why Mr. Poilievre is leaving his “broken” messaging behind. Yet the Liberals have already spliced together his past remarks for a 30-second attack ad that implies he would capitulate to Mr. Trump’s desire to see Canada become the 51st state. Immigration Minister Marc Miller also showed up to Mr. Poilievre’s weekend rally to remind reporters outside the venue about the Conservative Leader’s past disparaging comments about Canada. “You can’t say that Canada is broken and at the same time say that Canada is the best country in the world. The two just don’t go together,” Mr. Miller said.

But here’s the thing: you absolutely can love your country, and at the same time say that it is broken. In fact, it is an expression of patriotism – not the opposite – to acknowledge your country’s deficiencies in an effort to try to make it better. To suggest otherwise is like saying you can’t love your family home if you acknowledge that the pipes are busted and there’s mould in the basement. A good homeowner is one that recognizes he has to do something about the toxic stuff growing in the walls, not one that’s primarily focused on the pretty flower bed in the front instead. National pride and pragmatism are not antithetical.

That is the difference between blind patriotism, which psychologist Robert T. Schatz et al defined as “an attachment to country characterized by unquestioning positive evaluation, staunch allegiance, and intolerance of criticism,” and constructive patriotism, which is “characterized by support for questioning and criticism of current group practices that are intended to result in positive change.” Blind patriotism can breed complacency and groupthink; it glosses over the many critical deficiencies in our approach and infrastructure by emphasizing how pretty our daffodils look next to the mailbox. In this case, it seems to be more about reflexive anti-Americanism than genuine pride in our institutions. After all, not much of anything has tangibly improved in Canada since December, when an Angus Reid poll found pride in Canada was at a 30-year low. An adversary has united us, but he hasn’t forced structural change – yet.

To do that, this country must first acknowledge the depths of our sclerosis, our inefficiencies, our competitive barriers and our ideological rigidness. We need to admit, as unpopular as it might be right now, that Canada is broken. That doesn’t make you a traitor; it makes you a patriot.