A rchive Date
[ 07-03-2026 ]
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[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[https://nationalpost.com/opinion/geoff-russ-poilievre-embracing-our-english-roots-is-exactly-what-we-need-right-now
Poilievre embracing our English roots is exactly what we need right now
Liberty is Canada's inheritance
By Geoff Russ Published Mar 06, 2026
To love Canada is, at the very least, to admire England.
It was fitting for Pierre Poilievre to praise the legacy of Magna Carta at Runnymede on the River Thames during his tour of Great Britain.
“After Magna Carta, no one, not even the king, was above the law,” said Poilievre in a video posted to social media. “Thus began the journey towards what we today call liberty under law, a journey that took several more centuries, a civil war, and a lot of evolution; a journey that is still not complete today, but one that started right here.”
Forced upon King John by rebellious English barons at Runnymede in 1215, Magna Carta compelled the monarch to confirm that his power was limited, and all men, including himself, were equal before the law. The great document contains passages that resonate to this day.
“No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
“The men in our kingdom have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly, for themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all respects and in all places forever.”
In time, the Westminster Parliament and democracy as we understand it emerged from the principles of Magna Carta.
Rarely was liberty better cultivated, and peace better nurtured than it was in England. And liberty is, as Poilievre makes clear, very much part of Canada’s inheritance. It isn’t some American concept that progressives would have us shun.
For centuries, the European continent was ravaged by religious and political revolution, tumult, and slaughter many times over. England remained a comparative, though not absolute, haven, apart from occasional beheadings of traitors and others like Charles I and two of Henry VIII’s wives.
As a product of the British Empire and its habits and traditions, Canada also has few truly revolutionary tendencies. At Confederation in 1867, the Fathers of Confederation did all they could to hew as closely as possible to the mother country as they brought their own into existence.
George Brown, the founder of the Liberal Party, found inspiration to help create the new country after visiting the British Isles: “After a six-month visit to the noblest and best governed land on Earth I feel more than ever the necessity for (Upper) Canadians of all shades of political opinion to unite.” Tourism does not inspire people like it used to.
During Quebec’s 1995 sovereignty referendum, Parti Québécois Premier Jacques Parizeau came within a hair of helping to lead the sovereigntists to a majority vote for independence.
Had his side prevailed, the London-educated Parizeau had prepared the following words in a victory speech that was never broadcast: “I cannot neglect to emphasize to the people and authorities of Great Britain the attachment we still hold for the practices and the institutions they have passed on to us, which we have adapted to our French heritage, to our needs and to our culture.” |
Even the American Revolution was quite the opposite of a repudiation of Englishness, whatever later mythology may prefer.
What helped spark the Revolution, like taxation without representation, were fears of the denial of the “chartered rights of Englishmen”. For the American Founding Fathers of 1776, the Revolution only honoured the bargain of Magna Carta of 1215.
The American conservative thinker Mel Bradford wrote that, far from a radical doctrine, the Revolution was an act of preserving an inherited and sacred order. Bradford described it as “the American counter-revolution within the larger English prescription”.
Bradford’s contemporary Russell Kirk was even more explicit, writing elegantly about the British roots of the United States in his books, Roots of American Order, and, more starkly, America’s British Culture.
Kirk wrote that without Britain, the Americans would be left with “no coherent culture in public or in private life”, a diagnosis shared across the 49th parallel.
It is a shame that the American self-conception has become so frayed. The ideas, principles and culture lauded by Bradford and Kirk hang by a threat. Ironically, the U.S. is much further advanced in multiculturalism than Canada, despite the attempts by progressives to legislate otherwise.
Revolutionary America’s largely English and Scotch-Irish culture has long since been reshaped by hostile reinterpretations of the Revolution, Ellis Island mythology, and the postwar counterculture of the 1960s.
Our attempts to match the U.S., such as imitating Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and the lionizing of multiculturalism over common culture, or even a neutral pluralism. The Charter of Rights & Freedoms itself was a quietly revolutionary constitutional document imposed upon Canada, and that helped to nearly tear it apart.
According to American writer David Polansky, “this process has pulled Canada away from its own distinct historical legacy, and the reality is that the rapid mixing of cultures tends to produce a monoculture, and America retains the single greatest influence on global monoculture.”
The insecurity felt by Canadians next to the world’s biggest cultural, economic, and political hegemon is a self-imposed curse. Liberating ourselves from it will not be achieved by neglecting our own roots and history.
Therefore, it is welcome that Prime Minister Mark Carney is unafraid to publicly praise Canada’s “proud British heritage”, and that Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has invested great time and effort into celebrating the connection to England.
“I can stand here and connect this ancient charter to our own laws more than 800 years later in a land unknown to the men who signed it. That shows the enduring power of the ideas and principles. But only if we protect them. These principles are our inheritance as Canadians,” said Poilievre while at Runnymede.
It is discomforting to see the modern societal, cultural, and economic decline of the modern United Kingdom, which is uncomfortably similar to our own.
Fortunately, there is a realm beyond politics and statecraft in the wealth of British literature, music, and art that emerged from Britain.
English culture never dies, it merely queues for its next revival.
What was the 1960s without the Beatles? Can anyone imagine the early 2000s without J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, or the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings?
Netflix is currently preparing to release yet another adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and summer Shakespeare festivals are readying their costumes and casts around the world.
It is a great privilege to exist within the family of English-speaking peoples, even during family quarrels. We should stand by our own history, not walk further away from it than we already have. There is no contradiction between desiring an independent, modern Canada and celebrating what made it possible.
As for myself, I love Canada, its people, and its past. Therefore, I admire England as the first among equals in our English-speaking world. May there always be an England. |
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