A Civic Love Letter to Canada🍁💓

On this Valentine’s Day, consider this a different kind of love letter—not to a person, but to a country.

In this special Civility Dispatch, Diane Kalen-Sukra, your host of the Cultivating Civility Podcast, shares Beyond Beer & Booing: Loving Canada Means Living Our Values. 

Too often, national pride gets reduced to clichés and grievances, but love of country—real civic love—is about more than slogans. It’s about how we engage, how we govern, and whether we truly live out the values we claim to hold dear.

Because if we love this country, we need to act like it.

🎧 Tune in now.

To read a transcript, click here. 

Transcript

A Civic Love Letter to Canada

Beyond Beer & Booing: Loving Canada Means Living Our Values

What does it mean to be Canadian? Ask around, and you’ll hear the usual clichés—hockey, politeness, maple syrup. Some say it’s loving poutine, others say it’s saying “sorry” too much. But identity is more than habits and catchphrases. So what really holds us together? 

We’ve often defined ourselves by what we’re not—not American, not British. That can be useful, but we all know friendships aren’t built on contrasts or common enemies. Real unity—whether between people or nations—must be rooted in something deeper than a shared grievance.

And yet, here we are again. With livelihoods on the line and entire industries at risk, Canadian defiance is justified—but mistaking shared resentment for national unity and identity is foolhardy.

Booing may feel like righteous defiance, but it’s beneath us. It’s a cheap shot that weakens the very values we claim to uphold. A peace-loving country doesn’t mimic hostility—it stands firm in its principles.

Instead of defining ourselves through beer commercials and knee-jerk opposition, a more sustainable and resilient approach would be to ground our national identity in something foundational that actually distinguishes us. That foundation is written into the constitutional DNA of our country: Peace, Order, and Good Government.

While all democracies have guiding ideals, Canada is unique in explicitly defining its governance philosophy. The United States is built on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, with a strong focus on individual freedoms. France is shaped by Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, born from revolution. Canada, by contrast, was built through negotiation—an attempt to balance order with progress, unity with liberty, and governance with responsibility.

This defining principle isn’t just a legal framework—it’s a high calling.

Good government isn’t just about electing the right leaders; it depends on good citizens. As the 13th Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker warned, democracy “withers and decays” without engaged, principled citizens. This means civic education, respect for human dignity, and a culture that values reasoned debate over reactionary hostility.

Yet, look around. We are not raising citizens equipped for this responsibility. Our civic education is abysmal. How can we be a people committed to Peace, Order, and Good Government if most Canadians don’t even understand how their own government works? 

And the cracks are already showing. Incivility is rising, trust in institutions is eroding, and public servants—increasingly at the local level—are facing harassment and abuse at unprecedented levels. The very people who step up to serve their communities are being driven out, making it harder to solve the urgent challenges facing us.

President Trump’s proposed nationwide, free-for-all digital university—The American Academy—has sparked concerns that it could serve as a vehicle for ideological indoctrination. But at least it acknowledges a problem: the need to equip citizens with knowledge. 

Surely, we don’t need to resort to authoritarianism to prepare our people for good citizenship. And yet, Canada has resigned itself to a system where students are shackled by debt, with no national vision for civic education, civic leadership training, or public discourse.

When civic literacy fails, people don’t just disengage—they become vulnerable to reactionary anger, cynicism, and movements that feed on division rather than dialogue. If we cannot rise to the promise embedded in our founding documents, we risk losing faith in democracy itself.

A nation’s identity is not just about heritage—it’s about how we express our commitment to one another. At the heart of a just society is equality of opportunity—ensuring that every citizen, regardless of background, has access to the tools needed to contribute meaningfully to their communities. This is not an abstract idea; it is the most practical expression of goodwill in a democracy. It is how we nurture talent, strengthen institutions, and sustain civic trust.

If we continue down this path, we risk becoming a country with nothing left to offer but maple syrup nostalgia and plaid dinner jacket platitudes (which I enjoy as much as anyone)—just a nation that shrugs and says, “At least we’re not them.”

Civic pride comes from integrity. If we are to take pride in Peace, Order, and Good Government, let's put a premium on living up to it. If we truly believe in the values we claim to uphold, let's ensure they are reflected in our education, our civic life, and our public discourse.

The best way to be Canadian is to embody the Canada we claim to be.

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