OP-ED: What loyalty really means in Canada’s time of moral confusion
"In recent years, loyalty has become a suspicious word in Canadian public life. To express attachment to one’s culture, values, or historical narrative is increasingly treated as a moral flaw."
Author: Dotan Rousso
In recent years, loyalty has become a suspicious word in Canadian public life. To express attachment to one’s culture, values, or historical narrative is increasingly treated as a moral flaw rather than a virtue. We are often told that strong identification with a group signals exclusion or prejudice, as if rootedness itself were a barrier to be overcome. This view is mistaken. It misunderstands something fundamental about what it means to be human.
From an evolutionary perspective, loyalty was never optional. For most of human history, survival depended on belonging to a group and remaining faithful to it. Shared norms, mutual obligation, and collective memory were not abstract ideals; they were the conditions of survival. Group loyalty was not a moral excess; it was the mechanism through which individuals lived. That reality did not disappear with the advent of modern liberal democracies. Identity does not emerge in a vacuum. Language, moral instincts, and traditions are inherited before they are chosen. Acknowledging this does not undermine pluralism; it explains how a stable society becomes possible in the first place.
Yet in times of moral confusion, this basic truth is inverted. Under the banner of progressiveness, Canadians are encouraged to treat strong cultural attachment as morally suspect. Commitment is confused with intolerance, and loyalty is portrayed as a refusal to accept others. This framing is false, and its impact is not merely academic. We see it in the hushed debates over municipal holiday displays and the quiet removal of historical figures from the public square. When we scrub the “particular” to make room for the “universal,” we aren’t creating a more inclusive space; we are creating an empty one. We are asking Canadians to stand on a foundation of air.
Consider the irony of Remembrance Day. On this day, Canadians are encouraged to honor sacrifice, continuity, and national memory as unifying virtues. These rituals are widely understood as dignified. Yet, when similar language of loyalty appears outside officially sanctioned contexts, it is often treated with suspicion. The same society that honors collective memory in one setting condemns it in another. This inconsistency reveals not openness, but a deep confusion about the moral legitimacy of belonging itself.
It is entirely possible to respect others and recognize their legitimacy while remaining deeply committed to one’s own identity. Valuing what is “ours” does not require denying value to “theirs.” These positions are not contradictory; they coexist naturally in any healthy society. A culture that demands people abandon their deepest sources of meaning in the name of openness does not produce moral clarity. It produces fragility and resentment.
Loyalty, properly understood, is a moral commitment. It means holding certain values and traditions as worthy of protection. If a group’s identity is challenged by ideologies that seek to erase or delegitimize it, there is nothing un-Canadian about naming that threat and resisting it. Refusing to do so is not tolerance; it is abdication. To stand firm in one’s identity without apology is an act of responsibility. It means protecting what gives life coherence without pretending that all values are interchangeable.
As many Canadians mark Christmas, this is a moment to reconsider loyalty not as exclusion, but as rootedness. In an age that treats belonging as a liability, we must remember that it remains a foundation of human dignity and the bedrock of a confident, pluralistic Canada.
For comments: dotanrousso@yahoo.com
We are told we must tolerate those who do not tolerate us. There have been so many Juno News stories this year that have shed light on this assault on Canadian history, culture and values -- not being allowed to wear a poppy during Remembrance Day in certain courtrooms, demands by Muslims for prayer rooms in federal buildings when they comprise maybe 3% of federal workers, street name changes that erase our history, the ongoing war on Christmas, spontaneous prayer blocking downtown Toronto streets, and of course the constant hate marches. Each time we accept an assault on our history, culture and values those who won't tolerate us are emboldened to up the ante. They'll push the envelope so far that in another generation there won't be a Canada any of us recognize. It'll be Justin's post-national state wet dream come to life.
There was a time when emigrating to Canada was a serious process from start to finish, but an orderly one. The majority of immigrants and donor countries were European, following others who founded Canada and the USA, all
with their sleeves rolled up ready to work.
We had very efffective overseas assistance programs and always admitted a certain percentage of the overall intake as pure refugees. However, along with this government involvement, private charity was still very active. Thousands of needy people were sponsored by private Canadian citizens both independently and through various charitable organizations. Other than the allocations for refugees, applicants were selected on the basis of benefit to Canada.
Then along came Pierre Trudeau and the baby boomers’ parents fell in love. Gone were the stuffy-looking and grumpy old men Diefenbaker and Pearson.The problem for Canada was that Trudeau1 was a man who, in some ways acted Trump like. He was rich, single with a playboy style and image, dating models and the like. His plan was to dismantle the English-French structure of Canadian society while preserving special treatment for Quebec. He knew he couldn't do it strictly as a Frenchman railing against les anglais. He was seriously outnumbered by the rest of English Canada. So he did an end run around Canada's best interests via our immigration point system. Suddenly, your skills didn't matter nor did what was good for Canada matter. It was presented to us with the cheerful name of multiculturalism.
Little did most Canadians know that multiculturalism didn't mean a few new cultures here and there across the country; no, what it meant was giving other immigrants enclaves of their own within but isolated from Canada. There, they could continue to practice their own cultures while avoiding contact with ours, their hosts.
Now the whole concept of choosing who gets in has been conflated with bad memories from the past of the part of indigenous people and their supporters who feel that they were pushed aside. Never mind that Canada was assiduously careful in making proper agreements as the country expanded. Agreements that today's indigenous ancestors willingly agreed to. Ancestors who by the way had no difficulty making war against neighbours whenever it suited their purposes.