Sorry, But Here’s a Story About Justin Trudeau Saying ‘Sorry’ A Lot

Folks, Canada’s cuck-in-chief sure does love to say he’s sorry. We’re almost up to four formal apologies to minority groups for historical wrongs since he was elected in 2015. What’s the deal, Trudeau? Why are you ashamed of our country and its history? Are you just a big crybaby? Maybe it’s a sign that you’re not fit for Canada’s highest and proudest office!

Hell yeah. I’m going to get that whole paragraph made into a vinyl decal and slap it on my truck and everyone who sees it will pound their car horns with such furious ecstasy that the police will write me several tickets for noise complaints but I’ll ignore them because I’m a free thinker and I don’t give a hoot who knows it.

Right. Anyway, the prospect of Justin Trudeau giving a state apology for the treatment of the MS St. Louis—a refugee ship full of German Jews turned away by Canada in 1939 that resulted in many of them returning to Europe and perishing in Nazi death camps—has got some Canadians wondering if he’s going too far with this whole apology thing. (And by “some Canadians” I mean at least Tory MP Marilyn Gladu and John Ivison at the National Post.)

Everyone agrees that the MS St. Louis, the Komagata Maru, the residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the mistreatment of LGBTQ+ soldiers in the Canadian Armed Forces are all bad things that the government probably should apologize for. But apologizing for too much, too fast, is apparently sketchy to some critics. There is a risk people might (incorrectly) start to think that Canada has actually done a lot of bad stuff in history, instead of zero-to-three bad things. MP Gladu also suggested so many formal state apologies might cheapen the practice, which might be a fair concern if Trudeau had made forty apologies so far but feels a little overstated when he’s only made four in about three years.

Ivison is more transparent about his apology anxiety than Gladu. Formal apologies for ancient historical events is the thin edge of the SJW wedge. We are no longer learning from our shared history but we are gripped by it, paralyzed by what we witness as it fractures to pieces under the pressure of 2018’s fashionable political correctness. It locks us into an endless cycle of trying to alter yesterday’s injustices by coddling today’s special interest groups. Soon we’ll realize that everyone from history is somehow “problematic” and the only logical conclusion of this is the quickly-approaching day Justin Trudeau strips his father’s name off the Montreal airport because Pierre said something racist in the 1940s. So obviously the best solution to any history-based grievances is to just move past it. Blah blah.

It is exhausting to read this line of argument, again and again, every time Canadians are forced to think about Canadian history. So here we go again for the kids in the back: it is Good when a prime minister acknowledges the country’s past crimes.

As anyone who has ever dealt with a long-term problem in their lives can tell you, you can’t really move forward until you acknowledge what has happened in the past and the ways in which it may be connected to what is happening in the present. It definitely sucks for anyone heavily emotionally invested in the idea of Canadian exceptionalism to learn that large swathes of Confederation are indeed built out of graft and violence. I’m not thrilled about it either—no one likes to find out that their favourite celebrity is a sex pest, or that they are the more-or-less direct beneficiary of atrocities committed by their government. But anyone who is concerned that formal apologies or compensation for past injustices somehow involves “rewriting history” is already working from a fairy tale.

Of course, Ivison is right in his final conclusion: “apologies do not erase iniquity” in the same way that a diagnosis doesn’t cure disease. But shunning them because they simultaneously accomplish too much (altering the past!) and too little (cynical virtue signalling!) is a sure sign that this isn’t really about formal apologies. What is really at issue here—as it nearly always is in Canada, the world’s most neurotic nation—is a contest over what “Canada” means. And, once again, nearly as often, that becomes a preoccupation with preserving whatever “the Canadian nation” meant a generation ago to all the white writers mining nostalgia for content in the pages of the national press.

As always, the deeper concern here is the depth of the prime minister’s cynicism. Apologies handed out as tokens without material restitution and/or demonstrable institutional reform are arguably exploitative and definitely manipulative. I have no doubt that in his heart of hearts, Justin Trudeau is genuinely sorry for Canada’s uglier heritage minutes. He shouldn’t put his mouth where he wouldn’t put his money, but he almost invariably will, because that’s his thing. But this is probably more a combination of the man’s temperament and his party’s ideologically-blinkered policy options, rather than a nefarious effort to airbrush the triumphs of Western civilization out of Canadian history. Which I feel like is a pretty banal observation, but there you go.

Anyways Justin, if you’re reading this I would like a formal apology for having to both read a bad op-ed on this subject and then write one of my own. Just kidding! That would be an an actual example of cheapening the apologies process, for anyone who might get confused again the next time a politician acknowledges that it was probably wrong to brutalize minorities back in the day. I can see how you’d make the mistake.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

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