Loss Of Trust In Post-National Canada

In the summer of my 15th year, I stepped outside my house on a small fenced-off acreage on the outskirts of a country town in Alberta to find a cow standing in my front yard. Some may not find such a thing to be odd in a rural community – what made it odd to me was that my father was a mechanic and my neighbours had horses. There was no reason why a cow would be able to find its way into my yard by regular means.

I immediately called for my dad, startling the cow and sending it walking into the vacant field opposite my house. My dad and I followed, intermittently chasing the errant cow as it attempted to evade us by crossing irrigation ditches and climbing through brush. We caught up to it beside the house of a Dutch Reform family, who called their neighbour and managed to help us corral the cow in their yard. 

All together, we managed to get my grandfather in touch with the farmer who owned the cow, bringing it back to his farm 5 kilometres away. Everyone involved cooperated to no benefit of themselves. We didn’t even know who the cow belonged to, but we spontaneously aligned to do what was right simply because we knew it was.

This sense of trust, this innate drive to help others without being asked, simply doesn’t exist in modern Canada. In 2022, 39.2% of Canadians reported that strangers ‘cannot be trusted at all’. There are a number of reasons that contribute to this massive decline in societal trust. One facet of this discussion is immigration – only 15% of those of immigrant status report that strangers can be trusted, and only 12.4% of visible minorities do. Conversely, 21.5% of those who are not a visible minority report that strangers can be trusted.

The simple fact is that as the demography of Canada gets increasingly diverse, the social cohesion that lends itself to a high-trust society is degraded. All those who were involved in the anecdote of my childhood shared an innate connection in background, culture, and social situation. Even though we had never spoken before, and some of us didn’t speak the same language (Dutch Reform), we shared an innate cultural consciousness.

When comparing that to the situation of many of those who arrive in Canada from overseas, the same cannot be said. The majority of those immigrating here today are doing so because of perceived economic and personal rewards that they believe can be extracted from Canada. This is evident when you look at the behaviour of some international students in Eastern Canada when faced with the expiry of their work permits. For many immigrants, it is not a matter of what they can provide to Canadian society, but what Canada can provide for them.

The Bowling Alone thesis is a social science concept first put forward by Robert D. Putnam in his 1995 essay Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital, and later expanded upon in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Putnam enumerates the ways in which American society is witnessing a marked decline in social participation. The evidence he provides is likewise applicable to Canada.

Putnam demonstrates that in the 25 years leading up to 2000, attendance of social club meetings declined 58%, family dinners declined 43%, and having friends over at one’s house declined 35%. Traditionally popular social clubs such as Rotary International no longer bother with maintaining club attendance records.

In Canada, organisations like the Royal Canadian Legion are hemorrhaging membership, with four branches closing in 2023, and countless more struggling to make ends meet when faced with insufficient support from the community.

The abandonment of these traditional institutions and the general decline in social trust observed by Putnam are indicative of a deeper problem facing the Western world that goes beyond immigration – a mass disaffection with anchor points that traditionally led to bonding and bridges between people. There are a number of things that could be to blame, including the internet, car-based infrastructure (Putnam asserts that every 10 minutes driving reduces social capital by 10%), but also an attitude of exclusivity, and a lack of understanding of what actually engages the youth.

As for how we can help ourselves rediscover societal trust and re-engage with the institutions that once universally brought us together, a first major step would be leading by example. Those community members who helped wrastle that young heifer would have never known about the situation were it not for my father and I chasing it into their yard. If we want to build a community, we need to seek it, and make it accessible.

Find your friends, organise meetings, get people off the internet, utilise FOMO. Not only will this contribute to familial and community wellbeing, but it can also provide energy to political movements that seek to remedy societal woes, like the Loyalist Assembly of Canada.

In conclusion, I believe the words of Stompin’ Tom Connors, a singer who in many cases is considered to be the prime example of Canadiana, summarises the sentiment that is quickly slipping away:

“In a land that’s short on heroes, they trade our jobs away

And we don’t need no zeros to come and help us save the day

So if you don’t believe your country should come before yourself

Ya can better serve your country, by living somewhere else.”

(Stompin’ Tom Connors – Believe in Your Country)