What did Mélanie Joly mean when she called Canada 'the most European of all non-European countries'?
In an interview this week with the BBC , Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told the British news service that Canada has been “over reliant on the U.S. for too long,” adding: “We are the most European of all non-European countries. That’s why we want to be closer to Europe.”
It’s not the first time the phrase has cropped up in Canadian political circles, especially in connection with the recent trade war between Canada and the U.S.
Just days after being sworn in as prime minister, Carney made his first trip in that role to Europe, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and telling him : “I want to ensure that France and the whole of Europe works enthusiastically with Canada, the most European of non-European countries, determined like you to maintain the most positive possible relations with the United States.”
He added: “Canada is a reliable, trustworthy and strong partner of France, which shares our values and lives them through action during this age of economic and geopolitical crises.”
Carney had said after his swearing-in the previous Friday that Canada was built on a “bedrock of three peoples: Indigenous, French and British.”
The concept of “most European” is evocative but vague: What does it mean to be the most European of non-European countries?
At its simplest, the similarities are architectural. A recent Business Insider article from a writer who visited both Quebec and Europe puts it bluntly: “The streets and buildings of Quebec City felt similar to places I visited in Europe.”
A second article on travel to Montreal was headlined: “ I visited the city that’s been nicknamed the ‘Paris of North America.’ It really feels like a charming slice of Europe in Canada.”
And it’s true: As two of North America’s oldest cities — Quebec City was founded in 1608 and Montreal in 1642, more than a century before Toronto and over 200 years before Vancouver — these locations preserve many of the same physical details that make old European cities feel the way they do.
But the comparisons run deeper, and go back much further than the latest government’s pronouncements.
Ten years ago, the CBC reached out to academics outside Canada who teach courses about Canada — “Canadianists,” they’re called — to see what their students were being taught about our country.
One Dutch educator said: “Many of my non-Canadianist friends refer to Canada as ‘the European version of America.’ Canada resembles Europe the way it wishes it had stayed: full of natural beauty.”
Ten years before that, Gwendolyn Owens , a Baltimore expat living in Montreal, was writing about a Canadian “culture and mentality that melds together Europe and the United States,” referring to our more European-style health care system and describing our multicultural makeup as “a kind of union of many nations, not unlike the new European Union or a small United Nations.”
Timothy Sayle, an associate professor in the department of history at the University of Toronto, says recent comments by Carney and others can be interpreted in two ways.
First is at face value. “There are some basic historical and cultural connections here,” he said. “It wasn’t that long ago that Canadians stopped being British subjects, and the King of England is also the King of Canada. That’s very present in our governance but also in our culture.”
He added that Canada’s bilingual nature, its connections between Quebec and France, and its social and health programs, which run closer to European models than American ones, all push Canada closer to Europe, comparatively speaking.
“But there’s also a political argument that these leaders are making, in that Canadian governments have often worked closely with European partners in international affairs, partially because Canadian and European governments sometimes see the world through the same lens, that the same international frameworks and cooperation is the best way to deal with the world.”
Finally, there may be a sense in which Carney and Joly were also talking directly to Canadians. Sayle noted an address given by Secretary of State for External Affairs Louis St. Laurent in 1947 , the year before he became prime minister. He called liberty “ an inheritance from both our French and English backgrounds, and through these parent states it has come to us from the whole rich culture of western Europe.”
Sayle explained: “Sometimes Canadian leaders find it useful to talk about Europe as a way of hinting at national unity goals in Canada. I’m not sure if the leaders have that in mind right now, but it’s an interesting twist on it.”
David Soberman, a professor and the Canadian National Chair of the Rotman School of Management, said one audience for whom such remarks were not intended is the rest of the world.
“I would say they’re trying to set us up against the United States in this case,” he said. “I don’t think it’s designed as something to say we’re more European than the Australians. I’ve spent time in Australia and New Zealand as well, and they’re pretty European.”
But he agreed the message has a takeaway for Canadians as well.
“To make us feel a little bit less stressed out, if you will,” he said. “We are different from the United States, and we’re good with that, but we also have friends in Europe that can empathize with the sorts of things that are important to us.”
Carney also met with King Charles III during his trip to Europe, and has invited the King to formally open parliament on May 27, the first time Canada’s monarch has done so since Queen Elizabeth II in her jubilee year of 1977.
Joly told the BBC that the King’s visit was another “clear signal” of Canada’s sovereignty.
“That’s pretty important,” Soberman said. “He’s a European monarch, and here he is coming to deliver what’s one of the most important statements that occurs in the Canadian Parliament every year. That’s a pretty strong link.”
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