Whether he admits it or not, Prime Minister Stephen Harper clearly believes there are two tiers of Canadians: those who were born here and those who weren't but have acquired Canadian citizenship.
The comment about "old stock" Canadians he made earlier in the campaign demonstrates that this distinction is real to him. To be fair, however, many natural-born Canadians seem to think the same way, regardless of their political persuasion. Canadians are hardly unique in this belief. Only a natural-born American citizen may run for president, which is why Arnold Schwarzenegger's political career ended at governor of California. He was born in Austria.
Logically, the birthplace of an individual should have nothing to do with someone's identity, their qualification to hold political office or their suitability to become a citizen of another country. The geographical location where we exit our mother's womb should have no bearing whatsoever on who we are or what we stand for.
I was born in High Prairie, Alta., but I never lived there, not even as an infant. My mom liked the doctor there and was willing to go to him to receive the care she wanted to have her first child. She travelled even further two years later to have my sister there with the same doctor.
Although both my sister and I were born in Alberta, neither of us would ever identify as Albertans. Our early childhood was spent in the Northwest Territories. Ever since we were teenagers, we have lived almost exclusively in British Columbia. We are true British Columbians and we would laugh at anyone who would insist we were not "old stock" British Columbians.
What a silly distinction.
That's the "stock" part of the equation but the "old" part of it is also nonsense.
Roy MacGregor of the Globe and Mail wrote a piece in 2009 about Harper's lineage, which started in Canada with the arrival of Christopher Harper from Yorkshire in 1774. If old is the standard, then Harper is the new kid in town compared to me. I am a descendant of Nicolas Godbout, who left Berneval-le-Grand on France's north coast when he was 19 and made his way to Canada in 1651.
But I can't beat either Justin Trudeau or Tom Mulcair.
In 2013, the genealogy website ancestry.ca attracted a ton of media attention by showing that Trudeau and Mulcair are actually ninth cousins. Apparently their mutual eighth great-grandparents are Mathieu Amiot and Marie Miville, both "natural-born" Canadians (make that New France) who were married in 1650. Both of those families were among Quebec's first European settlers.
Yet neither Trudeau or Mulcair are more Canadian than me and I am not any more Canadian than Harper. So continue that argument going forward. A Canadian with family ties that go back to 1895 or 1995 is no less a Canadian than any other. I was born in 1968. Is an immigrant to Canada who became a Canadian citizen in 1967 or earlier more or less Canadian than me? If not, then is a Canadian who took their vows and was formally declared a citizen of this country yesterday less Canadian than any other?
People applying for jobs and candidates for public office will often throw in how long they've lived in Prince George, even though that has nothing to do with their qualifications.
Kathleen Soltis, the city manager with the City of Prince George, was born here and so was her father, Dr. Jack McKenzie, in 1917. Interesting tidbit, for sure, but what really matters about Soltis is she holds a master's degree in business administration from UBC, started her career at the city as a human resources officer in 1986 and rose through the ranks to senior management, becoming the corporate services director and chief financial officer in 1997.
In the last election, Harper made a big deal about "just visiting" Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader (and Canadian citizen) who has spent the majority of his adult life living and working elsewhere. Not Canadian enough to be prime minister was the insinuation. Strangely, Harper had no problem accepting the endorsement of Wayne Gretzky, who is a permanent American resident and raised his children there.
Is Gretzky still a Canadian? His address and his voter eligibility says no, but he will always bleed maple leaf red.
In the end, Harper's efforts to distinguish one kind of Canadian from another just isn't very Canadian of him.
