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John Diefenbaker is proudly and confessedly a nationalist, in a nation whose oldtimers can recall when annexation by the U.S. was still a live political issue. His special concern is how to bind together the 4,000-mile-long, east-west ribbon that is populated Canada, weaving it strongly enough to resist the fraying influences of the north-south pull of economics and geography. How to make a nation out of Canada has in fact been the historic preoccupation of both of Canada's major parties almost to the exclusion of doctrinaire, right-left, capitalism-socialism struggles. Canada's first Prime Minister, Tory John A. Macdonald (1867-73, 1878-91), liberally subsidized the Canadian Pacific Railroad to keep Canada from being served only by north-bound branch lines of U.S. railroads. Liberal C. D. Howe, a devoted private enterpriser, saw nothing strange in fathering a national airline and a national radio-TV network. When Liberals adopted baby bonuses, old-age pensions, a $100 million Canada Council to encourage culture, Conservatives generally approved. Tory Diefenbaker, in fact, promises higher pensions and fatter farm subsidies.
On the emotional issue of foreign relations, subtle differences mark the party attitudes. Liberals cherish the British Commonwealth as a purely sentimental unifying influence. John Diefenbaker (though he is the first Tory Prime Minister with a non-British name) loves Britain—and sees it as a useful lever to help Canada resist U.S. domination. In London for a Commonwealth Conference soon after his election, Diefenbaker invited his fellow Prime Ministers to send their finance ministers to Ottawa this fall to talk up Commonwealth trade. And back in Ottawa, he called on Canadians to shift 15% of their U.S. purchase orders to British suppliers, thus strengthen Britain's ability to buy Canadian wheat.
"I believe that Canadians are becoming more and more conscious of the need for re-examination of Canada's economic policies to ensure and preserve for the people of Canada the control of their own political and economic destiny," says John Diefenbaker. Then he adds a favorite line: "I am not anti-American. The very thought is repugnant to me. I am strongly pro-Canadian."