In 1958, the Diefenbaker government allocated $14,000 to what were then Dominion Day celebrations, according to Wikipedia. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to $155,761.59 today — pocket change for a federal government that now spends over $1.1 million per minute. Canada Day celebrations now cost Ottawa about 30 times what they did in 1958.
Declining national mood despite increased spending
Despite the big increase in celebratory spending, the country does not feel as good about itself as it did back in 1958, when the baby boom was filling new neighbourhoods, migrants were flooding in, and the prideful afterglow from World War II was still felt. As Canada Day 2026 approaches, the Confederation whose birth we observe is in question again. A leading party in Quebec favours a secession referendum, while Alberta has scheduled a referendum about having a secession referendum. A country that used to rank fifth in the world happiness survey is now 23rd, while in the world development reports we are down from first in the 1990s to 16th today.
Global context of discontent
Our discontent is not unique. Britain, having just devoured another prime minister, is on to her fourth in four years, a span during which Italy has had only the indomitable Giorgia Meloni. The United States is still digesting whether it won or lost a war in which it helped kill most of the adversary’s leaders in the first minutes, lost almost no combatants itself but somehow ended up legitimizing Iranian control over the Straits of Hormuz.
Historical perspective on Canadian politics
But best not overstate our current gloom. Dominion Day 1958 marked peak Diefenbaker. Three months earlier he had won almost 80 per cent of the seats with almost 54 per cent of the popular vote in an election in which voter turnout was almost 80 per cent. But just five years later he was out as prime minister, replaced by Lester Pearson, who himself lasted not quite five years. Canadian politics in the 1960s were so addled, off-putting and scandal-ridden that journalist Peter Newman titled his best-selling 1968 history of the Pearson government “The Distemper of Our Times.” It was published in January of that year, before the Americans lost two leaders to assassination (Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy) and suffered the military victory but propaganda defeat of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive in Viet Nam, in which 246 Americans died on the battle’s worst day (Jan. 31) — many times more than in the Iran war, so far at least.
Freedom at the core of discontent
Increasingly, governments like Canada have become much more involved in the lives of their citizens, telling them what they can and, more and more, cannot do. This treading less lightly on our lives is the source of our discontent. As we celebrate Canada Day, the question of freedom and government overreach remains central to our national mood.
