Why Are There No Canadian Conspiracies?

U.S. history is replete with conspiracy theories. The same can't be said of Canada.

Since the release of my new book about conspiracy theories, Among the Truthers, a lot of Canadians have asked me variations of the same question: “Why are so many of the conspiracy theories you describe in the book about the United States? Aren't there any good Canadian conspiracy theories?”

The answer, oddly, is no. Almost all of the conspiracy theorists I interviewed – both in Canada and the United States – focus their suspicion on the halls of power in Washington and Wall Street. Conspiracy theories about Canada are extremely rare. In fact, the only "homegrown" conspiracy theories I encountered involved the United States taking over Canada’s sovereignty.

Though I don't discuss this question in my book, the lack of Canadian conspiracy theories set me wondering as to what it is about Canadian culture that makes us so non-conspiratorial.

The explanation, I think, is multidimensional:

1. Subject matter. Most good conspiracy theories are ambitious and grandiose. They don’t just imagine the takeover of a city or country by an evil conspiratorial force, but rather the takeover of the entire world. (Thus the term “New World Order,” which has been much bandied around by black-helicopter types.) If you want to hatch such a narrative, you can’t situate it in a second-tier powerhouse like Canada, whose politicians and corporate masters have no reasonable hope of conquering the world.
2. Religion. My research showed me that conspiracy theories often act as secular stand-ins for religious theories of good versus evil: The evil conspirator, who starts wars and depressions for his own evil purposes, acts as a devilish puppet master – much like Satan as he is depicted in the Book of Revelation. But Canadian society – unlike its American counterpart – isn’t saturated with these sorts of ideas: We have only a very small evangelical Christian presence, and, as a result, we are more suspicious of Satan’s stand-ins than Americans are.
3. Political origins. Unlike Canada, the United States was forged in revolution against a foreign power that held dominion over ordinary citizens. The idea of fighting back against such foreign overlords has thus become programmed into the nation’s political DNA, to the extent that Americans tend to imagine foreign plots that aren’t really there (such as, say, the plot to install a “foreign” Kenyan president into the White House). Canada, on the other hand, was created through more peaceful means.

The influence of these three factors is evident in the very different tones of Canadian and American politics. In recent months, conspiracy theories have dominated the political discourse in the United States: Millions of Republican “birthers” believe Obama is a foreign-born, communist Muslim, or that his health-care plan is a plot to send grandma before a “death panel.” In such a climate, it is impossible to have anything approaching a rational political discourse, which is why the U.S. is so gridlocked over how to reduce its massive debt.

The Canadian political climate is far healthier, and less overheated. In Canada’s recent election campaign, we fretted about how “shrill” things got. But, by American standards, the conflict here was mild: Sure, the Tories made a big deal about how long then Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff had lived outside of the country. But they never once accused him of forging his birth certificate.