because the soul of the people comes to depend not on the citizens, or values, but instead on government programs, civil servants and budgets. A budget crisis -- or even relatively innocuous acts such as closing a railway link or shutting down a regional radio station -- become nation-destroying gestures. ... Another much more disquieting perverse effect is the development in Canada of an ideological orthodoxy. In Quebec, there are pressures that discourage intellectuals from straying from sovereigntist dogma without running the risk of exclusion and mistrust. I know something about this. The same process is at work in the rest of Canada, through the Canadian social model. It is difficult to be a true Canadian without espousing the centre-left values that underlie our welfare state."