The following is a speech delivered by Conrad Black at the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference 2023 in Ottawa on March 24, 2023.
I have been asked to give a summary of the development and current condition of conservatism in the United States and Canada. Please allow me to begin with a bit of historical interpretation. The nature of American and Canadian political society, including their somewhat different notions of conservatism, are derived from their early days.
Champlain founded Canada with the dream of a great French state in the New World, independent of the Americans, and this dream was modified and relaunched by Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester, the greatest of the British governors, as a great bicultural country also independent of the Americans….