This might be the best Mark Steyn column ever

And all I can say is ouch. Read the entire article, but registration is required (and free). The Western Standard really is worth reading from time to time anyway.

So we're no longer a great military nation. But nor are we a great peacekeeping nation: we do less than notorious sabre-rattlers like Britain and America. Compared to the Scandinavians and the other niceniks we're a poor aid donor, and our immobile rapid-reaction force is of no practical use in humanitarian crises. M. Chrétien's legacy-building Africa initiative of 2002 is known only to Canadians. Everywhere else, it's credited as Tony Blair's Africa initiative. We have less influence internationally than we did in the 1940s--before we had a flag, an anthem, or our own citizenship. Even if the Trudeaupian vision of Canada were sufficient for a national identity, it suffers from the basic defect of being a bald-faced lie.

Let's go back to those GDP figures: Canada's GDP per capita is US$31,500--about three-quarters of the U.S. figure, and, if you're a visitor from California or Connecticut, Canadians don't appear especially wealthy. But we supposedly "choose" to pay high taxes because we're so virtuous. So where does all the money go? Not to the military, not to UN peacekeeping, not to overseas aid. Few other western taxpayers get such a pathetic flatulent squeak of a bang for their buck. Maybe the government could set up a special program to give grants to Quebec marketing firms to investigate where the dough went. But the fact is one of the largest, wealthiest nations in the history of the world is entirely absent from the world scene. It's not just that we punch below our weight, but that we don't punch at all.

It's just occured to me that Canada is in serious need of an identity crisis - we need to sort out who we are and what we stand for.