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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Defence Minister Anita Anand walk in front of a column of Canadian troops at Fort York Armoury in Toronto, February 24, 2023. Katherine K. Y. Chen/Getty Images North America
John Rapley is a writer and scholar based in London, Johannesburg and Ottawa, whose books include Why Empires Fall (Yale University Press, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
Somehow, national service has resurfaced on the political agenda ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Rishi Sunak, leader of the British Conservative Party, floated the idea during the UK election campaign, and it has also been picked up by some Canadian commentators.
It is being promoted as a way to instill a greater sense of civic duty in a younger generation that may seem disconnected from society, and it may also provide some solutions to Canada's economic problems.
We actually know quite a bit about the economics of patriotism: where people feel a strong sense of attachment to their society, trust and voluntary compliance increase, productivity rises, transaction costs fall and output increases. But given how the issue is currently perceived, that may be putting the cart before the horse.
Thinking of government as a social contract means that, by and large, people put into government what they perceive they will get out of it. For example, a recent article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics looked at the impact of the New Deal on American patriotism.
They found that when the U.S. government expanded aid after 1933, the people who benefited most tended to be those who had shown the most patriotism during World War II — those who volunteered more, bought more war bonds, and demonstrated more heroism in combat (as measured by medals earned). As the article's authors note, the New Deal created a new class of patriots.
This new foundation mirrored similar developments in the Western world and became the basis of America's postwar social contract, a time when governments extended universal pensions, health care, and free education to society, and provided social assistance to citizens in times of poverty or unemployment.
The broad contours of that social contract were clear: If you worked hard, played by the rules, paid your taxes, and respected the law, you would get ahead, buy a home, have a family, succeed at work, and retire comfortably.
But today, the social contract is fraying for young Canadians: They have to pay more for education, and get more education to get good jobs, which may still be precarious.
Buying a home seems out of reach unless they borrow from family members, starting a family is more expensive than it used to be, taxes will surely rise in their lifetimes, and young people have a right to wonder when they'll get pensions as generous as those retirees get today. On top of that, they have to deal with the damaging effects of climate change, a problem that is relatively uncreated by them.
So young people can hardly be blamed for wondering what's in it for them. Older Canadians often point out that young people today are living better lives than they did when they were younger.
The food tastes better now, we have good coffee, a much wider variety of beers available, international travel is much cheaper and easier, more health conditions are treatable, and mental health, which was largely ignored back then, is now taken seriously. All of this is true, but it's beside the point: these benefits are available to everyone, and are not the result of special generosity showered on young people.
In any case, it can be said that young people have already demonstrated a strong willingness to sacrifice for society during the pandemic. When COVID-19 hit, it quickly became clear that without lockdowns, vulnerable and elderly people could suffer badly. But young people were at much lower risk. If the country had chosen to prioritize the well-being of young people at the time, it would have avoided lockdowns and allowed the virus to spread.
Instead, the state made a noble decision to protect those in society who needed it most. But the costs for young people were heavy: a decline in the quality of their education, isolation at a stage in life when social interaction is paramount for personal development, and a disrupted career start that, according to research, can permanently stunt a person's progress in life. Some are still paying the price.
And yet young people paid their taxes, and for the most part they did so without complaint. So before we ask what more young Canadians can do for their country, perhaps we should ask what the country can do for its young people.
Otherwise, Canada risks losing its young people, because more are emigrating and surveys suggest even more are considering emigrating, weakening the tax system, deepening the country's economic woes and perhaps draining the country's brainpower and exacerbating its productivity problems.
National service alone won't solve that.
