Military frames and Canada’s Conservative government: from extending to transforming perceptions of Canadian identity

Abstract

This article looks at framing strategies behind the recent Canadian Conservative government’s rhetoric on the military. Critics argue that Conservative rhetoric has politicised Canadian history and overemphasised the armed forces. Few scholars, however, have looked at the specific forms this rhetoric took and the strategies it suggested. The article presents the results of a systematic analysis of Conservative rhetoric between 2005 and 2015. It argues that three key frame alignment strategies were at the heart of the Conservative Government’s rhetoric: extension, consolidation and transformation, with truly transformative rhetoric transpiring only in the last phase. While agreeing with critics that this emphasis on the military aimed to alter perceptions of Canadian identity, the article shows that Conservative rhetoric was far from and monolithic.

Keywords:

• Canada
• government
• Conservative
• military
• framing
• partisan politics
• identity

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Emerson Vandenberg for research assistance. The authors also thank CCP’s anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A notable exception is the work of Loizides (2009).

2. The expression is borrowed from Steinberg (1998), though this author speaks of ‘tilting’ the perspective of frame analysts to account for more interpretive or discursive dynamics.

3. See Stephen Harper’s address to the 61st opening session of the United Nations General Assembly.

4. On this issue, see in particular the 2006 Election platform and the Canada First Defence Strategy.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.