Canada's Political Obsession with National Unity

Rather a dissociative federalism is raised to the level of a quasi-religious political dogma, and polarization to right and left in Canadian politics is regarded as disruptive. Consequently the main focus of Canadian politics has been to the right and the maintenance of the status quo. The reason that the Liberal party in Canada was in office so many years until 1957 was not because it was a progressive party, but because it served Canada's major goal of national unity.

--John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada, Studies in the Structure of Power: Decision-Making in Canada 2 (1965; repr., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 369.