Politics & Power Quote by Gordon Sinclair

Sinclair’s line drips with the moral accounting of wartime North America: not just who fights, but who gets to opt out - and who quietly foots the bill. The telling move is his casual “even,” which frames draft dodgers as a baseline test of Canadian decency. Canada, he implies, is so tolerant it won’t “pursue and hound” the very people the U.S. state wants to punish. That’s praise, but it lands as a provocation: if Canadians can restrain their anger, why can’t Americans restrain theirs?

The subtext sharpens when he pivots to money. “American dollars from Ma and Pa” is doing heavy cultural work: it paints the dodgers not as hardened radicals but as middle-class sons still tethered to family support, exporting U.S. comfort into Canadian space. The phrase makes them sound simultaneously dependent and entitled - refugees with an allowance. Sinclair isn’t defending their politics; he’s policing the social optics. He wants Canadians to notice they’re hosting a demographic that benefits from Canadian tolerance while remaining financially (and emotionally) subsidized by home.

Context matters: during the Vietnam era, Canada became a major destination for U.S. draft resisters, and the issue forced Canadians to narrate themselves against American militarism. Sinclair’s intent reads like boundary-setting nationalism: we’ll offer lawful refuge, but don’t mistake our restraint for approval, and don’t pretend this migration is purely principled when it’s also cushioned by U.S. money. The result is a tight rhetorical two-step - virtue claimed, resentment aired, both neatly insulated by “unless they are breaking Canadian laws.”