The First Borderless State
By: Richard Gwyn
Within not much more than 10
years, perhaps a good deal less,
Canada may no longer exist. The
Canadian national chronicle could
end, quite quickly, in a kind of
regretful sigh.
Or the opposite may happen.
Canada may complete its evolution
into a society unlike any other. We
may become the world’s first postmodern nation, inventing ways
others may follow in which people
almost infinite in their variety can still
cohere into a self-sustaining and a
creative collectivity.
It seems extravagant, if not absurd,
to suggest that a people like
ourselves, pragmatic, self-effacing,
addicted to the Golden Mean of
muddling through, could blaze a
global trail.
Yet this is what we are doing
already. No other country is
multicultural officially. No other has
so comprehensive a constitutional
guarantee of gender equality. No
other is as decentralized, that is to
say does so much of its governance
so close to its citizens. No other is
changing its own demography so
dramatically:
Our
immigration
program is the largest in the world.
These policies cause stresses and
strains. But all are the essential
components of a post-modern
society, provided we can find a way
to contain all our disparate parts
within a whole larger than their sum.
An impossible goal for Canadians.
Except that Pierre Trudeau, in 1976,
forecast that Canada could be ‘’a
brilliant prototype for the building of
tomorrow’s civilization.’’
The alternate scenario - that our
nation-state might soon peter out is, of course, a more shocking one.
Yet who, even a decade ago,
predicted the erosions to our
national identity now happening to
us, or that we would accept them so
passively.
The dissolution of our single panCanadian sporting competition - the
Canadian Football League. The
appointment of non-Canadians to
head
such
central
national
institutions as The Globe and Mail
and Air Canada.
Or the choice made by millions of
Canadians that their national
birthright entitles them to spend the
dollars they have earned in Canada
outside of Canada, or at least to
have done so until the decline in the
value of our dollar eliminated most
of the benefits of cross-border
shopping.
THE EROSION OF THE
NATION-STATE
It’s always possible that our nationstate will muddle along for many
more decades. Inertia is the most
powerful political force~ of all. But
this middle ground may not hold for
us for long.
That globalization is undermining
nation-states the world over is the
great
cliche
of
contemporary
commentary. The Canadian nationstate is threatened uniquely, though.
If a people do not shop together, do
not play games together, do not
holiday amongst each other Maclean’s once brilliantly titled a
cover story: My Canada Includes
Florida - can they really stay
together?
We’ve always been at least two
nations, and many more, depending
upon how the First Nations are
counted. Relevant also is that we most of us - have never been
distinct, ethnically and linguistically,
from our overpowering neighbour.
My own response is: Yes, we can.
Instead, our distinct identity has
always resided in our political
distinctiveness. We’ve depended
upon state enterprises, Canadian
National,
CBC,
Air
Canada,
PetroCanada, to ensure that we
owned essential parts of our national
infrastructure and also to alter the
character of our market economy.
Most forecasts for Canada’s demise
assume Quebec’s separation as its
immediate cause. But next year’s
referendum has been lost already by the separatists. Only malignant
stupidity by the rest of us could alter
this reality.
The narrowness of the electoral
victory of the Parti Quebecois and
the subsequent decline in support
for sovereignty in the polls strongly
suggest this. But the essential
reason Quebecers no longer feel the
need to separate is because they
are already separate, culturally and
psychically and in almost all
practical respects. Rather than a
mere distinct society, Quebec is a
distinct nation within Confederation.
It’s one of the ways we have already
become a post-modern state. Which
isn’t at all to say that Quebecers’
cultural concerns will not - forever challenge our nation-state.
This, though, is a familiar, indeed an
age-old, theme in the Canadian
reality. Just what are the new
themes?
Our political discourse has always
depended
upon
civility
and
compromise rather than, as south of
the border, upon the free-market
virtues of competitiveness and the
quest for victory. It’s been said often,
but does still say most of what
needs to be said, that our national
goal is ‘’peace, order and good
government’’
while
that
of
Americans
is,
much
more
ambitiously and aggressively, ‘’life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ‘
Other nations have survived the
vanishing of their nation-state, in the
instance of the French for four years
of wartime occupation, of Poles
during 200 years of partition, of
Jews during a thousand-year
diasapora. But can a people defined
by their state survive its vanishing?
The forces of globalization, of the
trans-national movement of goods
and services, of capital, of
production facilities, of know-how, of
technology, of consumer tastes,
cannot be halted at national borders.
Regional groupings - the European
Union, NAFTA - are quickening the
unravelling of the nation-states that
form
their
membership.
The
European Union’s members are
committed to a single currency. An
equivalent financial homogeneity
has been forecast for NAFTA by
Paul Volker, former president of the
U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.
Amidst
globalization
and
regionalization, nation-states can no
longer fulfil their original economic
purposes. They cannot ameliorate
significantly business cycles, they
cannot guarantee their citizens full
employment nor protect them from
the effects of international capital
and technology and trade. Instead,
employment is now largely the
responsibility of each individual. The
most a nation-state can do - it is still
a lot - is to improve its citizens’
employability
by
well-judged
investments in infrastructure.
A post-war justification for nationstates has been to protect their
citizens from the marketplace by
turning themselves into welfare
states. Often, as between Canada
and the U.S., it is differences in
social security systems that most
distinguish nation-states now.
But the assumptions upon which all
post-war welfare states have been
built - the attainability of full
employment; the attainability of
perpetual increases in national
wealth - are in fundamental doubt
now. The gap between these past
assumptions and contemporary
reality is measured by our debt and
annual deficits. We cannot continue
the style of welfare state to which we
have become accustomed. It will
have to be reformed, restructured,
reduced. In the process, though,
we’ll
diminish
our
national
distinctiveness, most certainly vis-avis the U.S.
One other external force is altering
the character of our nation-state.
This the ‘’information revolution.’’
Consider two slogans used to
describe it: The global village. The
wired world.
In a global village, where is the
space left for a l9th century
construct like the nation-state? In a
totally wired world, what meaning is
left to national boundaries? Will they
be replaced by the so-called ‘’virtual
communities’’ in which an individual,
living in St. Catharines, say, can, by
way of the Internet, E-mail, fax and
lap-top
computers,
live
simultaneously here and in San
Francisco or New York or London or
Tokyo, as a full member of a
geographically separated community
of like- minded people.
What about the effect of the
promised
500
channels
of
television? The French analyst Elihu
Katz has written about the loss of
what he calls ‘’the public space,’’ or
the commonality between citizens of
each nation-state. What will we all
say to each other around the water
cooler when none of us have
watched the same programs the
evening before?
This condition won’t be unique to us.
But it will affect us especially. Our
popular culture is not our own
culture. Our magazine stands, our
movie theatres, our TV, our pop
music, bathe us in the ideas and
images of the culture of our
neighbouring
nation-state.
Our
public space is already narrowing
sharply. Today, CBC-TV accounts
for 13 per cent of the audience in
English-speaking Canada. A decade
ago, its share was 21 per cent.
We are the only country in the world
in which most citizens do not identify
themselves as citizens of that
country. We identify ourselves
instead by region, as Albertans or
Quebecers or Newfoundlanders. Or
we identify ourselves by ethnicity, as
Italian
Canadians,
Somali
Canadians, Ukrainian Canadians.
In effect, more and more Canadians
are re-writing the terms of their
contract with the Canadian nationstate
to
suit
their
own
circumstances. More accurately, we
are allowing these contracts to be
re-interpreted
without
thinking
through - without daring to try to the
consequences
and
the
alternatives.
Multiculturalism
is
the
caseexample. It was created, in 1971, by
the customary coupling of political
opportunism and good intentions.
Those
intentions
really
were
honorable: To inculcate among
Canadians greater sensitivity and
understanding towards so-called
‘’New Canadians;’’ to make it easier
for newcomers to integrate by
softening the cultural shock they all
underwent.
THE IMPLOSION OF THE
NATION-STATE
Rather than bringing us together,
though, multiculturalism I believe
has become a system that’s pushing
us further apart. It’s the principal
reason why there are no Canadians
in Canada, only hyphenated ones,
the single exception, ironically, being
Quebecers. In his recently-published
book,
Selling
Illusions,
Neil
Bissoondath writes, ‘’Depending on
stereotype, ensuring that ethnic
groups
will
preserve
their
distinctiveness in a gentle and
insidious form of cultural apartheid,
multiculturalism has done little more
than lead an already divided land
down the path to further social
divisiveness.’’
Internal forces are having the same
hollowing- out effect. I’ve already
noted Quebec’s virtual separation
within Canada. Native peoples are
moving along the same path,
negotiating their own legal systems,
educational
systems,
policing
systems, local linguistic regulations.
Bissoondath’s use of the phrase
‘’social divisiveness’’ is especially
apt. At its inception, multiculturalism
was assumed by the public to be
intended to mean legitimating
cultural differences, as of folklore, of
music and dance and song, and
even, if only temporarily, of
In all these ways, the Canadian
nation-state is certain to become,
year after year, less and less
relevant to the daily, practical lives
of Canadians.
language. Today, multiculturalism is
being used to legitimate social
differences, that is differences of
habits, attitudes, values.
A vivid illustration is contained in the
proposal from Ottawa recently, for a
‘’cultural defence’’ against certain
breaches of the law - polygamy; the
wearing of ceremonial weapons.
Public outrage compelled the
minister of justice to make an instant
retreat. But how did the idea itself
ever get through him, his aides, his
officials?
The explanation is that the idea of
discriminatory treatment is no longer
in the least unusual. It’s the
intellectual and moral justification for
the
Ontario
government’s
employment equity legislation which
provides for Canadians to be treated
differently on the basis of their
gender, their color and their race in
the case of native peoples. It’s the
justification for the demand for state
support for segregated religious
schools, and that all public schools
close on the religious holidays of
some unspecified proportion of their
students.
It is the justification for the recent
proposal by the Harriet Tubman
Community
Association,
for
separate legal treatment for those
Canadians who have committed
minor crimes and who happen to be
black.
Multiculturalism as it has developed
could divide us, as it were, at our
centre. Signs exist that a growing
number of English-Canadians are
beginning to think of themselves as
just another multicultural group
within our mosaic.
To a significant degree, the Reform
party
represents
a
political
expression of a retreat by some
English-Canadians into a kind of
ethnic identity. The kind of crude
backlash against ‘’diversity’’ that
exploded during the recent mid-term
elections in the U.S. could happen
here.
I anticipate not. But if EnglishCanadians begin to rewrite the
terms of their contract with the
Canadian nation-state, what’s left to
hold the centre together?
Multiculturalism is also hopelessly
out of date. Once, all newcomers
underwent a severe cultural shock.
But the efficiency and comparative
cheapness of contemporary systems
of
transportation
and
communications, and the ease with
which cultural artefacts - foods,
clothing, works of artisanship,
videos, films, newspapers - can be
imported enable all who want to do
so to nourish their original culture,
rather than merely to preserve it in
some kind of household museum, or
in a ghetto.
The phenomenon now reshaping
our
society
is
much
more
multinationalism
than
mere
multiculturalism. That Canadian law
permits, almost encourages, the
retention of two passports is a
factor. The decisive one is that it is
scarcely more difficult now for
someone to live simultaneously, in a
commercial and a cultural sense, in
another country as well as in
Canada than for that person to
commute
regularly
between
Canadian cities.
In no way do I apply the term
multinationalism only to newcomers.
Any Canadian visiting eastern
Europe and the ex-Soviet Union
would be struck by how many
Canadians live there now. Many are
the second- and third-generation
children of immigrants who, whether
in Croatia or Serbia or Estonia or
Ukraine, have found in their
‘’homeland’’ a self-identifying cause
they could not find in the land of
their birth.
Neither is multinationalism in any
way unique to the descendants of
those who came from countries
other than those we once called the
Mother Countries.
In his last book before his recent
death, The Revolt of the Elites, the
American critic Christopher Lasch
writes
angrily
about
those
Americans who have, in his term,
‘’ceased to think of themselves as
Americans in any important sense.’’
These individuals, Lasch continues,
have turned their back upon
America’s crumbling cities and upon
the traditional values of Middle
America, to retreat into private
education, private medicine, private
security within walled estates, and to
retreat also from America itself into,
‘’an international culture of work and
leisure,
business
and
entertainment.’’
An increasing number of Canadians,
even if they still reside here, have
similarly become global expatriates.
Compared to the phenomenon of
multinationalism,
multiculturalism
merely inculcates variations upon a
theme. Its very marginality, though,
confirms that if the program were
scrapped, few need miss it.
HUMANISM vs. IDENTITY
Discussing multiculturalism is a
good entry point into what I believe
is a fundamental intellectual and
moral debate now going on about
what amounts to Canada’s postmodern character.
This debate is between those I
would call ‘’humanists’’ (my own
creed) and those I would call
‘’identity politicians.’’ I am trying to
distinguish between those who
regard ethnicity and gender as
central to each person’s attitudes
and circumstances, and who
therefore see Canadians as divided
naturally into groups, and those who
regard
humanity
itself,
or
individuality, as the single essential,
common,
distinguishing
characteristic of us all.
The starting point of those who
espouse either creed is the same.
Both accept that Canada was
structured historically, and to a
greater or lesser degree still is, so
as to disadvantage - and often also
to discriminate against - certain
Canadians by ethnicity and gender.
A difference, possibly only a
distinction, is that humanists would
place greater emphasis on the
distorting effects of wealth and
class, while identity politicians would
emphasize
the
common
discrimination inflicted upon, say, all
women regardless of their station.
Their end point is the same also.
Both seek a Canada in which neither
sex nor sexual orientation nor color
nor race nor culture nor language
make any difference to whether a
particular person fulfils his or her
potential, or fails to do.
The entire intellectual and moral
debate is taking place in the centre
ground. This is the source of the
arguments about employment equity
and
the
other
schemes
to
discriminate in favour of those once
discriminated against even at the
cost of reverse discrimination
against others. The opposite view
holds that to use discrimination as a
kind of vaccine against itself is to
inject it permanently into our body
politic.
Some of this debate is merely
tactical.
Humanists
fear
that
discrimination
will
provoke
a
backlash - specifically by white
males - that will slow the process of
change. Identity politicians fear that
failing
to
advantage
the
disadvantaged
immediately
will
multiply
their
frustration
and
alienation, making it more difficult for
them ever to enter the mainstream.
Some of the debate is only about
perspective.
Identity
politicians
argue that far too many of the good
jobs are still held by white males.
Humanists argue that this is a fading
reflection of the Canada of decades
ago when today’s vice- presidents
were hired as messenger-boys.
Identity politicians point to the
slowness of change, such as that
women’s earnings are only 70 per
cent of those of males. Humanists
point to the rapidity of change; that,
for example, young women are
gaining jobs far more easily than
young
men
now
their
unemployment rate is a full 25 per
cent lower - and that, since 55 per
cent of all university students now
are female, they are poised to do
better in tomorrow’s economy.
And, as evidence that color itself is
no economic barrier, there is the
recent finding that Vietnamese
Canadians, most of whom came
here a decade ago as unskilled,
unilingual refugees, already have a
superior employment record to that
of native-born Canadians, while the
many
second-generation
Vietnamese Canadian names on
honours’ lists and deans’ lists
confirms that they are going to do far
better economically than their ‘’oldCanadian’’ equivalents.
The debate itself, though, is real,
painful and strongly felt by both
sides. Last summer, Canadian
writers were torn apart over whether
a conference of writers of color from
which whites were excluded was a
necessary technique for overcoming
racism, or was itself racist. To one
side, discrimination can only be
ended
by
discrimination
and
exclusion
only
by
exclusion,
however temporarily and regretfully.
To
the
other,
to
legitimate
discrimination and exclusion is to
make
them
permanent
disfigurements of our society.
A SENSE OF THE CANADIAN
SENSIBILITY
Until now, I have painted a portrait of
a nation- state being eroded by
external forces at the same time as
it is being hollowed out by internal
ones.
What’s wrong with this portrait isn’t
that it is inaccurate. It’s wrong
because it is out of focus.
It’s time to shift from my thesis to my
antithesis and to lighten the gloom.
Clearly, loyalty to the traditional
Canadian nation-state is declining
and will continue to decline. But not
a scrap of evidence exists of any
decline in loyalty to the Canadian
sensibility.
Most
Canadians,
palpably and overwhelmingly, want
to go on being Canadian.
Earlier this year, people in a number
of countries were asked which
country in the world they judged ‘’the
best country to live in.’’ The highest
proportion of those who selected
their own country were Canadians 94 per cent. Ninety per cent of
Quebecers thought the same way
about Canada.
An almost uncanny difference exists
now between the political and social
conditions on either side of the
border.
As
the
mid-term
congressional elections confirmed,
many Americans have arrived
nowadays at the point of actually
hating each other. The level of
vitriol, and vengefulness and
paranoia in public debate there is
extraordinary.
No
less
extraordinary,
the
contemporary mood of Canadians is
equable and relaxed, even though
our
economic
conditions
are
decidedly more exigent. One
illustration of the cross-border
difference: By a wide margin,
Californians have just approved a
savagely anti-immigrant proposition;
here, the federal government has
recently
enacted
quite
minor
changes to our immigration system,
yet Canadians, who only recently
told pollsters they feared our
immigration program was ‘’out of
control,’’ have almost instantly
turned calm about it.
Personal and stylistic differences
between Jean Chretien and Bill
Clinton account for part of the
difference.
These
are
only
circumstantial differences, though.
They don’t explain why Canadians
should be so ready, almost anxious
to trust their leader, while so many
Americans should be so eager to
mistrust theirs - as they have every
leader but Ronald Reagan during
the three decades since John
Kennedy.
Our government may be weak, but
we still regard it as ours. Americans
want to weaken their government as
much as possible because many
regard it as an alien, as the enemy.
No explanation for these crossborder differences exists but the
Canadian sensibility. We don’t really
know what it is: Some blend of
civility, tolerance, a readiness to
compromise, an eagerness to
engage in dialogue, an appreciation
of ambiguity, a fear of extremes,
although, as critics have rightly
pointed out, a fear also of
excellence; plus a certain passivity
and smugness. But we know that
we’ve got it, and we don’t want to
give it up.
FROM SENSIBILITY TO
SYNTHESIS
Post-modern is a pretty slippery
phrase. In architecture, it doesn’t
mean much more than buildings that
aren’t all shaped like cereal boxes.
In literary terms, it means the
doctrine
of
deconstruction,
a
conveniently apt description of
what’s happening to our nationstate.
So far as nation-states are
concerned, political post-modernism
means that their normal condition is
going to become one of multiple
loyalties among their citizens, of
individuals
possessing
multiple
identities, and of an ever-shifting
balance between the opposed
virtues of unity and divisions, of
solidarity and segregation.
I can think of no nation-state better
fitted to cope with these 21st century
challenges
than
the
curious,
fractured, radically decentralized,
nation-state of Canada. Provided
that we don’t fly apart, or just peter
out.
Our traditional nation-state is bound
to become ever less relevant to our
daily lives. Many of its activities will
become largely symbolic - much of
the Ottawa apparatus functioning as
a kind of enlarged governorgeneralcy.
End of Canada, therefore. Except
that the Canadian sensibility is if
anything stronger than it has ever
been. It lacks the assimilative power
of the American Dream. But don’t
underestimate its seductive power.
A relevatory moment for me
happened last summer when I sat in
on the hearings in Toronto of the
Senate-Commons committee on
foreign affairs. By happenstance, all
the presentations were by groups of
so-called ‘’newcomers,’’ a Croat
group,
an
Iranian
one,
representatives of the East Timor
Network supported by the CanadianPortuguese Association.
All called on the Canadian
government to intervene on behalf of
democracy and human rights.
Gradually, I realized that these
invocations were identical to the
demands made so often by
Canadian aid groups and peace
groups and environmental groups,
even to their exaggerated estimate
of Canada’s international influence.
I realized also that these newcomers
had picked up the baton of ‘’helpful
fixer’’ first handed to Canadians by
Lester Pearson.
Another
relevatory
moment
happened earlier. Soon after coming
back from seven years in London, I
realized that Toronto had become at
least as polyglot. Almost as quickly, I
noticed a profound trans-Atlantic
difference. Couples of different
colours walking together along
Toronto’s streets, whether as
intimates or acquaintances, are
common; in London, they are still
rare.
A moment of pure epiphany about
Canada’s contemporary character
happened last month. The list of
finalists for the first annual Giller
Prize for fiction was announced. Of
the five writers judged to be the best
in the country, two were women, two
were writers of color, one was gay.
A more politically correct choice
could not be imagined. Yet less
politically correct judges than the
novelists Alice Munro and Mordecai
Richler and English literature
professor David Staines could not
be imagined. They sought, in
Munro’s phrase, those writers who
had ‘’the truest voice.’’ We’ve
created a country, therefore, in
which any voice can be heard,
provided it speaks the truth.
So we aren’t a nation. Instead we’ve
made ourselves into a distinctive
national sensibility. Nor are we
without some of the vital interconnecting sinews of a nation. The
Charter of Rights regulates the
behaviour of all of us, and influences
significantly the attitudes of all of us.
Another poll finds 83 per cent of all
Canadians say their commitment is
to all of Canada rather than ‘’just the
area where you actually live;’’ 78 per
cent of Quebecers say the same
thing.
We are cross-hatched over by all
kinds of regional, cultural, linguistic
and ethnic fault-lines, yet almost all
remain committed to the Canadian
whole. Why? Because, without that
whole, none of those differentiated
parts could survive, let alone flourish
as they now are doing.
So my synthesis, my conclusion, is
this: for us to make the collective
decision that the true mirror-image
of tomorrow’s Canada was reflected
in those five Giller Prize finalists and
that
the
alternative,
of
the
exclusionary Writing Thru’ Race
conference of last summer, would
be a regression into a fractured
Canada that could not survive.
To recognize this is to say, that
we’ve already accomplished far
more by way of creating a new kind
of Canada - a post-modern one than we are yet prepared to give
ourselves credit for.
WHO ARE WE?
WHO SHOULD WE BE?
It’s time for a national debate about
the nature of the Canadian nation.
An innovative proposal for how this
debate might be framed has been
advanced by Reform MP Ian
MacLellan. He has said Canada
needs a Charter of Responsibilities
as well as a Charter of Rights. This
idea has since been picked up by
Immigration Minister Sergio Marchi.
He has said he intends to develop a
Charter of Citizenship that would try
to spell out, to the native born as
well as to newcomers, the ‘’duties
and obligations’’ of Canadian
citizenship.
Most probably, the idea will prove to
be impractical. How to define a good
Canadian? Someone who pays their
taxes scrupulously? Someone who
mows their lawn scrupulously? Or
someone who turns their lawn into a
wildflower meadow?
But out of the confusion of a debate
about who we are could come a far
clearer understanding among all of
us of who we should be.
Nothing should be excluded from
that
debate.
Rethinking
multiculturalism, for example, to
cancel the part of it that divides us
as opposed to the part - the antiracist programs - that brings us
together. Casting doubt upon
employment equity programs, as,
likewise, unnecessary. Putting a
question mark against all of our
double barrelled Canadians. Terms
like Italian Canadian, say, may seem
impossible to give up because they
are so convenient. But nothing
prevents us from changing our
vocabulary, the mutation from
chairman to chair as an obvious
example.
Anyway, is ‘’Canadian of Italian
origin’’ that much more difficult to
say than The Rest of Canada that,
according to official decree, has now
replaced the traditional term, English
Canada?
To
the
phenomenon
of
multinationalism,
I
have
no
solutions. Limiting Canadians to a
single
passport
is
probably
impractical. But we’d be exceedingly
naive to pretend that dual-national
loyalties do not strain the cohesion
of a nation-state.
If we did decide to eliminate all
these, what we would replace them
with is the Canadian sensibility. We
would take the great dare that if all
Canadians are treated equally, no
more, no less, then, being
Canadians, they would treat each
other equally.
If a national debate did cause us to
make such choices, these would of
course fit exactly my own humanist
creed.
I accept fully discrimination’s value
in specific, time-limited, instances.
Native people cannot do more harm
to themselves than we have done to
them. Clearly disadvantaged groups
clearly need direct assistance. I’m
convinced, though, that Canadians
would
support
such
specific,
practical programs if they had no
need to fear, as they do today, that
these would set precedents for
generalized policies of segregation
and discrimination.
One benefit of a debate about the
nature of the Canadian nation could
be a re-discovery of our history.
Today, the Old Canada is treated as
irrelevant to contemporary Canada.
It was the Old Canada, however
racist and sexist and homophobic
and the rest of it, that created, as no
other society has done, official
multiculturalism, also the world’s
most generous immigration and
refugee programs, also a Charter of
Rights that is the most liberal and
pluralist in the world.
If we are defined internationally now
by our commitment to keeping the
peace for others, we, and the world,
owe that concept to a Canadian
born in the last century, Lester
Pearson. It is this continuity between
the Old Canada and Canada today
that makes me convinced that,
because we have a collective past,
we will have a collective future.
The Old Canada really is gone,
though. The national debate should
not be about nostalgia. The One
Canada that John Diefenbaker once
proudly proclaimed is anachronistic
as we approach the millennium. We
are destined to become a global
nation, or a microcosm of the entire
world - like the finalists of the Giller
Prize.
Within
this
Canada,
multiple
loyalities and multiple identities will
become as distinctively Canadian as
once were our air waves, our crown
corporations, and the Canadian
Football League.
In practical terms, being a global
nation in a global economy will give
us
immense
competitive
advantages. In psychological terms,
it will make us unlike any other
nation.
That infinitely varied whole will lack
all self- sustaining form and
coherence, though, unless the
Canadian sensibility is strong
enough, is deeply rooted enough in
us, to give us a common loyalty, to
the whole and to each other. I
believe our sensibility is strong
enough to do this. I believe we’ve
already re-invented ourselves into
the world’s first post-modern nation.
Source: The Toronto Star,
November 26, 1994