Natan Sharansky with Shira Wolsky Weiss, Defending Identity, Its
Indispensible Role in Protecting Democracy (2008).

Sharansky is famous for arguing that the desire for freedom is universal,
latent in the hearts of the populace even in the blackest despotisms. To
bring down tyrants and defeat terror, the West must act unflinchingly to
support democratic movements in the world’s “difficult places” (The Case for
Democracy, the Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (2004).

Now he’s exploring the idea that “identity” makes as strong a claim on the
human heart.

So what does he mean by “identity?” Is he thinking of the individual’s
attachment to family, religious denomination, and ethnic origin? Or is he
thinking of national identity?

Are he and Weiss saying that the desire for freedom and democracy comprises
the “identity” of the nations of the West?

Well, this is one to read!

On this blog I’m in a bit of trouble about “identity.” Alastair Sweeney, a
regular commentator, and the author of George-Etienne Cartier, A Biography
(M & S, 1976), is uneasy about my suggestion that the Fathers of
Confederation broach the idea of identity. I say that they expected the
new nation to have the identity associated with the universal desire for
freedom and democracy, as those desires find expression in parliamentary
government and British common law. I haven’t proved my case, says Alastair.

According to the Dominion Institute Canadians have a strong national
identity and they know it.

Rudyard Griffiths reports in the National Post (July 14): the Institute’s
recent study discovered “that whether you are a man or a woman, young or
old, from Trois-Rivières or Tuktoyaktuk, the top 10 things that you think
define Canada typically will have six or more items that are also on the
lists of each of your fellow 32 million Canucks.” Good news, eh? Well, yes.

What “items?”  To list a few that figured prominently in the top-10 lists
from coast to coast to coast: the Maple Leaf, the Canadarm, the beaver, the
federal Parliament, and Canada Day.

Griffiths concludes, “We are not as we have been endlessly told, a disparate
nation of regions, ethnic groups or linguistic communities. We are people
that enjoy, and benefit from a set of widely shared understandings about the
fundamentals of our identity … It is high time that we cast off the
erroneous belief that Canadians are incapable of sustaining a strong
national identity grounded in common symbols, heroes, places and events.”

One of the most interesting findings is that the top-10 lists of immigrants
were very like those of the broader public.

But do immigrants come to this country to consort with beavers, rake maple
laves, watch fire works? Beavers, leaves, technical accomplishments,
Parliament: are these “items” what make this a country that people are
lining up to get into?

Do we have troops in Afghanistan to defend the beavers, trees, and
politicians? Of course I’m glad to see that Parliament is showing up on the
lists. But just what about Parliament was in respondents’ minds?

What the heck is it that makes this a country to be proud of? On this
subject the Dominion Institute has nothing to say.

Retired persons do the cryptic crosswords. Here’s an anagram for the lawyers
on the list. There’s wealth in the law. And one for the political
scientists: Parliaments conduce to paternalism. (Not!) And think about
straighten / shattering!

In our house we don’t always finish the weekday puzzles. We know who
composes them. Brits with evilly intelligent minds. They must be my age or
older. They’re familiar with British law and parliamentary government. They
love the opera, they stopped reading novels after H.G. Wells, and they
expect you to know the Greek alphabet backwards and forwards. If they write
“school,” you fill in Eton.

We always get the weekend cryptics, set by Henry and Emily. They’re
Canadians. “Presumably of the first water.” Answer: Lake Superior. They too
love the opera. They recently informed us that rewarding arch mixes up to
make Richard Wagner. Invalid ovation makes Antonio Vivaldi. I ask
Sam Ajzenstat whether that’s God’s judgement. Can’t be Him, he says, because
Vivaldi’s the rewarding arch and Wagner enjoys invalid ovations. (But Sam
loves Wagner’s music.)

Only one of us does the sudokos. They’re a solitary pursuit in any case.
Requiring concentration. Cryptics go better with two people, the paper
passing back and forth and lots of chit chat.

And then there are the pix! A major diversion. In the National Post the
front-page news photo is a story in itself. And always beautifully composed.
(So says the woman who did her undergraduate degree in art and archaeology).

This morning (7/8/08): A well-muscled man in military costume is running
from a scene of destruction, carrying on his back a grey-haired elder in a
short white robe and sandals. It’s an Afghan officer rescuing an
unidentified “injured man” from a car bombing. It could be Aeneus carrying
Anchises out of burning Troy.

Everything old is new again. How surprised I was in the fall of 2005 to see
on the Post’s front page armoured horses in battle. The scene was familiar
from a dozen classical paintings, a dozen movies. The horses’ eyes rolling,
ears back. Crouching figures scrambling to get out from under the hooves.
Men leaning from the saddle to attack, arms crooked, weapons raised.

It was the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. We were seeing the Israeli army
beating off Israeli resisters. Looking closer you could see that the horses’
armour was light translucent plastic. The attackers were using rods, not
swords.

The courts in Canada spend considerable energy searching old treaties and
laws affecting Indians and other aboriginal peoples, some going back to the
era of French and British rule in North America in the seventeenth century.
They consider oral traditions from before the arrival of Europeans. Their
objective is come up with a “list” of features that defined the First
Nations “from of old,” “from time immemorial.” The result is often very
satisfactory for bands that want to extend their fishing, hunting, and
logging privileges. But we know that there are proud members of particular
bands who think that living a traditional life is too confining. They want
to redefine their community and nation in ways that will honour tradition
and history but also free them to participate fully in the politics, the
economy, and the life of the arts and sciences in North America. And why
not?

A scholar like Jeremy Webber (Reimagining Canada, 1994) would say that what
defines aboriginal peoples today is not so much the tradition as the
discussion about tradition. A band is defined by its on-going dialogue about
retaining, or redefining, or discarding aspects of the old ways. Its identity
includes disagreements about recourse to the courts and a variety of
opinions about particular judicial decisions.

To ask “who are we?” suffices, or very nearly suffices to give a definition
to the “we.” Well! Could be. Webber might be right; it’s fun to play around
with his ideas.

One problem is that the “we” is constantly interacting with outsiders. A
people seeking to define itself asks to be let alone, or just as often, more
often, demands “recognition” in law and material rewards. The literature on
demand for recognition is huge; Canadians excel in this field; we are
constantly turning out books on the subject, often good ones. Charles Taylor
comes powerfully to mind, and with him the long history of the idea in
European thought from Rousseau to Hegel.

At any rate there can be no definition of the First Nations without
considering how the rest of Canada sees them. And I will bold1y say that
non-aboriginals have seen the original peoples in two ways. (Blogging
encourages outrageous generalizations; goodbye academic wish and wash.) To
illustrate the first view I’ll cite the Anglican Bishop of the Artic,
Christopher Williams, who argues that the residential schools were necessary
and helpful (National Post, May 19, 2001).“Without them the government would
be guilty of the same sins as the architects of apartheid in South Africa
… If the people had been left on the land living their old precarious way
of life, feast and famine, they would have been bypassed by the twentieth
century and all the great blessings they and we now enjoy. What was the
alternative? Would it not have been abuse to deny the Inuit and Indian
people a place in that modern lifestyle we all enjoy as Canadians?”

In a good and necessary speech, Mr. Harper apologized for the sufferings
endured by children in those schools. I will say only that the establishment
of the schools in no way implied that the youngsters in them were not the
equals of Europeans in natural ability, dignity, and entitlement. The
schools embodied the Enlightenment perspective that there are no superior
“races.”

The second attitude prevails today. It is Romantic, in the line of thought
that originated in Europe in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It
admires the particular over the universal, what is original over what is
progressive. It left us, for one thing, with that marvellous phrase, the
“noble savage.”  The Romantic cast of mind rejects Bishop Williams’ argument
because it assumes that North America’s first peoples want the same kind of
things that “southern white Canadians” want, and because it does not see
that the way of life followed by southern white Canadians is cripplingly
deficient and inferior to the aboriginal way.

A perfect description of the Romantic view is found in Michael S.
Whittington’s article, “Canada’s North in the Eighties,” in Michael S.
Whittington and Glen Williams eds., Canadian Politics in the 1980s, a
collection of essays intended for university students at the introductory
level. The book was widely used; it shaped the thinking of a generation.

From the 1981 edition: “Indians and Inuit placed a far higher value on the
collectivity, or upon the community.” “The sharing ethic and the replacement
of the liberal notion of private ownership with the shared inherent right of
individuals to use a resource are nowhere more prominent than in the native
concept of the land.” “The native peoples feel a mystic ‘oneness’ with the
land.” “An extension of the ‘sharing’ ethic described above, when transposed
into the political context – the right of all members of a community to
express their views and to have an influence on the decisions that affect
them – is an ancient and deeply rooted political value.” “Native leadership
is functional because the choice of leader in any given situation depends
upon who is best suited to lead in that particular circumstance.” “The
natives use the resources of the land but they do not permanently alienate
any of its wealth.”

My students loved this chapter. They admired the aboriginals it describes
and they gratefully absorbed the central thesis, that there is something
profoundly less admirable about the “southern white Canadian” way of doing
politics. (“Southern white Canadian” is Whittington’s phrase.)

Do we owe the First Nations an apology for attributing to them this Romantic
straitjacket of a political culture? We fitted them up as noble savages. Do
we owe our students of the 1980s and 1990s an apology?

Further reading on Romantic political and cultural thought in North America:
an oldy-but-goldy! Morton and Lucia White, eds, The Intellectual Versus the
City (Mentor, 1962). It offers descriptions of Franklin, Crevecoeur,
Jefferson, Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, Henry Adams, Henry James,
William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, William James, Jane Addams, John Dewey
Frank Lloyd Wright among others on “why our cities have been the traditional
object of prejudice, fear and distrust.”

There’s nothing about Canadian cities. Pity, eh? But as I’ve said so often
Canada seldom figures on the world map of ideas.

I’m enjoying the discussion with Alastair Sweeny on George-Etienne Cartier.
He says in his last comment: “For Cartier, the Canadian Confederation was
all about business, not culture.”

A valuable observation! I admit it. I do not pay enough attention to the
railways issue at Confederation. My fellow commentator-editors for Canada’s
Founding Debates (Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, William Gairdner; U of T Press,
2003) weren’t much interested in them either. A volume of more than 500
pages on Confederation and we included practically nothing about them .

And not a single reviewer to this point has noted the lack.

We included speeches on human acquisitiveness, property rights, and personal
and political ambition, but I don’t think we have a single speech by that
eminent master of money-matters, dreary old Galt. For goodness sakes, the
book is stuffed with notes about Montesquieu, Locke, J.S. Mill, the American
Founding Fathers, Adam Smith. You can see where our minds were. In the
clouds: thinking of high intellectual matters. Well, Sweeny’s reminding me
of our bias. Thank you, Alastair.  Oh, wait: a review of the Index for
Canada’s Founding Debates turns up a few references under “railways.” Not
many.

My complaint is that scholars have paid too little attention to the fact
that at Confederation the Fathers created the Parliament of Canada. The
Fathers had the two tasks: to create a federation and to create a
legislative power with taxing and spending powers. Canadian scholars say
much too little about the debate at Confederation on parliamentary
government and little about the political institutions and principles
established in 1867 that still guarantee our liberty and equality.

This is perhaps the place to remind readers again that an excellent book on
Confederation, one that fully recognizes the Fathers’ role in making a
liberal democracy,  is Christopher Moore, 1867, How the Fathers Made a Deal,
(Toronto: M&S, 1997). When it first appeared Romney, Gentles, Gairdner and I
were on the line immediately. Had we been scooped? There was an initial
moment of jealousy.

Alastair Sweeny objects to my suggestion that Canada’s Fathers did not
intend to create a “distinctive nation.”

I think we’re talking past each other, Alastair. Of course the Fathers
intended to create a separate, sovereign nation in British North America.

And just as you say, they meant it to counterbalance the centrifugal force
of the United States.

The question is whether they intended the new nation to be culturally
distinctive.

You know that there are Canadian scholars (Donald Creighton, Michael Bliss,
Gad Horowitz, William Christian) who think that we were supposed to be not
only a separate political nation, but a separate cultural entity. We were
supposed to be more British in character than the Americans, or more Tory,
or more “collectivist,” more “inclined to deference,” (S.M. Lipset), more
peaceable.

Remember the Molsen beer commercial?

I am a Canadian.
I’m not a lumberjack, or fur trader,
I don’t live in an igloo, eat blubber, or own a dog sled …
I have a Prime Minister, not a President.
I speak English and French, not American …
I believe in peace keeping, not policing; diversity, not assimilation; and
that the beaver is a proud and noble animal.

“I believe in peacekeeping, not policing; diversity, not assimilation.” A
lot of people enjoyed that idea! And why shouldn’t they? But the Molsen ad
doesn’t define Canada. It merely gives expression to some common Canadian
sentiments. It doesn’t define the country.

Some of Canada’s founders (the Fathers, and the legislators in the colonial
parliaments) would have liked to see the new nation become more British in
character. Some, not many, hoped it would gravitate toward the United
States. A few, though only a few promoted the republican idea of a virtuous
leadership and citizenry. But they knew – at some level – they all knew that
there was no agreement on these matters. French speakers demanded protection
for the French language and French education in Lower Canada, but they did
not expect the French way of life to define the character of the nation as a
whole. Legislators from the other provinces were acutely aware of Lower
Canada’s demands.

The great achievement at Confederation was that the founders prescribed a
regime that would enable pursuit of political objectives without the
requirement that all or many agree at the “cultural” level.

In The Canadian Founding, John Locke and Parliament I use the term civic
identity, in opposition to cultural identity. It’s been suggested that I
made a mistake in coupling “civic” and “identity.” Could be. It probably
would have been better to speak of “civic regime,” and “cultural identity.”

In the National Post of Thursday June 19, Rudyard Griffiths, who is stepping
down as director of the Dominion Institute, offers a report on the state of
the nation. We’re not doing well in Griffiths’ opinion!

His first worry is that we’re becoming too American in character. We’re
seeing “the Americanization of the civic culture of English Canada.” The
complaint is familiar. Since the 1960s Canada’s national identity scholars
have argued that the precious heart of Canadianness lies in the fact that we
are not like the United States.

And just how are we different? Oops. How are we supposed to be different?
Here Griffiths’ second worry kicks in. The federal government “has lost the
momentum … to create the kinds of national programs and institutions that
previous generations saw as essential to our sense of shared nationhood.”
In Griffiths’ opinion Canadians need national programs on “climate change,
social welfare, and trade barriers.”  Grand visions of social policy will
foster our sense of ourselves as a nation. It’s another favourite idea from
the 1960s.

You may object that the Americans  are falling all over themselves to create
programs on climate change, trade barriers, and welfare. But you will never
grasp Griffiths’ point if you pursue that thought. Keep on track. Griffiths’
argument is first, that we must be different. And second, that we can
promote difference by generating national programs.

In Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life (University of Toronto,
1998; recently reissued), William Watson argues that “whether we are
different from the Americans … should not matter to us. What does matter
is that Canadian society should offer as good a life as possible to the
people who make it up. When that means adopting American-style policies,
insisting we be different from the Americans will stand in the way of
sensible change” (page 12).

(In The Canadian Founding, John Locke and Parliament (2007), I argue that
the Fathers of Confederation did not set out to create a distinctive nation.
Their efforts were bent toward giving us a good one. And I boldly suggest
that in the essential respects good nations are much alike. Not in all
respects, of course not; but in the essential ones.  All good nations
attempt to protect their inhabitants against foreign invasion, crime,
famine, injustice. They attempt to protect each and all equally against
these great ills.)

But let’s end with Watson. There’s “no reason why Canadians’ sense of
themselves should be defined in perpetuity by the ideological fashions of
the 1960s” (page 12). We “should choose what is best for us, not what we are
accustomed to choosing, or what we think our tradition requires us to
choose, or, worst of all, what those south of us are not choosing” (page
13).

Coming in September, from McGill-Queen’s: the second edition of Tom
Flanagan’s First Nations? Second Thoughts. We’re promised a review of
developments in aboriginal policy-making in the past ten years.

And in October, also from McGill-Queen’s, William D. Gairdner, The Book of
Absolutes, A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals.
“Strikingly original and important,” according to Tom Flanagan.

I’ve purchased and am reading with enjoyment, Lee Ward, The Politics of
Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, Cambridge University Press,
2004. (I did not buy it from the publisher; Amazon.com came through.) Pity
there’s nothing in it about Canada. Why not England, Revolutionary America,
and Canada? But as I’ve said, Canada seldom figures on the world map of
political ideas.

I’m about to sign a book contract with McGill-Queen’s and the Carleton
Library to prepare a new edition of G.P. Browne, Documents on the
Confederation of British North America. It appeared originally in 1969 and
has been long out of print. Browne took Sir Joseph Pope’s Confederation
Documents, a record of “the rush to Confederation” between 1858 and 1867,
edited it lightly, and added an invaluable selection of reports, letters,
records of informal meetings, and Colonial Office memoranda. I’ve had it in
mind for years to bring out a new edition. Now that I’m into the project, I
can see that there are decisions before me.

This is not a day on which to carp about the hellholes that are some
Northern Ontario reserves. It’s not the day on which to say that some native
Canadian children still live in appalling conditions, prone to suicide and
… I won’t go on. It’s not the day on which to say that we don’t know how
to make things better on reserves. Stephan Harper’s “residential schools
apology” was a great speech.

The phrase I’ll remember is his reference to the House of Commons as “this
chamber so central to the life of our country.”

“Therefore on behalf of the government of Canada and all Canadians, I stand
before you, in this chamber so central to the life of our country, to
apologize to the aboriginal peoples for Canada’s role in the residential
schools system.”

“Central to the life of our country.” Mr. Harper came into national politics
by way of the Reform and Alliance parties, parties that were critical of
parliamentary institutions. I remember joking – not so long ago - that the
Parliament of Canada was home to a party (Reform) that did not approve of
Parliament, and a party (the Bloc Québeçois) that did not approve of Canada.
A small miracle has happened. Or perhaps not so small. One-time Reformer
Stephen Harper has become a staunch parliamentarian, articulate in praise of
the House of Commons as “central to the life of our country.”

I am not going to carp – not today – about the fact that in the strict terms
of constitutional law it is not the Prime Minister’s role to speak for “all
Canadians.” It’s the Governor General who speaks for all Canadians. Mr.
Harper properly speaks for a party only, to be exact, the party representing
the majority or plurality in the Commons. We as Canadians do not live in a
country in which the majority speaks for all. That’s the guarantee of our
political freedom.

But today no carping. No carping especially because I think that the
Parliament system  may indeed in time produce the remedy for aboriginal
woes.

Peter H. Russell argues that George Brown disliked French Canadians and that
this personal distaste contributed to the political strife of the
pre-Confederation period. He cites a letter from George B. to Mrs. Brown,
written at the conclusion of the Quebec Conference (1864). It reads in part:
“Is it not wonderful? French Canadianism entirely extinguished!”
(Constitutional Odyssey, page 33).
Well for goodness sakes! The Ideal File has been working overtime in past
entries to suggest that Brown and the French Canadians worked together
amicably in the Confederation debates. I’ve been talking about the “two
Georges” – George Brown and George-Etienne Cartier - as if they were bosom
buddies.
It’s time to admit that Russell’s right on one point. The Georges were not
personal best friends. (I’m reading and enjoying Alistair Sweeny’s biography
of Cartier.) Brown had been quarrelling with Cartier, H.-L Langevin and
others for years. He and the French Canadians were reconciled only in 1864
and 65, and then only for the one purpose, to secure the division of
legislative powers proposed in the Quebec Resolutions. But Russell’s wrong
to believe that Brown’s pronouncements in the legislature reflect personal
grievance.
In the debates in the Canadian Legislative Assembly Brown sets aside
personal views. He’s on fire with a great political discovery, which in his
opinion overrides particular feelings and indeed forbids them. (See the Idea
File, “George Brown’s Big Boast.”) He’s convinced that he and the French
Canadians, chief among them Cartier, together have found a way to abort the
kind of dangerous political conflict that had made Canadian politics
miserable in the past.
In the letter to his wife he is not expressing dislike for the French and
French Canadianism. He is conveying his satisfaction that  debate in the
national legislature of the new federation would never consider intractable
matters of nationality and particular religious sentiment. It would not
entertain debates on “French Canadianism.”  French Canadianism and all such
particular demands would be “extinguished.”
What the world need now is love, sweet love? If we agree with Brown we we’ll
say, phooey. What the world needs now are politicians who can set aside
personal preferences and grievances, to participate in fruitful political
dialogue. In the Canadian political science literature Russell is cited
repeatedly as an authority on the Canadian Constitution. But on this
essential point, he’s missed the boat.
We’ve seen that Cartier was in agreement with Brown. “Now when we were
united together, if union were attained, we would form a political
nationality with which neither the national origin, nor the religion of any
individual would interfere.”
Cartier saw the fact that issues dear to French Canadians would be excluded
from the national legislature as the surest way to protect French Canadian
interests in a federation with an English majority. French-speaking
Canadians would of course take their seats in the general government of the
nation. And Cartier very naturally expected to wield considerable power in
that government. But he knew that the French Canadians’ role in the
Parliament of Canada would not be to represent French Canadian interests.
Their task would be first, to deliberate on all the issues proper to the
national legislature under the British North America Act, and second, to
resist attempts by English-speaking members to meddle in the particularities
of French Canadian life.
Brown and Cartier: it was a match made in heaven. Brown wanted to get
contentious issues out of the national legislature. The French wanted to
curtail the power of the English-speakers to suppress French Canadian
traditions and institutions. Voilà, the Canadian “political nationality.”
(Now can I “think together” – to use the phrase made familiar by George
Grant – the idea of the “political nationality” and the jumble of
pronouncements that is the Bouchard-Taylor Report? That’s some assignment!)