Prorogation can be mostly for benign reasons but in this case it was not. Done arbitrarily and out of the government’s own convenience, it was done to shut down voices that the government did not want to hear. That may be very human, but for a democratic society, for Canada, it is a big problem.

The Prime Minister does not like a lot of different voices, not in his caucus, not in his cabinet, not in committees, not in the bureaucracy, not in media, not anywhere.

During his now more than four years in office, think of any big public discussion his government has generated on the transforming issues of today and of the future, on the changing national and international economy, on global security, on climate change, on energy, on anything. Nothing. The Prime Minister does not like other voices. Other voices might be critical, embarrassing or inconvenient. They may simply be different from his own. He knows where he wants to go. He thinks he is right. So why do these voices matter?

Prorogation was just part of it. In his more than four years as Prime Minister, he has used and misused the power of his position, its rewards and punishments to entice an intimidate, to play on human weakness, to prop up voices he wants to hear and to shut down those he does not want to hear. All this may be very human, but for democratic society, for Canada, it is a big problem.

This past Monday we brought together about 20 community groups from across the country, some national and international and some small and local, that after years and sometimes decades of receiving federal government money to do important community services and to give voice to those who are less advantaged, to help them to live the way all Canadians should live, they had their funding cut. These were aboriginal groups, health groups, women’s groups, learning and child care, international aid groups and others. However, this round table was not really about their funding cuts. It was about what the loss of the services and the voice they provided means to their communities and to Canada.

These cuts, this different understanding of the importance of public voice, represent a great change from previous governments, from the Liberal governments of 1970s and early 1980s, from the Progressive Conservative governments of the late 1980s and early 1990s and from the Liberal governments again until 2006.

When I was minister of social development, my responsibilities included those for seniors, people with disabilities, the volunteer sector as a whole and child care. People who worked for advocacy groups on these issues did so because they believed in these issues and knew that so much more needed to be done. These groups pushed hard. We got to know each other, maybe even trust each other a little, but these groups were intensely politically no-partisan and intensely issue partisan.

They had to deal with whoever was the government. At times they drove me crazy. Sometimes they were too right, uncomfortably right when it was not sure that I could deliver that right. Sometimes I thought they were completely wrong, that to meet their own goals and mine they wanted to go down the wrong path.

However, I knew what every party for decades had known, which is that these voices are part of the essential mix of voices necessary for a properly functioning healthy society.

Then in 2006 the Conservatives won. During the first three or four months there were signs of trouble for these groups but to them they hoped it was just a matter of getting used to a new government and a new government getting used to them. They had seen it before, whether a Liberal or Progressive Conservative government, and eventually they knew they would get through to that government and everything would end up roughly as it was. However, not this time.

There were cuts to the court challenges program, women’s groups, literacy and child care, and aboriginal groups. The first groups in these areas thought they were the only ones affected. They kept waiting for the train to arrive at the station but I would tell them that the train was not coming.

The Conservative government thinks differently. It does not know why it should give money to these groups. It thinks it is its job to reflect the different voices in the country. It believes that if these issues had any real public support, people would give to these groups themselves. It believes that if any money does go to these groups, it should go directly to the people in need, to feet on the ground, not to mouths in corner offices. It cannot understand why any government in its right mind would support someone who just criticizes it anyway.

All this might be very human, but for a democratic country, for Canada, it is a big problem.

We all knew and the government knew what would happen next. For these groups, their effectiveness, their voices and their existences threatened, they would go nuts. Instead, most have gone quiet.

I think this even surprised the government at first, then it realized the power it had. Essentially it said to these groups, “You thought you were strong. You are not. You need our money and now you have a choice. You can go quiet and maybe get some money, but not likely and certainly a lot less, and by going quiet, you become powerless, or you can go loud and certainly not get any money and become powerless. What do you want, to be powerless or powerless?”

For the government it meant that it could keep its money and keep these groups quiet. Life does not get much better.

On Monday, together some of these groups told their story. Many others are still not willing to. There was also someone who took part but who decided to do so only by phone because a government contract was pending for a group she would like to work for and she did not feel that she could put herself or this group at risk by being identified. This is a person who has a reputation for fighting every fight, loudly, publicly and never taking a backward step. It is all about shutting down voices.

Another group, whose funding has not been cut, had intended to be there to show solidarity with the other groups because this group knows that but for the grace of one cabinet minister who has a personal interest in the issue that is its focus, its funding might be cut too. In the end, however, the group decided that it could not risk being there. In one way or another, again, it is shutting down voices.

The round table was not about groups losing their funding. It was about what the loss of funding means, what the loss of services and the voices that they provide means to local communities and the national community, and what it means to all of us.

Here is what some of them said. One said, “I am acutely aware that–today–there may be consequences associated with speaking publicly about social and political issues of importance to Canadians. …few would deny that the “chill” is real and that this is a new development in Canadian democracy”.

Another person talked about organizations that are now afraid to be visible in a press conference and about groups that historically have had too few resources to act alone. The person said that they were divided by fear, divided by a race to survive financially. The person said that the result was distrust, fear and a lack of cohesiveness.

Another person said, “We are witnessing some of the most prominent organizations in this country being silenced, reduced. …ensuring that the government will have little or no opposition to their actions and policy.“We are witnessing some of the most prominent organizations in this country being silenced, reduced, ensuring that the government will have little or no opposition to their actions and policy. It seems that NGOs have been given two choices–stay quiet and don’t represent the challenges facing vulnerable Canadians or voice those issues and quietly disappear”.

Those words do not convey their full stories nor the tone of their voices. Their tone was one of sadness, anger, disappointment in themselves for being so weak in the face of their organization’s survival, for turning against other groups, for turning selfish and greedy, for being so unlike what they ever thought they were. More than that, their tone was that of disbelief and denial. They could not believe this was happening. They could not believe it was possible to stop themselves before they could say what needed to be said. This was not Canada.

These groups knew their own stories and knew the stories of those in their own sectors but they were stunned by the other voices they heard and by how broad and how deep the problem went. I think it took so long for these groups to speak out because of this disbelief, because of a feeling that surely they were the only ones, that no one else would understand, and because to say something about losing their funding would sound to others like sour grapes and would sound self-serving, as if they really did not have the right to say something.

It is the same story for all the opposition political parties and for the media. We are losing our voice, but what right do we have to say something? It is called sour grapes and self-serving.

This is not, first of all, most of all, about us. It is about the public, about Canadians, and about how this country works. That gives us a right. That gives us an obligation.

For Immediate Release
June 14, 2010

Liberals are working for community-based organizations

OTTAWA – Liberals are working today to bring awareness to the Harper government’s funding cuts to community-based organizations by hosting a roundtable on Parliament Hill.

“Community groups work to meet a community’s needs and add to the mix of voices essential to healthy public debate,” said Liberal MP Ken Dryden, who is moderating the roundtable. “When cuts happen, the important question is not about the loss of these groups, but about the loss of these community services and the loss of this public voice.”

The roundtable – entitled “Public Voice: Why does it matter?” – brings together over a dozen community-based organizations to hear the impact Conservative cuts have had on the services they provide and to discuss ways forward.

Participating groups include: Action Canada for Population Development; Assembly of First Nations; Canadian Council for International Cooperation; Canadian Council on Learning; Canadian Council on Social Development; Canadian Society for International Health; Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail; MATCH International; Oxfam; Native Women’s Shelter–Montreal; New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity; Ontario AIDS Network; Quebec Native Women; Womanspace; and Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF).

“The organizations here today serve as mentors and as a resource to numerous other non-governmental organizations, and without government funding they will cease to exist,” added Liberal Human Resources & Skills Development Critic Mike Savage.

“This government has to get its priorities straight,” said Liberal Status of Women Critic Anita Neville. “By cutting funding to so many women’s groups, the Conservatives are effectively silencing a large part of society.”

The Harper government has reversed the federal government’s long history of working with women in Canada and the developing world by cutting vital funding to more than a dozen women’s groups.

“Community-based organizations must not be afraid to have an opinion that differs from the federal government,” said Liberal Health Critic Dr. Carolyn Bennett. “Differing opinions are imperative for a truly open society, and are needed for better policies. This major problem needs to be addressed.”

“Liberals will work this summer with community groups to develop a plan that ensures the healthy functioning of these groups for the important services they provide and the essential voice they offer,” concluded Mr. Dryden.   

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Contact:

Office of the Hon. Ken Dryden, MP, 613-941-6339
Office of Michael Savage, MP, 613-995-9378
Office of the Hon. Anita Neville, MP, 613-992-9475
Office of the Hon. Dr. Carolyn Bennett, MP, 613-995-9666
 

Pour diffusion immédiate
Le 14 juin 2010

Les libéraux valorisent le travail des organisations communautaires

OTTAWA – Aujourd’hui, les libéraux tiendront au Parlement une table ronde ayant pour but de mettre au jour les répercussions néfastes des compressions budgétaires imposées aux organisations communautaires par le gouvernement Harper.

« Les organisations communautaires répondent aux besoins des collectivités et deviennent, de ce fait, des porte-parole de premier plan dans les débats publics, a déclaré le député libéral Ken Dryden, l’animateur de la table ronde. Lorsque le gouvernement coupe les vivres aux organisations, elles ne sont pas les seules à en souffrir. Ce sont les collectivités tout entières qui se trouvent réduites au silence et privées de services indispensables. »

La table ronde, intitulée La voix du public, ça compte, rassemble plus d’une douzaine d’organisations communautaires : celles-ci expliqueront comment les compressions budgétaires appliquées par les conservateurs ont eu des répercussions négatives sur les services qu’elles offrent, et elles discuteront d’éventuelles solutions.

Les organisations suivantes participeront à la table ronde : Action Canada pour la population et le développement ; l’Assemblée des Premières Nations ; le Conseil canadien pour la coopération internationale ; le Conseil canadien sur l’apprentissage ; le Conseil canadien de développement social ; la Société canadienne de santé internationale ; le Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail ; le Centre international MATCH ; Oxfam ; le Foyer pour femmes autochtones de Montréal ; la Coalition du Nouveau-Brunswick pour l’équité salariale ; l’Ontario AIDS Network ; Womanspace et le Fonds d’action et d’éducation juridiques pour les femmes (FAEJ).

« Les organisations ici présentes sont des mentors et des guides pour les autres organisations non gouvernementales. Sans l’aide financière du gouvernement, elles cesseront d’exister », a ajouté Mike Savage, porte-parole libéral responsable des ressources humaines et du développement des compétences.

« Le gouvernement conservateur doit mettre de l’ordre dans ses priorités, a signifié Anita Neville, porte-parole libérale responsable de la condition féminine. En supprimant le financement à un nombre aussi important de groupes de femmes, les conservateurs vont littéralement bâillonner une importante partie de la société. »

En supprimant le financement, pourtant vital, à plus d’une douzaine de groupes de femmes, le gouvernement Harper rompt avec une longue tradition de solidarité de la part du gouvernement fédéral à l’égard des femmes du Canada et des pays en développement.

« Les organisations communautaires ne devraient pas avoir à craindre d’émettre une opinion qui diverge de celle du gouvernement fédéral, a lancé la porte-parole libérale responsable de la santé, le Dr Carolyn Bennett. Les divergences d’opinions constituent l’essence même des débats qui font évoluer une société ouverte. Elles nous permettent d’améliorer nos politiques et de les rendre adaptées aux besoins des citoyens. Il faut régler ce problème majeur au plus vite. »

« Les libéraux travailleront tout l’été avec des groupes communautaires en vue d’élaborer une politique favorisant la viabilité des organisations communautaires pour qu’elles puissent continuer d’offrir leurs services et de parler au nom des citoyens qu’elles représentent », a conclu M. Dryden.

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Renseignements :

Bureau de l’hon. Ken Dryden, député, 613-941-6339
Bureau de Michael Savage, député, 613-995-9378
Bureau de l’hon. Anita Neville, députée, 613-992-9475
Bureau de l’hon. Dr. Carolyn Bennett, députée, 613-995-9666

Pregnant mothers who don’t have enough to eat are less healthy, are more likely to give birth prematurely, and have kids who are less healthy and less strong.

And less healthy, less strong kids don’t develop as quickly or as well.  It’s as if this is a 100 metre race and the healthier kids begin at the start line, while these kids begin 10 metres behind.  To them in their world, other kids, somehow, always seem better and smarter.  They are always ahead.  And kids with less to eat are sick more often, they miss more school, they fall further behind.  This is not fair.  This is not Canada.

Today, as we think about hunger and its effect on our fellow Canadians, I hope we will also reflect on how as governments – on poverty and hunger – none of us has done very well, and for all of us this remains work undone.

The Liberal Party is a strong supporter of effective gun control to protect the safety of the public and our police officers.  All types of gun deaths – by homicide, suicide or accident – have declined since the registry was brought into force.  There is no doubt that there were dramatic cost overruns in the registry’s original implementation, but as inappropriate as that was, the questions now and for the future remain:  Is the registry effective? And is its annual cost worth it?  In that regard, the RCMP estimates that the cost for maintaining the registry is only $3 million annually – or about 9 cents per year for every Canadian.  Both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Professional Police Association also support the registry.   In fact, on March 18, Deputy RCMP commissioner Bill Sweeney told the House of Commons Public Safety Committee that there is strong evidence the registry promotes officer and public safety.

A responsible government would not dispose of a registry that is accessed 9,000 times a day by our police forces.  

If and when Bill C-391 is brought to a vote in the House of Commons, I will vote against it, as well as against any future attempts to terminate the gun registry.

Mr. Speaker, on April 13, 1970, an explosion on Apollo 13, halted its moon landing mission, placing the lives of its astronauts in danger, and forcing Astronaut Jack Swigert to send one of the most famous messages in space history, his actual words slightly different from the movie version: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”

What most people don’t know is that a team of engineers from the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies had a solution in helping Apollo 13 get back to Earth, determining the pressure necessary to provide an explosive charge that would spring the spacecraft into its re-entry.

The Institute, in my riding, has also assisted in the design of Canadarm 2.

Recently, the Institute and the members of its engineering team, Dr. Ben Etkin, Dr. Barry French, Dr. Phil Sullivan, the late Dr. Irvine Glass, Professor Peter Hughes and Dr. Rod Tennyson, were awarded the Canadian Air and Space Museum’s Pioneer Award for its involvement in the Apollo 13 return.  Congratulations to all of them.

I voted in favour of the bill, and Bill C-302 passed in the House of Commons.  It calls upon the government to issue an official apology for the internment of Italian-Canadians during World War II, and to create an educational fund to inform Canadians about the internment. 

The Conservative Government, which has issued official apologies to the Japanese, Chinese, and First Nations communities, has chosen not to support this bill.  I hope that Bill C-302 will be passed by the Senate and that the Conservative Government will exercise its authority and approve this bill.

Mr. Speaker, in 1933 there were nine million Jews in Europe. Half a generation later, six million had perished in the Holocaust, others had fled for their lives, and only a few hundred thousand were left.

The incalculable loss, fathers, mothers, grandparents the children never had. Children, so full of learning, so full of possibilities, never the chance to live their lives. A next generation never born, and a next.

The incalculable loss to the Jewish people; the incalculable loss to all of us.

For us, never to forget the Jews and the Jewish people. But for us, too, never to forget how easy it is to push to one side any group of people, to separate, divide, cut off, then to demonize, hate and destroy.

The Holocaust happened then and there, but the Holocaust is a forever story for all of us.

Never again, and always to remember.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a long time, but more since I was first elected a few years ago. Lots of things can bother us – we can all come to sound like Rex Murphy or Rick Mercer – but what bothers me the most is our wrong sense of ourselves as a country. We are more, so much more, than we’re willing to see and accept. And this wrong understanding forces us to live under a ceiling that is so far below what we can do and can be. So far below that anything we as individuals or governments can imagine ourselves doing – economically, socially, environmentally, internationally – becomes too modest, and certain to remain that way until we can think about ourselves differently.

As a country, what should we do in the bigger world – about climate change; about world hunger? At home what should we do about poverty within our borders? Well, it depends on whether we see ourselves wrongly as relatively small and powerless; economically, culturally and militarily a backwater far from where the action is. Or as the Canada we really are. Today. Now. And in the future. Because if you have the wrong story, you get the wrong answer.

I’ve seen it all my life. I’ve seen it as a child, and as a parent. As a player in Montreal where on a team with the right tradition, the right story, when winning was the singular understanding, we won – and in Toronto, as team president, when winning mattered a lot and making money a little more, we almost won. I’ve seen it as Ontario Youth Commissioner with school dropouts, and in writing a book on education when I went back to high school for a year to see who among the students around me was learning and who wasn’t – who had the right understanding of themselves as learners, and who didn’t. Wrong story; wrong answer.

And now I see it in politics. It’s not the political games that hold us back. Not first of all, not most of all. It’s us. As politicians, it’s our job to understand the country, what it is, what it was, what it can be. Our ambitions. Then it’s our job to use “the art of the possible,” to deliver on those ambitions. But it’s not politics that defines the possible – we do, all of us. And as politicians, as citizens, what we see in Canada, now, 2009, is much less than we really are, much less than where our ambitions, our hopes, can take us.

This is what I want to talk to you about. If we don’t get our story of Canada right, I can’t do what politicians need to do, and you can’t live the life that’s in you to live. It’s time. We are more than this; we’re better than this.

That’s why I’m talking to students at universities across the country. Last spring at Mt. Allison, Trent, Acadia, St. Mary’s, Dalhousie, St. F. X., Manitoba, Regina and Ottawa U – until exams cut things off. Now, it’s time to begin again.

But how do we write this new story that is us? I’m not entirely sure. That’s also why I’m here. I need to hear your thoughts and ideas.

So today, in the first half of our time together, I’ll tell you what I think, because in the second half, I need to hear what you think.

Let’s start –

This is not about politics. This is personal. This is about Canada.

I was born in 1947.

I grew up in a suburb of Toronto to middle class parents who hadn’t gone to university and had never even dreamed they would. By the time I was 6, I lived in a new house surrounded by lots of other new houses, with a new school, new church, new playground and hockey rink less than a block away.

I grew up in a Canada that was surrounded by a world of destruction and deprivation – the relentless poverty of Asia, the humanity-choked hopelessness of China and India, the impossibility of Africa, the corrupt sadness of Central and South America, and a Europe so fundamentally flawed it had twice tried to annihilate itself in 30 years.

I grew up in a Canada that was neighbour to the greatest power on Earth, the United States of America. The greatest place on Earth – New York, Hollywood, cars, stars, where everything was bigger and more exciting. And the US was a good place, a decent place of freedom and prosperity, where everyone had a chance, where even the poor would do well someday.

I grew up in a house where on our kitchen wall we had a map of the world. Every morning at breakfast with the newspaper, for every world event and game I’d read about, I’d look at that map and attach the event to it, and feel I was almost there myself. And on that map, just like on all the maps in all our classrooms at school, the pink outline of Canada was so big, so much bigger than the pink of Britain and purple of France. Almost as big as the purple of the Soviet Union, and far bigger than the yellow of the US and of China.

We were big. Canada was big. And I knew and we knew that if you had space, population would come. Importance would come. The future would come. If you had space, you had resources. And even if a lot of that space was cold and remote, someday it wouldn’t be. Frontiers were made to be tamed and made into something special. Space was destiny. It was only a matter of time, and our time would come.

I had no doubt. We had no doubt.

To me, to us, emerging out of World War II, the US was a country of greatness realized on the way to something greater. Canada was a country of greatness imagined, and greatness imaginable.

But by the 1960s, things began to feel different. Neither the US nor Canada was living up to this special promise. For the US, it was the problems of race, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the materialism of a consumer society, the conformism of the suburbs, the corporate and governmental abuses of power which brought about the rise of Ralph Nader, and Watergate.

For Canada, the disappointment we felt had to do with being so irresistably tied to the US, with the southward drain of our stars, not just in business, science, entertainment and the arts, but in every field. With government and corporate decisions, it seemed, always being made in Washington, New York or Dubuque. So humiliating. With all our special promise, I wondered/we wondered: is this what Canada was really about?

When their country stumbled, American myth-makers turned angry. Ours – our journalists and media stars – turned cynical. Ironic. No matter what we do, it seems – anything, everything – we just can’t pull it off. Typically Canadian, eh? When CBC radio icon Peter Gzowski ran a contest on his show for a phrase that best described our national identity, the winner: “As Canadian as possible – under the circumstances.” Funny. Wise-sounding.

Today in Canada, we’re still under the thumb of these old myths and myth-makers and their understanding of Canada. Even if the world and Canada have changed dramatically, even if we as Canadians are ready to see ourselves very differently.

In recent decades, this story of Canada and the story of the US didn’t change very much. Year after year – until Obama.

During last year’s election campaign, Mr. Obama, in essence, said to the American people:

Stop, everyone. Look around –

Is this America? The America we all grew up in, that special, special place, of forever new frontiers – geographical, intellectual, of the imagination – that special place of optimism, possibility, of forever becoming?

Is this the real America we see?

Iraq? Torture? Health care that has no place for tens of millions of fellow citizens? The exaggerated wealth and exaggerated poverty and the exaggerated gap between them, is this what this country stands for? Is this the American dream? Is the real purpose of all this freedom and liberty just more and more and more? More and bigger cars, more food, more things, more than we can really use, more than we even care about. More than is good for us – as people, as a society, as a planet. This obesity of body and mind and spirit that has crept into our lives and that seems unstoppable. Is this us?

No, Mr. Obama is saying, we are better than this.

So what is the new American dream?

What is worthy of America?

That is what Mr. Obama is asking. And last November on election day, Americans responded.

Americans want to believe in themselves.

They want to believe in Obama because they want to believe in America again.

I think Canadians want the same for Canada.

Look at us –

We are 33 million people; one of the world’s largest economies; one of the world’s richest nations. We have a huge and abundant landmass amidst a world of congested countries. We are safe, secure and stable. Because of our aboriginal history, their countless nations and their challenge to survive, because of our French and English past of different languages, cultures, religions and laws, because we have people inside our borders today from almost everywhere – we are a country that is learning to live with difference, accept difference, learn from difference, when in the rest of the world difference often, instinctively, still means guns and blood.

Look at us –

All those good words from others that sometimes make us squirm – a country that’s clean, civil, modest, polite. Tolerant and respectful. A place with wide-open spaces, that’s liveable, a great place to raise kids. A place that’s nice.

A country that’s dull and boring, the cynics say. Compared to whom? The US? “Boring” meaning no big surprises? No rampant disease, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, earthquakes, major economic or political disasters; a country without tabloid extremes – tabloid boring? Instead, a country where you can plan for tomorrow, count on tomorrow, when billions around the world cannot. All those things about us that embarrass us a little – all those things the world is dying for.

Countries come and go, prominent for a time, then pushed to the sidelines in another. History is a long time. Whatever Canada has been in the past we will be far more in the future. The world knows it.

We need to know it too.

What is worthy of us? What is worthy of Canada?

To think about Canada, we need to think about the world too. Once the world was a disconnected place. Disconnected by distance; by geography – oceans, mountains, deserts – by culture; by custom; by language; by laws; by borders; even by thought. Each, all, reinforcing difference; exaggerating difference.

Now the world is connected. And a connected world cannot be about difference. A connected world has to be about, can only be about, getting along, living together, and the instincts and instruments for doing that.

It’s not enough for us to think globally and act locally. We must think globally and act globally, in order to act locally too.

What is worthy of the world?

And where do we fit in? What do you think?

I’m here because, as students you’re old enough to know enough of the present to imagine the future, yet young enough not to be overburdened by the past. I’m here because you are our best imaginers, because you haven’t yet learned to overwhelm what you feel with explanation, because you’re still able to be outraged by the outrageous, and excited by the exciting. I’m here because the big, tough, necessary global fights of the future – human rights, poverty, starvation, climate change – demand outrage and excitement. I’m here because even though I know some of you are not interested in politics, I know all of you are interested in the world.

Right now the world order is shifting. The rise of China and India, the return of Russia, the world-wide threat of climate change, the US and European economic meltdown. The US is still the world’s pre-eminent power, but now this is a true global world. It is time, the time, to re-imagine the world, to re-imagine Canada.

What is it about Canada that matters? So that if Canada didn’t exist, the world wouldn’t be as good a place? What matters now, and what will matter to the world? That’s the real question.

Is it Canada as a northern country, with the great impact – economic, environmental, cultural and military – the north will have on the world’s future? And the chance for us to do it better this time?

Maybe.

Is it Canada as an environmental model? Our forests, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies are what others think of first when they think of us. The environment as beauty, the environment as riches, the environment as both together in a sustainable way.

Perhaps.

Is it Canada as innovator? The world isn’t about knowing – it’s about learning. The sun revolves around the Earth until we learn it doesn’t. What we know is just a placeholder for what we’ll learn someday. Our population more broadly educated per capita than anywhere else in the world, our immigrants from everywhere bringing their centuries of learning with them, together generating great innovation?

Possibly.

What do you think?

For me, I think there’s a bigger role. A more important role worthy of Canada, worthy of the world. In a global world, as you know, we can no longer avoid each other. All those different languages, different cultures, customs, traditions and understandings; all those different experiences, backgrounds and personal histories; all those deep-in-the-bone stereotypes and prejudices; conflicts and misunderstandings, all the water of centuries and centuries gone under the bridge – suddenly, now, they are all in one place, here.

The biggest challenge of a global world, I think, is not economic or environmental or military. It is living together.

Our country was not created out of revolution. We have no history of civil war. On matters that might have led to the break-up of our country, we held two referendums. For more than 15 years we’ve had in our federal parliament a major party whose purpose is an independent Quebec. Our instinct is not to fight; it is to work things out. Immigrants new to the country who carry with them histories of bloody hostility – often against those who are now their next-door neighbours – receive a quiet, subtle message when they arrive. It may be the only real obligation of Canadian citizenship. Its message: we get along here.

It’s not a message for an age of empire. Then the world was about power and might. The strong didn’t have to get along. The weak did. The strong could believe they were right, and act as if they were right, because they could impose right. In Canada, we lived in a huge space, in small settled groups in which no group was big enough to pretend to dominate another – the “losers of history,” some have called them – French Canadians, Loyalists, displaced Highland Scots, Irish fleeing the potato famine. We needed each other to survive. We had to get along, so we did. In an age of empire, this made us seem weak and irrelevant.

But in a post-empire age, power and might are not enough. The strong can’t impose right so easily; the weak are numerous and not so weak to be imposed upon. We all have to find accommodation. We all have to get along. As Canadians, we know how. Many do not. In an age of globalism, this makes us remarkable and crucial.

In an age of empire, homogeneity was good. In an age of globalism, it is not. I was at our daughter’s graduation not long ago. It was held outside. One of the speakers talked about the beautiful canopy of trees above us, how a century ago they were all elms – tall, majestic, perfect. Then disease came and wiped out most of them. The few that survived made it, in part, because other species of trees were planted in their midst. The genetic diversity of nature had brought adaptability, resilience. Diversity, it turned out, was good, healthy, necessary. The monoculture of elms could not survive. The multiculture of elms, oaks, maples and honey locusts survive and thrive.

Who knew?

It’s all a great surprise. As a country, we didn’t get here through any plan. We lived our life circumstances, adapted with each turn in the road, and this is what we became. Now we find ourselves in this very strange position where he line on the world-graph and the line on the Canada-graph have come together. We are going where the world is going. We are what the world needs – we get along here.

All those things that embarrass us a little – being civil, modest, polite, tolerant and respectful, getting along, having a history without the glory of revolution or civil war – all things the world is dying for. All things a global world needs. All things the future needs.

That’s us. We’re a living experiment. If a global world can’t work in Canada, it won’t work anywhere. We matter – a lot. And we’ll matter more and more and more in the future.

We need to know that. We need to understand that about ourselves. Not to become complacent, but the opposite, to become ambitious. To take on the big questions of the future with the right understanding of ourselves. What should the most global country in a global world do about human rights, poverty, starvation, climate change?

More. Much more.

It’s time.

What do we do about all this? How do we become fully what we are?

First, we need a common story. Because the US, Britain, France and others have found their common story in their history, it seems that we must as well. As if there’s a formula, and a common story can only emerge out of history, that we have skipped a step and need to go back before we can go ahead. And we’ve tried that. With the big CBC series, “Canada: A People’s History;” with “Heritage Minutes,” with new histories like John Ralston Saul’s “A Fair Country” which came out last year. But none of them have even begun to shake our old understanding of ourselves. Too many people and too many groups have too much of a stake in their past. French-English, East-West: if we try to win old fights, they become new fights. Forever fights. This isn’t about defeating old stories, it’s about writing new ones that make the old ones seems less important.

Our past can deepen and enrich our sense of ourselves. But we need to find our common story, we need to search for our future, in what we are now.

And that’s good. Very good. Being tolerant isn’t easy. Accepting people greatly different from ourselves isn’t easy. And maybe our biggest achievement has been resisting the almost impossible pull to be just like the US. The US is a spectacularly successful country. We share the same landmass. Who wouldn’t want to be just like the US? What except a perverse, knee-jerk, anti-Americanism would keep us from imitating their every move? But our history is a little different. Our land and climate are harsher. Our success not so certain. We learned in the past that we needed our neighbour and our neighbour needed us. It made us maybe a little more forgiving, more generous and more humble. The individual, and individual rights, mattered, but collective rights did, too. We learned that some things had to be done together, that sometimes government needed to play a role. We’ve had to accept higher taxes to deliver to remote and disadvantaged places what we believe every Canadian should have. We knew we weren’t going to be the richest, so our pursuit of wealth is tempered by other things that also make a life feel good. All this not to the extent that feels quite right to us – too often we fall far short – but the gap between our rich and poor, though much wider than in western Europe, is far less than the US.

We said no to Vietnam, no to Iraq, and yes to Medicare. We take great pride in having a public health care system. In poll after poll, we describe it as central to our identity. It seems almost embarrassing that we do. Tommy Douglas was named as CBC’s “greatest Canadian.” Surely there must be more to us than a public health care system. But our pride is not just in health care itself, it’s that we did it, it matters, and it’s right. And that the US couldn’t and can’t. It would’ve been so easy for us not to.

There is something so compelling about the American idea of the “melting pot.” People from everywhere, coming together, having a place, making an American life for themselves; their languages, cultures, traditions gradually “melting” out of existence. It would have been so easy for us to do the same. But those Canadians who came earlier to Canada were not so numerous, and our established culture was not so defined when others arrived, so we didn’t impose. We chose to understand ourselves as what we now call “a multicultural society,” and to be proud of that. And maybe that’s what we were, and are, but now we’re moving on to something else. To something new in the world. To a rich, remarkable experiment. To a “global culture.” To a “multiculture” society. That’s us. In the past, it would have been so easy to insist on something else. Now even if we wanted to go back to a French and English Canada, to a white-skinned existence, we can’t. It’s too late. We have to make this work. We have no choice. And it’s exciting.

As historian Margaret MacMillan has said, the writing of history really began in the 1800s. In an age of power and glory and empire, it was the story nations and governments wanted to have written. In tomorrow’s world, there won’t be one culture, one language, one set of understandings. No one’s going to conquer the world. Today, attempting to live up to the glories of that old story will kill us all. We need a new story. A new history. One that accommodates many cultures, many languages, many understandings. That accepts differences, that can live with differences. That highlights getting along.

For Canada, the absence of a strong, central story, a strong, central narrative, has allowed us to be what we are, to become what we have become. What always seemed our problem has become our great good fortune.

Canada is where the world is going.

Who knew?

But whether we knew that’s what we were doing or not, this is what we are. It also forces us to live up to our own selves and set our bar higher. We do have to be tolerant and decent, fair and generous. In a pre-global world, these seemed like “soft” values. The rhetoric of losers. In a global world, these are the essentials. Because without them, those left out will no longer rest quietly on the sidelines, and the “hard” values – economic growth, prosperity – will be blown apart.

“We get along here” – it’s the way we are; it’s the only way a global world can work. But it is a very hard standard to meet. It means that no one can be left to one side. In health, in education, in life circumstances, everyone deserves a chance. Everyone. Anything else is not fair. Not right. Not acceptable. It means we have to do better; close the gap between our rich and our poor. This is good ethics, good economics, and good for what makes life feel right. We have to trust our values, our experiences, what we’ve learned, what we have become. No hesitation, confident and proud, we have to trust us being us.

The world needs more Canada, but Canada needs more Canada too.

As a country, we are ready for more.

And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Like you, I’ve been in situations such as this in my own life. I was the kid from nowhere suddenly in the Stanley Cup playoffs. In Boston Garden, against the Stanley Cup champions. Like you, I didn’t know if I could do it. The good thing – I didn’t know I couldn’t. I just played. All those backyard ball hockey games, all those moments dreaming and imagining, all those ups and downs – it turned out I was ready. I had no idea. I had become what I needed to be.

It was time for me then. It’s time for us now.

Listen to these names, Canadian names:
Guy Laliberte, Frank Gehry, Justin Morneau, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mike Lazaridis, Celine Dion, Kiefer Sutherland, Leonard Cohen, Gord Downie, Sidney Crosby, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ben Heppner, Karen Kain, Jason Bay, Wayne Gretzky, Diana Krall, Douglas Coupland, Robert Lepage, Michel Tremblay, Bobby Orr, k. d. lang, Avril Lavigne, Michael Buble, Hayley Wickenheiser, Rohinton Mistry, Gilles Vigneault, Mario Lemieux, Shania Twain, Michael Ondaatje, Atom Egoyan, Steve Nash, Isadore Sharp, Louise Arbour, David Suzuki, Jim Balsillie, Anne Michaels, Jeffrey Skoll, Christopher Plummer, Sam Roberts, Sarah Polley.

Canadian names – what these names say isn’t about their work, it’s about what their work says. It says:

I can. I matter.

These are our real storytellers. This is what we are today.

It’s time.

Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist and philosopher – and a Canadian – wrote recently about individual life, saying, “None of us knows what made us what we are, and when we have to say something, we make up a good story.” It’s the same for a country. But that story has to be a good one. Because the wrong story leads to the wrong future. And we’ve had the wrong story for a long time. But now the right one is right here in front of us.

History, it can be said, is not just about writing the past. History is about writing the future.

How do we get to there from here?

We talk about it, just as we are doing today. At every university across the country. And if we believe it, we talk to others. We connect to a website. A website that is intelligent-enough, challenging- and smart-enough to be “cool.” And rough-edged enough to make people feel their own words and images are good enough to add to it. To make them players, not spectators. To make them want to connect, puzzle through and seek out something together, not just rant.

Over time, the story builds, deepens, broadens, grows richer. A national conversation begins. Others write about it and talk about it – writers, journalists, musicians, businesspeople, academics, historians, politicians – whomever. The conversation grows, builds . . .

People who have felt this way about Canada for years begin to feel the right to express what they feel. These thoughts, ideas and ambitions enter the language even of the most un-usual suspects. It’s just there – part of our understanding of ourselves, part of our language, finally part of our politics. Part of what Canadians come to demand of their political parties, their party leaders, their Prime Minister. A standard to which each must rise and meet.

The public expects, insists – and the political parties begin to respond, to compete. The story they tell in their speeches and platforms is of this bigger Canada. This bigger Canada is evoked again and again to explain and justify each policy announced. This bigger Canada becomes a standard against which we decide the dimensions of our policies – what would this Canada do about climate change, about transforming our economy, about poverty, about our role in the world?

“Typically Canadian, eh?” No. In the future, same words, new tone. Filled with ambition and pride. Filled with an understanding of our important place in the world, our important place in the future. Typically Canadian, eh.

It’s time.

It’s time – to know we are more than this.

It’s time – for a country where life can be imagined, hoped for, planned for and dreamed; where life can be counted on.

It’s time – for a country respectful of others, respectful of difference, respectful of the future.

It’s time – for a country that’s where the world is going – “we get along here.”

It’s time – to know what we are and be what we are.

No more an echo or shadow, it’s time – to be loud and proud.

It’s time for Canada.

Thank you.

The Forum for Young Canadians is a non-partisan educational program for high school students which brings outstanding youth from across the country to Ottawa for an intensive week of hands-on activities on and around Parliament Hill.  The program offers a unique insider’s perspective into politics and governance.  Students who are selected develop leadership skills, study parliamentary democracy, and learn how to make a difference in their own communities.  They also meet other students from many other parts of Canada, often developing friendships that will last all their lives.

On March 24, I had dinner with two special students from York Centre who were participating in the Forum.  Ari Zuckerbot is in Grade 11 at P.A.C.E., the Academy for Gifted Children, and Marco Bellissimo is in Grade 10 at Dante Alighieri Academy.  It was early in their week.  I asked them what had struck them most about Ottawa at that point.  Both said they were surprised by their feelings when they first saw the Parliament Buildings.  It reinforced in them their sense of importance of the country, they said.

If you are a high school student between the ages of 15 and 19, with sound academic performance and an interest in current national and community affairs, I encourage you to find out more about participating in Forum for Young Canadians. 

For more information on session dates, eligibility, and how to apply, you can visit their website at www.forum.ca