As a first-generation Canadian, I saw a unity of purpose connecting town to province and province to nation, and I learned to actively respect cultural and religious differences. The collapse of the global economic system in the 1930s followed by the great mobilization of World War II taught us all that we must act collectively to shape our destiny. And in the ensuing years, as the federal and provincial governments worked together, Canada was further transformed by a demonstrated concern for families, veterans, the unemployed, the elderly, and the sick. We built universities and community colleges, and their doors opened widely. We promoted research laboratories and created institutions that nourished the arts and planted the seeds for the golden age of Canadian literature. We funded the cbc and embraced the television age with a uniquely Canadian ethos. We then established our own citizenship act, national anthem, and flag, and introduced social programs like universal hospitalization and medical care that most concretely affirm Canadian communitarian values. By the year of the centennial, as Pierre Berton wrote, Canada had become “a world-class, forward-looking nation.”
After 1967, the tide of progressive reform continued. We went beyond the social and economic foundations of Canadian nationhood and transformed the political and legal framework of the country by affirming the equality of our two official languages, acknowledging the treaty and historic rights of aboriginal peoples, and recognizing the multicultural essence of Canada. Equalization was written into the constitution, echoing the principle that Canadians supported sharing between regions. The constitution was patriated, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was established, and we committed ourselves to equality, diversity, civility, and the pursuit of peace.
This is our history and it resides in our collective dna.
“Shared destiny” may seem like a romantic notion but it is not. It is central to our national identity and to all political and social progress in Canada. When Peruvian diplomat Javier Perez de Cuellar stepped down as secretary-general of the United Nations in 1991, he donated all the gifts and works of art he had received while in office to Canada, noting he had come to regard it as the kind of civil society the nations of the world should emulate.
One of the best descriptions of shared destiny is found in the few words used by Saskatchewan’s deputy Attorney General, John Whyte, in his oral submission to the Supreme Court of Canada in the post-1995 Quebec secession reference case: “A nation is built when the communities that comprise it make commitments to it, when they forego choices and opportunities on behalf of a nation...when the communities that comprise it make compromises, when they offer each other guarantees, when they make transfers, and perhaps most pointedly, when they receive from others the benefits of national solidarity. The threads of a thousand acts of accommodation are the fabric of a nation....”
This point of view speaks to a sovereign nation of citizens with rights and responsibilities, and with a commitment to act in the best interests of the nation as a whole. Stated another way, Canada cannot be defined merely through strict legal interpretations as they apply to federal and provincial jurisdictions. Citizenship, regardless of where one lives, is at the very heart of Canada and our never-ending project of nation-building.
In recent years, there has been a drift away from this legacy. Perhaps the deficits, which ballooned in all of our governments—and resulted in the elimination, amendment, or drastic alteration of social and economic programs—sowed the seeds of doubt about our collective capacity to meet future challenges and balance competing interests. Perhaps the new trading arrangements have ushered in a new globalization of commerce, which has weakened our resolve to continue the nation-building enterprise. For certain, the soil has been tilled for the sprouting of views at odds with shared destiny, and today there is palpable momentum toward decentralization, individualism, and privatization, all peddled as a means to forge a stronger nation.
Fuelled by global trade agreements and, at home, by pressure for more powerful provinces able to implement programs as each sees fit, unbridled competition appears to be the new orthodoxy. This potent mix could alter decades of successful national advancement and threaten Canada’s collective prosperity. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives, an influential lobby group that represents Canada’s largest corporations, recently advanced the idea that Ottawa should grant more taxing powers to the provinces and cease making transfer payments historically used to ensure that national standards for social and economic programs are applied throughout the country. Apart from narrowly defined roles primarily in defence and foreign affairs, what is left for the federal government to do under such a scheme If the idea is accepted, the things that matter most to Canadians would be turned over to the provinces, lock, stock, and tax points. This, along with recent failures to achieve principled compromises on intergovernmental matters that shape economic and social policy, has resulted in a patchwork quilt of programs unequally applied.
New institutions have been created to reflect these developments. The prime example is the Council of the Federation, a strictly provincial-territorial body. The common denominators in this forum are more federal funds and more freedom to fashion programs that conform to the ideology of a particular regional government. This structure sets up confrontation and devalues collaboration, ignores our history, and weakens the nation’s modern-day purposes. The Council represents provincial and territorial leaders sticking together so they can go their separate ways. Not surprisingly, then, the list of local demands grows. Fiscal imbalance, health care, environmental issues, trade, and equalization are tailored by the council to suit the interests of this region or that. With no federal representatives speaking for Canada as a whole, the country is fast becoming a loose association of semi-autonomous jurisdictions that claim to define the nation’s needs. The result is a bizarre redefinition of Canadian federalism from one based on greater co-operation to one of greater compartmentalization. The delicate Canadian balance between nation and enterprise, between the individual and community, is imperilled, all under the pretext of building national unity.
Governments must be mandated to base their decisions on the broadest public interest—interests that reflect both provincial and national concerns. Canada should not and cannot be built on what is solely best for one’s own jurisdiction or what is best to improve the agendas of the largest of our corporations. I am not against competition. Nor am I opposed to global trading arrangements designed in a balanced and fair manner that are beneficial to us and offer economic and social rights to the citizens of our trading partners. Rather, my concern is that our governments seem to lack the resolve to regulate competition where the national interest requires it, to guarantee that trade is reciprocal, and to ensure that matters affecting quality of life are not overlooked.
