What I Like about the Canadian Experiment

There is a trend in the air. Even as politics seems to become more divided than ever, more and more people that I meet seem to reject being put easily in one party category or the other. Like me, people are finding much to value in both the liberal and conservative perspectives. You can see this in the Christian church also.  More and more people are no longer seeing their denominational less as a tribal affiliation. In other words, people like Baptists for instance are also finding treasures in the liturgical traditions and vise versa. As an Anglican I found found spiritual nourishment in the Franciscan, Celtic, Anabaptist, Eastern Orthodox and Monastic traditions. And I am not alone. This is a strong mark of the emerging church. However, tt seems to me that this is less of an intentional project as it is an attitude, an attitude that is comprehensive as opposed to an attitude that easily partitions and categorizes. I think that it reflects an appreciation of complexity that is not easily reducible.

It is my interest in this comprehensive attitude that I think attracts me to the Canadian project so much. Because of the unique history of Canada and the different interests competing for recognition, the Canadian project seems to have built into it this comprehensive attitude. This comprehensive attitude really seems to be apparent after the tenure of Pierre Trudeau and his patriation of the Canadian Constitution. His favourite achievement in that move was of course the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As biographer John English observes, "because of Trudeau's view that you station rights in individuals to counter the collective forces of what he would see as tribal nationalism." Trudeau was one of the strongest federalists that this country has known, and he wanted to play down the regional and linguistic identities in order to promote a stronger national identity. But there is an obvious tension here that makes Canada so interesting. Trudeau was a strong prime minister, but not strong enough to pull people out of their regional identities in the way you might find in the United States where there is regional difference to be sure, but definitely subordinated to the American identity. In Canada it does not seem to be so straight forward; there is both an embrace of Trudeau's passion for individual rights and a very strong emphasis on linguistic, ethnic and regional identity.

You can see this most strongly in questions around the French language laws in Quebec and in debates about Aboriginal group rights, but in many other places as well. In the United States one would see these as contradictory positions. But Canadians don't seem willing to agree. It is not that it is easy to resolve the tensions, and the tensions are quite strong and the problems quite thorny. However, Canadians seem to think that there is something essential that would be lost if one position was simply subordinated to the other. We see this in the commitment to multi-culturalism and pluralism as well as the historic decision to create a political system that is both democratic and monarchical. This should be profoundly contradictory, and yet the Canadians seem to make it work. It is what I appreciate about the Canadian system.