Strange Utterances

Tuesday, 07 February 2017

Sometimes I wonder whether some of my fellow citizens’ Canada is the same as the one where I live. What led me to ask this question again is the interview given by Canadian novelist Eva Stachniak’s whose fifth and most recent novel is titled The Chosen Maiden?

The author was born and raised in Poland. She arrived in Canada in 1981 and presently she lives in Toronto.

In a recent piece published in the Globe and Mail on January 21, 2017 at.R16 under the heading “The Book Report” she is asked the question: Which country produces literature that you wish more people read?

Her short and sharp initial reply was the expected one: ”Canada, because she said we are relevant.” .That is all well and good but when she proceeded  to explain why we are relevant, I had this fleeting insight  as to why more people do not read our books.

Her explanation is: “We live in a country that embodies the essence of the 21^st century. We are grappling with important moral choices: how to reconcile the sins of our colonial past with the desire to build a just society, how to bridge cultures without losing our identity, how to prosper without destroying our soul.  Wave after wave of immigrants and refugees come to live among us, with their stories and their points of view, making us examine and then re-examine who we are and who we want to become. We are relevant…” (Italics mine)

To put it mildly, it is baffling reply. Having read my fair share of Canadian literature, I dare say more people ought to read our literature first and foremost because we have authors who write first rate books.

If her explanation goes around, I dare say even less people will read our books, particularly those of our “deep thinkers”; the “so-called” public intellectuals, not to mention our guardians and the accomplished practitioners of politically correct thinking.

Let’s now turn to the grounds on which she concluded that we are relevant.

Her first argument is that our country embodies the essence of the 21^st century. I am at loss 
to figure out how, barring divine revelation, anyone can say this, merely 17 years into it. But then, what is the essence of the new century and what is the evidence to prove that?  Further, Canada can hardly be compared to the European countries whose civilisation is in the process of going to hell fast in a hand basket. Of the two other countries I can think of, Canada does resemble Australia and United States in some respects and superficially in others yet remains distinct from both in fundamental ones. In the premises, I am compelled to conclude that, we must be the only country in the world that embodies the essence of the 21^st century.

What then makes Canada the embodiment of the essence of the 21^st century? Some of the reasons she proffers puts us squarely back in the 20^th century, while, at least, one other places us further back, and to be blunt yet others, simply do not make sense, at least to me.

Starting with the last category first, conceding for sake of argument, that the country is grappling with important choices, these are certainly not the ones she identifies.

More specifically, the first of these is the author’s contention that we are grappling with such moral choices as to how to reconcile the sins of our colonial past with the desire to build a just society.

The preliminary problems with this proposition are that one cannot make a moral choice between events that occur in different centuries, and furthermore the concept of reconciliation which requires two parties, is inconsistent with the notion making a unilateral choice.

Further, the desire to build a just society at present and the sins of our past are not interdependent. Surely; we can build or at least aspire to and work towards building a just society, regardless whether or not we sinned in the past. 

Second, assuming that  the sins of  our colonial past she talking about refers to the manner in which  the newcomers dealt with the aboriginal peoples, the first thing to be said is that those “so-called” sins are not ours but those of the French and the British colonial regimes. The overwhelming percentage of present day Canadians, immigrants and refugees do not have a colonial past, And those that arrived before them, had nothing to do with the government’s aboriginal laws, policies and practices. They were and continue to be, hard at work trying to adapt to the country, make a living and making sure to provide their children with a proper education while,   in the old days, while putting up with the prejudices of the Anglo-Saxon establishment and their economic exploitation of the newcomers and nowadays putting up with the caprices of the society we have become and expect them to buy into it holus bolus.

As to the alleged sins, having researched and read  a great deal into  the treatment  of the aboriginal peoples in conjunction with my work as a lawyer in the Federal Department of Justice specialising in aboriginal law,  and  out of personal interest, I am prepared to argue that  Canada’s over-all approach to aboriginal policy and the treatment of the aboriginal peoples by the moral and intellectual standards of the times, starting with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 followed by treaties have been far more, enlightened, principled and fair  than those of any  other Western country.

I remember some years back when a prominent Canadian Indian leader could not wait to attend an international conference on aboriginal matters in Geneva to put the federal government to shame by informing his audience how the government had recently reduced the budget for the financing of post-secondary education for status Indians. i.e. Indians as defined in the Indian Act and a few other trivial matters of the kind. Well, he did not do that, he could not do it, overwhelmed as he was, by the shocking tragic stories of the life-threatening  inhuman treatment of aboriginal peoples in other countries  told by the speakers that preceded him.

Did some  pre and post- Confederation governments  but, more often than not, some civil servants in Ottawa  and some the Indian Agents  in the field err, at times grievously, in their ways, make mistakes, act in a high handed  or highly  negligent manner, engage  in  some skulduggery to cause the theft of Indian lands? Yes, certainly some did, but then again, many others devoted their careers to the well-being of those with whose welfare they were entrusted and treated them fairly and respectfully.

Such personal failings hardly warrant   the imputation the term sin to the Canadian society.

And frankly, I find the people who presume to pass moral judgment on the widely shared historical western standards of civilization, values and codes of conduct elaborated in good faith, genuinely believing these to be in the best interests of both the aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities, to be self-righteous, ignorant bores.

Speaking of sins, I wonder, for example, how future generations in this or the following centuries, that is if planet earth lasts that long, are going to judge us for the way our society deals with the abortion issue with the approval of the nine judges of the Supreme Court of Canada and how the Court went about to grant the right to abort through its bizarre characterization of the legal status of the human embryo and foetus prior to a medically specified date..

At all events, I hardly think  that the Canadian society as a whole is particularly pre-occupied with the question of the  historical treatment of the aboriginal peoples in good measure  because insofar as the aboriginal  peoples  are concerned, the building of a just society has been going on for some time and continues to be built by, with and for them, among other things: (1) through modern–day land treaties; (2) since 1982, by  (a)  recognizing and affirming  their existing aboriginal and treaty rights as well as their other  freedoms and rights under the Constitution, and (b) protecting these  rights and freedoms against the encroachment of the provisions of the Charter rights and freedoms; (3) through the generous interpretation of the nature, scope and application of these rights by the Supreme Court of Canada, to the extent that it is becoming extremely difficult, sometimes seemingly near- impossible, to proceed with mega-projects on the ground that these projects may potentially affect adversely aboriginal lands and people; (4) by huge yearly financial outlays of monies for the administration  and maintenance  the bands and reserves, to the point that  at times people some have suggested that the government is buying back Canada acre by acre at current land market prices.

Third, I suggest that the question how to bridge cultures and languages without losing our identity is not really a matter of moral choice and certainly not the kind of question that can be addressed a priori, speculatively or resolved through social engineering.

National identity and the said bridging is not a zero sum game to be kept or to be lost, but something that evolves at its own natural pace in response to changing circumstances.

And to date, Canadians have done quite well in bridging cultures and languages and in fact, the Canadian identity is the end result of this process. Canadian society therefore   must be allowed to continue as it has done to date, and to address the matter of bridging through national consensus.

At all events, the best thing for the federal and provincial governments to do, is not to engage in social engineering at which they have proven themselves to be in turn, ill-advised; inept, and worst of all opportunistic, ready and willing to undermine our national identity in order to curry political favours or score electoral points, dismissive of the rights and concerns of the electorate, a subject to which I plan to return in the context of multi-culturalism.

The fourth question, “how to prosper without destroying our soul” is a queer one. During the nearly sixty years I lived in this country, save in religious sermons, I never heard anyone link his search of prosperity to the destruction of the soul”.

And I am willing to wager that if a pollster conducted a survey where the respondents are asked: Are you or Canadians concerned about   the risk of destroying your soul in the process of prospering?   The baffled respondents would either walk away in disbelief and at all events the affirmative replies would be scant.  

Finally, the observation that “wave after wave of immigrants and refugees come to live among us, with their stories and their points of view, making us examine and then re-examine who we are and who we want to become”.

As an immigrant and student of Canadian history, I have no hesitation that, historically, indeed until the recent past, Canadians as a whole did not consider the points of view of immigrants and refugees. They welcomed the immigrants and were and are still delighted to provide a safe home to refugees.

They knew and know who and what they are. They ask and expected the newcomers to leave their old hatreds at the door; to integrate them into the Canadian society by adopting the values, ideals, practices and ways of living and working. And needless to say past the first generation that seeks to integrate, their children inevitably assimilate into the Canadian society.  The notion of immigrants or refugees seeking or claiming the right to alter the fabric of the country was and, I verily believe, remains unimaginable both for Canadians as well as the overwhelming majority of the newcomers.

As a matter of fact, just as I was, most newcomers are only too keen to “Canadianise” ( my contribution to the English language)  themselves, dress, speak, act, work (and even chew gum) like Canadians  and acquire an education that will enable them  to integrate faster and finally give them the chance to make a good living.

Certainly, Canadians did not ask themselves, and I very much doubt that they ask themselves at present, who they wanted to become, for they have been and continue to be very happy who they are, and rightly so too.

And, they will remain so, provided the various levels of governments, their emanations and other, public institutions   respect and firmly defend the core Canadian values, traditions and practices that made Canada what it is today: a wonderful, decent and caring country, albeit with a some warts that need attending to and when necessary removing them before the rot sets in, as it is now happening in the nation’s college and universities.

In the meantime, I wish, we would stop, as someone said “cutting and sewing water” in the guise of analysing and defining our society.