The Canadian Consensus - As I Understand It

Having spent entirely too much time in the United States, I fear that I may have developed a somewhat simplistic - and perhaps overly optimistic - opinion on the mainstream of Canadian politics. From across the border, Canada looks like a left-wing fantasia - gay marriage, medicinal marijuana, free health care, popular multiculturalism and the CBC. While the story is much more nuanced than that, these institutions - and Canada's distinctiveness from the United States - do rest on a set of widely-shared values that have emerged from the post-war experience of politics, what I call the Canadian Consensus. I've listed what I consider to be the key elements of that consensus below - I'm very curious to hear what people who haven't spent the last eight years stateside think. Am I off base? Out of touch? Let me know.

The Canadian Consensus

1. Respect Quebec

Quebec is one of the founding provinces of Canada, and has an unassailable claim to Canadianess. The coexistence of French and English speaking communities is one of the defining elements of the Canadian national identity, and the contribution of Quebecois and, more broadly, francophone Canadians is great and appropriate to recognize. That said, francophone Quebecois have an ambiguous attitude towards Canada - some strongly identify with it (Stephane Dion, for example, whose thankless job under Chretien was to go around Quebec debunking the myth that Quebec pays more in taxes than it receives in benefits, and then going on to draft the Clarity Act. This probably cost him some friends) and many consider Canada to merely be the latest, nicest form of anglo domination that began with the Plains of Abraham, and feel a sense of patriotic obligation to shrug off this final form of oppression and finally create an independent Quebec. When this project is pursued through democratic channels, it is granted legal protection and social toleration (Giles Duceppe gets to sit in Parliament. Hell, he even gets invited to debates at the CBC), and when it relies on violence (as in the FLQ attacks in the 1970s) it gets put down with violence.
Canadians have responded to Quebec separatism, which amounts to an existential threat to the survival of the country, primarily by reasoned - if sometimes impassioned - debate and accommodation with every identity aspiration of Quebec short of secession. Or at least that has been the response of the political class. On a popular level, especially in Western Canada, there is some grumbling about Quebec and right-wing resentment of the political recognition of cultural rights (which, from a strict conservative position, should be settled entirely through private practices and supported by private contributions), but this has been, remarkably, marginal. The vast majority of anglophone Canadians have an attitude towards Quebec that ranges from benign indifference to outright affection, even those who have spent very little time in la belle province. Official bilingualism is uncontroversial and for many a source of pride in Canadian pluralism, and the official promotion of francophone culture (alongside programs for the arts in general) is likewise unproblematic. And anglophone Canadians seem to have no problem voting for francophone Quebec politicians to lead the country, and even turned out to watch the ultimate valentine to anglo-franco coexistence, Bon Cop Bad Cop, as entertaining as it was socially valuable. I've seen it twice - once for franco and once for anglo Canada.

2. Include Everyone

Not unrelated to the project of harmonizing anglo-franco and Rest of Canada-Quebec relations has been the Canadian embrace of official multiculturalism. Canada is a nation of immigrants, many (including the author) relatively recent ones with strangely-spelled last names or duskier complexions. Assimilation - the melting-pot approach favored by the United States - was too problematic for Canada. Not only is the relative proportion of immigrants much greater in Canada than in the United States, there is also the thorny question of which culture to assimilate them too - should new immigrants be socialized as anglo or franco Canadians? Instead a multicultural policy was adopted, in which immigrants were not expected to suppress their original cultural identities in the process of becoming Canadian. The upshot is that immigrant communities both feel at home and can choose how far they wish to assimilate - do I keep my impractical surname? Which language do I speak at home? How much of the old country do I want to give up? In practice these are always personal questions, but Canadian multiculturalism makes a point of publicly accepting any answer to those questions - great efforts are made to present culturally diverse personalities and arts in the public media, and the symbolic offices left over from the British Empire (the Governor-Generalship, etc.) are used to visibly include new Canadians into public life. A special mention should be made here of Little Mosque on the Prairie, a popular Canadian sitcom combining two of Canada's most misunderstood and cultural distinct communities -Prairie people and Muslims. The shows humor and story lines are the stuff of conventional family sitcoms - predictable, slightly corny, but remarkably easy to identify with. The juxtaposition of Islamic cultural practices with a downright wholesome small-town story presents a community which, since 9/11, has been seen as threatening and alien as likable, down-to-earth, reassuringly like us. If white Canadians are willing to watch such a show in numbers large enough to make it commercially viable, that suggests that multiculturalism has healthy roots in this society.
The same tactics have also been used to give women a more visible role in public life (such as the Liberal Party's goal of having one third of its Parliamentary candidates be women, or the careful gender balancing on the Supreme Court, or, once again, the office of the Governor General), with fairly credible results - certainly in some corners of Canadian society sexism exists, but the society at large gives equal credence to male and female leaders, and the opportunities for advancement to roles of high responsibility are very real for women in Canada.
Most recently, aboriginal peoples have been included in these efforts. The visibility of aboriginal culture in Canada has increased dramatically, largely due to resources provided by the state (Atanarjuat, for instance, received substantial support from various state agencies) although also in commercial media (as in Corner Gas). Further, recently a number of moves by political leaders have sought to improve relations and begin to settle the moral debt to Canada's aboriginal peoples - Stephen Harper's apology for the residential school system and the now-shelved Kelowna Accord being the most prominent examples.
The Canadian identity has never been an exacting one, making it relatively easy to expand the circle of social inclusion to culturally diverse communities. In doing this, the state has played a key role - and Canadians, by and large, are satisfied with the policies and pleased with the results.

3. Support Culture

One of the most significant legacies of British rule has been the creation and the continued strength and relevance of the CBC. Between hockey, news and cultural programming, the CBC - as an independent, publicly-funded institution, insulated from both direct political control and the lowest-common-denominator pressures of the competitive marketplace. CBC radio, chimerical free and available coast-to-coast in French and English, goes even further in promoting often overlooked elements of Canadian culture and delivering thoughtful news coverage. Apart from these venerable institutions, the National Film Board supports Canadian cinema and maintains a remarkable tradition in film animation, and the Canada Council provides support for individual artists. These programs all enjoy real public support - in the current campaign, one of the few missteps by an ever-cautious Conservative party was the introduction of cutbacks to arts funding, which compromised their standing in the polls and invited harsh criticism from all four opposition parties as well as significant social elements, especially in Quebec. Partly out of a fear of cultural domination by the United States, partly out of a sense of pride in the cultural achievements of Canadian artists, and partly because they very much enjoy watching or listening to the CBC, Canadians are broadly supportive of public funding for culture.

4. Stay out of the Bedroom

In the United States especially, Canadians enjoy a reputation as something of a libertine people, who have been far more accepting of gays and lesbians than Americans, and who display a refreshingly enlightened attitude towards marijuana. San Franciscans especially like to fantasizes about this country, imagining a society of bicurious, perpetually stoned Arcade Fire fans biking to and from the organic co-op. This is mistaken - the Canadian toleration of a hedonistic, Californian lifestyle should not be confused with an embrace of such a lifestyle as something to necessarily strive for. In terms of the sort of lives they lead, many Canadians are perfectly wholesome family people. One even finds personally conservative, firmly committed Christians leading lives of Ned Flanders style virtuous perfection. Also, rednecks. The wholesome (whether religious or not) represent a significant part of the Canadian population, perhaps even (gaps!) a majority. The reason that the society as a whole seems more libertine is because the wholesome have been convinced that wholesomeness is a personal choice and commitment, and should not be legislated upon the sketchy. This live-and-let-live attitude may have something to do with multiculturalism and franco-anlgo coexistence or maybe just the result of the more mellow form of Christianity which typified traditional Canadian culture (as opposed to New England Puritanism or the enthusiasm of the Great Awakening). Whatever it is, Canadians are content to allow individuals to look after their own moral well-being. Interestingly enough, when it comes to tobacco, the toleration reaches its end and the smug sanctimony begins. But that's a topic for another post.

5. Make Money, but not too Much, and Share it around

Canada has a socialist party - the NDP - which is generally well regarded, largely for the role it played in introducing universal health care. That said, the economic program of socialism - state control over the means of production, the restriction or elimination of private property - is a complete non-starter in Canada, whose economic model has consistently matched that of the other capitalist states of the West. In the post-War period, when even Nixon was a Keynesian, Canada had a mixed economy with some elements of planning. In the 1980s and early 1990s when economies were deregulating and welfare states retrenching, Canada followed the lead of the US and Western European countries and likewise liberalized its economy, albeit never to the same extent as the American. In the Keynesian heyday, for instance, Canada developed a much more significant welfare state, with more generous income provisions, relatively high quality public education, publicly funded mass universities and universal health care provision. All of these proved very popular among Canadians, and though health and education did experience funding cuts in the 1990s (as they did throughout the West), the brunt of the budget cuts befell the Canadian military, which was effectively disarmed under Jean Chretien (given the choice between guns and hospitals, Canadians felt he made the right one and reelected him twice). Canadians have nothing against business or the marketplace, and they very much like private property, but certain types of services are thought of as too sensitive to entrust to the profit motive, education and healthcare being the most important. The main reason for this has to do with a sense of Canadian egalitarianism which rebels at the idea of an essential service being apportioned by price - regardless of the efficiency arguments that may be mustered, there is a moral disgust at the thought of two-tier healthcare, or the exclusion of students from adequate education based on the inability to pay of their parents. In healthcare especially, everyone is not only entitled to a minimum of care, they are entitled equal care - when it comes to questions of life and death, wealth is not a measure of desert.
Which brings me to a broader point - Canadians are more skeptical of the claims that market success equals merit than are Americans, and are thus much less willing to tolerate the inequality of the very rich. Similarly, market failure in Canada is not the mark of disgrace that it is in the United States, and thus those who can't make ends meet through regular employment are not begrudged a boost from the federal dole. To be sure, there are significant disputes over the economic details of the Canadian welfare state and productive economy, but they fall within very sharp boundaries - no one on the left calls for large scale nationalization of industry, and no one on the right dare do more than nibble at the edges of the social safety net.

These five elements, as best as I can gather, represent the general area of agreement of the Canadian public. This is a slightly leftish set of values, I admit, but then the Conservatives have never polled over 38% Canada-wide, and have since slipped considerably, suggesting that the average Canadian is somewhere to the left of that particular perspective (and, given 18% NDP support, some are very far to the left). This is the set of values that Canadians have chosen for themselves over the last fifty years. In this election, and perhaps in the next one, we will see if they don't start selecting different ones for the next fifty.