The Essential Trudeau by Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
Title: The Essential Trudeau.
Author: Pierre Elliot Trudeau (edited by Ron Graham).
Genre: Non-fiction, politics, speeches, interviews.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1998 (excerpts from 1960s, 1970, 1974, and 1990).
Summary: Trudeau has always opposed the dominant ideology and what passes for conventional wisdom. This was true when he spoke out against the oppressive rule of Maurice Duplessis in Quebec. It was true in his years in Ottawa, as justice minister and prime minister, when he introduced controversial measures ranging from wage-and-price controls and restrictions on foreign investment, to expanded rights for homosexuals. It has remained true in the years since his retirement, particularly when he has taken issue with the more provocative expressions of Quebec nationalism and with federal initiatives with as Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord. Now neo-conservative ideas have taken over. Virtually every level of government in Canada is competing with the others to reduce the role of the state and eliminate constraints on business. Less government has come to mean a smaller role especially for the federal government. And the increased powers taken on by the provinces are being used, increasingly, to substitute private interests for the public good. The Canada that promoted equality, justice, and opportunity for all is under sustained attack. Never has the need for a clear statement of classic liberal principles been greater. In this book, Ron Graham has brought together a selection of excerpts from Trudeau's writings, speeches, and interviews to make a highly reasonable, lucid, and compelling summary of Trudeau's political beliefs. To each chapter in this selection Trudeau has provided an introduction and to many of the excerpts he has added a new commentary.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ Politicians are not expected to hold consistent views - for weeks, let alone decades - rooted in a set of basic ideas. (When Harold Macmillan was asked to come up with a collective phrase for politicians equivalent to a herd of cows or gaggle of geese, he immediately suggested "a lack of principles.")
~~from Introduction by Ron Graham.
♥ We are going to be governed whether we like it or not; it is up to us to see to it that we are governed no worse than is absolutely unavoidable. We must therefore concern ourselves with politics, as Pascal said, to mitigate as far as possible the damage done by the madness of our rulers.
♥ The price of liberty, say the English, is eternal vigilance. But to be vigilant one must be aware of one's rights. It is important, then, to know what our freedom is founded on, and how far the state has authority to restrict it. In other words, strict limits must be placed on the right of one person to rule another. This is indeed the domain of politics.
♥ Even when I was a student, a lot of my foolishness and a lot of my writings were about man's freedom. I liked the temperament of Cyrano de Bergerac, the idea of a man who does his own thing, who has his own ideals, and who fights anybody who tries to get in his way. Let's not follow conventions, fashions, or accepted opinions. Let's be ourselves and seek new truths for ourselves. Like Cyrano, maybe we won't climb very high, but at least we'll climb alone, without owing anybody anything.
♥ In the normal course of life we are subject to many constraints, and we do not hesitate to impose others on ourselves if need be; we are able to accept them as mechanisms indispensable to our life, as the framework of our liberty - for liberty is not without form. And the price of our liberty may be a momentary surrender of one particular freedom. This is undoubtedly the highest price we can pay for liberty, next to giving our life itself. But liberty is worth this sacrifice. With the love which gives it life, liberty remains the most difficult conquest for humanity. Liberty can thrive only if consciously nurtured; liberty is never won for all timer; liberty never sleeps.
♥ For, in the art of living, as in that of loving, or of governing - it is all the same - I found it unacceptable that others should claim to know better than I what was good for me. Consequently, I found tyranny completely intolerable.
♥ For public opinion seeks to impose its domination over everything. Its aim is to reduce all action, all thought, and all feeling to a common denominator. It forbids independence and kills inventiveness; condemns those who ignore it and banishes those who oppose it.
At certain times, on certain subjects, the government is either behind the people or in step with the people. But I believe a government should also try to be slightly ahead of the people. It must indicate the directions it thinks the society should follow for its future well-being. That's what you might call leadership. However, you can't be too far ahead of the people, too isolated, too dictatorial, or else the people will cease following. You can't lead a people like you can lead a horse.
♥ Neither authority nor obedience ought to he taken for granted. If my father, my priest, or my king wants to exert authority over me, if he wants to give me orders, he has to be able to explain, in a way that satisfies my reason, on what grounds he must command and I must obey.
♥ When authority in any form bullies a citizen unfairly, all other citizens are guilty; for it is their tacit assent that allows authority to commit the abuse. If they withdrew their consent, authority would collapse.
♥ Most people seek only their own comfort and pleasure: when these ends are assured, they ask no more than to conform to a given social order and to obey political masters who work to maintain that order. Few people are aroused by an injustice when they are sure of not being its victim themselves.
♥ Tyrants always claim that their social order is founded on the common weal, the welfare of the race; but they reserve the right to define this welfare themselves, and their laws require the citizens to act accordingly. Now, to credit one or several leaders with superior knowledge of what particular set of actions is best for everyone is to call into question the very basis of social morality. For the only goof action, of real moral value, is a voluntary action, chosen by the enlightened thinking of the person who performs it.
♥ No government, no particular régime, has an absolute right to exist. This is not a matter of divine right, natural law, or social contract: a government is an organization whose job is to fulfil the needs of the men and women, grouped in society, who consent to obey it. Consequently the value of a government derives not from the promises it makes, from what it claims to be, or from what it alleges it is defending, but from what it achieves in practice. And it is for each citizen to judge that.
♥ In a society of egoists, clearly, every citizen will want a government that will cater to him personally or even at the expense of others..
..But a society of egoists quickly becomes a society of slaves; for no one person is capable of overturning an established government. Such a government is not weakened at all when one discontented citizen refuses to obey the authorities, for they simply put him in prison.
To remain free, then, citizens must seek their welfare in a social order that is just to the largest numbers; in practice only the majority has the power to make and unmake governments. It follows that people can live free and at peace only if their society is just.
♥ Justice to me is a warm spirit, born of tolerance and wisdom, present everywhere, ready to serve the highest purposes of rational man. To seek to create the just society must be amongst the highest of those human purposes. Because we are mortal and imperfect, it is a task we will never finish; no government or society ever will. But from our honest and ceaseless effort, we will draw strength and inspiration, we will discover new and better values, we will achieve an unprecedented level of human consciousness. On the never-ending road to perfect justice we will, in other words, succeed in creating the most humane and compassionate society possible.
♥ I felt it was the duty of a middle power like Canada, which could not sway the world with the force of its armies, to at least try to sway the world with the force of its ideals.
♥ It is hardly credible that nations which have learned that their destinies are linked, that national aims can no longer be wholly realized within national boundaries, that beggaring our neighbours is the surest way of beggaring ourselves, should have discovered no better alternative to maintaining their security than an escalating balance of terror. And it is even less credible that, in a world of finite resources and in so many parts of which basic human needs remain unsatisfied, hundreds of billions of dollars in resources should have to be spent year by year for purposes of security.
♥ I am not suggesting that business, industry, or for that matter government is engaging in a conscious conspiracy to denude the landscape or cheat the consumer. Neither am I suggesting that civil servants possess somehow the ability to make choices on behalf of the consumer, to balance for society as a whole the advantages and disadvantages of any given industrial process, or even of the introduction of an industry into a natural setting. I do not deny that some government policies appear contradictory, any more than it can be denied that society as a whole harbours contradictions. Thus a community which will not tolerate a government's decisions to close a polluting plant, causing hundreds of persons to lose their jobs, will not hesitate for a moment to condemn the same government for its failure to protect the ecology.
♥ What we face now is not deprivation, but the challenge of sharing. We need not do without, but we must be good stewards of what we have. To ensure nature's continued bounty, we are not asked to suffer, but we are asked to be reasonable. We are asked to adjust our demands to nature's limitations. We are asked to concentrate not on what we have, but on what we are.
♥ What I dare to believe is that men and women everywhere will come to understand that no individual, no government, no nation is capable of living in isolation, or of pursuing policies inconsistent with the interests - both present and future - of others. That self-respect is not self-perpetuating but depends for its existence on access to social justice. That each of us must do all in our power to extend to all persons an equal measure of human dignity - to ensure through our efforts that hope and faith in the future are not reserved for a minority of the world's population, but are available to all.
♥ The Gross National Product is no measurement of social justice, or human dignity, or cultural attainment. Yet in the absence of reliable social indicators we elect governments, formulate foreign policies, offer advice to the world at large - all on the assumption that economic growth is not only an attribute of the good life but also in in fact its guarantor.
♥ So indiscriminate are our values that we allow ourselves to be directed by governments on the single assumption that the expenditure of money is a measure of happiness. Yet what does growth of the GNP do to confine or reduce the extent of delinquency in juveniles, corruption in government, monopoly in business, stagnancy in cultural activity, limitations in educational opportunity, pollution in our environment? What solutions does it offer to the presence of violence, or to the absence of beauty. Bluntly stated, it does nothing. Nevertheless, it is this "nothing" that directs our lives.
♥ A sovereign society that fears the state is a moribund society, unconvinced of the usefulness of its own existence.
♥ ..the state is precisely what the people want it to be, and has only such reality as they choose to give it. Its authority is limited by the general agreement to obey it. And it can exert only as much force as the citizens lend it.
&hearts. As long as there is freedom of speech, and as long as everyone is free to form opposition parties and dissent groups, there is no place for violence.
♥ Democracy and liberty must face sometimes the hysteria of a mob and at other times the calculated plans of a handful of conspirators. They are constantly under the attack of the bigoted and stupid; on occasion they need protection from the overrighteous and the superpatriotic. If anything be certain, it is that the continued vitality of neither liberty nor democracy can be assumed.
♥ We must shun the concept of the state as a machine to command obedience and impose order. The truly democratic state should rather court obedience and serve the citizens' loyalty by maintaining an order that they will think just. Under these conditions the exercise of force (army, police, prison) cannot become a habit of government. My idea of a state "made to measure" applies thoroughly here: the state must use force only to the extent that individuals or organizations try to use it themselves against the common good. If it is true that in the last analysis the state must retain the monopoly of force, the purpose is less to use it than to prevent someone else from usurping its thunderbolts.
♥ Those who advocate violence as a means of attaining greater freedom within a democracy are suffering from a fearful misconception: that there is somehow a conflict between man's instincts for justice for his fellows and liberty for himself. Rational men and women know in their hearts that this is not so. It is the task of government to demonstrate to militants of both right and left that there is no conflict, that justice and liberty must co-exist in a single community. But is is also the task of governments to preserve for all citizens their freedoms - from assault, from fear, from illegal acts of all kinds. The authority of democratic governments to protect their citizens finds its legitimacy in the will of the people.
♥ It is true that from one point of view the majority convention is only a roundabout way of applying the law of the stronger, in the form of the law of the more numerous. Let us admit it, but note at the same time that human groupings took a great step towards civilization when they agreed to justify their actions by counting heads instead of breaking them.
♥ Democracy recognizes that one person may be right and ninety-nine wrong. That is why freedom of speech is sacred: the one person must always have the right to proclaim his or her truth in the hope of persuading the ninety-nine to change their point of view.
That's also why, if it's a very important decision that can't be easily reversed, such as the independence of Quebec, the majority had better be a substantial one. Otherwise, you will have half a society on one side and half on the other, and the consequence will be perpetual instability. For the sake of stability, therefor, democratic law doesn't always accept the rule of 51 per cent.
♥ Participation really means explaining our problems to ourselves. When I talked about participation and participatory democracy, some people thought I meant that every citizen, or at least most of them, should be preoccupied with government every day, that there should be a constant interchange between the elected and the electors. But that can't happen all the time. Instead, we have organized parties and other vehicles for expressing our concerns.
For that purpose, our government tried to build the Liberal party into a mass party - one in which constituencies weren't cornered by the so-called old guard who kept re-electing the same member who, in turn, kept protecting the old guard. We tried to open the party to all dissenters so they would be able to get involved in the policy conferences and constituency teach-ins. And we introduced major electoral reforms to encourage participation and counterbalance the influence of money.
♥ And, again, because I believed in creating counterweights, I wanted to give a voice to those who had no voice. Our society welcomes dissent, it leaves room for dissent, and it's on this basis that ideas and policies are developed. Those who don't agree have a right, indeed they have a duty towards their own consciences, to express their feelings and to draw the attention of the authorities to the particular injustices or inequities about which they feel strongly. Our society needs this. And it would be a danger to our society if too many people were to feel that they can't express their dissent, or don't have the tools for changing the orientation of society, while those in power have microphones and television and the press and so on.
♥ It is not enough to avoid evil; we also have to do good. A church would be an impostor if it stayed forever in the catacombs. Similarly, in politics, you cannot stay below ground too long. An excess of unhappiness will snuff out the spirit, and heroic resistance will degenerate into beast-like stubbornness. That fortunately is what happens to some peoples who have struggled too much, and take virtue itself to be a negation.
♥ The problems of government are in people's minds, they are in the choices people make. And unless governments put these choices to the people, the revolution of rising expectations will destroy our society. Because citizens will ask more from their government than they are prepared to put into it in the form of taxes, and they will do this not only as citizens as regards the state, they will do it as workers as regards their industry, they will do it as shareholders as regards their company - and the whole society will be destroyed. The main purpose of government today is getting citizens to realize what their priorities must be. And explaining to them the choices they have to make.
♥ Ultimately, in parliamentary democracies, the decisions must always be taken by the representatives of the people. I am not a believer in parallel authorities or illegitimate authorities. I do not believe that foreign policy can be made in the streets or that policy of any kind should be determined by masses or mobs. I have the strongest disapproval for those who think that, by pressure, by making enough noise, by waving enough signs, they can make the decisions. They should influence the decisions. Their input should be received. But the government obviously cannot do what everyone wants it to do. It has to make what it believes, on balance, is the best choice. Then it's up to the citizens to throw it out if its choices are not satisfactory.
♥ We were governing people, I used to tell my party and caucus, we weren't there just to administer things. Anybody could manage the country more or less as well as we could. We were there to give it direction, to lead people in the direction we thought was right. And it was better to be defeated eventually, if we had to be, for having tried to introduce too many changes for the better than to be left behind when the people were moving on.
♥ The great strength of the Liberal Party of Canada in the past has been its ability to achieve a balance between the ambitions of the strong and the needs of the weak, between the strength of organized groups and the rights of the individuals, between the power of the majorities and the liberties of minorities.
♥ We are a party of the radical centre. And that means that sometimes we have to fight against the state lest its monopoly withdraw too many liberties from citizens, and sometimes we have to give more power to the state lest men and women and their inequality of brains and of physique come to dominate others and not permit justice and equality to survive the liberty.
♥ The liberal's moderation in attitude actually arises, I believe, from the liberal philosophy itself. It springs from a realization that today's problems are complex, and that simple and sloganeering answers can almost certainly be assumed not to be valid ones. The liberal, therefore, is a moderate and not a simplist in expression and conduct primarily because he is a moderate and not a simplist in his concept of society. He is, in brief, a realist, who knows that values change slowly, and knows that in order to change social values one has to change a large complex of ideas and mores.
♥ The liberal is an optimist at heart, who trusts people. He does not see man as an essentially perverse creature, incapable of moral progress and happiness. Nor does he see him as totally or automatically good. He prizes man's inclinations to good, but knows they must be cultivated and supported.
♥ Unlike an American president, for instance, a prime minister is always dependent on having a cohesive cabinet and caucus. If too many of his colleagues resign, he will cease to be prime minister. Nevertheless, because of television or the insecure times, many people tend to personalize politics, identify with leaders, and seek someone up there telling them what to do - the Moses complex. But I've always insisted that the best way to serve democracy is not to judge leaders on their image or style - whether they're dull or a swinger, born poor or rich, with long hair or short - but on their ideas and their performance.
♥ We should start, then, by banishing from our political mores the whole concept that a prime minister gives bridges, roads, schools to his province. These are works that society needs, that it gives to itself and pays for through taxes. A prime minister gives nothing at all (unless it is his superfluous services); quite simply he works in the service of the state as an instrument through which society gives to itself.
♥ Either a region needs a bridge, a road, a school, or it doesn't. If it doesn't need them, the statesman has no right to promise them. If it does need them, he has no right to refuse them.
♥ Certain political rights are inseparable from the very essence of democracy: freedom of thought, speech, expression (in the press, on the radio, etc.), assembly, and association. Indeed, the moment these freedoms suffer the smallest restraint, the citizens have lost their full power to participate in the organization of the social order. And so that each citizen may feel the benefit of the inalienable right to exercise his liberties - in spite of anyone, in spite of the state itself - to these rights two more must be added: equality of all before the law, and the right not to be deprived of one's liberty or one's goods without recourse to a trial before one's peers, under an impartial and independent judicial system.
♥ The paradox is real: freedom for some is detrimental to the equality of others. And it has been the subject of many philosophical dissertations. How can we prevent strong individuals from using their superior strengths to create economic, social, and institutional conditions in which the weak cannot find equal opportunities?
The state may restrain the exercise of a freedom by some if this exercise negates a freedom for others. In other words, the state may limit one individual's freedom if it is necessary (economically, socially, linguistically...) to enable others to enjoy theirs. In this way, the concepts of society and of the common good have a place in the application of a charter that is intrinsically centered on the freedom and equality of individuals.
It places the onus on whoever invokes such a restraining law to show that the restraint is reasonable and justified in a free and democratic society. It is therefore wrong to pretend that the existence of the Charter is in contradiction with the supremacy of Parliament, and that it replaces the people's representatives with judges who are appointed for life.
♥ Only the individual is the possessor of rights. A collectivity can exercise only those rights it has received by delegation from its members; it holds them in trust, so to speak, and on certain conditions. Thus, the state, which is the supreme collectivity for a given territory, and the organs of the state, which are the governments, legislatures, and courts, are limited in the exercise of their functions by the Charter and the Constitution in which the Charter is enshrined.
♥ Democracy requires a respect for truth. If the books and newspapers and other media give only one version of the facts, and if the intellectuals aren't honest or courageous enough to denounce the myths and the lies, democracy inevitably will suffer. One can always say that there's nothing to be done except to despair and surrender, but one can't do politics like that. One mustn't let things slide. If one doesn't battle the purveyors or distortions and lies, things will get worse.
♥ The Anglo-Canadians had been strong by virtue only of our weakness. This was true not only at Ottawa, but even at Quebec, a veritable charnel-house where half our rights were wasted by decay and decrepitude and the rest devoured by the maggots of political cynicism and the pestilence of corruption. Under the circumstances, can there be any wonder that Anglo-Canadians did not want the face of this country to bear any French features? And why would they have wanted to learn a language that we had been at such pains to reduce to mediocrity at all levels of our educational system?
♥ Remember what Humpty Dumpty said to Alice when she was in Wonderland: words mean what you choose them to mean.
Nationalism comes from "nation," and "nation" has two distinct meanings. In the sociological sense, it means an ethnic group, a tribal group, a linguistic group, in the way we talk about the Huron nation or the French-Canadian nation. ..But, in the political sense, "nation" refers to a particular country or to all the people - whatever their language or ethnicity - who live within its boundaries. That's what we mean when we speak of the United Nations or the Swiss nation.
My objection has always been to identifying a nation in the sociological sense with a nation in the political sense. The state must govern for the good of all the people within its boundaries. If you want to call that nationalism, so be it, though I prefer to call it patriotism or the common good.
♥ I've always believed that a state was better if it included many ethnic groups and governed for them all, not as groups but as individuals. That was the basis for my belief in federalism and why the Charter of Rights insisted on the equality of individuals.
♥ The liberal's concern with freedom of the individual must also be a concern for the milieus in which individuals develop towards their full potential.
♥ Nationhood being little more than a state of mind, and even sociologically distinct groups within the nation having a continent right of secession, the will of the people is in constant danger of dividing up - unless it is transformed into a lasting consensus.
The formation of such a consensus is a mysterious process which takes in many elements, such as language, communication, association, geographical proximity, tribal origins, common interests and history, external pressures, and even foreign intervention, none of which, however, is a determinant by itself. A consensus can be said to exist when no group within the nation feels that its vital interests and particular characteristics could be better reserved by withdrawing from the nation than by remaining within.
♥ The tiny portion of history marked by the emergence of the nation-states is also the scene of the most devastating wars, the worst atrocities, and the most degrading collective hatred the world has ever seen.
♥ The very idea of the nation-state is absurd. To insist that a particular nationality must have complete sovereign power is to pursue a self-destructive end. Because every national minority will find, at the very moment of liberation, a new minority its bosom which in turn must be allowed the right to demand its freedom. And on and on would stretch the train of revolutions until the last-born of nation-states turned to violence to put an end to the very principle that gave it birth. That is why the principle of nationality has brought to the world two centuries of war, and not one single definitive solution.
Only a very, very few of the 170 or so countries of the world are homogeneous in their ethnic composition. Japan has its Korean minority; France has its Basques and Algerians; Britain has its Scots, Welsh, and Irish. If we were to follow the ethnic principle of nationality, there would be as many countries as there are ethnic groups - which probably reach into the several thousands...
♥ Now there is something to Quebec's separatists to sink their teeth into: if there is any validity to their principles they should carry them to the point of claiming part of Ontario, New Brunswick, Labrador, and New England; on the other hand, though, they would have to relinquish certain border regions around Pontiac and Remiskaming and turn Westmount into the Danzig of the New World.
I rerecorded that observation in 1962, more than thirty years before the movement by certain anglophone and native communities to partition themselves from Quebec in the event of its separation from Canada. I'm not claiming any prophetic powers. Logic made it absolutely predictable.
♥ It could be that in certain historical situations, where oppression was intolerable, misery unspeakable, and all alternative escape routes blocked, it was nationalism that sparked the subsequent break for freedom. But the arousing of such a passion as a last resort has always had its drawbacks, and the bad has invariably gone hand in hand with the good. This bad has almost always included a certain amount of despotism, because people who win their freedom with passion rather than with reason are generally disappointed to find themselves just as poor and deprived as ever; and strong governments are necessary to put an end to their unrest.
♥ The nationalists - even those of the left - are politically reactionary because, in attaching such importance to the idea of nation, they are surely led to a definition of the common good as a function of an ethnic group, rather than of all the people, regardless of characteristics. That is why a nationalistic movement is by nature intolerant, discriminatory, and when all is said and done, totalitarian. A truly democratic government cannot be "nationalist," because it must pursue the good of all its citizens, without prejudice to ethnic origin. The democratic government, then, stands for and encourages good citizenship, never nationalism. Certainly, such a government will make laws by which ethnic groups will benefit, and the majority group will benefit proportionately to its number; but that follows naturally from the principle of equality for all, not from any right due the strongest.
..in the advanced societies, where the interplay of social forces can be regulated by law, where the centres of power can be made responsible to the people, where the economic victories are a function of education and automation, where cultural differentiation is submitted to ruthless competition, and where the road to progress lies in the direction of international integration, nationalism will have to be discarded as a rustic and clumsy tool.
♥ If politicians must bring emotions into the act, let them get emotional about functionalism!
♥ I have always made a distinction between nationalism in the sense of being proud of your nation and nationalism as an exclusive idea. That's why I have always objected whenever Quebec is described as the home of the French-Canadian nation. The French-Canadian nation, in a linguistic and ethnic sense, has certainly spread to other parts of Canada. The province of Quebec can hardly claim to speak for those French Canadians living beyond its borders. At the same time, Quebec is not a nation. It's a multinational entity whose government should govern for the good of every citizen, not just one linguistic group or religious group.
♥ I always believed that we would become our own masters the day we decided to educate our young people and develop our talents in business or engineering rather than concentrating on law, medicine, and the priesthood.
♥ We have expended a great deal of time and energy proclaiming the rights due our nationality, invoking our divine mission, trumpeting our virtues, bewailing our misfortunes, denouncing our enemies, and avowing our independence; and for all that no one of our workmen is the more skilled, nor a civil servant the more efficient, a financier the richer, a doctor the more advanced, a bishop the more learned, nor a single solitary politician the less ignorant. Now, except for a few stubborn eccentrics, there is probably not one French-Canadian intellectual who has not spent at least four hours a week over the last year discussing separatism. That makes how many thousand times two hundred hours spent just flapping our arms? And can any one of them honestly say he has heard a single argument not already expounded ad nauseam twenty, forty, and even sixty years ago? I am not even sure we have exorcised any of our original bogey men in sixty years.
♥ The separatists will sometimes argue that, once independent, Quebec could very well afford to give up part of her sovereignty, re-entering a Canadian confederation, because then her choice would be her own, a free one. That abstraction covers a multitude of sins! It is a serious thing to ask French Canadians to embark on several decades of privation and sacrifice, just so that they can indulge themselves in the luxury of choosing "freely" a destiny more or less identical to the one they have rejected. But the ultimate tragedy would be in not realizing that French Canada is too culturally anemic, too economically destitute, too intellectually retarded, too spiritually paralysed, to be able to survive more than a couple of decades of stagnation, emptying herself of all her vitality into nothing but a cesspit, the mirror of her nationalistic vanity and "dignity."
♥ It would seem, in fact, a matter of considerable urgency for world peace and the success of the new states that the form of good government known as democratic federalism should be perfected and promoted, in the hope of solving to some extent the worldwide problems of ethnic pluralism. To this end, Canada could be called upon to serve as mentor, provided she has sense enough to conceive of her own future on a grand scale.
♥ One way of offsetting the appeal of separatism is by investing tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money in nationalism, at the federal level. A national image must be created that will have such an appeal as to make any image of a separatist group unattractive. Resources must be diverted into such things as national flags, anthems, education, art councils, broadcasting corporations, film boards; the territory must be bound together by a network of railways, highways, airlines; the national culture and the national economy must be protected bu taxes and tariffs; ownership of resources and industry by nationals must be made a matter of policy. In short, the whole of the citizenry must be made to feel that it is only within the framework of the federal state that their language, culture, institutions, sacred traditions, and standard of living can be protected from external attack and internal strife.
♥ Thus the great moment of truth arrives when it is realized that in the last resort the mainspring of federalism cannot be emotion but must be reason.
♥ The Canadian nation must be founded upon reason. If it isn't reasonable, it shouldn't exist. But if it is reasonable, it can take a variety of positive, even emotional, measures to defend itself, so long as they don't degenerate into an ethnically based or culturally specific nationalism. That's why, to avoid confusion, I like to distinguish such positive, pragmatic, nation-building devices as patriotism.
When you're talking about defending the Canadian nation against the American nation, you're obviously talking about nationalism in the political sense, about governing the Canadian people in the way they want to be governed as opposed to the way the American people want to be governed. Thus, the governments I led began to screen all foreign investment over a certain amount in order to ensure that they bring some "significant benefit" to Canada, whether better consumer prices or better technology or more jobs. I wouldn't describe that as nationalism. I'd describe it as asking the elephant not to roll over on us.
♥ When the Lesage government talked of nationalizing the power companies to form Hydro-Québec, there was a smattering of "politique de grandeur," the politics of greatness. The gesture was partly intended to show that French Canadians can run their own enterprises, that they don't need foreign capital, and so on, which touched on ethnic or linguistic nationalism. But my government didn't create Petro-Canada or the National Energy Program to benefit one particular ethnic group within Canada. It was to preserve Canadian autonomy as much as we could against the oil multinationals who were setting our energy policy from the outside. We weren't defending one ethnic group against another. We were defending the good of the whole.
♥ I know a man whose school could never teach him patriotism, but who acquired that virtue when he felt in his bones the vastness of his land, and the greatness of those who founded it.
♥ There wasn't the same kind of backlash in Quebec about bilingualism, but there was a subtle opposition to it. The strongest argument behind the separatist and nationalist cause was that Canada was an unjust country, that Quebeckers couldn't even speak their own language in Ottawa or the courts, and so on. Well, the Official Languages Act was a terrible demolition of that argument. Never mind what happened in Manitoba in 1896; never mind what happened in Ontario before the First World War; never mind what happened in New Brunswick. Now things have changed.
♥ At the very time we were working hard to sell the idea of two official languages in Canada, Robert Bourassa chose to make French the only official language in Quebec. If he had talked about principal language or working language, it wouldn't have done so much damage. Even so, I never considered using the power Ottawa had under the constitution to disallow his legislation. The way to change laws is to change governments, I've always believed, so it was up to the people to be better informed and their politicians more open-minded.
♥ At one point in history everybody was using French as the language of diplomacy, culture, science. Today English is the international language of business, technology, and so on. That's a given. If you try to fight it artificially, you'll condemn your people to a new dark age. Instead, you have to counter this reality with superiority. The Swedes, for example, aren't losing their language, despite being just a small country in Europe: they're keeping it while picking up two or three others. Similarly, I believe in promoting the French language by promoting the excellence of the people who speak it. A proud people will keep their language precisely because they're proud of it. But if you have to scare or threaten them into keeping it, you're never going to have a proud people who are determined to preserve their language and preserve it freely rather than by coercion.
♥ The issue at stake is not the mere survival of the French language and of the cultural values relating to it. Their survival is already assured. French is spoken in Quebec by an ever-increasing number of persons. If one discounts the possibility of genocide or of some major cataclysm, it seems certain that in this part of America French will continue to be spoken regardless of what happens to the constitution.
The problem is therefore to stimulate our language and culture so that they are alive and vital, not just fossils from the past. We must realize that French will only have value to the extent that it is spoken by a progressive people. What makes for vitality and excellence in a language is the collective quality of the people speaking it. In short, the defence of the French language cannot be successful without accomplishments that make the defence worthwhile.
♥ I am afraid that excessive preoccupation with the future of the language has made certain people forget the future of the person speaking it. A working man may care about his language and cultural values; he also cares very strongly about having a decent life without the risk of losing the little he has through some misguided political adventure.
♥ If French Canadians are able to claim equal partnership with English Canadians, and if their culture is established on a coast-to-coast basis, it is mainly because of the balance of linguistic forces without the country. Historical origins are less important than people generally think, the proof being that neither Inuit nor Indian dialects have any kind of privileged position. On the other hand, if there were six million people living in Canada whose mother tongue was Ukrainian, it is likely that this language would establish itself as forcefully as French. In terms of realpolitik, French and English are equal in Canada because each of these linguistic groups has the power to break the country.
♥ National unity, if it is to mean anything in the deeply persona sense, must be founded on confidence in one's own individual identity; out of this can grow respect for that of other and a willingness to share ideas, attitudes, and assumptions. A vigorous policy of multiculturalism will help create this initial confidence. It can form the basis of a society which is founded on fair play for all.
♥ We have concluded in Canada almost without debate that true greatness is not measured in terms of military might or economic aggrandizement. On a planet of finite size, the most disable of all characteristics is the ability and desire to cohabit with persons of differing backgrounds, and to benefit from the opportunities which this offers.
♥ Every single person in Canada is now a member of a minority group. Linguistically our origins are one-third English, one-third French, and one-third neither. We have no alternative but to be tolerant of one another's differences. Beyond the threshold of tolerance, however, we have countless opportunities to benefit from the richness and variety of a Canadian life which is the result of this broad mix. The fabric of Canadian society is as resilient as it is colourful. It is a multicultural society; it offers to every Canadian the opportunity to fulfil his or hew own cultural instincts and to share those from other sources. This mosaic pattern, and the moderation which it includes and encourages, makes Canada a very special place.
♥ Uniformity is neither desirable nor possible in a country the size of Canada. We should not even be able to agree upon the kind of Canadian to choose as a model, let alone persuade most people to emulate it. There are surely few policies potentially more disastrous for Canada than to tell all Canadians that they must be alike. There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an "all-Canadian" boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate. A society which eulogizes the average citizen is one which breeds mediocrity. What the world should be seeking, and what we in Canada must continue to cherish, are not concepts of uniformity but human values: compassion, love, and understanding.
♥ Essentially, a constitution is designed to last a long time. Legal authority derives entirely from it; and if it is binding only for a short period it is not binding at all. A citizen - to say nothing of a power group - will not feel obliged to respect laws or governments he considers unfavourable to him if he thinks that they can easily be replaced; if the rules of the constitutional game are to be changed in any case, why not right now? A country where this mentality is prevalent oscillates between revolution and dictatorship.
♥ When I became prime minister, I was always trying to move French-speaking Canadians into posts they had never occupied in Ottawa. At one point we had a French-speaking governor general, prime minister, chief of defence staff, head of the RCMP, minister of finance, and so on. We were establishing, to the delight of Quebeckers, that they could help run the country as well as anyone from Ontario or elsewhere. As for the defence of our language, we introduced the Official Languages Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That's why I think we got such massive support from Quebec. And that's why I groan when I hear calls for special status, as though we need crutches because we're not bright enough or can't protect our own language. Well, you can't have crutches against the world. You have to get out and fight.
♥ I have always opposed the notions of special status and distinct society. With the Quiet Revolution, Quebec became an adult and its inhabitants have no need of favours or privileges to face life's challenges and to take their rightful place within Canada and in the world at large. They should not look for their "identity" and their "distinctness" in the constitution, but rather in their confidence in themselves and in the full exercise of their rights as citizens equal to all the citizens of Canada.
♥ I believe in balance. Too much state interference is bad; too little is bad. Too much provincial power is bad; too little is bad. You have to look for counterweights all the time. When I first went to Ottawa as a civil servant, I returned thinking that we had to give more powers to the provinces, because Ottawa was doing everything.
♥ I was trying to take the passion out of politics at a time when people were arguing for separation or more provincial rights or the compact theory. When some people wanted to change the monarchy, either to strengthen it or abolish it, I'd say, why fix it if it isn't broken? It may not be all that useful, but changing it would have involved a great deal of emotion and political capital, so why bother? And that was mu approach when the Lesage government wanted to nationalize the power companies. They could be improved, no doubt, but the money it cost to nationalize them could have been better spent on education. Mine was a functional, common-sense approach.
♥ The duty of a premier is to fight for the good of all the people in that province, nor just one ethnic group, even if it happens to be the majority. And I objected when Quebec, more often than not, said it wanted more powers, more money, more special status, or else it would leave the federation. I'm a Canadian and a Quebecker, and I think we have a great country and that it's everybody's job to try to make it greater. I don't like those who use blackmail and threaten to get out if they don't feel loved enough.
While the premiers were fighting for the goof of their provinces, I had to right for the good of the country.
♥ The political thinking of the nationalist intelligentsia in Quebec - that is, the kind that thrives on slogans and clichés - has always regarded me as a hard-eyed centralizer, whereas in fact I led the only government since Confederation that has ever given the provinces legislative power that previously belonged to the federal Parliament, and while I was prime minister, public finances evolved steadily toward centralization of revenues and expenditures.
♥ No nation is eternal. The glue that holds it together, the thing that makes nationhood, is the free will of a sovereign people to live together. The nation exists, not because it has been held together by force or enslaved, but because every part of the nation wants to belong to the whole for a host of social, economic, and historical reasons. Every citizen, every family, every group, every region must feel that the chances of fulfilling themselves to the utmost are greater within a united Canada.
National will, to my mind, is different from nationalism. It's a sense of belonging, a sense of patriotism, a sense that being together is better than being apart. Sometimes, I'm afraid, the will to exist as a country is not very strong in Canada. There are all kinds of centrifugal forces - economic discontents, regional discontents, social discontents - which have caused the national will to weaken. It has to be strengthened. The first thing we should do is ask ourselves: Do we really want to sacrifice something of our provincialism in order that we be a country or do we want to take the easy road towards regionalism or egocentric personal gain? Is it going to be every man for himself or is it going to be every man for his country?
In historical terms we are on the way to becoming one of the freest, one of the most prosperous democracies in the world. We are the inheritors of two of the main languages and cultures of Western civilization. We've built a tremendous country politically and we've expanded it geographically. We've brought in some of the most progressive social and political systems in the world. We're a pluralist society. But look around. Talk to the people. Read the media. Listen to the grumblings. Canadians aren't happy with their fate. And this, in spite of the success of our country.
Nobody is going to write anybody some sort of blank cheque on the future of Canada; here's the cheque, now go out and cash it and you'll get what you want out of this country. It doesn't work that way. We'll get it if we fight fort it. We'll get if, in future, Canadians are more skilled, more energetic, and more purposeful than the citizens of other countries.
Canada has often been called a mosaic, but I prefer the image of a tapestry, with its many threads and colours, its beautiful shapes, its intricate subtlety. If you go behind a tapestry, all you see is a mass of complicated knots. We have tied ourselves in knots, you might say. Too many Canadians only look at the tapestry of Canada that way. But if they would see it as others do, they would see what a beautiful, harmonious thing it really is.
♥ Notwithstanding all of this, the professional pessimists among us say that we are all doubts and visions and confusions; that we are a youth suffering from the difficulties of adolescence. Well, let them moan; it is the unimaginative and the frustrated who are always the first to despair about the attitudes of the young. Youth is hope and adventure and confidence. And so is Canada.
♥ Canadians are not inhibited by pressures of manifest destiny. Our destiny is what we choose to make it. And if we surprise ourselves from time to time by our own accomplishments, so what? If we find that there is fun in being Canadian, why not?
♥ The character of Canada - Canada's ethic, if you wish - is not marked or identified by a sense of eighteenth-century territorial grandeur or nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century economic ferocity. Canada is know to its inhabitants and to others as a human place, a sanctuary of sanity in an increasingly troubled world. We need not search further for our identity. These traits of tolerance and courtesy and respect for our environment and for one another provide it. I suggest that a superior form of identity would be difficult to find.
♥ Nobody ever said that living on half a continent with two official languages, composed of people who come from every corner of the earth, who had added themselves not only to the original French and English, but to the aboriginals who were here before us - nobody said it was easy; and that is why we say it takes more courage to stay in Canada and fight it out and look for equality in the defence of our rights than to withdraw within our regional walls and say we will be among ourselves.
♥ The answer is NO to those who advocate separation rather than sharing, to those who advocate isolation rather than fellowship, to those who - basically - advocate pride rather than love, because love involves coming together and meeting others halfway, and working with them to build a better world.
♥ Time, circumstances, and pure will cemented us together in a unique national enterprise, and that enterprise, by flying in the face of all expectations, of all experiences, of all conventional wisdom, that enterprise proves the world with a lesson in fraternity. This extraordinary undertaking is so advanced now in the way of social justice and of prosperity, that to abandon it now would be to sin against the spirit, to sin against humanity.
♥ My faith in Canada is, indeed, based on my faith in the people. Throughout my years in office, that faith proved justified over and over again, whenever the going was tough and the reforms we were trying to introduce were being opposed by the multinational corporations, by the provincial premiers, or by a superpower. I invariably found that if our cause was right, all we had to do to win was talk over the heads of our adversaries directly to the people of this land.
♥ Who speaks for Canada? Our strength lies in our national will to live and work together as a people. Weaken that will, that spirit of community, and you weaken Canada. Weaken Canada, and you damage all the parts, no matter how rich some of those parts may be. My friends, you and I must stand up for Canada, and we must see that there is a national government that has the courage to do so as well.