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CANADIAN IDENTITY, , AND A COSMOPOLITAN FUTURE

A dissertation submitted to the Kent State University of Education, Health, and Services in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

By

Bryan A. Silverman

August, 2014

© , 2014 by Bryan A. Silverman All Reserved

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A dissertation written by

Bryan A. Silverman

B.A., University of , 2000

M.S., D’Youville College, 2004

Ph.D., Kent State University, 2014

Approved by

______, Director, Doctoral Dissertation Natasha Levinson, Ph.D.

______, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Averil McClelland, Ph.D.

______, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Polycarp Ikuenobe, Ph.D.

Accepted by

______, Director, School of Foundations, Leadership Shawn Fitzgerald, Ph.D. and Administration

______, Dean, College of Education, Health and Human Daniel F. Mahony, Ph.D. Services

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SILVERMAN, BRYAN A., Ph.D., 2014 Cultural Foundations

CANADIAN IDENTITY, MULTICULTURALISM, AND A COSMOPOLITAN FUTURE (165 pp.)

Director of Dissertation: Natasha Levinson, Ph.D.

In this dissertation, the development of a multicultural population in is traced from early European settlement in up through the 20th century. The implementation of official Canadian multicultural policy as a response to demographic concerns and the expanding demands of human rights in a liberal state is then examined through historical and philosophical perspectives. An analysis of present challenges to the policies of Canadian multiculturalism is situated in an argument that suggests continued and expanding tensions to current framework. An argument for a future of rooted in Canada is presented as a way to the concerns raised regarding multicultural policy. Based on the philosophy of Kwame Anthony Appiah, rooted cosmopolitanism is presented as a philosophical and policy perspective that could be implemented in Canadian public education and shape a successful future for the

Canadian state.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank advisor Dr. Natasha Levinson for her efforts, thoughtfulness, and patience through this long process. Over the of many

Natasha’s expertise was instrumental in guiding me through this process both academically and administratively. Her efforts, along with dissertation committee members Dr. Averill McClelland and Dr. Polycarp Ikuenobe challenged me to create a dissertation I am proud of.

I would also like to thank Dr. Kim Sebaly and the late Dr. John Heflin for their time and mentorship early in my graduate studies at Kent State. Drs. Sebaly and Heflin helped to ground me in the foundations of education and understand it’s often overlooked importance today.

This long process would have been impossible without the love and support of my parents, Merton and Denyse. As parents go, my brother Greg and I could not have been luckier. They have set a wonderful example of love and compassion and have helped us to achieve whatever goals we set.

Louis and Wilder, I’ll always love both.

Above all I’d like to thank my wife Emily. Our life has had challenges and achievements, pitfalls and joys. Through all of them I cannot imagine anyone else at my side. She is the best role model for our son Wilder that I could imagine. She has an overflow of love and belief in those around her, a work ethic that fills her with pride, and an openness to new experiences that has made our lives immeasurably better.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism ...... 4 Overview of the Dissertation ...... 7

2 CANADA PRIOR TO THE NEW / MULTICULTURALISM ...... 9 Canada and ...... 14 Minority Groups in Canada ...... 21 Racism and ...... 27 Residential Schools ...... 29 The Special Case of ...... 32

3 CANADIAN MULTICULTURALISM – THICK OR THIN ...... 35 Rational for the Goals of Multicultural Policy in Canada ...... 45 Underpinnings of Canadian Multiculturalism ...... 49 Criticisms of Multiculturalism ...... 54 How Thick or Thin is Canadian Multiculturalism? ...... 59 Outcomes of Multiculturalism ...... 62

4 GOVERNMENT ROLE IN DEVELOPING THROUGH EDUCATION ...... 66 , National Identity, and Public Schools ...... 66 Schools as Space for Public Engagement ...... 69 Liberal Autonomy and Education ...... 74 Civic and ...... 80

5 INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP IDENTITY IN CANADA...... 90 Definition of a Liberal State ...... 90 Canada as a Liberal State ...... 92 Groups Rights in the Chart of Rights and ...... 94 Canadian Group/Individual Identity Tension ...... 102 Misunderstanding of ...... 105 Multiculturalism and Identity ...... 110

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6 A COSMOPOLITAN FUTURE ...... 117 Why is Canada Multicultural? ...... 117 Multiculturalism Concerned with National Culture ...... 121 Cosmopolitanism Political Culture ...... 127 Cosmopolitanism in Context...... 128 Fluidity of Culture...... 133 Education for Cosmopolitanism ...... 139 Role of the Canadian Government in a Rooted Cosmopolitan Education ...... 145

8 CONCLUSION ...... 151

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 156

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In 1972 the CBC Radio program This Country in the Morning held a contest: complete the phrase, “As Canadian as…” The host, , was searching for the

Canadian equivalent of the saying, “As American as apple pie.” Entries were as one would expect: “As Canadian as ,” “As Canadian as a toboggan,” etc. The winning entry, submitted by a 17- old from Sarnia, named Heather Scott was

“As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances.”1 Ms. Scott’s entry has become a memorable saying across the country, titling sermons, conference papers, and newspaper articles in the decades since.

The question of Canadian identity has been around as long as the country. It is an identity developed by the multiple participating in its founding as a new , an identity tied its colonial history, an identity shaped by its immediate proximity to a dominating global power, and an identity shaped by decades of immigration from every corner of the globe.

At this point in the nation’s history, Canada is relatively well situated. It is large, resource rich, and inhabited by a generally peaceful, economically successful, diverse population. Canada is consistently ranked as one of the developed countries in the

United and it is ranked 6th in the UN Sustainable

Development Solutions Network’s Happiness Report. Canada’s approach to identity, through a policy of multiculturalism over the past four decades, has helped to

1 http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2013/06/as-canadian-as.html

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create some of these positive conditions. Multicultural policy has helped to open the eyes of to many of the indignities of the past and helped to create a society where the ‘general will’ of the people is to be inclusive, respectful and tolerant, even if in an overcompensating way.2 Multicultural policy has also helped open Canada to the intelligence and creativity of minority citizens throughout society. Political, business, and community leaders across Canada are drawn from a diverse set of cultural backgrounds, both as Canadian by birth and naturalized Canadians.

The gains made through multicultural policy have been essential in creating a

Canada that has been more considerate of the needs of all of its citizens than had been the case in the past. Where historically -Canadians operated in a position of legislative privilege, much of multicultural policy has helped create the conditions whereby individual Canadians of different backgrounds are able to more freely choose their best future.

To say that multicultural policy has helped create beneficial conditions for

Canada and its citizens however is not to say that it is the best policy to continue this trend for the future. The greatest benefit of multicultural policy in Canada has come from its insistence that the of any particular Canadian not exclude them from full participation in society. This has been done through a combination of policies in legislation and education federally, provincially and locally. Multiculturalism’s breaking down of barriers, both de jure and de facto, has opened both Canadian citizens and their

2 A University student recently conducted a social experiment wearing a hijab for 18 days on campus. As she writes, she didn’t expect to be met with open hostility, but when she encountered the opposite reaction, people being nicer to her than when she didn’t wear the hijab, she was surprised. http://queensjournal.ca/story/2014-03-14/features/overt-covert/

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government to people as individuals, and thus entitled to the respect and of an individual in a free society.

However, the policies of Canadian multiculturalism, through their categorization of citizens into different, defined, cultural groups also allows for, and perhaps encourages, the creation of communities defined by, and perpetually tied to, their difference. Kenan Malik calls this the political policy of multiculturalism. It is, “a set of policies, the aim of which is to manage and institutionalize diversity by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy.”3 The problem here lies in the ‘cultural’ part of multicultural. The policies of Canadian multiculturalism necessitate defining culture in static terms that operate against the actual cultural life of people in the modern, interconnected world. The formalizing of ‘cultural boxes’ creates a host of problems that work against the liberties that multicultural policy was meant to promote. The institutionalization of culture in this way creates categories and requirements for individuals to fit into.

The key problematic of multiculturalism, and multicultural policy, in Canada comes from the static understanding of culture found in its philosophical footing. That

Canadian multicultural policy works to protect and promote cultures is not an immoral, or unethical goal, but it is an unrealistic one, especially in the present era of hyper- connectedness through global migration, international travel and democratic global communications networks. In centuries past cultural interaction, for many, was more

3 http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/what-is-wrong-with-multiculturalism-part-1/

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limited. Living in remote Canada, , or wherever, citizens were unlikely to encounter sustained, meaningful interaction with people from different cultures. That is not to say that cultures were static, but the rates of change for many were considerably less than they are now. Presently, it is largely impossible to avoid significant interaction with people different from oneself. What used to be multiple, distinct cultural heritages now exist within the same community, the same house, and often the same person.

In maintain the success Canada has had in bringing both minority citizens and immigrants fully into political life, different policies that maintain the best of multiculturalism’s inclusive aspects but reject the worst of its social fragmenting are required. This will require changes in both legislation and in the realm of education. Into this gap the dissertation steps. The essential question is how are we supposed to act and live with each other moving forward and what is the government’s role in facilitating that? This dissertation will explain the roots, benefits, and key problems with multiculturalism, situate the context of the backlash against multiculturalism from different perspectives, and suggest a way forward through the of a rooted cosmopolitanism.

Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism

Multiculturalism in Canada operates as both a guiding philosophy and, stemming from that, a set of legislative policies. The Canadian government proclaims,

“multiculturalism is fundamental to our belief that all citizens are equal. Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and have

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a sense of belonging.”4 The diversity of Canada’s population has been an element of the country’s make up that has only increased over time. Canada’s response to this diversity for the past four decades has been a policy of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism as a philosophy is meant to move beyond toleration of difference as a guiding principle, and instead actively accommodate group difference in society.5 This guiding philosophy has resulted in legislation in both federal and provincial .

After reviewing multiculturalism in its Canadian context, this dissertation will show that what multiculturalism misses in accommodating the cultural dynamism of the individual, a rooted cosmopolitanism will achieve. A rooted cosmopolitan philosophy, expressed in both legislation and education, provides a path forward to maintain the best of Canada’s diversity without creating the social tensions of multiculturalism.

The Canadian philosopher and the British-born Ghanian –

American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah both identify Cosmopolitan philosophy as originating in the 4th century BCE when the Cynic Diogenes reply to the question of where he came from was ‘I am a citizen of the world.’ This traditional cosmopolitanism suggests that the moral and political commitments of individuals should reach beyond both the local community and national and instead find common cause as human beings where the quality of humanness transcends the limited affiliations of locality or even nationhood. The broad cosmopolitanism of the and Stoics claims a long theoretical lineage stretching through Christian Theology, Kantian critical theory and on

4 http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/multi.asp 5 Kymlicka, W. 1995, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford:

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to present day articulations of global . As such, it has developed in a number of interesting, if not always congruent directions. The rooted cosmopolitanism of Appiah and Waldron is the path for which Canada is best suited, for it is open to both the importance of to the individual and the notion that the culture itself isn’t what is of importance, but the individual and their ability to live as they see best.

Additionally, in the modern world of nation states, it is a more realistic organizing principle.

Appiah writes, “There are two strands that intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism. One is the idea that we have obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance”6 This kind of rooted cosmopolitanism acknowledges that

“loyalties and local allegiances determine more than what we want; they determine who we are,”7 and to attempt to ignore this reality and instead forge a kind of universality challenges our freedoms as individuals. The notion of universality is somewhat unrealistic considering the deeply ingrained ties to nationalism and the political importance of the .

Multiculturalism in Canada had been, and continues to be, a largely positive effort of the government. Much of what makes Canada a desired place to live, the tolerance,

6 Appiah, Kwame A., 2006, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, : W.W. Norton. 59 7 Appiah, Kwame A., 2006, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York: W.W. Norton. xviii

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willingness to change, and economic success, has roots in Canada’s multicultural policies. This dissertation will show that a rooted cosmopolitan approach would not be a radical change to the philosophy that currently runs through the at

Hill. The change in philosophy from multicultural to rooted cosmopolitan would, of course, have an effect however, the goal of the change in philosophical orientation is to keep Canada largely on the political, economic and social path started in the 1970’s.

Overview of the Dissertation

This dissertation consists of seven chapters. After this introduction, the second chapter will explore the historical path of Canada towards multiculturalism. By showing the multiethnic the chapter will provide the context and background of the different cultural groups existing in Canada both pre- and post- confederation, their changing political demands, and the ways in which the government has responded to those demands over time.

The third chapter will explore how the conditions of the second half of the 20th century set the stage for the development and implementation of specific multicultural policies in Canada and show the continued growth of those policies up through the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 and the Canadian

Multiculturalism Act of 1988. The chapter will also explain the goals and foundations of

Canadian multiculturalism as well as some of the outcomes and resulting criticisms.

The fourth chapter will explore the development of a national identity in and through Canadian public schools and the state’s role and limits in developing that identity. The ways in which the development of a national identity interacts with the

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educative demands of a liberal state are also investigated. The tradition of civic education and its relationship to national identity in 20th century Canada is also explored.

The fifth chapter will explore the tension between individual and group identity claims in the context of Canadian multiculturalism, including the expanding group claims in a liberal state and the effects on the commitment to individual autonomy. The chapter will also explore the way culture is understood and valued in Canada through the prism of Canadian multiculturalism and how that understanding has led to many of the legislative and educative policies in Canada. The problematic of that understanding and its resulting principles will also be explored.

The sixth chapter will explore the implications for Canada of shifting from a multicultural approach to a cosmopolitan one. The chapter will also explore how a cosmopolitan approach, specifically a rooted cosmopolitan approach, would best be able to preserve the gains that multiculturalism has meant to citizens of previously oppressed, or at best ignored, minority cultures while at the same time limiting the negative effects that the category based multiculturalism of Canada has on individual autonomy.

The seventh, and concluding, chapter will draw together the arguments of the dissertation.

CHAPTER 2

CANADA PRIOR TO THE NEW IMMIGRATION/MULTICULTURALISM

Canada is country of changing demographics. Prior to the 1981 census, seven of the top ten countries of origin for immigrants were European and the other three countries of origin were the at number three, at number seven and at number ten. In the 1981 census, the top five birth countries of recent immigrants to

Canada were the , , the United States, India, and the .

Between 1981 and 2006 the demographic patterns had changed noticeably with the top four countries of origin being China, India, the Philippines, and (See Table 1). 8

Table 1. Top 10 Country of Birth of Recent Immigrants, 1981 to 2006

Rank 2006 2001 1996 1991 1981 Census Census Census Census Census 1 China China Hong Kong U.K. 2 India India China Viet Nam 3 Philippines Philippines India China U.S. 4 Pakistan Pakistan Philippines India India 5 U.S. Hong Kong Philippines Philippines 6 S. Korea Poland U.K. 7 Taiwan Viet Nam Hong Kong 8 Iran U.S. Viet Nam U.S. 9 U.K. S. Korea U.S. Taiwan 10 Sri Lanka U.K Portugal China

The 2006 revealed what all Canadians know to be true; the composition of the nation is changing. Between 2001 and 2006 the growth in the

8 Table 1 Top 10 country of birth of recent immigrants, 1981 to 2006. . Available online at: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2008001/t/10556/5214757-eng.htm

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population of visible minorities was over 26% while the growth of the population as a whole in the same time period was less than 6%. As a result, visible minorities now account for greater than 16% of the total . In terms of , over one million Canadians speak a of Chinese as their tongue, an increase of 18% since 2001. The growth in Punjabi is even more rapid, increasing over 35% in five years. Unsurprisingly, urban centers experienced an accelerated growth of minority populations. In the Toronto CMA (census metropolitan ) the population is 45.7%, in the of Toronto (the core,) the foreign born population is almost 50%. The surrounding of , Markham,

Mississauga, Richmond Hill, and Vaughn vary between 44.9% and 56.5% foreign born.9

The populations of foreign born in Canada vary depending on which of

Canada is considered. In the of Ontario, the largest groups are

South Asian, in the largest visible is Chinese, and in

Québec, form the largest visible minority group followed closely by of

North African descent. Of the foreign born eligible for Canadian citizenship, over 85% chose to become citizens, which is the highest uptake on citizenship in any country.10

9 Information on the 2006 census is available at the ’s Statistics Canada website: http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97-557/Index- eng.cfm,StatsCan, the agency responsible for the census in Canada, defines the term ‘visible minority’ as: “Refers to the visible minority group to which the respondent belongs. The Employment Act defines visible minorities as 'persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour'.” 10 The requirements for applying for Canadian citizenship include: permanent status in Canada for three of the preceding four years, communication in at least one official , have not been charged with or convicted of a criminal offense, war crime, or crime against humanity, and successful completion of a citizenship test and swearing/taking the .

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Given these changes in the , one would expect challenges to the notions of what constitutes Canadian identity. As such, assumptions concerning that identity must be investigated so that overgeneralizations and anecdotes, which are incorporated into notions about Canadian identity, can be separated from historical fact.

The investigation is necessary in order to clarify the educative elements of Canadian history and separate them out from what merely makes a good story. The facts of

Canadian history need, undoubtedly, to be taught, and what I’ll call the ‘story’ elements must be thought through as to how they help or harm understandings of Canada. While the story elements help to provide for a narrative that can make historical learning more interesting and engaging for , those aspects that contribute to adverse understandings or unnecessary social tensions, tensions often manipulated into alarmism or xenophobia about the changing character of Canada, must be corrected. As we will see,

Canadian demographics, and as a result, Canadian identity, have been in flux for much of the nation’s history.

Canadian history is not a uni-ethnic or mono-linguistic history like some other states. Unlike nations with deep historical roots, Canada was only confederated in 1867 and that confederation included diverse peoples over an enormous geography. English,

French, and independent were brought together in a slow process of confederation that began at least as early as the 1840 Act of Union sanctioned by Queen

Victoria and passed by the British Parliament. That act abolished the legislatures of what where then Upper and and unified them into the . At the Conference of 1864, which had begun as a unification project for the

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of , and , the idea of unification grew into one of a confederation that would include the Province of Canada.

The 1867 British America Act, signed by , created the of

Canada and the of Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. In

1870, Rupert’s Land and the North-Western were transferred from the

Hudson’s Bay Company to of Canada and became the province of

Manitoba and the Northwest . Former colonies became the provinces of British

Columbia (1871), Prince Edward Island (1873), (1905), (1905), and (1949), and the territories of the (1898) and (1999).

The development of this process was slow and included negotiation with the

English, French, Scottish, Irish, and independent First Nations, as well as the United

States for border issues. Different of the country had populations of the aforementioned groups, as well as migrants from China, Eastern , India, , and the United States, including loyalists who had left after the and approximately 30,000 slaves who entered Canada via the Underground Railway.11 These disparate groups have formed part of Canada since its confederation and have influenced notions of Canadian identity. For these reasons, as Ignatieff 12 and Gwyn13 have shown, at no point in the history of Canada can it be confused with an ethnic nationalist state.

Canadian identity has arisen, it is argued, from the slow and deliberate of

11 , Influence of the . The , Anti- and the Underground Railway. Library and Archives Canada. Available online at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/confederation/023001-2050-e.html 12 , The Rights Revolution (Toronto: , 2000) 13 Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995)

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“complex and innovative rights frameworks, social infrastructures, and government services… Canada derives its from common principles rather than common origins.”14 An ethnic nationalist state can place more emphasis on common ancestry, religion, and language than can a nation such as Canada. As a result, Canadian national identity is more easily transmittable and transmutable. However, because of this flexibility, Canadian identity is less definitive and tangible and is dependent to a far greater extent on a shared political culture. As the government of stated in a policy document, “Canada is a country in which national unity cannot be taken for granted. It is multicultural, with many of its various groups experiencing a new sense of identity. It is geographically diverse, officially bilingual, and often subject to severe divergent forces.”15

Examining these roots of Canada, it becomes more apparent that while the concept of multiculturalism wouldn’t be official state policy until the second half of the

20th century, elements of negotiation across language, history, and geography influenced the founding and development of Canada throughout its history. This is not to say that as a nation Canada has been free from racism and intolerance. Indeed much of Canada’s history includes state acts excluding Chinese, German, Jewish, and most of all First

Nations people, from the affairs of the state – even going so far as to attempt to extinguish First Nations culture through the residential school program. However, these abhorrent policies are not the only side of the nation, nor are the policies of tolerance and

14 Dennis Sumara, Brent Davis, & Linda Laidlaw, “Canadian Identity and Theory: An Ecological, Postmodern Perspective,” Canadian Journal of Education, 26, 2 (2001): 144–163 15 Manitoba Department of Education Social studies: K-12 overview. (, 1985), 1-2.

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consensus building, which have also been state acts from time to time. Both have been part of Canada’s legal and moral history and have influenced its national identity.

19th Century Canada and Confederation

We will start looking at the development of Canada as a nation beginning with the

1763 , signed by the kingdoms of Great Britain, , and . The most important aspect of treaty in the context of was the ending of the

French and Indian War and the division of the North American . France ceded the most of the colonies of (the colonies of Canada, , Newfoundland and part of ) to Great Britain in exchange for and its lucrative sugar plantations. Significantly, in the treaty the British also specifically allowed the continued practice of Catholicism for the inhabitants of Canada, so far as the of Great Britain permitted it. King George III’s 1763 Royal Proclamation created the Province of Quebec, which ran from the (in what are now Newfoundland and Nova Scotia) all the way to the western boundary of the and north to Rupert’s land (privately owned territory by the Company). The proclamation, while setting parts of the North American realm aside for colonists, importantly reserved other lands for the

First Nations. This action affirmed native to specific lands and established that, though under the of , First Nations bands were autonomous political units in a nation-to-nation association with non-native governments. In this arrangement, the was understood to act as arbitrator. First Nations bands maintained the idea of a relationship with the Crown separate from Canada’s relationship to the Crown until the 1982 repatriation of the Canadian constitution. The proclamation

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thus created a constitutional and moral basis of between indigenous Canadians and the Canadian state as personified in the Monarch, and a affiliation in which the Crown is constitutionally charged with providing certain guarantees to the First

Nations.

In another element of negotiation, the 1774 established the use of

French civil in Quebec (British applied universally elsewhere in the

British colonies). It also revised the oath necessary for holders of public office to accommodate the Catholic majority in Quebec and established a right for the Catholic

Church to tithe. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, Great

Britain gave up a claim on the land east of the and north of the to the Great , effectively establishing the eastern and boundaries of the

United State and Canada that we know today. The 1791 Constitution Act divided the

Province of Quebec in to the political divisions of and Lower Canada and protected the guarantees the Quebec Act had made to Catholics, while introducing a similar allotment and appropriation of land for the Protestant clergy in Upper Canada. In

1837 rebellions in both Upper and Lower Canada against the colonial government were motivated by a frustration with political reform. The rebellions were armed uprisings against oligarchical control in the provinces. The rebellions were effectively stopped by the British though the tensions that had led to them remained. The General,

Lord Dunham, set out to find a method acceptable to both the ruling British and the colonials so as to prevent a second, possibly successful, revolution in North America.16

16 The Governor General is representative of the Canadian monarch.

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As a direct response to Lord Dunham’s 1839 report17 on the Upper and Lower Canada rebellions in 1837, the 1840 Act of Union combined the legislatures of Upper and Lower

Canada into one colonial unit with two sections, and Canada West. Both sections were to have an equal number of legislators, whilst still remaining under some element of control by the Governor General. The report suggested, and the Act implemented, a modified form of for the that would set a foundation for Confederation in 1867.18 One goal of the act, though not successful, was, as suggested by Lord Dunham, an attempt to assimilate the French minority through the process of including them more directly in the larger government of the Province of

Canada. The assimilationist goal however, did not strip any of the earlier rights of either the French colonials or the . It was meant to be a benign assimilation through .

The 1867 Confederation of Canada through the Act, also known as the Constitution Act, divided the Province of Canada into the provinces of

Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick to form “one Dominion under the .”19 The Act set out the nature and form of the Government of Canada, including detailing the powers of the federal and provincial governments and establishing and education rights. The act also provided for the admission of new provinces into the country. The Act, in section 91, subsection 24, separates Indians and

17 Report on the Affairs of British North America / From the http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.32374/2?r=0&s=1 18 Will Kaufman, Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson, eds. Britain and the : Culture, Politics, and History, (ACB-CLIO, 2005), 819-820. 19 British North America Act, 1867 – Enactment no. 1 Online at: http://canada.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp- pr/csj-sjc/constitution/lawreg-loireg/p1t11.html

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Indian lands as particular lands for Crown administration, giving legal precedence to the idea of the First Nations people as a distinct national group.

The 1870 inclusion of Manitoba is interesting to investigate with respect to the multicultural, or multi-national, history of Canada. The inclusion of Manitoba and the

North-West Territory into Canada were a result of the transfer of land from the Hudson

Bay Company to the Government of Canada. The land of what would become Manitoba comprised a large population of Metis - descendants of mixed European and First Nations people. The Metis were a hybrid of usually Catholic Europeans and generally either ,

Ojibwa, or First Nations.20 As the population of Anglophone Protestants began to grow in Ruperts Land, and with the ongoing transfer of the land to the new

Government of Canada, the Metis population was weary that a political solution would not include them. The Metis, led by as secretary of the Metis National

Committee, were concerned when surveyors from the federal government came to inspect the Red River settlement. The growing tension led to the of 1869 and the establishment of a provisional government by the Metis. The rebellion, which included armed conflict between the federal government and the Metis provisional government, divided the largely Protestant and English Ontario and the largely Catholic and French Quebec. Prime Minister McDonald negotiated with the provisional government the terms of the of 1870 to encourage the Metis to accept status within Canada. Whilst creating the province of Manitoba and granting Manitoba federal representation and a provincial assembly, the negotiation also yielded two official

20 My wife is a Metis from the Ojibwa nation who is now Jewish too. Canada!

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languages, and the right to separate schools supported through provincial taxes to attempt to address the concerns of the Metis provisional government.

The association between the Canadian Crown and Aboriginal peoples of Canada stretches back to the first interactions between North American and

European colonialists and, over centuries of interface, treaties were established between the monarch and aboriginal . Canada's First Nations, , and Métis peoples now have a unique relationship with the and, like the Māori and the Treaty of

Waitangi in , generally view the affiliation as being not between them and the ever-changing , but instead with the continuous Crown of Canada, as embodied in the reigning sovereign. These agreements with the Crown are administered by and overseen by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and

Northern Development

While treaties were signed between European monarchs and First Nations in

North America as far back as 1676, the only ones that survived the American Revolution are those in Canada, which date to the beginning of the 18th century. Today, the main guide for relations between the monarchy and Canadian First Nations is King George III's

Royal Proclamation of 1763; while not a treaty, it is regarded by First Nations as guaranteeing a particular relationship binding on not only the British Crown but the

Canadian one as well, as the document remains a part of the Canadian Constitution. The proclamation set parts of the King's North American realm aside for colonists and reserved others for the First Nations, thereby affirming native title to their lands and making clear that, though under the sovereignty of the Crown, the aboriginal bands were

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autonomous political units in a nation-to-nation association with non-native governments, with the monarch as the intermediary. This created not only a constitutional and moral basis of alliance between indigenous Canadians and the Canadian state as personified in the monarch, but also a fiduciary affiliation in which the Crown is constitutionally charged with providing certain guarantees to the First Nations, as affirmed in Sparrow v.

The Queen, meaning that the honour of the Crown is at stake in dealings between it and

First Nations leaders.

Given the divided nature of the Crown, the sovereign may be party to relations with aboriginal Canadians distinctly within a provincial . This has at times to a lack of clarity regarding which of the monarch's should administer his or her duties towards indigenous peoples. Once the Dominion of Canada purchased what remained of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company and colonial settlement expanded westwards, more treaties were signed between 1871 and 1921, wherein the

Crown brokered land exchanges that granted aboriginal societies reserves and other compensation, such as livestock, ammunition, education, , and certain rights to hunt and fish. The First Nations regarded this situation under the Crown as better than that which had befallen their brethren in the United States. The treaties did not ensure peace: as evidenced by the North-West Rebellion of 1885, which was sparked by Métis people's concerns over their survival and discontent on the part of Cree people over perceived unfairness in the treaties signed with Queen Victoria.

Cornelius Jaenen has shown the connection between these roots and Canada’s multicultural society in a number of ways. One, Canada is a product of two, competing,

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colonizing movements: French and English. Two, Canada was originally a British, not

English, nation. The British themselves were, and continue to be, a diverse group, seeking commonality through recognized political institutions like the monarchy rather than cultural or linguistic ones. Three, Canada, as can be seen in the successive acts, has a long tradition of cooperation, as opposed to American style separation, between church and state, arguably a different path to religious tolerance and the enhancement of minority rights. Four, education in Canada has been provincial in jurisdiction, with the caveat of minority language protection, thus encouraging regional particularism and regional diversity.21 Jaenen shows that the idea of tolerance between ethnic groups is more than a matter of legislative action or governmental policy. It is an ethos born out of the historical development of Canada.

We can look at the successive acts and treaties creating the modern Canada, the

Treaty of Paris and Royal Proclamation, the Quebec Act, the Act of Union, the

Constitution Act, and the Manitoba Act, as furthering the foundation of in

Canada. Each of the documents includes some founding elements of responsible government, equality amongst people, and the principle of . Each document also includes elements that came from negotiation with a minority that was to participate in government, be it English, French, First Nations, or Metis. Certainly each of the documents is not fully liberal, but they do demonstrate a consistent move towards the liberalism finally enshrined in the Constitution Act.

21 P. Saradhi Puttagunta, Invasion of the Immigrant Hordes: An Analysis of Current Arguments in Canada Against Multiculturalism and Immigration Policy, (University of British Columbia, Dissertation, 1998), 78-9

21

Minority Groups in Canada

Different minority groups have come to Canada at different times, and in different numbers, throughout its history and established cultural centers, developed communities, and assumed different amounts of political power. Between the American Revolution and the American Civil War, Blacks came to Canada both as slaves as and free people.

Slavery was abolished in the in 1833 and so any Blacks arriving after that were necessarily free.22 Many Blacks settled in the eastern part of Canada, predominantly in Nova Scotia. The community of what would be called Africville surrounding Halifax,

Nova Scotia was settled in earnest sometime after the . Africville began as a promise to Loyalists and War of 1812 of free land and equal rights. The community lasted as a distinct part of Halifax until the post-WWII period when the growth of Halifax coupled with government programs meant to improve housing stock led to the forced relocation of many residents. The Seaview African United Baptist

Church, established 1849, was demolished by the government in 1969.

Jews have been in Canada since at least the 18th century however none officially lived in Quebec until the British capture of the French province of Canada in 1760. Prior to that Louis XIV had decreed that only Catholics could enter Quebec. In the 1804 election, Quebec-born won a in the Assembly of Lower Canada. His opponents publicly asserted that Hart could not be sworn in on the grounds that he was a

Jew. The Assembly formed a special committee to consider the matter and recommended that he be expelled. The resolution was passed by the assembly and Hart was banned

22 The British Empire allowed slavery to remain in the possessions of the East India Company and the islands of Ceylon and St. Helena until 1843.

22

Elected again in the ensuing by-election, Hart was expelled a second time. Because of the oath and the resolution, in Quebec were ineligible for membership in the provincial assembly and legally unfit to hold any civil, judicial, or military office. This ban was in effect until its removal, in 1831, by reformers Louis-Joseph Papineau and Denis-

Benjamin Viger. It became law in 1832, and after a challenge was confirmed in 1834 by a special committee of the assembly.23 The most noteworthy expansion of the Jewish population in Canada occurred between 1901 and 1911 in , where

Winnipeg's Jewish community experienced an 800 percent increase and 's nearly a 500 percent increase. Meanwhile, smaller centers in western Canada, such as

Calgary, , Regina, and , grew as well. During the settlement of the late 19th and early 20th century, many small of western Canada began to have at least one or two Jewish .24

The 20th century opened with the arrival of nearly 42,000 immigrants in 1900.

Numbers quickly escalated to a then record high of over 400,000 in 1913. Canada’s economy was growing rapidly during these years and immigrants were drawn by the promise of good job prospects. The building of the transcontinental railway, the settlement of the , and expanding industrial production intensified demand for labour. Aggressive recruitment campaigns by the Canadian government to boost immigration and attract workers also increased arrivals: between 1900 and 1914, more than 2.9 million people entered Canada, nearly four times as many as had arrived in the previous 14-year period. The share of the overall population born outside Canada

23 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03891.html 24 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03891.html

23

increased in consequence. While immigrants accounted for 13% of the population in

1901, by 1911 that number grew to over 22%. Most of the foreign-born population lived in Ontario at the start of the century, but many later immigrants headed west. By 1911,

41% of Canada’s immigrant population lived in the Prairies, up from 20% recorded in the

1901 Census. This influx had a profound effect on the populations of the western provinces. By 1911, immigrants represented 41% of people living in Manitoba, 50% in

Saskatchewan, and 57% of those in Alberta and British Columbia. In contrast, immigrants made up less than 10% of the population in the Atlantic Provinces and

Quebec, and only 20% in Ontario.

At the start of the 20th century, the majority of immigrants to Canada had originated in the United States or the United Kingdom. However, during the 1910s and

1920s, the number born in other European countries began to grow, slowly at first, and then rising to its highest levels in 1961 and 1971. This change in countries of origin had begun in the closing decades of the 19th century when many new groups began to arrive in Canada — and Jewish refugees from , , Mormons from the U.S., , and . This flow of immigration continued up until World

War I. It generated public debate about who should be admitted to Canada: for some writers and politicians, recruiting labour was the key issue, not the changing origins of immigrants; for others, British and American immigrants were to be preferred to those from southern or eastern European countries.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries the west coast of Canada began to experience greater immigration from , including Sikh, Japanese and Chinese populations.

24

have been in Canada since at least 1887. In travelling for the 1897 Jubilee of

Queen Victoria, many Sikh solders were exposed to the west coast of Canada. A number of immigrant Sikhs were former soldiers in the British Indian Army, which contributed to the (slightly) lesser amount of racism they experienced in Canada compared to other immigrant populations. Still however, the population of Sikh’s in Canada grew haltingly at first primarily as a result of Canadian racism. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were approximately 1,500 Indians living in Canada, mostly in British Columbia and the overwhelming majority was Sikh. On 25, 1912, the Abbotsford Sikh

Temple, or Gurdwara, became the first Sikh in Canada. With the slow growth of

Sikh’s came an organized, legislated, racist backlash towards them. In 1907 the federal government introduced a regulation halting immigration of those that did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a continuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or citizenship," called the

Continuous Passage Act25 In practice this significantly limited the ability of Indians to immigrate as there existed little to no ships that sailed directly from India to Canada and not stopping in Japan or Hawaii. This regulation was successfully challenged on procedural grounds, but the government rewrote the regulation to the satisfaction of the court and it remained in effect.

Under the Dominion Elections Act of 1900, the only people allowed to vote in federal elections were those who had the legal right to vote in provincial elections. In practice, this excluded different minorities in different parts of Canada. For example, in

25 Continuous Passage Act, Government of Canada. Online at: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/asian/100years.asp

25

1900, Section 8 of the British Columbia Provincial Elections Act stated that no

“, Japanese, or Indian" was eligible to vote in British-Columbia, therefore not in any federal election either. It is also important to note that the legal term Canadian citizen was still developing. The 1910 Immigration Act created the legal status of

Canadian citizen, however at that point the status included only British subjects born, naturalized, and domiciled in Canada. The right to vote was suspended from Indo-

Canadians beginning in 1907 and lasting until 1947. The 1947 the Provincial Elections

Amendment Act allowed citizens of Indian and Chinese descent to vote, however it maintained the exclusion of Aboriginal and . Additionally, for their pacifism and refusal to swear allegiance to the Crown, the act added Doukhobors,

Hutterites, and (who had not served in the armed forces) to the list of excluded people. By 1955 only Aboriginal people remained excluded from voting in federal elections. It was not until 1960 that both voting rights and immigration policy were fully stripped of racial considerations.

In the second half of the 20th century, especially after the racial quotas on immigration had been abandoned, Indian grew rapidly. The population of ‘other-Asiatic’ people in the Canadian census (explained as non-Chinese or

Japanese Asians) increased from 18,636 to 34,399 between 1951 and 1961. By 1971 the number of other-Asiatic immigrants had grown exponentially to 129,460. Many Indo-

Canadians can also trace their roots to and the .

Large scale Chinese immigration to Canada began with the Fraser rush of the

1860’s. Most of this immigration was not direct from China but instead a move north

26

from the already established Chinese community in California, particularly the Bay area.

Chinese migration from mainland China began in earnest in the 1880’s with the hiring of a workforce to build the western part of the Trans-Canada railway. Chinese labourers were brought in and Chinese communities in Victoria and Vancouver grew rapidly, establishing cultural centers and communities for immigrant Chinese. In 1877 the Chee

Kung Tong Building was built and for traditional Chinese and Hong-men society ceremonies and celebrations, as well as a for the political to maintain a connection with China. It also served as a venue for dealing with the affairs of the

Chinese community in the Cariboo District, exerting control over business and personal relationships between members. The Chinese population in Canada is not recorded in the

1871 census because that census included only the provinces that made up Canada at confederation in 1867.26 The 1881 census recorded 4,383 Chinese, the 1901 census

17,312, and the 1911 census 27,831. The greatest growth of Chinese in Canada occurred after the 1962 repeal of racial quotas in immigration. The 1961 census recorded 58,197

Chinese, while the 1971 census recorded 118,815.

The strength of the growth of particular identities in Canada was not limited to immigrant groups. Nationalist tendencies were growing in Quebec and amongst the First

Nation populations as well. The Quebec provincial Parti Quebecois was created in 1968 by the of two Quebec sovereigntist political parties. The NIC (National Indian

Council) formed in 1961 and was replaced by the NIB (National Indian Brotherhood) in

26 But 1871 Manitoba and British Columbia had become provinces, but the census did not include them.

27

1967, which then became the AFN (Assembly of First Nations) in 1982. The Congress of

Aboriginal Peoples (representing non-status First Nations and Metis) formed in 1971.

Racism and Xenophobia

While we see the growth of different populations in Canada and a kind of multicultural attitude developing out of the process of confederation, it is important not to overstate this case and view the history of Canada through rose colored glasses. Both the existing First Nations populations and immigrant minority populations experienced significant racism not only through local attitudes, but also officially through provincial and federal governments.

In the tiny Jewish community of about one hundred families encountered the first attempt made in Canada to pass municipal legislation specifically against Jews when their attempts to erect a synagogue were stymied by local politicians.

Ultimately successful in securing permission, their new synagogue was burned to the ground on the eve of its opening in 1944. In 1948, the results of a Gallup poll revealed that forty-nine percent of the Canadian people were opposed to the admission of Jews to the country even under a policy of selective immigration. The question used by the

Canadian Institute of Public Opinion survey was: "If Canada does allow more immigration, are there any of these nationalities which you would like to keep out?"27

The questionnaire listed 12 different nationalities. According to the answers in the immediate post WWII period, 60 percent opposed the entrance of Japanese; 49 percent

27 “Gallup Poll Reveals 49 Percent of Canadians Oppose Jewish Immigration to Country”, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 4, 1946 Online at: http://www.jta.org/1946/11/04/archive/gallup-poll- reveals-49-percent-of-canadians-oppose-jewish-immigration-to-country#ixzz30m06aUST

28

opposed Jewish immigration; 34 percent opposed German immigration; 33 percent opposed Russian immigration; and 31 percent opposed “Negro” immigration.

Chinese immigrants to Canada after 1885 became subject to a racially specific tax. The Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 instituted a $50 fee for ethnic Chinese to enter the Canada. In 1900 the tax was raised to $100, and in 1903 it was raised again to $500.

This fee was applied to ethnic Chinese, which included not only people immigrating from

China but all people of Chinese descent, including those immigrating from Britain and the United States for example. In 1923, the new Chinese Immigration Act banned the immigration of all Chinese except for people in three categories: One, diplomats, two, foreign students, and three, special circumstances exempted by the minister. Like the head tax, the 1923 act not only banned Chinese from China, but ethnically Chinese people from everywhere.

During I and II, the Canadian government also interned both

Canadian born and naturalized citizens and immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian

Empire (mainly Ukrainians) in and from Japan, , and in

World War II. The Ukrainian Canadian internment was part of the confinement of enemy aliens in Canada the war and lasting for two years after it ended. In all, the internment lasted from 1914 to 1920 and operated under the terms of the .28After

WWII only about 25% of Japanese-Canadians were able to regain their property that had been confiscated during the war.

28 Six were killed while trying to escape.

29

Residential Schools

One of the greatest injustices to any idea of multiculturalism was the policy of residential schools for First Nations children in Canada. While education in Canada is a provincial matter, Aboriginal people and their treaties are with the federal government or crown. Established by the of 1876, a residential school system was created for

First Nations youth. As outlined in the act, these schools were funded by the Department of Indian Affairs and administered through local churches of various denominations. The foundations of the system were the pre-confederation Gradual Act (1857) and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act (1869). These assumed the inherent superiority of

British ways, and the need for Aboriginals to become English-speakers, , and farmers. The system was designed as an immersion program: children were prohibited from (and often punished for) speaking their own languages or practicing their own faiths. In 1857, the was passed by the legislature of the Province of Canada with the aim of assimilating First Nations people. This act awarded 50 acres of land to any indigenous male deemed sufficiently advanced in the elementary branches of education and would automatically enfranchise him, removing any tribal affiliation or . With this legislation, and through the creation of residential schools, the government believed indigenous people could eventually become assimilated into the population. In 1884, attendance became compulsory by law for status Indians less than 16 years of age. Children were often forcibly removed from their families or their families were threatened with prison if they failed to send their children willingly. Students were required to live on school premises. Most had no contact with their families for up to 10

30

months at a time because of the distance between their home communities and schools, and sometimes had no contact for years. They were prohibited from speaking Aboriginal languages, even among themselves and outside the classroom in order that English or

French would be learned and their own languages forgotten. Following the 1947 report of a Special Joint Committee and subsequent amendment of the Indian Act, compulsory attendance at residential schools had ended by 1948, although this did little to improve conditions for those attending.

The schools themselves came over time to be closed or run by the local bands. By

1969 the Department of Indian Affairs had taken sole control of all the schools, eliminating the historic church involvement. In 1970 the Quills Indian School in Lac

La Biche, Alberta was the first schools to be run independently by a band. In 1988 and

1990 two court cases were filed against the federal government and Anglican and

Catholic churches by former students of St. George’s Indian Residential School in

Lytton, B.C, and St. Joseph’s school, in Williams , B.C. In both suits the government and churches admitted fault and paid damages. These lead to a growing investigation of the residential school system that found systematic sexual and physical abuse. The 1998 establishment of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation by the federal government was created to fund community based healing projects. This was followed by a nearly $2 billion settlement agreement from the federal government in 2006. On

11, 2008, Prime Minister apologized, on behalf of the sitting cabinet, in front of an audience of Aboriginal delegates, and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC, for the past governments' policies of assimilation. The Prime

31

Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but also for the creation of the system itself. Prime Minister Harper described the rationale for the schools thusly; “Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the . These objectives were based on the assumption aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal.

Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, `to kill the Indian in the child.' Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.”29

The courts in Canada have caused both the perpetuation of, and end to, legislative racism depending on the era Canadian history examined. As we have seen the Supreme

Court at times sanctioned laws restricting the rights of minorities, preventing them from voting, owning property, and being counted as citizens at different times for different groups. The 1903 Cunningham v. Homma case for instance upheld a British Columbia law that prohibited Japanese and from voting in provincial, and therefore federal, elections. Similarly, in Quong Wing v. The King the 1914 decision upheld restrictions against ‘Chinamen’ in Saskatchewan and held that Quong Wing was subject to the discriminatory law that prevented him from hiring women in his restaurant because despite his citizenship, the language of ‘Chinamen’, to whom the law was directed, included all those born in China regardless of nationality.30 At times however, and especially over the last 40 years, the courts have challenged legislative racism and

29 http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3568890 30 http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/en/browseSubjects/quong.asp

32

affirmed the rights of those same minorities that they previously denied. For example the

1970 R. v. Drybones decision held that the "empowered the courts to strike down federal legislation which offended its dictates."31 Accordingly, the

Supreme Court of Canada held that section 94(b) of the Indian Act (which prohibited

Indians from being intoxicated off of a reserve) is inoperative because it violates section

1(b) of the Canadian Bill of Rights.

The Special Case of Quebec

In 1981, a round of negotiations led by Prime Minister to patriate32 the constitution reached an agreement that formed the basis of the Constitution Act of

1982. Although this agreement passed into law, amending the British North America Acts as the constitution of the land, it was reached over the objections of Quebec René

Lévesque and the Quebec refused to ratify the constitution. The

Supreme Court of Canada had previously ruled in the Quebec Veto Reference that

Quebec never had, according to constitutional convention, a constitutional veto and that no province did. The Supreme Court also ruled that the new constitution applied to all provinces notwithstanding their disagreement. Ultimately, Quebec was the only province that did not favor .

31 https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2722/index.do 32 The Oxford English Dictionary documents the earliest use of the word ‘patriate’ to Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1966. “We intend to do everything we can to have the repatriated, or patriated.” Until the 1982 ‘patriation’ of the constitution, Canada was subject to a constitution that required an act of the British Parliament to change. By bringing the constitution to Canada (‘patriating’ it), Canada was freed from that constraint.

33

The was negotiated at a meeting between Prime Minister

Mulroney and provincial premiers at Wilson House at Meech Lake in the Hills in 1987. It identified five main modifications to the Canadian Constitution:

 A recognition of Quebec as a

 A constitutional veto for Quebec and the other provinces

 Increased provincial powers with respect to immigration

 Extension and regulation of the right for a reasonable financial compensation to

any province that chooses to opt out of any future federal programs in areas of

exclusive provincial jurisdiction

 Provincial input in appointing senators and Supreme Court

Because the accord would have changed the constitution's amending formula it needed to obtain the consent of all provincial and federal legislatures within three years. Mulroney termed this the ‘Quebec round’ of constitutional talks and promised future reforms after the accord had been approved, which it never was.

Through this brief look at the development of Canada up through the mid-20th century, we can see that the multicultural policies which would later become central to peoples notions of Canada did not occur out of the mere presence of different founding groups at confederation. Instead it becomes clear that the multicultural character of

Canada developed slowly and indirectly. The multicultural character comes through the negotiation across cultures that are central to the liberal cores of Canada. We should see

Canadian multiculturalism than not simply as a newly developed multicultural policy to suit the demands of the , but instead as one likely continuation in the growth

34

of liberal policies that attempt to protect individual rights. As individual rights have properly, and logically, come to include minority and previously disenfranchised people, the rights demands have had an increasingly multicultural character. The demands of minority groups for inclusion into the mainstream of rights and liberties as groups, however, is what will significant challenges to the competing commitments of multiculturalism and liberalism. As we will later see, through a combination of a static understanding of culture and an notion that to best promote individual liberties group particularities must be protected, a tension is created within the Canadian commitment between individual rights and the ability to create a sufficient diversity for individuals to exist within.

Through this brief history in the development of Canada up to the 1970’s we can see a few different lines. First, different kinds of people coming together, be they French,

English, Metis, Aboriginal Canadians, or other immigrant minorities. We can see the growing demands both political and cultural of these different groups as seen through the establishment of government and community based institutions through the history of

Canada. As Canada has moved to write and apply its laws based in an idea of comprehensive human rights, we are then left with a nation centered on ideals and legislation; a nation that tries to overcome its past racism and move forward governed by the general set of liberal principles of and the liberty of individuals.

CHAPTER 3

CANADIAN MULTICULTURALISM – THICK OR THIN

The 1960’s in Canada were a time of intense change. The role of the federal government expanded dramatically in the areas of health care and education, growing the public sector throughout the country. For example, the Medical Care Act of 1966 provided universal public healthcare coverage to all Canadians. In Quebec, Premier Jean

Lesage re-established a Ministry of Education; it had been abolished in 1875 in order to allow the Catholic Church domain over education in Quebec. The social and economic development of Quebec contributed to a surge in that was characterized by a growing separation from the rest of Canada, including traditional

English Canada, Aboriginal people, and the new various minority communities. Quebec nationalized hydro-electric companies and created public companies in mining, forestry, and the oil and gas sectors to exploit the provinces resources. Caisse de Depot et

Placement du Quebec, an enormous provincial plan was also created, largely on the advice of and future sovereigntist Quebec Premier .33

It was the first, and so far only, provincial pension plan in Canada. All other provinces operate out of the . In 1968, feeding off both the growing economic power of Quebec and the growing separation from the rest of Canada, the sovereigntist

33 Parizeau was during the 1995 in that province concerning its separation from Canada. The soverigntists a close vote and Parizeau is famously remembered for a line in his concession speech. "C'est vrai, c'est vrai qu'on a été battus, au fond, par quoi? Par l'argent pis des votes ethniques, essentiellement.” In English this translates to the distinctly not-multicultural: It is true, it is true that we were beaten, but in the end, by what? By money and ethnic votes, essentially.

35 36

Parti Quebecois was created with the goal of political, economic, and social autonomy for the province of Quebec, a relationship not seen since 1763.

The possibility that Quebec might separate from the country was a cause for economic and social concern. In response to the , as the 1960’s were called in Quebec, the federal government attempted to find ways to mollify Quebec nationalists and promote stability across Canada. The federal government, led at the time by Prime Minister Lester Pearson, created a on Bilingualism and

Biculturalism in , 1963. The purpose of this commission was to "inquire into and report upon the existing state of bilingualism and in Canada and to recommend what steps should be taken to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by the other ethnic groups to the cultural enrichment of Canada and the measures that should be taken to safeguard that contribution."34 The commission issued its report in a series of releases: Book I: The Official Languages (1967), Book II:

Education (1968), Book III: The Work World (1969), Book IV: The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups (1969), Book V: The Federal Capital and Book VI: Voluntary

Associations (1970). Among its recommendations were that Canada declare English and

French official languages, nationally codifying the ability of parents to school their children in the language of their choice (where there was sufficient demand), that the federal government operate in both languages, including the federally funded training of

34 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Online at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/public_mikan/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayIte m&lang=eng&rec_nbr=251

37 its employees to be bilingual, and an emphasis on a balance in the government that reflected the demographic balance of Canada. This balance, it is important to note, concerned the English and French only, not First Nations, Metis, Inuit, or other minority populations in Canada.

The government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau attempted to enact many of the proposals from the commission. The 1969 Official Languages Act provided for the equal status of English and French in Canada. In practice this was to mean that services provided by the federal government and federal crown corporations (such as Canada

Post, the , and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation) were to be available in both English and French, federal courts would be operated in both languages and that

English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians not be discriminated against based on ethnic origin or learned when it comes to employment opportunities and advancement.

It is from the reactions to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and

Biculturalism and its subsequent reports that the beginnings of official, or legislative, multiculturalism began in Canada. An early proponent of multiculturalism in Canada, who called for such a policy shift, was Senator Yuzyk of Manitoba. In a 1964 speech to the he said, in part, “The Indians and Eskimos have been with us throughout our history; the British group is multicultural - English, Scots, Irish, Welsh; and with the setting up of other ethnic groups, which now make up almost a third of the population, Canada has become multicultural in fact ... In keeping with the ideals of democracy and the spirit of confederation, Canada should accept and guarantee the

38 principle of the partnership of all peoples who have contributed to her development and progress."35 That Senator Yuzyk was a professor of Slavic studies at the University of

Manitoba, from an ethnically Ukrainian family, and an early supporter of multicultural, rather than bicultural policy, is notable. The Ukrainian minority in the Prairie provinces had become a politically powerful block by the second half of the 20th century. In the

Canadian west generally, the French population was considerably smaller than other ethnic minority groups, the so-called ‘third force’ in Canadian society.36 Rather than an attempt to minimize the power of the French and English, the move to a multi- rather than bi- was an attempt by the so-called third force Canadians to halt what they saw as the marginalization of their own cultural identities. Their influence, led politically by Senator Yuzyk, shifted the emphasis from bi- to multi-cultural, with both the term and the concept growing as a result.

By the 1970’s, it was becoming apparent that the Royal Commission on

Bilingualism and Biculturalism did not have the desired effect of bringing Quebec solidly back into the fold of Canada. The commission and the legislation that came out of its recommendations created a backlash in Quebec where nationalists were not satisfied with the attempts to protect and promote Quebecois culture, in where where it

35 , Maiden Speech, Debates of the Senate, March 3, 1964, p. 34 36 Demographically, some analysts suggest that Canadian society can be divided into three major forces. The first force consists of aboriginal peoples and includes status Indians, non-status Indians, M tis and Inuit. The Constitution Act of 1982 defined all natives as aboriginal peoples. In 1991, a total of 1,002,675 persons reported their origin as aboriginal or part aboriginal, representing about 3.7% of the total population. The second force consists of the colonizing groups; who eventually defined themselves as the founding members of Canadian society. Known as the Charter groups, both the French- and English- speaking communities constitute this force. The third force in Canadian society comprises those racial and ethnic minorities who fall outside the Charter groups; that is, native and foreign-born Canadians with some non-French and non-British ancestry.” http://publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/CIR/936-e.htm

39 felt rejected by Quebec’s rejection of the commission’s findings, and in the rest of

Canada where Aboriginal and non-founding peoples felt their cultures to be lessened in the eyes of the government. Nevertheless, federal policies were enacted to enhance the standing of Quebecers and the in the federal government and across the nation. Partly in response to the feeling of powerlessness when compared to the French population, nationalism grew in First Nations and Metis populations as well. The

National Indian Council was formed in 1961; the National Indian Brotherhood was formed in 1967, later changing its name to the current Assembly of First Nations. The current Native Council of Canada was created in 1971 by non-status and Metis people, originally called the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.

Non-founding people saw the elevation of French culture by the government as an explicit lessening of their culture in relation and began to demand a new kind of politics that included them on a more equal . Multicultural policy in Canada was thus not initially intended for the benefit of non-European immigrants, but instead was an outgrowth demanded by the growing European ethnic groups long present in Canada, as a reaction to the rise in Quebec nationalism and the federal government’s policies to accommodate the demands of Quebecers. These groups, while growing in number, were also growing in political influence. In all of the policy shifts towards recognizing two official languages, ensuring fair representation of in government, and recognizing Canada’s duality, ethnic groups such as the Ukranians, Poles, ,

Jews, etc., worried that government funds and policies would be split between English and French, leaving other traditional ethnic groups on the outside looking in.

40

Like much of , Canada had been moving towards a more pluralistic society in the post war years. Immigration policy had been dramatically changed in 1962 when the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration introduced legislation to eliminate the racial rules previously guiding

Canadian immigration policy. The 1962 bill stated that any unsponsored immigrant that had the required education, skill, or other quality, and either had a job waiting for them or demonstrated the means to support themselves in the interim, was able to enter Canada if suitable, irrespective of colour, race, or national origin. At that particular moment in time, four concurrent conditions served to shift the country towards a new policy. One, the changes to immigration policy, two, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and

Biculturalism’s recommendations, three, the specific recommendations of commission member Jaroslav Rudnyckyj , and four, the political leanings of the governing and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. These conditions prepared the country for the implementation of a new multicultural policy. It was Rudnyckyj who authored Book IV:

The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups of the report which endorsed the idea of a multilingual Canada that recognized the importance of regional languages.

Leading directly from Rudnyckyj’s Book IV, Prime Minister Trudeau made the

“Announcement of Implementation of Policy of Multiculturalism within Bilingual

Framework" in the House of Commons on 8, 1971. The key objectives of this policy were: to assist cultural groups to retain and foster their identity; to assist cultural groups to overcome barriers to their full participation in Canadian society; (thus, the multiculturalism policy advocated the full involvement and equal participation of ethnic

41 minorities in mainstream institutions, without denying them the right to identify with select elements of their cultural past if they so chose); to promote creative exchanges among all Canadian cultural groups; and to assist immigrants in acquiring at least one of the official languages.

Implementation of these policy objectives depended on government

funding. Nearly $200 million was set aside in the first decade of the policy

for special initiatives in language and cultural maintenance. A

Multicultural Directorate within the Department of Secretary of State was

approved in 1972 to assist in the implementation of multicultural policies

and programs. The directorate sponsored activities aimed at assisting

ethnic minorities in the areas of human rights, from racial

discrimination, citizenship, immigration and . A Ministry

of Multiculturalism was created in 1973 to monitor the implementation of

multicultural initiatives within government departments. In addition,

formal linkages between the government and ethnic organizations were

established to provide ongoing input into the decision-making process. An

example was the Canadian Consultative Council on Multiculturalism,

established in 1973 and later renamed the Canadian Ethnocultural

Council.37

Of the four objectives, the first, retaining and fostering identity, is somewhat problematic in that it seeks to support culture as a static good and similarly puts a

37 http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/prb0920-e.htm#3-Institutionalization

42 privilege on group identity both against other groups and against individuals. The other three stated objectives allow for flexibility, or dynamism, of the particular cultures of groups and individuals and allows for individuals to keep their relationship to the state, regardless of their personal particularities of culture.

Multiculturalism was also a key part of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and

Freedoms, which itself was a part of the Constitution Act of 1982. The Charter replaced the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights which, rather than a constitutional document, was a federal . The Charter enumerates the rights of Canadian citizens and of people residing in Canada, including the fundamental freedoms of conscience, religion, thought, press, peaceful assembly, etc. Section 27 of the Charter is the section concerned with multiculturalism in Canada. Section 27 reads: “27. This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of

Canadians.”38 Rather than enumerating a particular right, the section is meant as a guide to how elements of the Charter should be interpreted and as an endorsement that multiculturalism is a Canadian value.

Similarly, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, which assented to parliament in

July of 1988 by the Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian

Mulroney, aims to enhance multiculturalism in Canada. The first section of the act reads:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the Government of Canada to

recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects the

cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society and acknowledges the

38 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms online at http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/

43

freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and

share their cultural heritage.

Each of the ten provinces have their own forms of multicultural policies that vary from legislative acts to government advisory councils. With the exception of Quebec, the provinces endorse the same goals as the federal government. The province of Quebec instead focuses on the diversity of cultures within a French framework. The Ministry of

Immigration and Cultural Communities, created in 2005, is meant to foster intercultural, rather than multicultural, relations among the people of Quebec. Part of the function of the Ministry is, “faciliter le rapprochement interculturel entre les Qu b cois.”39 French is the official public language, going so far as to limit the size of English writing on signs and requiring that non-Anglophones educate their children in French.40,41

Saskatchewan was the first province to adopt legislation on multiculturalism, passing the Saskatchewan Multiculturalism Act in 1974. Saskatchewan’s early adoption of multicultural policy is perhaps best understood as a reaction to the ‘bilingual’ and

‘bicultural’ debate between French and English Canada. Saskatchewan had long been an area of settlement for Ukrainian immigrants and 1966 marked the 75th anniversary of the

39 In English, “foster closer between Quebecers” http://www.micc.gouv.qc.ca/fr/ministre/index.html 40 British Columbia adopted their Multicultural Act in 1993, which requires the provincial government to “generally, carry on government services and programs in a manner that is sensitive and responsive to the multicultural reality of British Columbia.” The 1990 Alberta Multiculturalism Act established a Multicultural Commission. The 1992 Manitoba Multiculturalism Act established a Multiculturalism Secretariat. Ontario’s 1982 Ministry of Citizenship and Culture Act is responsible for “recognizing the pluralistic nature of Ontario society.” New Brunswick introduced its multicultural policy in 1986, Prince Edward island in 1988, Nova Scotia in 1989, Newfoundland and in 2008. 41 For a sense of how ridiculous the policy has become, a July 24th, 2012 Gazette article explains how when calling the provincial health authority in Quebec, operators are supposed to test callers for a knowledge of French. If they believe the caller has facility in French, the call must be in French. See: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/service+English+please+take+this+language+test/6977148/story.html

44 first, and largest, wave of Ukrainian settlement.42 The Ukrainian community in

Saskatchewan was politically active, as represented in the 1960’s by Senator John

Hnatyshyn, Bilingual and Bicultural Commission member Jaroslav Rudnyckyj, and

Deputy Premier . This community was especially sensitive to the apparent division of Canada between two ethnic groups and mobilized to push for a different solution articulating arguments for a multicultural policy in both the province and federally. , president of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, addressed the

Commission at the preliminary hearings and argued that language such as biculturalism failed to represent all Canadians. He claimed it failed to consider the five million

Canadians of different and culturally distinct ethnic minorities.43

The 1988 federal legislation sought to assist with cultural and language preservation, to reduce discrimination, to enhance intercultural awareness and understanding, and to promote culturally-sensitive institutional change at federal levels.

While the Multiculturalism Directorate of the federal government has existed since 1972, it merged with other directorates to form the Department of Canadian Heritage in 1993.

Provincial governments have recognized multiculturalism in a variety of ways. As education is a provincial responsibility in Canadian public policy, provincial governments promote multiculturalism through education in one or more of the following ways:

1) English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for new arrivals

42 The first wave of Ukrainian settlers came to Canada from 1891-1914. It was also the strongest wave, with more than 170,000 members. 43 Isydore Hlynka, “Royal Commission On Bilingualism and Biculturalism Preliminary Hearing.” (: November, 1963), 81-84.

45

2) Nonofficial language (heritage language) instruction. These classes are

designed to teach a specific ethnic language. Requests for these courses often

originate from the interested .

3) Programs aimed at discouraging and eradicating racism. An example would be

the Alternatives to Racism' project in British Columbia.

4) Cultural and historical information transmitted through the social studies

curriculum. Some , such as Ontario, offer separate courses in

multiculturalism.

To summarize, multicultural policy in Canada includes both federal and provincial legislation with the stated aims of assisting cultural groups in maintaining their identities, overcoming barriers to full participation in Canadian life without losing their identities44, promoting exchanges between groups, and assisting immigrants in acquiring at least one of the two official languages. The policy is enshrined in both constitutional documents, and legislative acts at the federal and provincial levels. The multicultural rather than bicultural nature of the policy grew out of the reaction of other, non-English or French, minorities.

Rationale for the Goals of Multicultural Policy in Canada

As has been shown, a significant part of multicultural policy in Canada has been its legal development from the 1960’s through present day. The reasons behind this policy are demographic, political, and social. Canada, originally confederated amongst

44 To me, the idea of ‘Losing their identities’ is a more complex concept than it appears on its face. The interaction of people of different cultures shapes and changes identities, as it has for all of history. In a 21st century democracy, the interactions are faster and broader than they have ever been and cultures are challenged, changed, and shaped faster than ever. The idea of holding on to one’s culture has incorporate these new realities.

46 different founding peoples, has had to negotiate across elements of culture throughout its existence to one extent or another. The modern understanding and implications of multiculturalism are closely tied to the immigration patterns of Canada, particularly in the

20th century. The way Canada chose to deal with the regional settling of different ethnic groups and the required cooperation across boundaries in order to promote stability in a geographically enormous nation while remaining committed to its liberal principles was to attempt to develop a kind of multicultural policy that would be able to exist within the commitment to individuals that the country’s liberal core requires. The inevitable tension between these two different concepts, one grounded in the other in group identity, has been the focus of much introspective debate in Canada over the last half- decade. As has previously been shown, immigration patterns varied greatly across

Canada, with the historic French population centered mainly in Quebec, but also existing in and in New Brunswick, Eastern European populations settling in the

Prairie provinces, Asian populations settling in the West and later , and

Haitian and North African populations settling in Quebec. Multicultural policy allowed for the development of populations centers that preserved, if not promoted, different ethnic communities in different parts of the country.

Two specific arguments for the introduction and success of multiculturalism in

Canada relate to the timing of its introduction and the geography of the nation. As has been shown, multiculturalism in Canada grew in large part to a reaction on the part of non-founding peoples to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism and the implementation of some of its recommendations. Much of this reaction was by

47 established ethnic groups in Canada including Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Jews, Italians, etc. At the time of these national debates the ethnicities in Canada, especially those with organized political power, were largely white and European. That multiculturalism was pushed by ethnic groups that were generally well integrated and had been in Canada for several generations lessened considerably the fear that a multicultural Canada would have to accept cultural practices that were vastly different than those already accepted and widely practiced.

If we look to the debate around multiculturalism both in Canada and throughout

Europe that has been going on since the 1990’s, it becomes apparent that some of the fears now considered were not part of the conversation in the 1960’s. Robert Fulford writes that the problem of multiculturalism is that it puts the rights of a group (race- based, according to Fulford) before the rights of the individual. For Neil Bissoondath, multiculturalism contradicts individualism. To pretend one does not evolve, as multiculturalism does, is to stultify personality, creating stereotype, and "stripping the individual of all uniqueness"45.

Bissoondath is not the first to make this point. His argument resembles John

Porter's claim that multiculturalism is anachronistic in that it emphasizes group ties in an individualistic, modern, capitalist society.46 As Bissoondath states, we must acknowledge the wide variance within cultural groups. Shared ethnicity does not mean unanimity of vision, according to Bissoondath: "If the individual is not to be betrayed, then humanity

45 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), 211 46 See John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada, (Toronto: Press., 1965) and The Measure of Canadian Society: Education, Equality and Opportunity, (Toronto: Gage, 1975)

48 must prevail over the narrowness of ethnicity."47 The argument is made that by promoting in-group identities, the government may not be explicitly (or legislatively) creating internal restriction amongst a group but by privileging group identity against individual autonomy, the ability to act autonomously is hampered.

Immigration to Canada towards the end of the 20th century was vastly different and included populations that were generally neither white, nor Christian, with cultural and social practices that differed to a greater degree than the differences between

Ukrainian-Canadians of the 1960’s and the mythical Canadian culture of the same time.48

The similarly lessened some of the contemporary fears of immigration in debates around the world. Immigration to Canada is vastly different from immigration in the United States and Europe. Whereas the United States experiences high levels of immigration (both legal and illegal) from one particular border nation49, and

European nations experiences both legal and from nearby African and

Eurasia, Canada experiences little immigration from its one border nation.50 Canada is accessible to most of the world only through air or sea travel, which is easily restricted and requires a government visa to enter the country. As a result, immigration to Canada is effectively controlled by the government. Because of this reality, the Canadian public is less fearful of a mass homogenous immigration bloc significantly affecting the culture.

Unlike the United States or Europe, no single immigrant group forms greater than 15% of

47 Neil Bissoondath, “I am Canadian” Saturday Night 109, 8 (October, 1994), 119. 48 Kymlicka, http://post.queensu.ca/~bantingk/Canadian_Multiculturalism.pdf 49 According to the Pew Research Center, in 2008 Mexican immigrants accounted for 32% of all immigrants living in the United States. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1191/mexican-immigrants-in-america- largest-group 50 Of the 247,243 permanent residents admitted to Canada in 2008, 11,216 were from the United States http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2008/permanent/10.asp

49 the total immigration pool. As a result of these two facts, historically multiculturalism in

Canada was less fraught with the fear of ‘being overrun’ than it is in other Western nations.

The implementation of multicultural policy with regard to immigration was to understand the new demands of and respond to them with changing

Canadian values and within the Canadian liberal framework. Whereas in its early history

Canada, from time to time, responded to the challenges of cultural pluralism with an imperial, or racist, hand, it was beginning to respond in a more inclusive manner. Part of this change was a result, as we have seen, of timing, of a reaction to the demands of a bilingual, bicultural idea, of politicking, of geography, and perhaps a small part, out of idealism.

Underpinnings of Canadian Multiculturalism

One way of understanding the idea of multiculturalism is in what it developed in response towards. Kymlicka writes that, “all struggles for multiculturalism share in common a rejection of earlier models of the unitary, homogenous nation-state.”51 The earlier model nation-state being dominated by one particular cultural group which uses the national infrastructures (such as public schools, national symbols, unified legal systems, etc.) to either assimilate or slowly eliminate minority cultures. Multiculturalism grew from the contestation by various substate groups to this kind of nation-state project as a way to protect and promote particular cultures.

51 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2007), 61

50

Canadian philosopher Charles has described two different kinds of politics in the West, one based more strongly in traditional liberalism and one based in a more contemporary liberal multiculturalism. The ‘politics of equal dignity,’ as Taylor calls them, is based in a more traditional liberalism that ascribes a universality to the human condition and is rooted in the notion of broad notions of equality. The politics of equal dignity ascribes to everyone "an identical basket of rights and immunities," identical because it is limited to that aspect of everyone that is assumed to be universally the same, namely, "our status as rational agents,"52 agents defined by a shared potential for deliberative reason.

In contrast, ‘the politics of difference’ is more rooted in a multicultural frame.

This kind of politics does not merely allow differences to exist, but is instead committed to their flourishing. While we understand the ‘politics of equal dignity’ to subordinate local cultural values to the universal value of free rational choice, the ‘politics of difference’ names as its preferred value the active fostering of the unique distinctiveness of particular cultures. It is the actual distinctiveness rather than that capability to make distinct choices, which is cherished and protected by this politics. Whereas the ‘politics of equal dignity,’ focuses on what is the same in all" and regards particularity as icing on a basically homogeneous cake, the ‘politics of difference’ asks us to recognize and even foster particularity" as a first principle.53

52 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 41 53 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 43

51

Canada attempts to follow Taylor’s ‘politics of equal dignity’ in that much of

Canadian multiculturalism is borne out of the extension of the liberal of a universal ideal of human rights. The preamble of the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act begins by affirming the individual rights of persons to equality before the law, freedom of conscience, religion, thought, expression, peaceful association and assembly and goes on to say that Canada is adopting multiculturalism in order to further those commitments.

We can see that multiculturalism in Canada, at least legislatively, is located firmly within the camp of liberalism. In announcing the 1971 Canadian Multiculturalism Act Prime

Minister Trudeau said:

There cannot be one for Canadians of British and French

origin, another for the original peoples and yet a third for all others. For

although there are two official languages, there is no official culture, nor

does any ethnic group take precedence over any other. No citizen or group

of citizens is other than Canadian.

Kymlicka argues that the way multiculturalism in Canada “has been legally defined makes clear that it does not exist outside the framework of liberal-democratic and human rights jurisprudence, or as an exception to it, or as a deviation from it. Rather, it is firmly embedded within that framework. It is defined as flowing from human rights norms, as embodying those norms, and as enforceable through judicial institutions whose mandates is to uphold those norms.”54 Indeed

Kymlicka sees Canadian multiculturalism as an extension of a kind of civil rights

54 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2007), 107.

52 liberalism where the protection of the cultural and political interests of minority individuals is the continuation of a filling out the original human rights project.

In distinguishing between a strong and a weak version of multiculturalism it becomes a matter of degree. Both variants have their roots in liberal political theory, with strong multiculturalism characteristic of modern liberalism, and weak multiculturalism characteristic of . The weaker multicultural outlook is both willing to accept a diversity of newcomers to a society, and untroubled if they remain undigested.

The stronger multiculturalist view is that society should take positive measures not only to enable such people to participate as full members of society but also better to enable them to maintain their separate identity and traditions. Diversity should not only be tolerated but also fostered or promoted, and supported – both financially (if necessary) and by special rights for minority cultures. For Kymlicka, the liberal state should take active steps to ensure that groups have the resources they need to sustain themselves.

This means not simply subsidizing their activities but also ensuring that legal and political arrangements do not discriminate against or disadvantage cultural minorities.

Equally, however, the state should also make sure that cultural groups respect certain basic civil rights to which all individuals are entitled in a liberal order. For Kymlicka, the stance of ‘weak’ multiculturalism (or weak liberalism) offers a policy that amounts to little more than ‘benign neglect’; and such a policy, he argues, ultimately fails properly to address the crucial questions that confront a multicultural polity.

Kymlicka suggests that in Western there has been a general trend towards greater recognition and accommodation of diversity. This trend is shown to be

53 expressed in different ways in different democracies. Generally, it takes the following forms: either an increased autonomy for national minorities, a move away from policies of assimilation of immigrants, or a greater recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples. Canadian multiculturalism is distinctive in that it incorporates all three of the forms of diversity at the same time “in the extent to which it has not only legislated but also constitutionalized , practices of accommodation.”55 Multiculturalism also can deal differently with different kinds of minority groups. Kymlicka writes of a distinction between what he calls ‘national minorities’ and polyethnic, or immigrant, groups.

National minorities meet the following criteria, present at founding; prior history of self- government; common culture; common language; governing selves through institutions.

(For example First Nations people in Canada). Polyethnic groups are voluntary immigrant groups and as such don’t require the same effort of the state in accommodation.

The state response to these kinds of groups is still to work for some kind of accommodation that, for Kymlicka, allows for external protections (ie. through legislation, funding, or some other government mechanism) but generally works against internal restriction in the groups (through things like bills of rights). He does allow that the distinctions between external protections and internal restrictions may sometimes be unclear. A group can be protected only if it can be defined and the majority may misdefine a minority or a minority may manipulate its definition against the majority or

55 Andrew Hughes and Alan Sears, “The Struggle for Citizenship Education in Canada: The Centre Cannot Hold,” in The Sage Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy, ed. James Arthur, Ian Davies and Carole Hahn (London: Sage Publications, 2008), 129.

54 against its own internal minorities.

The government response to the demands of cultural groups presents challenges in a liberal state. The tension, between group and individual demands in Canada, and the laws and policies the support both individual rights and group demands will be discussed further in the chapters that follow.

Criticisms of Multiculturalism

In a somewhat zealous critique of multiculturalism, Stanley Fish argues that it is, essentially, hooey. Boutique multiculturalists, as Fish calls them, go in for a kind of superficial multiculturalism, enjoying ethnic foods, festivals and clothing, but pulling back when the philosophical, or foundational, differences between cultures appear. A boutique multiculturalist may endorse a festival of Eid, but would not consider an argument to allow Muslims to participate in their own separate judicial system. “The boutique multiculturalist resists the force of the appreciated culture at precisely the point at which it matters most to its strongly committed members.”56 The reason the boutique multiculturalist resists those forces is that he sees as essentially the same and their cultures merely as an adornment. He understands that identity as a human being is the essential one, and that this identity must cut through all the rest. In this understanding, culture is something that sits on top of our core identities rather than something constitutive. This understanding is problematic in that it demands that people bracket out their cultural beliefs at precisely the point they are most important to them. Take the example of a pro-choice or pro-life individual. The pro-choice individual believes deeply

56 Stanley Fish, “Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech,” Critical Inquiry 23 ( 1997): 370.

55 that a woman’s body is her own and that she has domain over the choices that affect her body. The pro-life individual believes just as deeply that pro-choicers are either or supporters of . These cultural beliefs are so deeply held as to be constitutive to the people that hold them and not merely an adornment on top of the core of human universality.57

The strong multiculturalist endorses Taylor’s ‘politics of difference’ in that s/he values difference above the universality of a human core and understands that these differences are constitutive. “For the strong multiculturalist the first principle is not rationality or some other supracultural universal, but tolerance.”58 Tolerance as a guiding principle is just as problematic however, in that it forces the strong multiculturalist to the point where he must decide either that tolerance of the intolerant is acceptable, thereby violating his own principle, or deciding that tolerance of the intolerant is intolerable, similarly violating his own principle.

Fish endorses instead Taylor’s call for inspired adhockery. In this understanding universal principles that can guide us through every decision are an unreachable expectation and the best we can hope for is a reasoned ad-hoc set of principles to guide us through the meeting of cultures in our society. That society is becoming multicultural is

57 It has been pointed out to me that one’s stance on abortion may follow from a cultural or religious identity (e.g. Catholic), but it may also be formed in opposition to or in tension with one’s identity (e.g. a pro-Choice Catholic). i.e. One’s identity as a Catholic can give rise to a politics that is in line with the Catholic church and one that is at odds with it. While this is certainly true, there can be no doubt that for a significant population, and particularly for those most fundamental and absolutist in their beliefs, this is not a political issue but a moral one attached to their cultural identity. 58 Stanley Fish, “Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech,” Critical Inquiry 23 (Winter 1997): 373.

56 neither a positive nor a negative for Fish, it is a demographic reality that must be faced.

How we deal with this reality is all that is left.

Canadian author Richard Gwyn argues that Canadian multicultural policy is both unnecessary to those it intends to help and slowly destructive to the nation as a whole.

Gwyn sees multicultural policy as unnecessary because by the time it began to be officially adopted, Canada had already moved beyond it’s colonial, sometimes racist, values and towards a higher valuing of cultural pluralism. Canadian immigration became free from racial discrimination in 1962, and officially open to the world when the points system was introduced. The 1967 introduction of the points system gave preference to immigrants who, among other things: knew English or French, were not too old/too young to take regular jobs, had arranged employment in Canada, had a relative or family member in Canada, had proper education and training, and were immigrating to a region of high employment. As a result, Canada began to receive dramatically more immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, the and Asia.59 “We stopped being (parochial and colonialist) for quite some time: within the lifetime of almost every Canadian , our attitudes have undergone a sea change”60

To pick a point with Gwyn’s discussion of timing, noting that Canada was already moving towards non- (or perhaps less-) racist values regarding immigration, the removal of racial barriers in immigration occurred in 1962 and the Royal Commission on

Bilingualism and Biculturalism was set up merely one year after. This is a very small

59 http://www.canadiana.ca/citm/specifique/immigration_e.html#1967 60 Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 273

57 window for a country to have suddenly lost its prejudice. Even if that could be said legislatively, the implementation of multicultural policy had as a chief goal addressing the de facto and not only de jure issues of newcomers.

Additionally if a chief goal of multiculturalism is not merely the loosening of racial quotas but in fact to “assist cultural groups to retain and foster their identity”61 as has already been shown, then the criticism is beside the point. Maintaining an element of a national identity and the relationship between the government and the individual is where the challenge of multicultural policy is to Canada and where the questions of its usefulness and its appropriateness lie. The individual relationship to the state is, and must remain, paramount.

Gwyn writes that, “official multiculturalism encourages apartheid, or to be a bit less harsh, ghettoism."62 The more multiculturalism policy has been in place, "the higher the cultural walls have gone up inside Canada"63. Multiculturalism encourages ethnic leaders to keep their members "apart from the mainstream", practicing "what can best be described as mono-". In this way, "Our state encourages these gatekeepers to maintain what amounts, at worst, to an apartheid form of citizenship."64 Gwynn understands Canadian multiculturalism to be reliant on ‘spokesmen’ of culture who create false, calcifying, models. In addition to being false, these cultural models tend to

61 Canadian Multiculturalism Act Online at: http://publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/CIR/936-e.htm 62 Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 274 63 Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 8 64 Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 234

58 restrict the freedom of their members and encourage a retreat within particular cultural spheres.

Writer Neil Bissoondath criticizes Canadian multicultural policy as a naturalized

Canadian who immigrated to Canada as an 18 year old from Trinidad. In his view,

Canadian multicultural policy serves to both “exoticize” the new comers to Canadian society and to create a series of “mental ghettos for the various communities.” Thus

Bissoondath says that multiculturalism has led to undeniable ghettoization.”65 Rather than promoting integration, multiculturalism is encouraging the idea that immigrants should form "self-contained" ghettos "alienated from the mainstream". This ghettoization is "not an extreme of multiculturalism but its ideal: a way of life transported whole, a little outpost of exoticism preserved and protected."66 He approvingly quotes Arthur

Schlesinger's claim that multiculturalism rests upon a "cult of ethnicity" which

"exaggerates differences, intensifies resentments and antagonisms, drives even deeper the awful wedges between races and nationalities. The endgame is self-pity and self- ghettoization,” or what Schlesinger calls “cultural and linguistic apartheid.”67,68

According to Bissoondath, multiculturalism policy does not encourage immigrants to think of themselves as Canadians, and indeed even the children of immigrants "continue to see Canada with the eyes of foreigners. Multiculturalism, with its emphasis on the

65 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), 111 66 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), 110. 67 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), 98. 68 Arthur Schlesinger, The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1991), 1, 137-8

59 importance of holding on to the former or ancestral homeland, with its insistence that

There is more important than Here, encourages such attitudes."69

How Thick or Thin is Canadian Multiculturalism?

On the other hand, Randell Hansen writes that Canadian multiculturalism is a

‘thin’ multiculturalism, or rhetorical multiculturalism, meant primarily for the integration of new immigrants. In a ‘thin’ multiculturalism when there is a conflict between cultural and individual values, the liberal idea of the individual will win out. In so-called ‘thick’ multiculturalism, which was more common in Western Europe until recently, cultural, or group, value takes precedence over individual value. As an example, Hansen refers to the now defunct British policy of allowing religious groups to refuse to hire a homosexual if such refusal was in line with religious script. Hansen argues for a calling our ‘thin’ multiculturalism what is it; a sensitive integration policy, and argues that “what has been lost is a vision of Canada in which undifferentiated is the overarching goal and in which our unity – as bearers of liberal rights and supporters of a common political project – matters more than our diversity.” My is that the whole multiculturalism policy is not so much harmful as useless," Hansen says. "It doesn't make the situation worse but it hasn't delivered what it intended to deliver -- that people would feel more attached and loyal to Canada." Canadian multiculturalism, while not akin to the strong

(former) multiculturalism policy of the , still however generates problems for its citizens, two of which Hansen illuminates. First, “it has led well-meaning liberal academics and commentators to adopt an indulgent attitude to demands for special

69 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), 133.

60 treatment articulated by (often unrepresentative and self-appointed) spokespeople who define (an often conservative version of) a minority’s cultural and religions requirements.”70 Second, even a multiculturalism rooted in liberalism encourages ethnic minorities to fall back on their culture history and language as cores of their identity, rather than acquiring a new one. State support for the persistence of unique cultural identities forces us to question whether it is those identities that are valued over the liberal values of unity within the political project.

Hansen’s argument that the thinness of Canadian multiculturalism shows it to be more an integration policy above all else overlooks elements of the policy. Hansen suggests that the smallness of the multicultural funding (around 15 million in

2013)71 partially demonstrates that it cannot be taken too seriously as dramatically affecting Canada. He also also concludes that the success of public schools is more influential to the success of immigrants in Canada. These arguments overlook a number of issues. With regard to funding, it is true that federal funding is not a significant budget item. However, multicultural policies exist, and are funded, at federal, provincial, and municipal levels. More importantly however, the effects of multicultural policy in

Canada more from the actual policies than the associated funding elements.

Similarly changes made to government institutions to effectively meet the multicultural legislation are already absorbed into regular budgets and don’t come out the additional federal dollars to which Hansen refers.

70 Randall Hansen, “Multiculturalism Through Thick and Thin: Social Cohesion and Identity in the Shadow of Terrorism,” Metropolis World Bulletin, 7 (, 2007) http://canada.metropolis.net/pdfs/World_Bulletin_socialcohesion_e.pdf 71 http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/ethnicstudies/2013/02/qa-with-randall-hansen-major-debates-and- challenges-in-immigration-canada-and-europe/

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In Who Gets In, Stoffman argues that Canadian multiculturalism in more rhetoric than reality. Stoffman writes that, “Canada has no right to claim to be multicultural because it disallows cultural practices that conflict with deeply held values of the majority population [for example not recognizing the Jewish Get as a legal document for or and not allowing Sikh men to carry the Kirpan in certain places]…Canada should stop trying to have it both ways: either it should be multicultural, or if it does not want to be, it should stop claiming that it is.”72 Stoffman also claims that a pattern still exists, despite the enactment of official multiculturalism policy in the

1970’s, that the grandchildren of immigrants to Canada retain little to none of their language and, “identify only slightly if at all with other aspects of the original immigrants' native culture.”73 This claim however is troubled by the finding that second generation immigrants to Canada, those born in Canada to immigrants, have less of a sense of belonging to Canada than their parents. A Toronto article stated,

“While 65 per cent of recent black immigrants, 70 per cent of South Asians and 52 per cent of Chinese felt they belonged in Canada, those numbers dropped to 37 per cent, 50 per cent and 44 per cent in the second generation.”74 The reality of immigration to and integration into Canada are different things, which is why the varieties of multiculturalism need to be separated out to be properly investigated. In the chapters that follow, I hope to contribute to a clearer understanding of the diverse form of

72 Daniel Stoffman, Who Gets In: What’s wrong with Canada’s immigration program and how to fix it (Toronto: Mcfarlane, Walter & Ross, 2002), 121 73 Daniel Stoffman, Who Gets In: What’s wrong with Canada’s immigration program and how to fix it (Toronto: Mcfarlane, Walter & Ross, 2002), 123. 74 Lesley Ciarula Taylor, “Darker the skin, less you fit,” , May 14th, 2009, accessed May 4, 2014

62 multiculturalism. A key assumption in both Hansen and Stoffman’s criticism of Canadian multiculturalism is the discussion of cultures and members of those cultural groups as more bounded and definite that I believe is warranted. It is written about almost as multiple cultures as separate, contained bubbles, needing to find a way to interact with the larger bubble. This presupposes too much homogeneity within those bubbles and tends to conflate having a shared language and/or religious aspects with larger shared concerns that, in reality, may not exist.

Donald Moon in Constructing Community writes, “By all means let us be sensitive to difference. But the idea that groups are internally homogeneous in these ways, particularly such large and diverse groups as “lesbians, gays, blacks, Hispanics, other peoples of color and subordinated classes,” let alone, “women,” is absurd….In fast- changing societies such as ours, both individuals’ affiliations and the nature and identity of particular groups will alter significantly in relatively short periods of time.”75

Outcomes of Multiculturalism

The outcomes of Canadian multicultural policy are contested between those who find the policy to be effective in the integration of immigrant groups into Canadian society and those who find it to be creating a set of bracketed Canadians living in one society but apart from one another. I use bracketed here intentionally instead of hyphenated because a hyphenated Canadian suggests, at least to me, more of an interaction between facets of identity. The critics of multiculturalism (Gwyn, Bissondath,

75 J. Donald Moon, Constructing Community: Moral Pluralism and Tragic Conflicts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 189.

63 for example) would prefer the term bracketed as is suggests more of an expressed (and they would say preferred) distinction between the identities.

Kymlicka finds that Canadian multicultural policy has positively affected the integration of immigrants to Canada when he considers four particular categories: citizenship, political participation, competence, and intermarriage rates.

Since the adoption of official multiculturalism in 1971, rates have increased. “moreover…we find that it is the ‘multicultural groups’ – that is, immigrants from non-traditional sources for who the multiculturalism policy is most relevant – which have the highest rates of naturalization.”76 Kymlicka also finds high rates of political participation in non-ethnic parties amongst so-called multicultural groups. He also finds rates of official language acquisition and intermarriage to be high or rising.77 His findings, however, are challenged by more recent findings in the work of Jeffrey Reitz who found that second generation immigrants, particularly visible minorities,78 feel less a sense of attachment to Canada than their immigrant parents.79

Similarly, Kymlicka’s findings are not necessarily of any effect of multicultural policy. Indeed inter-marriage rates are rising in most nations around the world, a reflection of liberalizing attitudes towards inter-ethnic conflicts, rather than any

76 Will Kymlicka, “Immigrants, Multiculturalism, and Canadian Citizenship” p 2 (paper presented at the Social Cohesion Through , Ottawa, November 2, 1997), 2. 77 Will Kymlicka, “Immigrants, Multiculturalism, and Canadian Citizenship” p 2 (paper presented at the Social Cohesion Through Social Justice, Canadian Jewish Congress Ottawa, November 2, 1997), 3-4 78 The term visible minorities is becoming a problematic one, particularly in Toronto, where the population of visible minorities is greater than 50% and growing. 79 Jeffrey Reitz, “Chapter 1 Assessing Multiculturalism as a Behavioural Theory” in Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity / Edition 1, ed. Jeffrey G. Reitz, Raymond Breton, Karen Kisiel Dion, Kenneth L. Dion, Mai Phan (Springer Netherlands, 2009), 14.

64 particular feature of multicultural policy.80 High rates of naturalization in Canada similarly can not necessarily be attributed to multicultural policy. As has previously been mentioned, Canadian immigration policy was changed in the 1960’s to encourage a class of immigrants who have skills in one of the official languages and skills to succeed in the labor force. These changes, made before multicultural policy was instituted are seemingly as likely contributors to high rates of naturalization in Canada. Additionally, it is suspect that Kymlicka uses official language acquisition as an indicator of the success of multicultural policy rather than immigration policy, for skill in one of the two official languages has been legislatively valued in Canadian immigration policies since 1967.

Political participation is also a complex subject to investigate and Kymlicka’s association of high rates of political participation with the policies of multiculturalism are similarly questionable. Political parties, in Canada and elsewhere, actively court voters, not for any pluralistic or moral value, but simply because votes are votes and political power is determined by the raw numbers of those votes. In Canada, the federal Liberal Party has long been identified with ethnic minorities. “Ethnic minorities and immigrants have also tended to vote Liberal, due to the party’s association with a generous immigration and policy, as well as the fact that Liberal governments established, and have vigorously defended for decades, the policy of official multiculturalism.”81

In a broad study of the integration and attachments of ethnic minorities in Canada,

Jeffrey Reitz found that, in Canada, “ethnic attachments are positively related to well-

80 Jeffrey Reitz, “Chapter 1 Assessing Multiculturalism as a Behavioural Theory” in Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity / Edition 1, ed. Jeffrey G. Reitz, Raymond Breton, Karen Kisiel Dion, Kenneth L. Dion, Mai Phan (Springer Netherlands, 2009), 16. 81 http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/ipg/ipg-2010-4/lang.pdf

65 being within a possible circumscribed community context, but negatively related to at least some other attachments to the broader society.”82 Significantly these effects appear most strongly not among recent immigrants, but in immigrants who have spent more time in Canada and among the children of immigrants. “This finding indicates that the potentially negative impact of ethnic community attachments is not only in relation to matter of nation identity. They may also restrict the development of attachments important to bonding with other groups in the community.”83

The findings that second generation immigrants are less attached to Canada than their immigrant parents give credence to two arguments. One, that Canadian multicultural policy is a sensitive immigration policy for those immigrating, helping the newcomer adjust to Canada by helping to keep some cultural norms that may shape choices in their lives and understand make sense of their own identities. Two, that Canadian multicultural policy maintains difference to such a degree that its encouragement of cultural difference is at the expense of an attachment to Canada and allows, or encourages, people to retreat to particular cultural communities.

82 Jeffrey Reitz, “Chapter 1 Assessing Multiculturalism as a Behavioural Theory” in Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity / Edition 1, ed. Jeffrey G. Reitz, Raymond Breton, Karen Kisiel Dion, Kenneth L. Dion, Mai Phan (Springer Netherlands, 2009), 40. 83 Jeffrey Reitz, “Chapter 1 Assessing Multiculturalism as a Behavioural Theory” in Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity / Edition 1, ed. Jeffrey G. Reitz, Raymond Breton, Karen Kisiel Dion, Kenneth L. Dion, Mai Phan (Springer Netherlands, 2009), 41.

CHAPTER 4

GOVERNMENT ROLE IN DEVELOPING NATIONAL IDENTITY THROUGH EDUCATION

Nationalism, National Identity, and Public Schools

The first step in understanding national identity in the context of education is to try to understand the role of the state in developing particular dispositions necessary for a in its citizens, and determining the place and role of public education in a liberal society.

The twin goals of the public school system in Canada have been one, to socialize the diverse population of Canada in such a way as to promote a stable society, and two, to educate the citizens for the dispositions needed in a liberal democracy. “The characteristic conviction of the school promoters was that mass schooling could be an effective instrument for instilling appropriate modes of thought and behaviour into children; in their minds, the purpose of mass schooling did not primarily involve the acquisition of academic knowledge. School systems were designed to solve a wide variety of problems ranging from crime to , and from idleness to vagrancy.” 84

Educators related the potential for education in maintaining a functioning democracy in Canada to three main problems they foresaw it solving: the impact of constant and substantial immigration; the transition from agricultural to industrial ; and process of state formation in which citizens came to exercise political

84 http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/history-of-education

66 67 power. While all three of these causes played key roles in the minds of school promoters across Canada, the relative importance that each leading educator attributed to them depended on the regional and cultural context in which the school promoter functioned, however there tended to be broad agreement. That leading educators were so consistent in their ambitions is not surprising since they not only read each other's writings, but also were often in touch with each other. The leading figures in the formation of public education in their respective provinces first and then, through their influence, the rest of the country, were in Ontario, Jean-Baptiste Meilleur in Québec, and

John Jessop in British Columbia. These three often worked in with one another and greatly influenced both each other and the future of public education in

Canada. In turn, these school promoters operated in an international context. For example, Egerton Ryerson visited more than 20 countries during 1844 and 1845 when he was developing his proposals for a public school system.85 At the heart of Ryerson’s educational ideas lay his Methodist Christian faith. Prior to working in public education in Ontario, Ryerson was a Methodist minister. Next to religion, Ryerson believed that education was God’s purpose for man. To Ryerson, carried out in a Christian context, education promoted virtue and usefulness in the world and was intricately tied to leading a good Christian life. Education made good and useful individuals and so it was also a key agent in supporting the good society, inasmuch as it helped to promote social harmony, self-discipline, and loyalty to properly constituted authority. To Ryerson it was the duty of education to develop “all the intellectual powers of man, teach him self-

85 http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/history-of-education

68 reliance as well as dependence on God, excite him in industry and enterprise, and instruct him in his rights as well as the duties of man.”86

From these principles Ryerson, Meilleur, and Jessop drew particular goals. First, the system of education must be Christian: a secular education was a danger to the child and the society as well as a denial of God’s message to mankind. Secondly, in order to have its intended effects on all children, schooling must be universal. A truly national system must also be “extensive” or “comprehensive”: it must meet the needs of all ranks and vocations by providing both elementary and advanced institutions of education. As well, the system must be both British and Canadian. The schools had a duty to uphold the

British tie and respect for British constitutional government, and at the same time to foster local and serve the particular needs and circumstances of Upper

Canada’s social and economic life. Meilleur believed that in Quebec, education must be primarily French with Canadian elements secondary. The system must be the active concern of government. In the liberal understanding, government had a duty to sustain and encourage those institutions that promoted the welfare of its citizens.87

In Ontario, Ryerson sought universality and improved quality in several ways. In a period when much of the province was still being settled, he provided the legislative and financial devices that enabled even new, small communities to provide schools for themselves. He also led the campaign, which culminated in the Schools Act of 1871, to make every elementary school tuition-free and to introduce Ontario’s first tentative

86 Ontario Department of Education Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada (University of Library, 1894), 188 87 http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5817

69 measure of compulsory attendance. For Ryerson however, it was not enough to ensure that the rudiments alone were universally available. Through exhortation and regulation, he tried to make certain that the program of studies extended well beyond the ‘three Rs’ so that the elementary schools not only began but completed all of the schooling most children and their parents would want or need. He tried to ensure that textbooks were pedagogically sound and reflected the political, social, and religious values he believed should underpin Upper Canadian society.88 Finally, he did what he could to promote improved teaching. In 1847 he established the first -training institution and he constantly attempted to set progressively higher standards for the certification of elementary school .89

Schools as Space for Public Engagement

Liberal democratic theory sometimes tends to portray individuals as generally rational creatures who confront each other and society naturally ready to engage in commerce and politics. In practice, we are far less confident that each individual can be fully prepared for life in a liberal democratic society by their diverse families or other separate, private cultural communities. There must be something that binds together free, separate individuals – some common core of skills, knowledge, or value commitments – without which our commitment to freedom threatens to dissolve into anarchy. In liberal democratic theory, this is usually established by philosophical argument, for example, concerning the terms of a social , or practice in democratic politics. In practice,

88 Upper Canada is meant to signify generally what is now the southern Ontario. It was called the Province of Upper Canada from 1791 to 1841. What is now Quebec was called Lower Canada. The upper and lower relate to the headwaters of the River. 89 http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5817

70 however, such a core must be actively created by groups and institutions, and, reasonably, in modern societies the public schools have been central to this effort.

In 1871, Ontario and New Brunswick passed compulsory school laws, and tax supported education laws. The Nova Scotia Free School Act was passed in 1864 and

Manitoba’s in 1890. Combining the compulsory nature of schools, with the fact that

Canada had a diverse population, Canadian public schools have historically been a place where different ethnicities, economic classes, religious faiths, etc., share a space and learn from a shared curriculum. The idea is particularly important in Canada as we have seen that shared values are the primary way in which the nation constructs its identity because of the ethnic and cultural diversity inherent to Canadian demographics.

The notion that public schools in Canada would be places to develop shared understandings and shared values was perhaps somewhat less controversial in its inception than would be if thought about now. This is because while Canada had elements of diversity in its founding, society generally concerned itself with a diversity constrained to the European population present in Canada. That is not to say that other minorities weren’t present, but the vast majority of immigrants and second generation

Canadians were descended from Europe. As Klymicka noted, in the mid-twentieth century, Canadians, especially those with organized political power, were largely white and European. That multiculturalism was pushed by ethnic groups that were generally well integrated and had been in Canada for several generations lessened considerably the fear that a multicultural Canada would have to accept cultural practices that were vastly different than those already accepted and widely practiced.

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Public schooling in Canada demands that all parents give up some elements of control in the education of their children. This is done for two particular reasons. First, in understanding children as individuals, the state has a duty to ensure that children are educated to the minimum level required to authentically and freely make informed choices in a liberal democracy. Second, the shared sacrifice of direct control over our children’s education is in order to create a kind of shared civic virtue necessary for the stability of the liberal state. (I will address the conflict between freedom and a state’s control over the content of education further in this chapter and the next. It will become apparent that, at least with regard to the public schooling of children, we live in a state with liberal perfectionist tendencies, or comprehensive liberalist tendencies, with a kind of perfectionism hidden underneath, and therefore have an ideal, however broad it may be, of the good and seek to dispose our children towards that good.)90 Schools aim to build what Rawls called, ‘an overlapping consensus,’ thereby creating a political sphere where citizens holding different conceptions of justice, morality, or religion, etc. can achieve consensus. The consensus is built through, in part, creating a freestanding political conception that citizens with different comprehensive doctrines can share.

Schools can be an effect instrument in creating the aforementioned freestanding conception.

90 Comprehensive and is distinct from political liberalism in that is more explicity includes ethical considerations. Whereas political liberalism attempts to limit itself to a theory of right as opposed to a theory of good, comprehensive and perfectionist liberalism are a substantive, moral theory about the good. I understand perfectionist liberalism as described by Nussbaum in, “Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 39. She believes that perfectionist liberalism covers "not only the political domain but also the domain of human conduct generally” and as such can, ironically, be too overwhelming in their demands on individuals in that it presupposes a particular conception of the good in a plural society.

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Mann wrote, “those articles in the creed…which are accepted by all, believed in by all, and which form the common basis of our political faith, shall be taught to all.”91

The idea of a national character to education, while unsettling at first, is less so when investigate deeper. “The principles reasons that justify the idea of a common school are advanced as universals. They are said to apply to everyone, and yet one of the more important roles of the common school is to create, reproduce, and sustain a particular identity, not a universal one. This identity that we have as members of a nation, and this identity frames the way in which the ‘universal’ principles are interpreted and applied. It is this identity that schools create through citizenship education. Hence if the idea of advancing universal individual growth is intended as a universal, it is one that is circumscribed by national boundaries. ”92 Senator Rufus Pope in 1919 introduced a resolution proposing that ‘there should be established in Canada a national free compulsory school system.’ In his speech introducing the resolution, Pope said, “No man can travel throughout Canada without realizing that, in the first fifty years of our confederated life, we have failed to a great degree in creating that strong unanimity of sentiment which is so essential to the development of a country.”93 He saw public schooling in Canada much like Mann did in the United States.

The same concepts are true of the concerns of the relationship of groups and individual relationships to the state. Although some object to on the

91 Horace Mann & Felix Pecant, Life and Works of Horace Mann, Volume IV (New York: Lee and Shepard, 1891), 282. 92 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 35. 93 Rufus H. Pope, “A National School System.” In Debates, Senate (Canada), (30 , 1919): 265-76. 13th Parliament, 2nd session.

73 ground that it violates the principle of by allowing less qualified people to advance over more qualified ones, few here give it a second thought if a less-qualified

American is selected over a more-qualified Italian. What is expected for most positions is that one better-qualified American will not be passed over in favor of a less-qualified one and that a person from one cultural group within the nation will not favor a person from her own group over a better-qualified American from another group. Reinforcing the notion that a shared national public is so ingrained as to be invisible, Feinberg writes,

“Similarly the staunchest defenders of freedom of association on the cultural and religious levels think nothing about all the barriers –, visas, working permits- that are erected to limit association on the national level.”94

“What children pick up when they take on a national identity is the idea that nationhood involves collective inclusion and exclusion in a past, present, and future stream of activities, sufferings, and anticipations. They learn that as they become a member of that nation they enter this stream and, ideally, that as they become citizens they take responsibility for interpreting and directing it. Through the nation individuals are brought together as a people and as such, and they stand in distinction from others who are brought together as a different people.”95 The public schools help in creating both the shared notions that bind citizens together in their conscious political decision making and in their less conscious assumptions of unity.

94 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 36-7. 95 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 47-8.

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“In addition to the assumptions about nationalism that people in all nations share, each individual nation expresses through its members certain ideas, norms, self- understandings, and practices that distinguish it from other nations. ”96 Feinberg found these things in political and juridical practices, in literature, and in normal everyday expectations and behaviors. Feinberg explains that the task is now to provide a vision of public schools and national identity that allows for both the development of unifying sentiments and the recognition of cultural differences.

Liberal Autonomy and Education

Callan writes that in the liberal state, “legitimacy and justice are commonly taken to be the defining normative commitments.”97 Legitimacy requires the free consent of citizens and justice requires that those citizens have basic rights and realize a “fair distribution of benefits and burdens.”98 Callan, Gutmann, Brighouse, and Galston, among others, are engaged in a debate about goals and boundaries of a liberal government in educating its citizens so as to function within the state. The main considerations of which are whether the state is coercive in fostering a disposition in its citizens with the purpose of perpetuating the state and the strength of the commitment on the part of the state to ensuring individual freedom within a group context. Is this, in fact, coercive if the state simultaneously promotes an autonomy-facilitating education? Can a state be legitimate if the inculcation of this disposition prevents citizens from ‘freely’ giving their consent to the government? Does that state violate its commitment to individuals by fostering a skill

96 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 48. 97 Eamonn Callan, “Liberal legitimacy, Justice and Civic Education,” Ethics 111 (2000): 141. 98 Eamonn Callan, “Liberal legitimacy, Justice and Civic Education,” Ethics 111 (2000): 141.

75 and ability to act autonomously that can may well work against the existence of particular cultures.

Galston, in Liberal Purposes, argues that the state goes too far in usurping parental authority when the value of autonomy is favored over tolerance and respect for diversity. Galston worries that in favoring autonomy, the state violates the “right to live unexamined as well as examined lives—a right the effective exercise of which may require parental bulwarks against the corrosive influence of modernist skepticism.”99

Following the criticism of Mill in On Liberty, Galston suggests that a premium on the value of autonomy, fostered in public schools, will serve to eliminate the diversity (of religion, of thought, conscience, etc.) that liberalism was initially meant to protect. By educating children towards autonomy, it is as such not only exposing them to different ways of the ‘good life,’ but requiring that they understand these different ways and are able to critically reflect upon their own. Mill argued that this kind of education, however, may be “a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another,” a method of state coercion, used to generate loyalty to whomever is in power, be it “a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or [a democratic] majority.”100

Galston, however, places too much emphasis on the ability of parents to control their children, for children, while being the responsibility of their parents, are not wholly subject to their will. While parents have a primary interest in their children, children are also themselves individuals who enjoying the protections afforded by liberalism

99 William A. Galston Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 254. 100 , “On liberty” in The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women & (New York: The , 2002), 110.

76 including specific individual rights. As such, the state has a duty to protect the interests of children in developing the capacity for both authentic consent to a democratic authority, and the capacity of rational, informed, choice in the path of their lives. This capacity requires that children have the distinct ability to act autonomously as , should they so choose. It cannot be merely left to parents to direct the content of children’s lives, for cannot a parent be as tyrannical as the state in the life of a child?

If the state is adequately to protect children’s interests—including their prospective interest in autonomy—it must do more than require that they develop a

‘minimal awareness’ of other ways of life. It must have the authority to establish and enforce more rigorous educational standards aimed at the cultivation of autonomy in children. These include standards for the development of the kinds of critical thinking skills and dispositions such as the ability to evaluate reasons, determining how well they support particular claims or beliefs, and the inclination to value good reasoning and act on its basis. The enforcement of these challenging educational standards will make it more difficult for some parents and local communities to pass their particular values, beliefs and ways of life onto their children. But this is the necessary cost of valuing autonomy before diversity, an argument I will make in the proceeding chapters.

In separating teaching for autonomy and teaching for authentic consent in a democracy, Brighouse writes that children necessarily grow up in a world where many influences work to make their beliefs and preferences non-autonomously.

Whether autonomy-facilitating education should be mandated depends on how authority over children’s upbringings should be divided between parents and the rest of society; while the permissibility of civic education

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turns on questions of what are the legitimating conditions of the liberal state.101 In this logical understanding children, being children, are not yet equipped to challenge or question the belief and family systems that they grow up within and thus generally understand these systems to be preferable, even if they are not. He goes on to argue that non-autonomously chosen commitments necessarily form part of a child’s life. “Many of our commitments must be formed non-autonomously. Many of our most deeply held beliefs were not selected through careful and rational weighing of the reasons for holding one belief or another, but by internalizing impressions, by trusting the testimony of others, or by trusting our intuitions or hunches.” These kinds of commitments are often formed through cultural or religious affiliations and rely on ideas of faith and tradition.

In order to counteract these commitments, or to be certain that they are freely entered into, Brighouse argues that an autonomy-facilitating education should be a goal of the state in public education. Education should be as value free as possible in this understanding, fostering in students’ knowledge and skill, rather than virtue. In this way,

Brighouse writes, students will be able to assess their own choices and decide authentically. Brighouse contrasts teaching students the knowledge and skill of autonomy with the knowledge and skill of . “The education does not try to ensure that students employ autonomy in their lives, any more than Latin classes are aimed at ensuring that students employ Latin in their lives. Rather it aims to enable them to live autonomously should they wish to.”102

101 Harry Brighouse, “Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy” Ethics 108 (July, 1998): 720. 102 Harry Brighouse, School Choice and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 67.

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Callan argues that an education that will allow for an authentic consent to the authority of the state, as Brighouse requires, cannot be merely autonomy facilitating, but must be autonomy promoting. Autonomy facilitation is not enough to break through the

“emotional inhibitions [that can be] effectively cultivated to protect the amalgam of belief and desire from future critical assessment.”103 In order to fully allow citizens to reflect actively and reasonably on their choices, education must be autonomy promoting.

Callan argues that an autonomy-facilitating education will not give children the actual ability to act autonomously, only a skill that they have little ability to use.

“Nonautonomous belief and preference formation often, perhaps characteristically, works not merely by blocking the acquisition of knowledge or skill. Instead, affect and desire are shaped so that even if the knowledge and skill is later acquired, these will not be used to correct the results of the original process.”104

To satisfy the educative requirements in a liberal state, acquiring the skills of, including the ability to act with, autonomy is not enough in Amy Gutmann’s assessment of the aims and confines of a liberal state. Gutmann writes, “the cultivation of virtues, knowledge, and skills necessary for political participation – has moral primacy over other purposes of public education in a democratic society. Political education prepares citizens to participate in consciously reproducing their society, and conscious social reproduction is the ideal not only of democratic education but also of democratic politics.”105 Gutmann however, separates ‘moral’ ideals from ‘political’ ones, assuming that conflicts within the

103 Eamonn Callan, “Liberal legitimacy, Justice and Civic Education,” Ethics 111 (2000): 146. 104 Eamonn Callan, “Liberal legitimacy, Justice and Civic Education,” Ethics 111 (2000): 146. 105 Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 287.

79 moral dimension can be subordinated to the political dimension. This idea however is problematic in that it doesn’t accept moral concerns as core concerns to those that hold them. The subordination of truly moral concerns to the political dimension is unlikely to be acceptable when we understand individual moral considerations to be fundamental to those that hold them. “The disagreement between them is anything but intellectual because it is so obviously fundamental. In an intellectual disagreement the parties can talk to one another because they share a set of basic assumptions; but in a fundamental disagreement, basic assumptions are precisely what is in dispute. You can either have fundamental or you can have intellectual, but you can't have both, and if, like Gutmann, you privilege intellectual, you have not honored the level of fundamental disagreement, you have evaded it.”106

Mustn’t we then go further in developing a disposition, or virtue, for democracy?

Further than merely developing of virtues of autonomy and placing political participation as the primary goals of education in a liberal society? As Macedo writes, “liberal democratic public institutions count on shaping wider social norms and expectations so that people are gently encouraged to behave in ways that are broadly supportive of our shared civic project.”107 In order to reproduce the liberal state, and do it in a successful manner, it is impossible, and somewhat undesirable, to avoid promoting a version of the moral and religious life while discouraging other versions. 108 Macedo argues that we

106 Stanley Fish, “Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech,” Critical Inquiry 23 (Winter 1997): 388-9 107 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge: , 2000), x. 108 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 5.

80 must face up to, “liberalism’s civic ambitions: to argue that we should not allow liberalism’s most alluring features – broad freedoms, , and the great pageant of diversity – to obscure other dimensions of a healthy, free, self-governing society.”109

Comprehensive, or perfectionist, liberalism is then required, at least within the sphere of education in order to develop children into citizens who can authentically consent to democratic legitimacy and reproduce legitimate democracy as adults.

Civic and Citizenship Education in Canada

Autonomy promotion is a necessary but not sufficient condition of education in a liberal state. Liberal virtues and democratic dispositions are similarly required of the citizenry. These dispositions are taught through a project of shared civic education that is a necessary commitment of public schools. What does a civic education look like?

Margaret Stimmann Branson provides the following useful definition of civic education:

Civic Education in a democracy is education in self government.

Democratic self government means that citizens are actively involved in

their own governance; they do not just passively accept the dictums of

others or acquiesce to the demands of others. As Aristotle put it in his

Politics (c 340 BC), "If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are

chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be attained when all persons

alike share in the government to the utmost." In other words, the ideals of

democracy are most completely realized when every member of the

109 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 275.

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political community shares in its governance. Members of the political

community are its citizens, hence citizenship in a democracy is

membership in the body politic. Membership implies participation, but not

participation for participation's sake. Citizen participation in a democratic

society must be based on informed, critical reflection, and on the

understanding and acceptance of the rights and responsibilities that go

with that membership.110

Combining Stimmann Branson’s ideas of civic education with Macedo’s conception of privileging particular conceptions of the ‘good’ leaves us with a particular idea of civic, or citizenship, education required in a pluralistic, liberal, state. When understood in this way, civic education is essential for a democracy

The idea of citizenship in education is rooted in the understanding that at least the core of Canadian society, and indeed all constitutionally bound nations, is a form of liberal perfectionism, or at least comprehensive liberalism. In Canada, as we have seen, a primary historical goal of public school has been to educate the public so that the state continues to flourish as a liberal democracy. As Horace

Mann said, “Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortification,” and “education is our only political safety. Outside this ark all is deluge.”111 While deluge may be a bit strong, the idea that schools allow us to perpetuate the liberal society is a founding element of their creation run by the state as a means to continue a

110 Margaret Stimmann Branson, A Forthcoming Education Policy Position Paper from the Communitarian Network, September 1998 http://mdk12.org/instruction/curriculum/social_studies/civic_ed.html 111 The New Era, Vol. III, No. 10 (October 1873), p. 368.

82 political ideology. In Canada soon after Mann, Egerton Ryerson attempted to grow the public school system in Ontario, fighting for a secular, public education.

Ryerson was appointed Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada in 1844.

He wrote, “On the importance of education generally we may remark, it is as necessary as the light; it should be as common as water, and as free as air”112

The liberal democratic state’s interest in creating a shared national unity among its citizens can be argued from a number of approaches. First, though the direction of its policies are determined by its constituents Canada, in its responsibility to its minority population as written in the Charter of Rights and

Freedoms, must try to find a way to mediate purely partisan decisions to ensure the rights of minorities and the continued stability of the state. One tactic the state takes in attempting to promote its stability and protect the interest of minorities is through education and socialization in schooling around specific national values that can be said to be a part of a national identity. Through education per se, there is an attempt on the part of the state to impress on its citizens the value of equality. The attempt on the part of the state to impress equality through socialization, while often falling short, has been an active goal since the founding of common schools in the 19th century. The creation of a common space in the public school classroom was intended, in part, to facilitate a cross-cultural understanding in an attempt to ease between-group tensions. This is particularly interesting because of the large difference between education in Quebec where the

112http://www.etfo.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/About%20ETFO%20Documents/ETFO%20History%20Do cuments/history-pt2.pdf

83 public system was largely influenced by the Catholic Church and in Ontario where it was influenced by . From those two separate spheres, each worked to promote cultural identification with its customs and language and we can see an example of the efforts towards building the aforementioned overlapping consensus.

A different aspect of socialization is the commonality of the public school experience. While schools may differ in their content and approaches depending on their respective communities, there exist commonalities of patriotism and nationalism that are taught to the students through such devices as the singing of

O Canada, history textbooks with shared narratives, etc. These devices attempt to create a national identity across race, class, and ethnic lines. The creation of these links is particularly important in Canada when compared to other nations, particularly historically, because unlike most nations, diversity is more the rule than the exception. A shared identity had to be created both for the original settlers because of their differing backgrounds and for the vast number of immigrants who have settled in Canada over the past 150 years. Between the

1890s and 1920s, citizenship education focused on assimilation and

Canadianization. At this time “[s]chools were meant to be a homogenizing force that would work with immigrant and native-born children and their families to create ‘good Canadian citizens’ in the image of British loyalists.”113 This was of particular concern in areas with large numbers of non-English speaking

113 Reva Joshee, Citizenship and Multicultural Education in Canada,” in ed. J. A. Banks, Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives (Toronto: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 135.

84 immigrants such as Ontario and the West. Canadianization was promoted through the use of English (except in Québec), statutory holidays, Canadian and provincial , and symbols throughout the public school curriculum.

Citizenship education in the 1920s through to the 1960s may be characterized as education as socialization and social living. Although citizenship was given less emphasis in education policies during this time, when it was discussed citizenship was described as a matter of personal character, in addition to national identity and pride.

Character meaning a personal commitment to the morality endorsed by the state. Those with good character were also good citizens and were those who served others in ways beyond what they did for themselves. The timing of the lack of direct citizenship education is interesting in that it encompasses the post war period of both world wars.

Citizenship education in the 1960s to the 1980s began to reflect broader and more inclusive notions of citizenship becoming evident in Canadian society at large. New

Canadian Studies courses emphasized pan-Canadian understandings and promoted local and regional priorities instead of a coherent vision of Canada. As a result of official multicultural policy, material in texts reflecting assimilationist goals was replaced with material focused on multiculturalism. Glassford’s article, Citizenship and

National Self-identity: The Historical Impact of Curriculum and Textbooks in Shaping the Character of Ontario reviewed textbooks approved by the Ontario Ministry of

Education in the three successive eras – 1914-1928, 1950-1963, and 1989-2000.

Glassford found that as the end of the 20th century approached, “approved textbooks had again evolved. Less content-laden, more visually appealing, they contained far more

85 social history than ever before. There was no attempt to inculcate pro-British attitudes. In its place, there was a new focus on groups previously overlooked, such as women,

Aboriginals, the working class, and marginalized ethnic groups. Celebrating Canada’s diverse heritages inevitably de-emphasized the British roots.”114 Texts were also examined for racial, , class and other biases. Teachers began to emphasize world affairs and by 1980s there was growing recognition that citizenship education had to be both national and global in scope.115 The influence of multicultural policy is clearly demonstrated by these findings.

Another important change, according to Sears & Hughes, as well as Osborne, was the rising acceptance of a more active notion of citizenship and citizenship education by practitioners and policy-makers.116 Sears and Hughes examined policy documents from the 1980s and early 1990s from all the provinces and territories, with the exception of

Québec, in order to discover their intended purposes and practices. The authors found that the policies emphasized citizen action, participation, and use of knowledge.

Citizenship remains the primary focus of social studies.117

114 Larry Glassford “Citizenship Literacy and National Self-identity: The Historical Impact of Curriculum and Textbooks in Shaping the Character of Ontario”Activehistory.ca Online at: http://activehistory.ca/papers/history-paper-5/ 115 Alan Sears & Andrew Hughes, “Citizenship Education and Current Educational Reform,” Canadian Journal of Education, 21 no. 2 (Spring 1996) 123-142. 116 Alan Sears & Andrew Hughes, “Citizenship Education and Current Educational Reform,” Canadian Journal of Education, 21 no. 2 (Spring 1996) 123-142. 117 Vandra Masemann, “Citizenship education in Canada: The current status of teaching about citizenship in Canadian elementary and secondary schools. A pre-conference report prepared for the delegates to the Forum on Citizenship and Citizenship Education in Schools and Communities,” sponsored by the Department of the Secretary of State and the Canadian Education Association, Edmonton, Alberta. (November, 1987)

86

Studies of education in Canada, notably by Conley & Osborne and Tomkins118, have shown that although education is administered provincially, there is “a fair degree of similarity across the different systems.”119 The policy and curricular documents Sears &

Hughes examined showed that a commonality of perspective persisted in citizenship education. There were different nuances in different jurisdictions, but all the conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education that form the basis for policy in English-

Canadian public school curricula fall toward the activist end of the continuum of citizenship.120 Hughes observed that civic education in Canada has involved a knowledge of rights and obligations as well as a commitment to the ideals of Canadian democracy.121

The Ontario high school curriculum has included public as a requirement in its grade ten history courses, reflecting Conley’s assertion that the mandate of public education “is to train citizens, in the widest sense of the term.”122

If the Canadian state and public schools are today more open to cultural pluralism, several critics of multiculturalism, most notably Jack Granatstein, Richard Gwyn, and

Neil Bissoondath, have suggested that the Canadian state, via multiculturalism and multicultural education, encourages ethnic groups to maintain a segregated identity.

Rather than promoting integration (or a singular national identity), these critics suggest

118 Ken Osborne, “Education is the Best National Insurance: Citizenship Education in Canadian schools, Past to Present,” Canadian and International Education, 25(2) (1996) 31-57. 119 Marshal Conley & Ken Osborne, “Political Education in Canadian Schools An Assessment of Social Studies and Political Science Courses and Pedagogy,” International Journal of Political Education, 6 n1 (1983), 65-85. 120 Alan Sears & Andrew Hughes, “Citizenship Education and Current Educational Reform,” Canadian Journal of Education, 21 no. 2 (Spring 1996) 123-142. 121 Andrew Hughes, “Understanding citizenship: A Delphi Study,” Canadian and International Education, 23 (1994) 13-26. 122 Marshal Conley, “Theories and Attitudes Towards Political Education,” in ed. K. A. McLeod Canada and Citizenship Education (Toronto: Canadian Education Association, 1989) 134.

87 that Canadian institutions favour the formation of “self-contained ghettos”123 alienated from the Canadian mainstream. For Granatstein in the polemic Who Killed Canadian

History? this backlash against multiculturalism “comes from the widespread realization that it will erode the history and the heritage that Canadians share.”124 Simultaneously, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms puts the emphasis on individual rights and reinforces the demand for distinctive treatment, as Gywn writes, “in everything from turbans in the

RCMP to state-supported segregated schools.”125

However, as Kymlicka has indicated, the view of these critics is mistaken since immigrants actually integrate more quickly and more effectively today than they did before the adoption of multiculturalism as official policy.126 More importantly, they do so more successfully in Canada than in any other country that does not have such a policy.

Thus the problem for Kymlicka is not multiculturalism in itself but the concern among the Canadian population that multiculturalism has “no limit.” Canadians, he argues, value cultural diversity but they also want to know that “this diversity will be expressed within the context of common Canadian institutions, and that it does not entail acceptance of ethnic separation.”127 Canadians want immigrants to integrate into the Canadian society and they expect the Canadian state to take a central part in this nation-building project.

Andrew Hughes has found a general consensus among Canadians that their ideal of good

123 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin, 1994), 211 124 Jack Granatstein, Who Killed Canadian History? (Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), 92-3. 125 Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 274 126 Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998) 127 Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), 23.

88 citizenship includes dispositions such as “open-mindedness, civic mindedness, respect, willingness to compromise, tolerance, compassion, generosity of spirit, and loyalty…Many of these ideals would seem to be characterized by a willingness to set aside private interests and concern for the sake of the common good.”128

Osborne has declared the 1990s as the beginning of the disappearance of citizenship education in Canada. Instead of blaming its loss of importance on multicultural policy, he attributed this mainly to politicians’ and policy-makers’ prioritizing of the needs of the labour market and schools’ role in preparing students to fill these needs. However, despite the continuing devotion of schools to meet market demands, a reemergence of citizenship education in policies is evident in Canada and education systems around the world according to Joshee, Kerr, and Torney-Purta,

Schwille, & Amadeo.129

These policies do not necessarily reflect a continued commitment to active notions of citizenship, however. Giroux argues that since the 1980s there has been a restructuring of the discourse around citizenship education rather than a flight from it.130

In Canada, federal policies have restructured the discourse into a social cohesion framework. This framework recognizes diversity but positions it as a possible threat to

128 Andrew Hughes, “Understanding citizenship: A Delphi Study,” Canadian and International Education, 23 (1994), 21. 129 Reva Joshee, :Citizenship and Multicultural Education in Canada,” in ed. J. A. Banks, Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives (Toronto: Jossey-Bass, 2004) Kerr, D. (1999). Citizenship education: An international comparison. Retrieved April 30, 2009, from http://www.inca.org.uk/pdf/citizenship_no_intro.pdf Judith Torney-Purta, J. Schwille, & J.A. Amadeo, Civic education across countries: Twenty-four national case studies from the IEA Civic Education Project (Amsterdam: IEA, 1999) 130 Henry Giroux, Schooling for Democracy: Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age (London: Routledge, 1989)

89 the development of national unity. Policies are instead more concerned with promoting a sense of shared values as a means of achieving social . Henderson and McEwan examined the relative importance of shared values in the development of national identity. They conclude that a belief in shared values is important in strengthening social cohesion in Canada.131

Having established that a sense of national identity and purpose through shared history, shared language, etc. are impossible to achieve in Canada, the creation of a national identity around national values, embedded in the governing documents of the nation and learned thorough shared experience in the public school system is an abiding state interest. In the public school, citizens of all different backgrounds, be they religious, racial, or ethnic, give up control of the education of their children and essentially all children learn at least some lessons differently than they would have had their parents been in total control. The shared sacrifice of individualized control over our children’s education is the price we pay to live in a democratic society where the competing foundations of freedom and equality sometimes conflict. When these values conflict, the solution must be found in central ideals of the state.

131 A. Henderson & N. McEwen, “Do shared values underpin national identity? Examining the role of values in national identity in Canada and the United Kingdom,” National Identities, 7(2), (2005) 173-191.

CHAPTER 5

INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP IDENTITY IN CANADA

In Canada there exists a tension between individual and group rights. This tension is threaded through the history of Canada from long before the 1867 confederation right up to the present day. While situated firmly within the Western tradition of a state based upon individual rights and freedoms, the also includes a long history of negotiation and compromise with groups either existing within, or being brought into, the state.

Definition of a Liberal State

Despite the differing branches of liberal theory, the trunk of liberalism remains and can be said to hold at least the following commitments: believing in equality and individual liberty, supporting and individual rights, and supporting the idea of limited constitutional government. As Macedo writes, “the liberal foreground is composed, first, of the basic liberties for all that are familiar from bills of rights; freedoms of religious practice, rights of association, and personal privacy, as well as freedom to express your opinion, to travel, and, as put it, “to be neither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will” of others.”132 These protections are afforded in liberal states through such institutions as the , legislative , and the . These aspects can be thought of as negative constitutionalism, what called – that

132 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 8-9.

90 91 is a sphere of individual inviolability.133 is that which includes having the power and resources to be able to fulfill one’s chosen path and can be understood as a kind of freedom from internal constraints.134,135

A similar working definition of liberalism is also found in Gutmann’s Liberal

Equality, “1) A liberal theory begins by stipulating what constitutes an individual's interest. 2) Among such interests is an interest in liberty: in doing what one chooses without interference from others. 3) A state is then justified if and only if it satisfies the interests of individuals as previously understood. 4) A liberal theory assumes that a state is necessary to regulate the pursuit of individual interests.”136

The start of a liberal state then, is the freedom of the individual and an equality amongst individuals in relation to the state. The principles of diversity and tolerance are then premised upon the ability of individuals to act freely. Later in the chapter we will see how a change in the understanding of concepts relating to the freedom of individuals to act freely will be transformed into a principle that calls for an affirmation of particular kinds of lives, lives which require more than individual freedoms - government supported group freedoms. It will be this movement towards supported group freedoms that, in one understanding can be said to come out of liberalism, but in the end requires a violation of liberalisms foundational commitment to the individual.

133 Isiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) 134 Isiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) 135 Charles Taylor, "What's Wrong with Negative Liberty" in Law and Morality, 3rd edition. ed. David Dyzenhaus, Sophia Reibetanz Moreau and Arthur Ripstein. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) 359-368. 136 Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 3.

92

Canada as a Liberal State

Since even before its founding as a particular nation, communities in Canada have operated as, and been conceived as, liberal with respect to the state. The Province of

Quebec was created through the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the French and Indian

War (also known as the Seven Years War). In the treaty, France ceded the colony of New

France to Britain, and thus the creation of the Province of Quebec. While later liberal principles would establish in a more total sense, it was notable at the time that in the treaty, Quebecers were protected in the practice of their Catholicism.

Section IV of the treaty reads, the British Crown, in taking possession of Quebec, “agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholick [sic] religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will, in consequence, give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman

Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the

Romish [sic] church.”137 The Royal Proclamation of 1763, which clarified how the colonies would operate, established the constitutional principle still in effect in treaty negotiation with First Nations bands.

The British Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the then Province of Quebec into

Upper and Lower Canada. The Constitutional Act of 1791 was meant, in part, to address the United Empire Loyalists (also called Loyalists or ) who left the United States after Britain lost the Revolutionary War against the newly created United States of

America. In separating the Province of Quebec into the two provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, the Constitutional Act enacted representative government through

137 http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/encyclopedia/TreatyofParis1763- QuebecHistory.htm

93 elected assemblies, a key part of any liberal state. The main objectives of the act were: to guarantee the same rights and privileges as were enjoyed by loyal subjects elsewhere in

North America; to ease the burden on the imperial by granting colonial assemblies the right to levy taxes with which to pay for local civil and legal administration; to justify the territorial division of the Province of Quebec and the creation of separate provincial legislatures; and to maintain and strengthen the bonds of political dependency by remedying acknowledged constitutional weaknesses of previous colonial governments. The Constitution Act of 1867 (also called the British North

America Act, or BNA) created the federal Dominion of Canada starting July 1st 1867 and defined the particularities of federal parliamentary democracy and in Canada. While the Constitution Act did not have an explicit bill of rights, it has been understood to have an ‘’ which implied “that in Canada there must be a of government, acting under the influence of public opinion, of a free press, with free speech.”138 These commitments were made more clear in the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights and the Constitution Act of 1982 (which included the

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

If we are to accept the definition of a liberal state as discussed earlier in the chapter, we can see how Canada has had liberal elements since before its founding and had developed into a fully liberal state by confederation in 1867. These bonds have been strengthening through successive legislation including the bills of rights and Charter. The

138 , Constitutional . 2003 Student Edition. (Scarborough, Ontario: Thomson Canada Limited, 2003), 686.

94

1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in section two, enumerates what it calls the ‘Fundamental Freedoms.’ Section two of the Charter reads as follows:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of

conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and

expression, including and other media of

communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of

association.139

The goal of such freedoms is to protect individual liberty.

Groups Rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

While much of the framework of the Charter is liberal in the traditional understanding with a focus on individual rights and freedoms, there is an important counterweight in section 15, subsection 2 of the Charter. Section 15(1) outlines that every individual equal before the law and is granted equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination. However, subsection 2 reads, “Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”140 Similarly section 33 of the Charter, commonly known as the

‘notwithstanding clause’ has also been used to override the individual rights enumerated, most famously with the Charter of the French Language law in Quebec which, among

139 http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/page-1.html#l_I:s_2 140 http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/page-1.html#l_I:s_2

95 other effects, specified the size and amount of non-French language on signs in the province.

If we can understand the concept of positive liberty as a similarly important part of liberalism, the part, which includes having the power and resources to be able to fulfill one’s chosen path and can be understood as a kind of freedom from internal constraints, then we must broaden the definition of liberalism to include not only its foreground in individual protections, but its background necessary in creating the opportunities for the expressions of the free individual. The background of liberty can therefore be said to include the, “promotion of preconditions of active citizenship, capacities and dispositions conducive to thoughtful participation in the activities of modern political and civil society.”141

In considering the implications of combining the features of a free individual able to make their own choices towards a good life, and an active citizen with the capacity and disposition to engage with modern civil society, we must attempt to understand the further demands this puts on the elements of a liberal state.

In Kymlicka’s liberal framework, cultural identities are necessary to provide individuals with liberties in that for an individual to be free to make choices for a good life, the parameters of choice are provided through the framework of a culture. To

Kymlicka, “access to a societal culture is essential for individual freedom…people have a deep bond to their own culture, and that they have a legitimate interest in maintaining this

141 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 10.

96 bond.”142 He defines ‘societal cultures’ as “a culture which provides its members with meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres.”143 He further goes on to say that liberal societies such as Canada are required to act in some way to protect cultural distinctions, in order to remain liberal and committed to individual freedom. Kymlicka argues that liberal states already make particular choices that serve to promote the dominant culture, including choices about national holidays, state symbols, and internal boundaries. By privileging one, or more, particular cultures through making these choices, the government is necessarily disadvantaging others. Citizens of the disadvantaged cultures are therefore less free to make the choices to exist within their desired cultural frameworks. This idea is further explored in Charles Taylor’s Multiculturalism: The Politics of Recognition, specifically in his consideration of identity formation. Identity formation, according to Taylor, is a socially-based activity; it cannot be achieved in isolation. Identity, including cultural identity, is formed, against a background of those people who are important to us. Taylor explains the dialogue involved in development, especially cultural development, as occurring between people who are interested in each other. As social beings, “we define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our

142 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 107. 143 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 76 He continues, “these cultures involve not just shared memories or values, but also institutions and practices.”

97 significant others want to see in us.”144 We will investigate Taylor further, as his claims on group identity are considerably stronger than Kymlicka’s.

Within limits, Kymlicka subscribes to the notion that “group specific rights for ethnic and national minorities…are needed to ensure that all citizens are treated with genuine equality.”145 I think it is necessary to unpack this statement a bit, primarily the meaning of ‘genuine equality.’ Liberalism understands people as individuals who have different capacities and who make rational and at times different choices that lead to different ends. This is a fundamental aspect of our pluralism. What the liberal society values, and must actively promote to remain truly liberal, is an equality of opportunity.

As both Hayek and Friedman make clear, “There is, indeed, a strong case for reducing ... inequality of opportunity as far as congenital differences permit and as it is possible to do so without destroying the impersonal character of the process by which everyone has to take his chance and no person’s views about what is right and desirable overrule that of others.”146 Problems arise, however, when the exceedingly complex interplay of nature and nurture, material and non-material factors, by which families transmit their differences is reduced to a question of redistribution of family wealth. Of course the possibility of passing on material goods is an important factor in perpetuating family traditions and standards, but that does not mean that such transmission is primarily material, let alone pecuniary. Cultural values and customs, moral habits, the intelligence

144 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 33. 145 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2000), 108 146 Friedrich von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)

98 and kindness of parents, and everything else that goes into a good and loving home are surely at least as important, and probably far more so, than the material circumstances in which they are embedded. Perhaps one should give some to those who shrink from the colossal presumption of assessing these complex qualitative differences by focusing instead on what can be gauged more readily; by the same token, however, the reduction of inheritance to a matter of money is a crude materialism curiously at odds with the higher motives egalitarians commonly claim for themselves. It might also be noted that rich and powerful parents will always find ways to pass on their wealth and influence, and that the bequest of money is likely to be far cheaper from a social point of view than the alternatives.147,148,149

Transmission is not limited to questions of wealth and social class. As Kymlicka points out, “Freedom involves making choices amongst various options, and our social culture not only provides these options, but also makes them meaningful to us.”150 This line of argument follows closely that put forth by Ronald Dworkin. Culture, “provides the spectacles through which we identify experiences as valuable.”151 Dworkin discusses two kinds of liberalism that place different emphases on the notions of neutrality and equality. Each of these kinds of liberalism argues against the legal enforcement of private morality and for a greater political and economic equality. The difference is on the

147 , “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” Postscript to The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 397-411 148 Friedrich von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 29. 149 , Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) 150 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 83 151 Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 228.

99 emphasis, neutrality or equality. “Liberalism based on neutrality takes as fundamental the idea that government must not take sides on moral issues, and it supports only such egalitarian measures as can be shown to be the result of that principle. Liberalism based on equality takes as fundamental that government treat its citizens as equals, and insists on moral neutrality only to the degree that equality requires it.”152

Favouring a liberalism which takes equality as its fundamental principle, as

Dworkin does, would suggest a commitment to cultural recognition of group identities.

Group identities are here understood to help create the context of the choices individuals can make in their lives. This however runs up against setting individual as equals in relation to their government. The question of what equality of opportunity means is at the centre of how one must approach this question. That question requires lines to be drawn as to how to set different group demands against one another, and against individual demands.

In Gutmann’s conception of a liberal state, the broader goals discussed can also be seen. When Gutmann talks of “stipulating what constitutes an individual's interest,”153 we can see the broader claim that identity formation is understood to be contextualized within a group demand. That is the individual, to which the state is committed, can’t properly be said to exist (or developed) without its group ties. Also, if we understand

Gutmann’s ‘stipulating what constitutes an individual's interest’ to include the idea of conscious social reproduction as the ideal, for democratic politics to be able to provide

152 Ronald Dworkin, “Why Liberals Should Believe in Equality” New York Review of Books, February 3, 1983. 153 Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 3.

100 for the individual interest in the long term a broader educative is required by a liberal society.

Communitarian philosophers such as Charles Taylor have a different, and more involved idea of the interaction between culture and the individual. The individual is not, in Taylor’s estimation, an atomistic concept, developed solely through inward reflection.

The idea of authenticity, rooted in the elemental freedom of the individual cannot be generated inwardly. Instead, Taylor argues that “there is no such thing as inward generation, monologically understood.”154 The individual, with its particular identity, is a

“fundamentally dialogical character.”155 Taylor defines identity as, “who we are… As such it is the background against which our taste and desires and opinions and aspiration make sense. If some things I value most are accessible to me only in relation to the person I love, then she becomes part of my identity.”156 larger, in order to be free to form an identity authentic to one’s self, the thing place I form that identity within is a necessary part of it. “Thus my discovering my own identity doesn’t mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly over, partly internal, with others….My own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others.”157

Taylor makes the case that this dialogic conception of identity does not diminish the individual but situates him or her in a particular context. As he puts it: “The

154 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 32. 155 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 32. 156 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 33. 157 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 33.

101 understanding of identity and authenticity has introduced a new dimension into the politics of equal recognition, which now operates with something like its own notion of authenticity, at least so far as the denunciation of other-induced distortions is concerned.”158

The discourse on recognition operates on two levels: first, the private sphere where identity formation is understood as taking place in a continuing dialogue and struggle with significant others; second, in the public sphere where a politics of equal recognition has come to play a large role in our modern discussion.

The politics of difference “asks that we give acknowledgement and status to something that is not universally shared.”159 Concerns about diversity in Canadian classrooms are central to multiculturalism, while a focus on the issue concerning the resolution of conflict created by difference is at the heart of recent calls for a politics of difference. Stuart Hall wrote of his desire for this kind of a politics, “That notion of a politics which, as it were, increasingly is able to address people through the multiple identities which they have — understanding that those identities do not remain the same, that they are frequently contradictory, that they cross-cut one another, that they tend to locate us differently at different moments, conducting politics in the light of the contingent, in the face of the contingent— is the only political that the locals have left at their disposal, in my view.”160

158 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 37. 159 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 39. 160 Stuart Hall, “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities,” in ed. A. King Culture, and the World-System (Binghampton: State University of New York, 1991), 59.

102

Hall’s understanding of the fluidness of culture however, is somewhat problematic in relation to the idea of protecting culture found in multiculturalism and the politics of difference. If culture is fluid and changing and attempts to protect it are necessarily static, how is this discrepancy to be resolved?

A fluid understanding of culture is problematic for the Royal Commission on

Bilingualism and Biculturalism’s recommendations upon which the multicultural policy is founded, most specifically the objective for cultural groups to retain and foster their identity. The other key objectives of the policy, namely assisting cultural groups in overcoming barriers to their full participation in Canadian society, promoting creative exchanges among all Canadian cultural groups; and assisting immigrants in acquiring at least one of the official languages all fit within the more dynamic understanding of culture that allows for people to have, and operate within, different identities. Retaining identity suggests a static-ness that, in a fluid understanding, would suggest a troubling limit, or constraint on the individual or at least the state’s relationship to the individual.

Canadian Group/Individual Identity Tension

Some elements of particular group identity however, are also specified in the

Charter and other elements of the value of group identity can be inferred. Sections 16 through 22 of the Charter define English and French as the official , ensures the bilingual nature of the province of New Brunswick, and the required availability of government communication in both English and French. Section 23 deals with minority language educational rights and specifies the right of French language students to be educated in French. The right of particular language instruction is

103 however, constrained by the requirement that, “the number of children of citizens who have such a right is sufficient to warrant the provision to them out of public funds.”161

Inferred elements of group rights can be seen in the tripartite motto ‘Peace, order, and good government,’ found in section 91 of the Constitution Act, which outlines the powers of the parliament. The motto has taken on a meaning for Canadians beyond its legal applications. The sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset contrasts ‘peace, order and, good government’ with the American motto of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ in his book : The Values and Institutions of the United States and

Canada. Lispet writes that in developing this ‘counterrevolutionary dominion’ there are

“no limits on the authority of the state other than those derived from a division of jurisdictions between national and provincial governments.”162

In a review of Lipset’s book, William Stahl writes, “It is clear why the spoke of ‘peace, order, and good government’ rather than ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The virtues of monarchy subordinate the individual to the community. Instead of liberty and happiness, loyalty and responsibility are stressed.

Freedom may be a watchword, but equality is not, and freedom is always tempered and circumscribed by obligations and the rights of others. But if subordination is preached, subservience is not…The individual curbs his or her egoism because not to do so would make life in family and community intolerable. And over all is emphasized the personal

161 http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/page-2.html#l_I:s_23 162 Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, Reprint Edition, 1990), xiii

104 nature of social and political relationships. Monarchy is but the family writ large.”163 In

Lipset’s understanding of Canadian national identity, the relationship to Canada can be seen to take precedence over individual identities, which are themselves tied to the healthy functioning of the state.

As Feinberg notes, “What children pick up when they take on a national identity is the idea that nationhood involves collective inclusion and exclusion in a past, present, and future stream of activities, sufferings, and anticipations. They learn that as they become a member of that nation they enter this stream and, ideally, that as they become citizens they take responsibility for interpreting and directing it. Through the nation individuals are brought together as a people and as such, and they stand in distinction from others who are brought together as a different people.”164 This is why the public school is the state’s primary, and most effective, gateway for shaping a national identity in its citizens. Through the shared space of the school, the collection of individuals is given the opportunity to develop a shared national identity that may greatly shape their individuality, while maintaining the particularities of individual cultural identity.

“In addition to the assumptions about nationalism that people in all nations share, each individual nation expresses through its members certain ideas, norms, self- understandings, and practices that distinguish it from other nations. These are found in such things as political and juridical practices, in literature, and in normal everyday

163 William A Stahl, “’May He Have Dominion…’ Civil Religion and the Legitimation of Canadian Confederation” (Luther College, , 1986), 14. 164 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 47-8.

105 expectations and behaviors.”165 As Lipset described identity in Canada as a relationship to the state, this allows for individuals holding different cultural identities to share a

Canadian-ness that cuts across group difference. The tie that must be created then is the common bond to the state.

Misunderstanding of Culture

In Canada, the tensions between individual and group identities are expressed in both related and distinct ways when one considers the identity claims of longstanding nations in Canada, namely the French and Aboriginal people, and the newer minority cultures, shaped through immigration and growing rapidly as a section of the total population. This is further complicated by the different identity claims immigrant groups make based the length of their existence in Canada, their influence on Canada, and their respective political power.

Kymlicka writes that, “individual freedom is tied to membership in one’s national group.”166However, not all national groups merit the same consideration. How could a state that is perpetually settling new minorities maintain any political integrity if all minorities were afforded the rights and distinctions of the First Nations and the

Quebecois? Kymlicka makes a distinction between what he terms polyethnic groups, which would include immigrant minorities in Canada like the Ukrainians or Sikhs for instance, and national minorities, which would include both the Quebecois and the

Aboriginal populations in Canada. Generally minorities in a liberal state are classified as

165 Walter Feinberg, Common Schools/Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 48. 166 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 69

106 polyethnic and in order to be considered a national minority in Kymlicka’s formulation, the following conditions must be met: Present at the founding of the state, a prior history of self-government, a common culture, a common language, the existence of governing institutions. This formulation raises immediate questions. First, how should a group like the Metis be classified in this system? The Metis population is a result of intermarriage amongst the French and First Nations people in the history prior to Canada. The Metis people were generally, but not exclusively, descended from a combination of English,

French, or Scottish and Cree, , Algonquin, Saulteaux, Menominee, Mi'kmaq or

Maliseet First Nations. There are, as you would imagine, a number of languages in Metis culture, there have been many Metis that have organized themselves in different systems of self-government, different cultures, common to those who operated within them, existed across parts of Canada. The Metis seem to both meet Kymlicka’s definition of a national minority and fall short. Additionally, over time, the Metis have generally tended to coalesce into one larger group identity. This raises a problem of classification, for the identities have changed dramatically over time. What is it that is in fact Metis? How far back does the analysis of Metis culture need to go to find that which is actually Metis? Is it the initial miscegenation between European trappers and First

Nations people? How many generations had there to be before the Metis where in fact,

Metis? If it occurred over time, and most likely over the course of the development of

Canada from a colonial settlement into a modern state, can the Metis be said to be present at the founding of the state? Similarly, how far from the original conception of Metis, if we can ever nail that down, do people have to travel to give up their Metis status? As I

107 have mentioned, my wife is Metis, but no one would know that unless they looked at her government status card. Is this a national minority that requires group protection? How much change can there be in an identity yet have it remain identifiable to the original? It is essentially a phenomenological question that is unanswerable.

A similar problem can be raised when examining the histories of immigrant groups such as Ukrainians in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, for instance. There have been

Ukrainian communities in Canada since at least 1891, and there is currently a controversy as to whether Ukrainian settlement in Canada occurred in the first half of the 19th century, rather than the second half. At minimum, Ukrainians communities have existed in

Saskatchewan and Alberta longer than the provinces has existed (both were confederated in 1905). In many respects, Ukrainian communities, remote as they were, had a common language, culture and elements of self-government, but no one mistakes them for a national minority in the same way as Quebecois and First Nations people.

The problems with Kymlicka’s classifications extend also to the notion of culture with respect to the Quebecois. The culture of the Quebecois is problematic in that it is intimately tied to Quebec nationalism. According to Richard Handler in From

Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec:

To be Quebecois one must live in Quebec and live as a Quebecois. To live as a

Quebecois means participating in Quebecois culture. In discussing this culture people speak vaguely of traditions, typical ways of behaving, and characteristic modes of conceiving the world; yet specific descriptions of these particularities are the business of the historian, ethnologist, or folklorist. Such academic researches would seem to come

108 after the fact: that is, given the ideological centrality of Quebecois culture, it becomes worthwhile to learn about it. But the almost a priori belief in the existence of the culture follows inevitably from the belief that a particular human group, the Quebecois nation, exists. The existence of the group is in turn predicated upon the existence of a particular culture…the assertion of cultural particularity is another way of proclaiming the existence of a unique collectivity.167

Appiah, in Cosmopolitanism, identifies another problem with Kymlicka’s use of culture and its protection. Kymlicka argues that protecting culture is good in that it helps to create the range of choices for individuals to live a good life for themselves. Kymlicka argues that minority cultures, be it in the national minority or polyethnic minority understanding, are justified in having support for the protection of their societal culture

(to differing degrees depending on national or polyethnic minority classification). The support is predicated on a number of individuals living in a community so as to be able to sustain the particular cultural practices. Yet, as Appiah explains, it is precisely when these numbers do not exist, that the element of support may be required. If there is a substantial Hmong community in Churchill, Manitoba for example, than the community will be better able to continue its practices that serve the good of the individual Hmong to make choices in a liberal society. However if one Hmong family moves to Green Gables,

P.E.I. and no community exists, is that individual family not in need of greater support to be able to maintain a cultural sense within which to operate? Without that support aren’t they going to become enthusiasts at the expense of their Hmong

167 Richard Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison: University of Press, 1988), 39.

109 culture? It is indeed unrealistic to expect the government of Canada to work for the promotion of Hmong culture in Green Gables for the benefit of one family. Yet doesn’t this undercut the argument of need for cultural protection?

Communitarians like Charles Taylor actively and vocally support the emphasis of communalism over individualism in circumstances where cultural survival is at stake.

Taylor asks that privileged members of society consider relinquishing some of the emphasis they place on individualism for the sake of the community or group. Taylor suggests that North American society may have shifted the balance too far in the direction of individualism, away from community. In explaining Taylor’s views, Begley writes:

[He] favors a commitment to collective identity -citizenship, nationality-

and a participatory model of political life. . . . We must be true to

ourselves and forge our own ideas of the good— but we ought to

acknowledge that shared cultural or national identity and the communal

goals of active citizenship. . . make for better forms of the good.168

In the communitarian understanding, diverse cultural identities and languages are irreducible social goods, which should be presumed to be of equal worth. The recognition of the equal worth of diverse cultures requires replacing the traditional liberal regime of identical liberties and opportunities for all citizens with a scheme of special rights for minority cultural groups. This understanding though requires a new conception of the state, one that overlooks the original

168 A. Begley, “The Mensch of Montreal: Charles Taylor’s Authentically Ethical Life,” 3, (May/June, 1993), 41

110 rationale for the liberal state and assumes that the oppressive regimes that helped spur their creation wouldn’t be possible in the future. This is clearly an assumption that puts a lot of faith in the goodness of collectives. This kind of state is, as Taylor writes, “willing to weigh the importance of certain forms of uniform treatment against the importance of cultural survival, and opt sometimes in favor of the latter.”169

Multiculturalism and Identity

Multiculturalism in Canada attempts to overcome supposed barriers to traditional liberal thought. Canadian multiculturalism presumes that contrary to traditional liberal thought, a foundation of individual rights is unable to resolve the most important questions relating to cultural minorities. For example, should ethnic groups have publicly-funded education in their mother tongue? Can a minority group, such as a First

Nations group, control a particular region? In order to deal with these issues, governments can supplement traditional individual rights with minority/group rights.

This explanation of the dangers of non-recognition and the need to supplement the traditional liberal paradigm of individual rights is given to explain the rationale and justification behind multicultural policy as practiced today in Canada. Multiculturalism is an attempt to expand the list of human, economic, and civil rights to include protection for minority groups. This knowledge is crucial, considering the opposition and misunderstandings that multicultural policy can create not only from conservatives, but from liberals as well. These liberal criticisms of multiculturalism are often consistent

169 Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 61.

111 with those made by conservatives. For example, both Richard Gwyn and the Reform

Party, while ideologically separate170, claim that multicultural policy contributes to a breakdown in national cohesion by giving minority groups the idea that they need not assert their loyalty to the nation. Furthermore, conservative sources such as The Western

Report often quote non-conservatives such as Neil Bissoondath to support their case against minority rights. Hence, in order to challenge the very basic assumptions which constitute the backlash, one needs to understand how pluralist rights are not inconsistent with individual rights which are the foundations for western- liberal societies and their laws.

Additionally, Canadian multiculturalism does not assume that collective rights inherently conflict with individual rights. This assumption shows the necessity of distinguishing between two kinds of collective rights: internal restrictions and external protections. Internal restrictions enable a state or province to limit the rights of its members in order to maintain strongly-held cultural goals. The streaming of non-

Anglo/non-French (allophone171) children in Quebec into French-language schools against their will in the 1960’s is an example of such. External protections limit the power exercised by larger society over the group, and are not a threat to individual rights.

Section 27 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which recognizes the multicultural nature of Canadian society, is often used in conjunction with section 2, which outlines

170 From 1968 to 1973, Gwyn served as assistant and later to federal Communications Minister in the Liberal Pierre Trudeau government. The was created in 1987 as a Western Canadian conservative party rejecting the idea of Canada as an equal partnership between two founding people and calling for more provincial and regional power throughout Canada. 171 Immigrants to Quebec with a mother tongue other than French or English are called allophones.

112 fundamental freedoms, and section 15, which contains individual protections. These laws have been cited to protect individual rights such as freedom of religion in court cases permitting turbans in the R.C.M.P., store closings, and the use of prayer in public schools (these have been explained in greater detail in chapter three). A multicultural policy must concentrate on external protections. Kymlicka insists that external protections can assist rather than impede a minority group's integration into the larger society. As cultures become more open (that is, more people can question whether or not their culture is the best life), people share that culture's bonds less and relate more to people from other liberated cultures. That is, in contemporary society people start to relate less to their own culture and begin to share bonds with individuals from cultures different from their own. Support of internal protections, (also called ‘internal restrictions’) is more problematic. Internal protections are the claims that groups make against their own members. Such support of internal protection would promote a rigid and ossified culture purposefully creating an impenetrable border between members of the culture and non-members. If culture helps to provide the framework against which individuals are able to choose the best life for themselves, the strengthening of internal protections would significantly limit the options of that individual. It is the internal restrictions of cultures running up against the larger society that is the focus of much of the criticism of multiculturalism - the fear that individuals will be actively constrained by their cultural heritage. Canadian multiculturalism does a good job of coming down on the side of external rather than internal protections. This balance is how multicultural policy is set against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

113

We can see that understanding culture in the way as required by liberal multiculturalism is problematic both in its conception and its application. Precisely where support would be most needed to maintain a particular culture in the multicultural understanding is where it fails, and where cultural existence is less threatened is where it puts its strongest emphasis. This is a problem of application. The greater problem, and the source of the problem of application, comes from a problematic understanding of culture. This becomes more clear when one attempts to define what it is that constitutes a particular culture. In attempting this definition, one runs up against a number of obstacles relating to time, interaction, and membership.

In considering time when attempting to define the particularities of culture, it becomes apparent that accepted core practices of particular cultures weren’t always cores, or even aspects, of the particular culture. This is most obvious when looking at cultural signifiers. Appiah discusses the Kente cloth, considered a cultural garb of and the

Ivory Coast. Presently, it is undoubtedly a piece of Asante culture. The question then, is when did that start? The kente has not been in existence for as long as the Asante. The kente is made from materials not native to lands of the Asante. Over the passage of time, with the dynamic nature of all culture, the kente has taken on significance in Asante culture. Perhaps a more elemental cultural piece should be considered? The Metis in

Canada today predominately speak French, indeed Metis is a French word. However as we have previously discussed, the Metis are a combination of various European and First nations cultures and over the last three centuries have spoken different languages in different proportions. The ties that the French language now has to the Metis, undeniable

114 cultural ties in the present, really exist only in the present. Any attempt to protect the

French nature of their language derives not from any particular cultural authenticity, but merely to the time when those protections were enacted, in effect stopping the evolution of the Metis language at an arbitrary point.

The problems of interaction are similar in that they occur over time, but can be more personal in nature, especially in an era where cross-cultural contamination is basically unavoidable. Attempts to protect cultures necessarily mean some element of freezing a culture in its particular form. But the interaction in essentially all states means that individuals connect and interact with people who are different from themselves.

Human interaction, especially of the interaction of liberal people, disposed to some elements of tolerance and mutual respect, causes people evaluate themselves in reflection and will, in many cases, cause changes. New words enter vocabularies, new modes of dress, expression, and new beliefs are all transferred this way. Cultural protections necessarily try to stop these human interactions. Kymlicka and others accept the dynamic nature of culture and in response argue that when accepting cultural change, it must be change from internal, rather than external, forces. Kymlicka maintains that we must distinguish the existence of the culture from its character at the moment. This attempt however, then forces culture to rely mostly on descent as continuity, a pretty arbitrary distinction. Descent based affiliation also doesn’t really give any account of the fact of culture that one is attempting to protect. In this understanding, essentially I am Jewish because my parents are. My son is Jewish because his parents are, and on it goes. If I believe in reincarnation and have a big glass of with my steak, I am still Jewish in

115 this understanding, as will my son be, as will his children. Is there any connection though between that grandchild and the culture of my parents beyond descent?

The problem with membership tends to express itself in the exponents of culture in multicultural societies. The ‘spokesmen’ of these cultures tend to define membership in ways that are usually conservative. These definitions, which tend to pervade the collective ideas about particular cultures, becoming the defining elements when in reality all they are is the personal understanding one some taken as the parameters for the whole.

The creation of these rigid cultural practices, defined and enforced by gatekeepers of the culture is the antithesis of a liberal state like Canada. These kinds of internal protections are limited in Canada, but they have and do still exist. In the largest scope, Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows provinces (or the federal parliament) to override the Charter for a period of five years, renewable as seen fit.172 Quebec has used the clause to override the protection of freedom of expression in mandating the language used, and the size of fonts used by particular languages, on all signs in the province. The current debate in Quebec about a proposed new has given rise to similar fear of Quebecois internal protections. The proposed Charter of Values would, among other things, ban what it calls ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols from all public sector employees and functions. However the large crucifix in the legislature and things like large Christmas trees would be exempt owing to their ‘historical‘ nature. The issue of religious courts in Ontario also concerned citizens about support of internal cultural protections supported by the government. The 1991 Arbitration Act allowed Ontario

172 The legislature can not override the entire charter, just he sections dealing with fundamental freedoms, legal rights and equality rights. Phew!

116 courts to enforce arbitration decisions made in religious courts. These courts existed for

13 years until a controversy sparked by the creation of the Islamic Institute of Civil

Justice brought them to the publics’ attention. The ensuing outcry led Premier McGuinty to rescind the law. These kinds of constraints, imposed either by a minority nation, like the Quebecois, or immigrant groups supported by the government, go directly against the notion that in order to meet its obligations as a liberal state, the state must allow individuals to make the best life for themselves and the only restrictions to those choices must be made of them most careful consideration.

What then is the proper relation of individual identity to group identity in

Canada? That community affiliation is a good for the individual in terms of being able to create a context of choices for a good life is accepted, but is detrimental when it restricts the individuals’ ability to exercise this choice. As previously mentioned Canada tends to successfully navigate the distinction between internal and external cultural protections.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms necessitates that navigation. The biggest challenges to internal restrictions have to do with what Kymlicka’s ‘minority nations’. In Canada this applies to First Nations people as well as the Quebecois.

CHAPTER 6

A COSMOPOLITAN FUTURE

Why is Canada Multicultural?

A popular argument as to the multicultural nature of Canada is that because it has been made up of multiple cultural groups from its founding up through its development, the movement towards multiculturalism was the only natural progression. Seeing the state as a blend of different cultural groups as a situation unique to Canada, or limited to a few particular countries, is largely incorrect. With the possible exception of geographically isolated island states (and even that is suspect), states in general are comprised of culturally diverse elements to some degree or other. The boundaries of this diversity may be different, but that states the world over are collections of different cultures is not. Let us randomly select a country – say . Throughout the history of what is now known as Gabon, the population has included, at least, the original Pygmy people, the Bantu people arriving from the 14th century onwards, the 15th century

Portuguese, and English, French, and Dutch traders in the 16th century. Presently Gabon, according to the US Department of State, has 40 ethnic groups, and the Department of

State recognizes at least 6 languages spoken there. Let us take another example at random

–. tools back 11,000 years have been found in Peru. In the 13th century the Incas conquered the Huari, Chimú, Chincha, and Chanka tribes. The Spanish conquered Peru in the 15th century. Argentine Jose de San Martin and Venezuelan Simon de Bolivar led Peru’s independence movement in the 19th century. While Spanish is the

117 118 predominate language, Quechua, Aymara, and Urarina are still spoken by more than one seventh of the population, not to mention the immigrant European population –Peru has had presidents and prime ministers of Japanese and Chinese heritage. That is to say, essentially all states are made up of different ethnic and cultural groups.173

As was discussed in the second chapter, it was the liberal elements of the treaties and legislative efforts of confederation that allowed for the multicultural aspect of

Canada to develop and flourish. This core dedication to individual autonomy is at the foundation of the state. Canada’s political development following the Western tradition of a commitment to individual liberties and combined with its demographic changes led the country to its multicultural position. When Canada saw its commitment to individual rights overcome its earlier ethnic, racial, and religious prejudices, the political goal of the state became one that would include the marginalized people within the political sphere.

There are multiple paths to the goal however – one of which is the multicultural policy that Canada adopted. A cosmopolitan approach would however maintain much of the status quo while allowing the state to be firmer in its commitment to individual liberties and as such, more properly address challenges to the liberties.

The cosmopolitanism I envision for Canada would come from Appiah’s notion of rooted cosmopolitanism that he explains as “universality plus difference.”174 It would share with Canadian multiculturalism many elements enacted in the Multiculturalism Act,

173 I’d like to note that the concepts of ethnicity and culture are distinct. In this dissertation, culture is understood as the shared system of values, beliefs, and governing rules. Ethnicity is a shared geneaology or ancestry. Often the two concepts are shared in one population, but just as often, and more so now than in the past, the are not. 174 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 151.

119 including to “promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society and assist them in the elimination of any barrier to that participation.”175 Similarly a cosmopolitan Canada would, “ensure that all individuals receive equal treatment and equal protection under the law, while respecting and valuing their diversity,” and,

“promote the understanding and creativity that arise from the interaction between individuals and communities of different origins.”176 The most significant differences between this kind of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism would stem from the difference in an understanding of culture. The cosmopolitan understanding, viewing culture as a fluid concept, constantly changing through interactions, would not include the protectionist elements of multiculturalism. As Appiah notes, universality comes before difference and a nation’s polices must reflect that fact. As such cosmopolitan policies would ensure the liberty of the individual and attempt to remain more neutral in terms of cultural policy/protection. It is important to note that remaining neutral in terms of cultural protections would not mean that cosmopolitanism doesn’t value culture or that it wouldn’t make efforts to ensure the full participation of individuals from minority or disadvantaged groups. Cosmopolitanism does value culture, but not in and of itself. The value stems from the individual – culture matters as it matters to the individual. This is the key distinction.

175 Canadian Multiculturalism Act Online at: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-18.7/page-1.html 176 Canadian Multiculturalism Act Online at: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-18.7/page-1.html

120

We must remind ourselves of the distinction between a nation and a state. The nation is “an imagined community of traditions or ancestry.”177 It is a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history and has no physical . A nation matters because it matters to individuals as autonomous agents who chose to care about them. Contrastingly, a state has an objective moral value. The state is a political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory. The state matters not because individuals chose to value it, but because the state regulates the lives of those individuals through coercion and force, by its institutions and legal frameworks.

When thinking about the place and value of culture, as autonomous individuals, the separation between a national and a state culture is important. A national culture, like a nation is arbitrary and while it can have value to individuals, it is not of value in a permanent way. A national culture, like a nation, matters because of the individuals who choose to make it matter. A national culture, while it can include the political sphere, is larger and can create a broader context for individual to operate within. The broadness of a national culture, expecting those who operate within it to live in specific ways that can effect religious commitments, language and cultural practices, etc, gives reasonable rise to worry. Such a culture demands far more of the individual than a liberal state can sustain and can quite easily pass into illiberalism.

The state culture, in a liberal state, is both circumscribed and political. It is important in that it helps to define the ways in which the state manages its monopoly of

177 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 244

121 coercion and force, which constrain and enable the citizens living within the state. The state culture is defined through political institutions like the legal system, constitutional documents, etc. As such, the state culture is shared, to some degree or other, by all citizens of that state in that all citizens operate within it and have at least some general familiarity with it. Many citizens in a liberal state care deeply about the state culture, but many do not. Whether a citizen cares deeply or not, the state culture is still to some degree shared. As autonomous individuals, citizens are, obviously, allowed to care as little as they like about the state’s political culture. The circumscribed nature of the state culture is the key to a liberal state. Such circumscription allow for a diversity of people to live freely, making autonomous choices towards what is valued as the good life for themselves.

Multiculturalism Concerned with National Culture

There is a vast difference between the cosmopolitanism that I will advocate for and particular strong forms of multiculturalism that bend towards if not , than cultural preservation and protectionism.178 These theories understand culture, national culture that is, be it religious, ethnic, etc., as more static and pure than a dynamic understanding of culture would produce. Cultures are not distinct, self-contained wholes; they have long interacted and influenced one another through war, , trade, and migration. People in many parts of the world live within cultures that are already cosmopolitan, characterized by cultural hybridity. The faulty understanding of culture, in attempting to maintain the spheres in which people live their lives, makes the false

178 Such as those advocated by Bhikhu Parekh in, “Cosmopolitanism and Global Citizenship” Review of International Studies 29, 01 ( 2003), 3-17.

122 assumption of culture as a static good that can, and should be protected. This kind of multiculturalism, in attempting to protect a vast array of cultures, including illiberal cultures and cultural practices, does not ensure that citizens are free to live autonomous lives. It fails to do this because this kind of strong multiculturalism places the same, and perhaps greater, value on diversity than it does on autonomy. Valuing diversity as a primary good, that is seeing it as a correlative of liberty, falsely understands the fundamental nature that autonomy places in liberty. Liberty certainly allows for diversity, but it is constructed with autonomy. That is, diversity is only a good in that it is born out of individual autonomy - diversity for its own sake in not of value, but only because it stems from, and is a flourishing example of, individual liberty.

As Anne Philips writes, multiculturalism:

exaggerates the internal unity of cultures, solidifies differences that are currently

more fluid, and makes people from other cultures seem more exotic and distinct

than they really are. Multiculturalism then appears not as a cultural liberator but

as a cultural straitjacket, forcing those described as members of a minority

cultural group into a regime of authenticity, denying them the chance to cross

cultural borders, borrow cultural influences, define and redefine themselves.179

The kind of multiculturalism advocated by theorists like Kymlicka, and indeed elaborated upon in the legislative documents in Canada, is different in that it is far more liberal and grounded in autonomy. Kymlicka’s, and Canada’s, multiculturalism is rooted in liberal individualism and so while I see it as problematic, it is merely problematic in its

179 Anne Philips, Multiculturalism Without Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 14.

123 understanding of culture, not its conception of a free society. The preamble of the

Canadian Multicultural Act of 1988 shows just how grounded in liberal theory it is. The text reads:

WHEREAS the Constitution of Canada provides that every individual is equal

before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and benefit of

the law without discrimination and that everyone has the freedom of conscience,

religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression, peaceful assembly and association

and guarantees those rights and freedoms equally to male and female persons;

Kymlicka also makes greater allowances for cultural change and development and understands it as less monolithic that the strong multiculturalists. The main difference between the multiculturalism advocated by Kymlicka and the cosmopolitanism that I am suggesting for Canada is the value and understanding of culture. Kymlicka still sees what

I have called national culture as important and deserving of protection. What I suggest is that national cultures are valuable but that you can’t actually protect them and a great part of their value comes from their dynamism – a feature that is hampered by the attempts at state protection. He does allow that cultures change, but maintains that their change should be the result of internal rather than external forces. “It is natural, and desirable for cultures to change as a result of the choices of their members. We must, therefore, distinguish between the existence of a culture from its ‘character’ at any given moment.”180 But, as Appiah notes, separating the existence of a culture from its character is akin to seeing culture as a matter of descent. As Appiah writes, “even if descent-based

180 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 136

124 accounts resist the temptations of racialism, there remains something morally arbitrary about basing identities on the scale of thousands or millions on the bare assertion of genealogical relationships.”181 What Appiah means here is that to speak of a culture’s existence without recourse to its character likens the culture to something passed down, uncritically, through generations. This understanding then gives us a hereditary nature, imbuing its members with particularities, that runs up against the understanding of the individual central to Canada and the Western paradigm. If we understand culture in this way then it becomes something that takes away some of the agency of individuals and promotes political categorization of groups against the commitment to the individual. It a problem that is stems from improperly conflating culture with ethnicity.

John Thompson, president of the right leaning Mackenzie Institute describes the differences in stark terms. “There are profound differences between a multicultural and a cosmopolitan society. For a start, multiculturalism is based on preserving inherent differences while cosmopolitanism is based on bridging them. Multiculturalism implies separate and real (or assumed) status based on collectivism - groups of people having power because of their background and associations. Collectivist power may not always be shared equally (and rarely is) or proportionately, but it depends on group identities.”182

Exploring the ideas of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, writes about the myriad identities within each individual. Sen argues that the very idea of identity has been distorted by the popular assumption of singular affiliation, the belief that any person belongs, for all practical purposes, to only one collectivity. Sen critiques

181 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 136. 182 John Thompson, “Multiculturalism vs. Cosmopolitanism,” The Mackenzie Institute 9 (June, 2003)

125 multiculturalism for being too reliant on contenting itself with a ‘ of communities’ where minorities participate within their particular communities, but not in the grater community as citizens except when they are acting as representatives of their particular minority.183

One particular issue for examination is what this approach would mean for First

Nations in Canada. As a founding minority group with a distinct society, the Canadian

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recommended that there be a recognition of

Aboriginal government with authority over Aboriginal nations and territorial issues. Is preservation of First Nations culture then is something different? This would have to be resolved in one of two ways in a cosmopolitan approach. The first resolution is to simply, and problematically, regard the First Nations as like any other cultural group existing within Canada. That is, to begin with universality and a value privileging the individual within the Canadian state. The resolution would, with great difficulty, suggest that the cultural protections afforded to First Nations be rescinded and the ability of the culture to continue would be left to the members of the group. A second, and difficult, but perhaps more realistic and equitable resolution, honouring the treaties made with the monarch, would be to understand the First Nations as a separate nation existing within Canada. As discussed earlier, in his multicultural framework Kymlicka calls them a ‘national minority.’ A national minority, the First Nations [Kymlicka also includes the Quebecois in this group which I would not] would be regarded as distinct because prior to the

183 See Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007)

126 founding of Canada, they had prior history of self-government, a common culture, a common language, and were governing themselves through institutions. I would make a distinction between the Quebecois and First Nations for two reasons, namely immigration and confederation. The Quebecois came to Canada from Europe in the same colonial process as the English, displacing existing First Nations groups and were included far more than First Nations in the process of confederation, including explicit powers and protections.

Being a national minority, the rights of First Nations would not be temporary rights, but should be recognized on a permanent basis, because these are inherent rights of the national minority. These groups could, of their own accord, decide to secede and this may be the best solution in some cases. But should they not, it must be possible to accommodate the rights of national minorities through a combination of self-government and special representation rights. From a cosmopolitan approach, it is important to note that the national minority is not afforded any different consideration with the goal of cultural protection in mind. The different consideration stems from the fact that a nation existed previously and did not openly and freely give up its rights to self-determination at the time of confederation.

That multiple nations exist within Canada presents a less difficult problem as to the responsibility of any attempt at cultural preservation when viewed through this perspective.

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Cosmopolitanism Political Culture

The first place to start is not to allow people to conflate a respect for individuality with individualism. To hold that people are bearers of abstract rights and equal dignity is not to hold that we should simply spend our lives pursuing our own self-interest. The development of one's individuality, for Mill and for all philosophical liberals, entails recognizing that one is a social being, that one has moral obligations, and that by way of one's identity one is intimately connected with other people. Nevertheless, identity has been seen to be a problem for liberalism, partly by opponents who have conflated respect for individuality with a form of egoistic pursuit of individualism.

In this application of cosmopolitanism the value of culture is to a state culture as related to its political system. The definition of culture I am using is similar to

Kymlicka’s. Culture, in this framework, means the cultural structure understood as the context of choice. It is this culture that is not arbitrary and that is shared across the citizens of the state, for in a liberal state we are all bound equally under the same laws and subject to the same coercive features of the state. This is the normative shared culture that we must endorse. Because we are persons, “our autonomy ought to be respected,” and because, “we are encumbered, socially embedded, selves, we will use our autonomy to protect and preserve a wide variety of extra-individual commitments.”184 Encouraging the development of a state identity resting on the shared political culture has two primary effects. First, it helps to perpetuate the liberal state, a primary guarantor of individual liberty. The shared state political identity is consistent with Gutmann’s notion of

184 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 211.

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‘conscious social reproduction’ while at the same time allowing for greater development of individual autonomy in children. The second primary effect of resting state identity upon this foundation is that it ensures that the liberal state does not stray too far from its central requirement. In encouraging this kind of identity, the state creates a mutually reinforcing cycle that serves to protect the autonomy of individual. Normatively, citizens with the kind of shared identity I am advocating will, through their participation in responsible government, ensure that the state continues to value its original commitments.

Cosmopolitanism in Context

Coming from the Greek kosmopolitês meaning a citizen of the world, cosmopolitanism at its core, hold that all people should be members of a single community. Whether this is a moral or political community depends on the thread of cosmopolitanism that one follow out from the Greeks. The philosophy of cosmopolitanism has many branches, ranging from the universalized cosmopolitanism of the Stoics, where the fundamental component is shared humanity from which the obligations we have to one another are completely universal, to the more moderate cosmopolitanism understands a middle ground that accepts both the values placed on shared humanity and particular family/community relationships. Strict cosmopolitanism is the kind of global cosmopolitanism that, in the most extreme form, calls for world citizens and Esperanto. With the global framework of a shared humanity, this kind of cosmopolitan asks, why is it that I should have a tighter moral bond with someone born in Vancouver then with someone born in Valencia? The fact that of a shared humanity is

129 what matters – the Vancouverite and Valencian should have the same moral relationship to me. The contemporary example of this branch of cosmopolitan thought is shown in the work of . For Nussbaum, a cosmopolitan’s allegiance is “not to a single state government or temporal power, but rather to a moral community deeply committed to a fundamental respect for humanity.”185 This is akin to Habermas notion of constitutional patriotism, where a commitment to a state constitution allows individuals to be universalist within the liberal context.186 That is, so long as certain boundaries that protect individual freedoms and autonomy exist, the individual can be safely patriot without falling into the immoral nature of blind nationalism. In this understanding citizenship is premised on a shared set of values illuminated by the constitution. The ability to have a shared values built through consensus and which have a formula for amending them allows for states to be flexible up to a maximum point.

Waldron embraces a more moderate cosmopolitanism, allowing for greater importance placed on the local cultural interactions. Waldron suggests it is possible to be openly affiliated with one’s local community while also maintaining a cosmopolitan sense of identity. Waldron finds no reason to suggest that holding multiple cultural relationships would render one’s culture obsolete.187 Kwame Appiah follows Waldron down the road of a more moderate cosmopolitanism, with what he terms a ‘rooted’ cosmopolitanism. Appiah writes, “we value the variety of human forms of social and

185 M. Ayaz Naseem & Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, “Nussbaum’s Concept of Cosmopolitanism: Practical Possibility or Academic Delusion,” Paideusis 15, 2 (2006), 52. 186 See Cecile LaBorde,”From Constitutional to Civic Patriotism,” British Journal of Political Science, 32, 4 (October 2002) and Jan-Werner Muller, “On The Origins of Constitutional Patriotism” Contemporary Political Theory 5 (2006) 187 Jeremy Waldron, “What is Cosmopolitanism?” Journal of Political Philosophy 8,2 (June, 2000)

130 cultural life: we do not want everybody to become part of a homogenous global culture; and we know that this means that there will be local differences (both within and between states) in moral as well. So long as these differences meet certain general ethical constraints –so long, in particular, as political institutions respect basic human rights –we are happy to let them be.”188

Autonomy is a central core of liberalism and of this understanding of cosmopolitanism. It is only through autonomy that an individual can be free to decide amongst the options available. Where some liberals, such as Galston, argue that teaching for autonomy violates some elements of parental rights and commitments to diversity, others, such as Brighouse argue that an autonomy facilitating education will both meet the standard of educating students to be able to make their own choices with a limited infringement on the commitments to both parental rights and diversity. I agree with a third set of liberal philosophers, Reich, Callan, and Macedo among them, who argue that mere facilitation of autonomy does not in fact ensure in students the ability to lives autonomous lives, should they so choose. Where Brighouse likens teaching autonomy facilitation to teaching Latin in that it, “does not try to ensure students employ autonomy in their lives, any more than Latin classes are aimed at ensuring that students employ

Latin in their lives. Rather it aims to enable them to live autonomously should they wish to do so.”189 I believe there are two specific failures in this line of thinking. First, in a liberal state where the commitment is decidedly to the individual, living autonomously

188 Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” in eds. Martha Nussbaum & J. Cohen For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (: Beacon Press, 1996), 94. 189 Harry Brighouse, School Choice and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 80.

131 should be regarded as the default setting of the state, rather than one option among many.

Citizens should certainly be able to freely give up their autonomy, bounding themselves to some vow of obedience (of course providing the right of exit exists), however the state must start at the idea that autonomy is a primary good itself, that citizens can give up, rather than operating as if autonomy was equal among many goods. This line of thinking is similar in its valuing of diversity. Diversity is to be valued, however, in a hierarchy it is below autonomy and not all diversity is valued equally. The liberal commitment to autonomy allows us to make judgments on kinds of difference.

The second problem in analogizing learning Latin to learning autonomy is that students come to Latin from a far more neutral place than they come to autonomy. In communities that operate non-autonomously, students will come to school with the default setting of a non-autonomous disposition. In order to overcome this disposition, one needs more than skill, one needs the opportunity and encouragement to practice that skill. If the same students learns Latin and then returns to their community where no one speaks Latin, there are no books in Latin, and the student has virtually no opportunity to use their skill, what good is it? Autonomy as a good is only of value to the individual if there is the ability to act autonomously. The skill is an element, but so is overcoming expectations and the indoctrination of national and familial cultures than can be opposed to the practice of autonomy.

An autonomy-promoting educative experience will necessarily present some unwanted challenges to cultural practices that value heteronomy and resist particular diversities, reshaping the choices of citizens. This is a cost of ensuring the ability of all

132 citizens to practice autonomy. And while citizens are able to live non-autonomous lives, the commitment of the state is first to ensure that they be able to live autonomous lives and if this conflicts with particular cultural values placed on non-autonomy, that is a cost that state must bare0. This is where the normative, circumscribed, aspect of a state culture

(called the political culture by Gutmann, Callan, etc.) in practice becomes more comprehensive, if only implicitly. While the state has gone to lengths to circumscribe its culture to the political, in order to respect the autonomy of people and remain committed to its liberal principles, the creeping comprehensiveness of the demands can be understood when one thinks about how dramatically our lives are shaped by politics. In the commitments shared politics demands, it necessarily shapes all of our institutions - educational, social, and economic. While it is possible to live at least part of your life outside of these structure, through home schooling, self-employment, etc., it is exceedingly difficult and involves significant cost, both in time and resources. While the modern liberal state must allow for citizens to live the un-circumscribed parts of their lives freely, it can not be denied that the circumscribed part is central to the rest of our commitments and will shape and constrain them. Education in Canada attempts to operate primarily in the circumscribed part of citizens lives, however it is impossible for those circumscribed parts not to dramatically influence the other side of the individuals life. It is primarily about the circumscribed parts of our lives in that it attempts to provide the knowledge and skills to operate effectively and freely in Canada, both politically and economically. However, the ways the knowledge and skills are taught and valued, and what they provide the individual has a moral component, crossing into the aspect of

133 individual life that its attempts to stay away from. Managing this interaction is the main challenge of democratic education, be it multicultural, cosmopolitan or other. This is both the most troubling and the most necessary aspect of a state culture. It is troubling in its unspoken challenge to the freedom of individuals to live lives of their own choosing, and it is necessary for the continuation of the liberal state and the freedoms that it does provide.

Fluidity of Culture

Culture in this framework of cosmopolitanism is understood differently from many pluralist and multicultural philosophies. This cosmopolitanism understands that people operate within particular cultural contexts and that these often, but not always, serve to provide meaning and a framework of choices in their lives. The distinction comes in a couple of forms though. First, any understanding of culture in a monolithic or universally relatable sense is false. People operate in many contexts at once and relate to them differently as individuals. Cultures are not reducible or essentialist.

Let us, for example, look to my wife Emily whom I referenced in the footnote of an earlier chapter. If we look at culture as a context within which we operate, let us examine her context. Her ancestry is somewhat complex. Her grandfather was an Ojibwa who had changed his name when he left the reservation to be able to join the Canadian

Forces in WWII. His wife spoke English but was of French descent living in northern

Ontario. After growing up in rural , her mother relocated to Toronto.

Emily’s patrilineal ancestry comes from (including her great –uncle John

George Haigh, the so-called ‘Acid Bath Killer’ complete with his own wax replica in

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Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors). Emily has since converted to and moved to the United States yet she is still considered Metis. How are we to understand what kind of culture to protect to make sure she has opportunities? Is it each of them?

Does their interaction change things? And what of the particulars of each element of her heritage? In Canada, the Metis people are eligible for government assistance in terms of educational grants and bursaries. Additionally, the Metis are currently attempting to have their status in the federal system ‘upgraded’ to be equal to that of First Nations people which would open more avenues of government assistance to both protect the culture and promote well being. To again consider Emily, because her grandfather was Ojibwa the federal government would go to greater lengths to ensure her post-graduate education.

The rationale comes from that static understanding of culture. One of the categories she fits allows the government to take a particular understanding of her. The greater context of her situation, the culture in which she actually lives, was not a factor in the government’s decision. The other categories matter differently (one could argue less) to her government. The effects of this are both positive and negative, but the important thing is that there are particular effects in her relationship to the government by virtue of her being Metis and of the government having a policy response to Métis based on its generalized and static understanding. The response is based on valuing their understanding of, in this case Metis, culture as an inherent good.

The understanding of cosmopolitanism in this argument is similar to multiculturalism in that it values culture, but different in that it values it only as an instrumental good. How is this kind of rooted cosmopolitanism different from

135 multiculturalism? It “values human variety for what it makes possible for free individuals, and some kinds of cultural variety constrain more than they enable. In other words, the cosmopolitanism’s high appraisal of variety flows from the human choices it enables, but variety is not something we value no matter what.”190 Culture matters only so much as it matters to the individual and his or her ability to act autonomously. What this would mean in application is a not-overly dramatic change in the way Canadian policy understands and responds to culture, particularly cultural protection. Changes in the way government funding is allocated, based more on need as opposed to culture; changes in the approach schools use develop curricula focusing more on developing a rooted cosmopolitan understanding as opposed to a multicultural one. These changes would be more of emphasis rather than a dramatic shift in anything particular. The difference between a multicultural and a cosmopolitan Canada would be important but not immense.

This cosmopolitanism is rooted in liberalism. Provided a foundation upon the overriding commitment to human rights, most basically personal autonomy, the varieties of cultural differences are actively desirable in that they further the options for autonomous choice. While valuing diversity, this approach guards against any charges of relativism in its commitment to the universals espoused by liberalism. The state, and through it the schools, put a value on diversity in that diversity provides a greater range of choices from which the autonomous individual can choose. However diversity itself is not what holds the value; that value is in providing the option for the individual to move

190 Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots” Critical Inquiry 23, 3 (Spring 1997)

136 between different options for living their best life. The state, and through it the schools, is first committed to the autonomous individual. That commitment forces the state to put a value on culture only so far as to the culture is consistent with the constitutional values of the state.

In one sense it can be seen as value pluralist, but not in the traditional definition.

Traditionally, as espoused by Berlin, value pluralism had a difficulty in any ordering or judging of particular cultures. This difficulty stemmed from a particular understanding of culture that, like Canadian multiculturalism, understood it in static a manner. By understanding culture in this way, Berlin took it to be irreducible, and thus unable to exercise a reasonable standard of . Understanding a value pluralism that emphasizes the necessity of hard choices among conflicting goods, while allowing that we can indeed whether those goods are of intrinsic individual value seems a better fit with this approach to cosmopolitanism. As Berlin puts it, ‘the world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realization of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others.’191 Some goods are universal – that is, they contribute to the good life for any human being. Berlin includes liberty, equality and courage in this category.

The kind of cosmopolitanism suggested here, while very similar to

Canadian multiculturalism would have two main differences. The first would be a difference on the emphasis of protecting culture. There would be a clarification needed

191 Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 29

137 about Canadian multiculturalism’s objective of allowing cultural groups to retain and foster their identity. That the state’s objective would be to limit the unnecessary coercion of cultural groups to only as far is necessary to provide for the individual autonomy and the protection of the meaningful interaction with the larger society. That means the state wouldn’t make any undue requirements of cultural groups so long as the operated within the constraints of Charter of Rights and Freedoms and weren’t harmful to the autonomy of their members. The second main difference would stem from the first change. Through being more robust in clarifying that its commitment to diversity comes out of, and after, its commitment to the principles of individual autonomy and the liberal state, this brand of cosmopolitanism would be better positioned to rebut the demands for things such as the language and dress restrictions proposed by the Quebec government, restrictions that contravene the fundamental freedoms of a liberal state.192 The significant, and severely problematic, change this would require is the repeal of Section 33 of the charter, the notwithstanding clause. The notwithstanding clause of the charter allows either parliament or a provincial legislature to override particular sections of the Charter of

Rights and Freedoms. Among the particular sections included are section 2 of the charter, the fundamental freedoms [no irony there!], section 7, the legal rights of the principles of justice, and section 9 the outlawing of arbitrary detention. In order to invoke the

192 The has proposed a Charter of Values that would, among other things, prohibit public sector employees, which includes all and university employees, from wearing ‘conspicuous’ religious symbols. The government of Quebec provided a helpful handout which showed small earrings, necklaces, or rings with religious iconography to be acceptable, but a cross, hijab, turban, yarmulke etc. to be unacceptable. Parti Quebois Democratic Institutions Minister Drainville also stated in an interview that university students would be prevented from wearing a niqab or burka. The Charter would however, make specific exceptions for the large cross over the Quebec provincial legislature and for the observation of Christmas by the provincial government.

138 notwithstanding clause, a provincial legislature needs a simple majority. The invocation lasts for 5 years but is renewable. It seems to me that a simple majority being required to override one of the fundamental rights is far too low a bar.

The ways in which Canada would approach group difference would be almost akin to a market model. By virtue of its historical (if in word more than deed) commitment individual liberties, the respect for individual difference, within the scope of liberalism, is inviolable. Group difference in Canada, as we have seen, has also been a part of our history, from the Quebecois to the to the First Nations and beyond. Initially, the leeway given to group difference operated out of the large population blocs mentioned.

However, the multicultural character of Canada has splintered the allowances given to group difference beyond what is practically possible for the country to continue its trend of peaceful unity. Moving forward, a cosmopolitan Canada would keep its commitment to the individual and, while not inhibiting group difference, would not actively support it.

There is an important distinction to be made between ‘not actively supporting’ group differences and ‘discouraging’ group difference. As has been previously stated, the particularities of different cultures matter, so much as they matter to the individual. In and of themselves, the significance of the particularities is only one of curiosity. A policy of not actively supporting group difference would allow for individuals to maintain what is important to them in their cultural life. A policy of discouraging group difference would actively interfere in the ability of individuals in creating meaningful cultural opportunities and communities.

First Nations bands in Canada however, have a stronger argument for continued

139 state support of their cultural communities and opportunities. By virtue of their being colonized and subject to active government interference with a goal of eliminating their culture, First Nations bands have a unique claim in Canada. Having negotiated with the

Crown (the Queen or King) as opposed to the government in Canada from before there was a Canada, First Nations bands would negotiate their own terms of relationship with the Government of Canada.

The market analogy moving forward would appreciate that individuals, acting with their cultural background, interact with, and are affected by, individuals with different cultural backgrounds. These interactions, and the resulting hybridity, should not be viewed as occurrences where one can ‘lose’ an element of their culture. An individuals’ relationship to their cultural particularities and the value they place on those particularities, are in a state of constant flux and re-appraisement. What the individual values is retained, what isn’t of value is jettisoned. The particularities of culture matter only so much as they matter to the individual. The dynamic nature of this interaction is why the government, with layers of bureaucracy and a need for specificity, must stay out of the ‘cultural maintenance’ business. Canada would have to begin to approach difference as neither a good nor a bad, but a fact of individuality.

Education for Cosmopolitanism

John Dewey wrote that we should conceive, “education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.”193 The philosophy

193 John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Free Press, 1916), 328.

140 of cosmopolitanism, which starts from a point of shared humanity, is first a way of being that is educative. The openness required of cosmopolitanism as an outlook and practice means that a cosmopolitan education, similar to a multicultural education, would,

“recognize”] the potential of all Canadians, encouraging them to integrate into their society and take an active part in its social, cultural, economic and political affairs.”194

A rooted cosmopolitan approach to civic education in Canada would have the effect of being able to articulate more strongly an idea of what constitutes the shared civic ideal in Canada. As a result of a values centered and rights oriented idea of cosmopolitanism, judgment becomes crucial to the determination of what values are to be striven for and which to be left to fall away. This should not mean any kind of imperialistic idea, but instead the determination of valued goals as developed through a deliberation of

Rawlsian public reason occurring within the framework of Canada’s governing documents. Public reason giving, in the Rawlsian sense, involves justifying a particular position by way of reasons that people of different moral or political backgrounds could accept. Although in his later writings he added what is known as the proviso, meaning that non-public reasons could be given assuming that public reasons would be provided in due course. In order to accomplish this, however, one must overcome what he refers to as the burdens of judgment, which can produce disagreement among reasonable citizens.

These burdens include conflicting evidence, giving differing weights to considerations, conceptual indeterminacy, differing experiences and value conflicts. Private reason, by contrast, is the exercise of an individual's reason to the constrained norms and interests of

194 This quote is from the Government of Canada document, Canadian Multiculturalism: An Inclusive Citizenship http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/citizenship.asp

141 some sub-set of the public as a whole (such as a business, a , the military or the family). These determinations, as a result of the cosmopolitan understanding of fluidity as it relates to culture, should be rooted but not permanent. The value of cosmopolitanism, as outlined by Appiah and Salman Rushdie, is that it "celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world."195 Because of this approach, a sort of protection for minority cultures is offered in that the cosmopolitan attempts to seek value in difference.

One principle of education which those men especially who form

educational schemes should keep before their eyes is this – children ought

to be educated, not for the present, but for a possibly improved condition of man

in the future; that is, in a manner which is adapted to the idea of humanity

and the whole destiny of man…

But the basis of a scheme of education must be cosmopolitan. And is, then

the idea of the universal good harmful to us as individuals? Never! for though it

may appear that something must be sacrificed by this idea, an advance is also

made towards what is the best even for the individual under his present

conditions. And then what glorious consequences follow! It is through good

education that all the good in the world arises. For this the germs which lie hidden

195 Salman Rushdie, Imaginary (London: Granta Books, 1991), 394.

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in man need only to be more and more developed; for the rudiments of evil

are not to be found in the natural disposition of man. Evil is only the result of

nature not being brought under control. In man there are only germs of good.”196

Like multicultural education, a cosmopolitan education would most openly be taught through the social studies, understanding Canada’s development through an analysis of the opportunities and choices Canadians have made that caused us to end up where we are today. It would assess the values guiding those choices and attempt to understand the rationale and commitments embedded within the documents that guide the nation. Understanding the normative commitments and values of the nation is necessary to create the reinforcing cycle I had discussed earlier where the citizens, in attempting to realize the better elements of the state, then work to strengthen and uphold those better elements, helping to sustain and strengthen the liberal state and its commitment to individuals. The changing value commitments of Canada can be seen in the development of, among other things, the human rights elements of documents such as the Quebec Act,

BNA Act, the Constitution Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, etc. The broadening of commitments from the initial rights protections for specific elements of the population and moving wider until the protections are near universal is one basic example of the changing values in history of Canadian society. However, examining the failed challenges to broadening these protections are just as important in understanding what

Canadians value and where the boundaries lay. That is not to say that the boundaries are to remain static, indeed, the opposite is true. If we see anything, we see change in the

196 , Kant On Education (Mineola: Dodo Press, 2008), 15.

143 values orientations of Canadians, changes that occur in response to both national dialogue and the path of history. It is why each of these political frameworks details the process necessary for the citizenry to change them to best reflect the values of the current society rather than the past.

Similarly, like multicultural education, a cosmopolitan education should help to address the historical marginalization of, particularly, women and minorities that much of multicultural education was created in response to. It would accomplish this by keeping true to its commitment to equality among individuals. With this common notion as its foundation, a cosmopolitan education would necessarily place its value on the true history of individuals in society and not on the individual’s cultural particularities. By this I mean to say that the accomplishments and failures of individuals, groups and nations alike, when stripped of the false notions hung on them by a misunderstanding of cultures, could be studied and taught not as means to fit them into particular understandings, but for their own realities. In a cosmopolitan education the contributions of women would be studied because woman made contributions. Similarly the contributions of marginalized people would be studied because of their contributions.

Where, admittedly, multicultural education may be more appropriate is in actively seeking out hidden spaces where racism, sexism, classism, etc. that have been used to improperly shape the educational sphere. But in moving forwards, a proper cosmopolitan education should not be mired with the racism, sexism, classism, etc. of the past.

Similarly, if following an education that is committed to the heart of cosmopolitanism, which puts the value of all people on an equal level, a truly open, cosmopolitan education

144 would be as effective in uncovering the overlooked and marginalized parts of our history as multicultural education has been. The National Association of Multicultural Education, in defining multicultural education, writes, the “school curriculum must directly address issues of racism, sexism, classism, linguicism, ablism, ageism, heterosexism, religious intolerance, and xenophobia,” in order to help, “students develop a positive self- concept.”197 The cosmopolitan corollary to this would be that, in order to be meet the requirements of a cosmopolitan education, the curriculum must look beyond the aesthetic elements of race, culture, and gender to focus on the individual and help students see the value present in both themselves and those they encounter.

A cosmopolitan education should also address similar issues however not primarily for the self-concept of students. The self-concept of students needs to come from the inherent value they have as humans and citizens, not as members of particular categories.

Issues of discrimination should be studied and addressed for the reasons that they operate in contrast to the values we have determined to be most important to our society. That is, those values (racism, sexism, classism, etc.) work directly against the liberties of individuals and the notions of equality at the core of both cosmopolitanism and Canada.

Self-esteem is not necessarily the main motivation for multicultural education today, however it was a key part of its development.198 The particular contributions of different cultures should be addressed not in an attempt to promote a positive feeling in a

197 National Association for Multicultural Education website: http://www.nameorg.org/resolutions/definition.html 198 Timothy Owens and Sheldon Stryker, “The Future of Self-Esteem: An Introduction” in Extending Self- Esteem Theory and Research: Sociological and Psychological Currents eds. Timothy Owens, Sheldon Stryker, and Norman Goodman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–9

145 particular student but should be addressed because of their positive contributions. The ends of the educational mission are similar, but the rationale is different and the difference matters because it stops us from promoting particular, static culture identities that can work as a barrier to interaction in a diverse community, and to the development of autonomous individuals. In the same way history class should not mythologize national history for fear of both being dishonest and of creating unthinking , schools should not focus on promoting positive cultural histories in order for student self- conception for similar reasons.

Critics of Canadian multiculturalism like Bissoondath and Hoffman overstate the problems the country is facing. All countries shaped by immigration, which in the 21st century means most countries, face challenges of incorporating newcomers. The balance between adjusting to suit the changing needs of a changing population, and maintaining fidelity to the liberal roots of the state is a challenge at which Canada has largely succeeded. As you can see, the changes I am suggesting are more of a clarifying nature than a dramatic reorganization.

Role of the Canadian Government in a Rooted Cosmopolitan Education

In one sense, the role of the government is circumscribed to the ‘political’ aspect of identity. It is only justified to be coercive to the minimum limits required to ensure the twin goals of individual autonomy and political stability. That is to say, the government can, and indeed should, work to shape citizens so that they posses the skills and dispositions to live autonomous lives of their own choosing within the boundaries of the liberal state.

146

However, this is contrasted with the need, in a rooted cosmopolitan state, for citizens to learn about other cultures and difference so as to be able to properly engage with difference. Learning about difference from a rooted cosmopolitan frame takes an outwards approach, that is seeing and trying to understand difference across society. This is contrasted with a multicultural approach which can often takes an inwards approach, that is attempting to see and understand one’s own difference from society. In the first case, the educative goal is to create a broader understanding of different kinds of ways of being in what is seen as a complex and multi faceted society. In the latter approach, the educative goal is to attempt to understand individual difference from what is too often simplistically understood as a hegemonic society. The rooted cosmopolitan approach to this kind of understanding takes greater account of the flexibility and nuance of culture and society that will be necessary moving forwards. This is part of the state’s purview because, as more and different kinds of people live together, cultural interactions will happen increasingly and it is the governments place to make sure they happen meaningfully to protect the stability of the state.

The difference is in the coercive aspect of the government’s intent. In attempting to shape citizens so that they posses the skills and dispositions to live autonomous lives, education takes the form of character education. It is openly attempting to shape the character of its citizens to live in a particular, liberal, democratic, way. In the second instance, that of citizens learning about other cultures and difference so as to be able to properly engage with difference, the intent is not explicitly coercive, but instead educative in that it attempts to expand the knowledge base of individuals beyond the

147 scope of their own experiences. It is the difference in learning ‘to be’ something and learning ‘about’ something. The distinction between those two concepts is an important one. In the first instance, that of ‘becoming’ something, that state has a specific intent in relation to/ regarding the outcome of an educative process. The goal, in the first sense, would be to actually become someone who can be characterized as an individual with liberal, democratic dispositions. (Of course these can be rejected, but the state operates from the premise that they are desired qualities in the citizenry.) In the second instance, the state has less specific intent in the outcome of the process. Exposure to knowledge changes students, so in one sense all education that takes place in a public school is an influence of the state on its citizenry, but unlike the political education the state provides, embracing the cosmopolitanism presented is not a threshold necessary for the survival of the state and the liberty of the citizens. It is a way of being in the world that may help individuals and the state be more open and responsive to change, act more ethically in their obligations, and understand their fellow citizens more deeply, but as positive as I understand these qualities to be, they reach far enough into character building that the state has to be less demanding in its education towards these ends. It is exposure and learning, which in its most basic form is in some ways coercive, but only in the most elemental sense, and a sense that cannot be avoided in any kind of education in any subject.

In Canada, the role of the state in a rooted cosmopolitan education is to educate citizens so as to be able to live their best lives. Operating from the premise that it is the educated individual who can best make the determination of what that means for

148 themself, the state should approach education from the two distinct elements of the philosophy – ‘rooted’ and ‘cosmopolitan.’ The role of the state regarding the rooted aspect of the philosophy is to inculcate the dispositions necessary for citizenship in a liberal democracy. As discussed in the sixth chapter, the identity that the state would be fostering would be one attached to the central ideals of the state that are embedded in the constitution. The guiding principles in the development of the identity are rooted in foundations of the state rather than any particular cultural/ethnic identity. The role of the state regarding the cosmopolitan aspect of the philosophy is to attempt to provide a framework for encountering difference and to encourage the understanding that we have obligations to others as moral beings. However, where the state’s attempt to inculcate dispositions is a formative endeavor, the cosmopolitan aspect of the state’s role is to be educative. Formative meaning that the state attempts to explicitly inculcate these dispositions so as to be internalized by the individual; educative meaning that the cosmopolitanism endorsed by the state guides curricula, but is more open to individual hermeneutics.

The first role, that of helping to educate citizens in the political sense of the world, has been discussed in the fifth chapter. The elements of the government’s relation to students in this sense would remain very much the same in a rooted cosmopolitan education in Canada, as it has been through multicultural education policy. That is to say, the state, through the public schools, has a necessary objective of educating students explicitly towards liberal and democratic way of being in society. That includes educating for the reproduction of the state in future generations and education for

149 personal autonomy. The cosmopolitan aspect of the philosophy is what would cause change in the governments approach to education. As has been discussed, the value placed on culture in multicultural philosophy is not shared in cosmopolitanism. Culture

(outside of the aforementioned necessary political culture), to the rooted cosmopolitan, is not to be protected or promoted as it is to the multiculturalist. That is not to say however, that it is not to be understood and studied. The motivations in studying culture differ importantly though from the multiculturalist to the cosmopolitan. Where a significant part of the importance the multiculturalist places on studying culture is to help individuals and groups to protect particular cultures, the cosmopolitan places importance in understanding culture as part of the bridging necessary in making connections to others in the world, others to whom we have obligations of varying degrees, but obligations nonetheless. Studying and attempting to understand culture and difference is important in that it helps to create a framework so that we can meet some of the moral obligations we have as people.

What this would mean in practice is a renewed focus on learning about culture and cultural differences as a shared experience rather than through the creeping group particularism in Canadian multicultural policy. By approaching cultural education in this way, schools could more successfully educate students to be both open to difference and to change. Approaching and negotiating difference is an increasingly important skill both in Canada and globally, and necessary for the twin goals of schooling in a liberal democratic state – educating for autonomy and political stability. Similarly, in the increasingly interconnected world, schools need to prepare students for increasingly rapid

150 changes across all aspects of their lives, including cultural change. If one looks at any particular culture over the last 1000 years, it seems apparent that the changes and existential challenges in the last 100 years vastly outnumber those of the previous 900.

New methods of work, communication, and travel seem likely to continue this pace of change, at least for the next few generations. Schools would best serve their students and the citizens of the state in adopting a rooted cosmopolitan approach to education.

Through a twin commitment of building and actively encouraging capacities for liberal democratic citizenship and opening students to the pace and variety of change in Canada and the world, public schools can help to ensure a robust successful future for the citizens and the state.

It is important to note that the focus on identity in this argument is the government’s role in its development, most specifically through the schools. The cultivation and/or protection of identity in the private sphere is not the government’s concern. Groups and individuals are free to associate with the goal of protecting or promoting whichever identity they so choose, provided it operates within the laws of

Canada. Individuals are free to choose how to be in relation to their culture, but the state has no such obligation.

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

There have been significant benefits to Canada that stem directly from its commitment to multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has been an effective policy direction for addressing the challenges built into the multi-ethnic history of Canada. When compared to the earlier history of Canada, multiculturalism’s implementation in the second half of the 20th century has helped the nation to more fully embrace both existing minorities and new immigrants into the fabric of Canadian society. Additionally, multicultural polices have helped minorities, new immigrants, and majority Canadians develop and, “actualize the sense of trust and solidarity essential to maintain the thick web of mutual obligations upon which the liberal-democratic state rests.”199 As a result, multiculturalism has become a significant part of our Canadian civic identity – a 2010

Focus Canada poll found that 86% of Canadians held multiculturalism to be an important part of Canada’s national identity.200

However, the blind spots in Canadian multiculturalism, specifically as they relate to its understanding and attempted preservation of culture, create foreseeable problems moving forwards into the increasingly integrated, connected and dynamic society of the

21st century. Canadian multiculturalism’s approach to culture as fixed to its attempt at preservation which opens up a whole host of problems related to accommodation and

199 Cecile LaBorde,”From Constitutional to Civic Patriotism,” British Journal of Political Science, (October, 2002) 32 (4), 593 200 http://www.queensu.ca/cora/_files/fc2010report.pdf

151 152 insulated communities and risks becoming detrimental to both the obligations to individual liberty at the heart of the Canadian state and to the political unity necessary for the long-term health of the country. The previously mentioned Focus Canada poll also found an increasing worry about “issues related to immigrants and the long-term integration of ethnic and religious communities, including the adoption of .”201 The 2012 Focus Canada report reinforces these findings, at the same time as it shows a lessening of support for multiculturalism.

The rooted cosmopolitan approach suggested in the chapter six maintains the sense of inclusiveness that is central to Canadian multiculturalism. It also works to make the inclusive aspect of the policies influence minorities, be they existing minorities or newcomers, as well as majority Canadians. Rooted cosmopolitanism offers a stronger safeguard to the individual liberties central to a liberal-democratic state while opening a wider path for the government to promote a political national unity that is committed to the ‘juridical, moral and political, rather than cultural, geographical, and historical.’202

The ‘rooted’ aspect of a rooted cosmopolitan approach also should help to alleviate the demonstrated concerns of Canadians that the past successful integration of new comers into Canada would be continued in a manner consistent with values of both openness and fidelity to Canada.

The way in which multicultural policies have been implemented in Canada, through legislation at the federal, provincial and local level as well as through educational

201 http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/pub/multi-report2011.pdf 202 Cecile LaBorde,”From Constitutional to Civic Patriotism,” British Journal of Political Science, (October, 2002) 32 (4), 593

153 policy, have been effective in shaping a political climate that has been largely peaceful and has fostered a prevailingly multicultural sensibility throughout the population. This strategy, of creating a general political framework that informs all legislation, could be a blueprint for the successful implementation of a rooted cosmopolitanism that would serve to orient Canadian society a new sensibility. What this would mean in schools, and generally, is a move away from the focus on cultural preservation and instead an orientation towards both the historical understandings of how different cultures actually operate as well as an investigation into the way in which they have been changed and shaped over time. This is not to diminish the importance of culture and in fact would serve to create a more meaningful understanding of the ways culture operates in an individual’s life and cultural community.

Whereas Canadian multiculturalism currently focuses largely on the fixed cultural identities of Canadians, a rooted cosmopolitan orientation to Canadian education would shift the focus in two diverging ways. It would first focus on the ‘rooted,’ or Canadian aspect. This would be seen in a sort of constitutional patriotism203 whereby commitment to the principles of Canada would be emphasized. This would be an attempt to combine,

“the universalist and inclusive ideals of liberalism with a recognition that citizens of a liberal-democratic polity must display at least some shared dispositions and commitments.”204

203 Jurgen Habermas is the philosopher most associated with constitutional patriotism. See, Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy 491- 515, 566-567 (MIT Press, 1996) 204 Cecile LaBorde,”From Constitutional to Civic Patriotism,” British Journal of Political Science, (October, 2002) 32 (4), 593

154

The second shift in focus would be the openness of cosmopolitanism that is expressed through a commitment towards others. When culture is understood in the dynamic terms that have been suggested in the preceding chapters, the engagement with the larger world becomes both more meaningful and more transformative. It may seem that in this transformation we lose something significant- the idea of a cultural identity that we can fix ourselves to. This idea appears, at first, as something that can be scary since it suggests a loss of something perceived to be essential. However, it is only the perception of the culture, premised on a faulty understanding and reinforced thorough things like Canada multicultural approach to that we lose. Our actual cultural lives are the same, we just open ourselves to the understanding that variation and transformation are realities that affect us and have affected all the members of our cultural group. This realization opens the possibility for more meaningful cross-cultural engagement and understanding.

Because rooted cosmopolitanism focuses on culture as something always in a state of transition, the educative aspect of a rooted cosmopolitanism differs from a multicultural approach in that it the cultures are investigated and understood more in terms of how and why they are shaped as opposed to the more static analysis of multiculturalism. In approaching cultures through a paradigm of change and interaction, one should be exposed to the contributions of wider array of influences, rather than merely the dominant ones. That is, examining cultures through their changes and interactions, one is perhaps less likely to fall victim to the bias of overlooking the contributions and experiences of the traditionally marginalized. This kind of approach

155 allows for more meaningful interaction in learning by exposing in greater detail previously unexplored histories of people and cultures and connecting these histories to dominant narratives. These kinds of connections will necessarily broaden the scope of the educative process. The practical implementation of a rooted cosmopolitan approach would take a long time and require changes to the charter and other pieces of legislation, but the spirit can be implemented through these changes in orientation.

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