Canada: more liberal than Tory? A new book puts the country's bedrock beliefs under a microscope.

The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament Janet Ajzenstat McGill-Queen's University Press 193 pages ISBN 9780773531529, hardcover ISBN 9780773532243, softcover

I. Early on a Thursday morning, in the fine, cool spring air, a prosperous blacksmith and a gentleman farmer fell to their deaths from a scaffold in a public execution in front of the Toronto Gaol. Their crime was insurrection. Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were convicted and hanged by the colonial oligarchs of Upper Canada for their role in the Rebellion of 1837. Given that the men were charged with treason, a contemporary reader might assume that, just or not, the trial of Lount and Matthews was concerned with protecting the Tory values governing Upper Canada from the more pronounced liberal ones of the United States. It was not.

In his judicial address, which was published at length in the local papers, Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson employed a clearly Lockean justification for condemning the prisoners to death. Upper Canada was a peaceful, verdant land in which hard-working inhabitants could secure a comfortable degree of material security; the government, through its protection of the life, liberty and property of its citizens, could legitimately demand allegiance to its authority. Those preferring republicanism to monarchism were free to emigrate. Thus Lount and Matthews, having subverted the order within which they had prospered for so long, were clearly guilty of treason. (1)

And so it was Locke, the liberal, and not Burke, the Tory, whose ideas were employed to defend the actions taken against the rebels of 1837. Even at the beginning of the 19th century, the liberal principles of popular sovereignty, equal rights and political freedoms were more prevalent in political rhetoric in Canada than the Tory ones of authority, common good and reverence for tradition. Why, then, do Canadians insist upon seeing their heritage as a long narrative defending Toryism against the encroachment of liberalism? And what are the implications for us today of neglecting Locke's northern disciples?

The consequences, argues Janet Ajzenstat in The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament, are considerable: "Our present-day quarrels about national identity and our ignorance of Locke's role in Confederation are factors contributing to the erosion of Canadian democracy." That we are ignorant of the formation of Canadian political institutions and, more importantly, the reasoning behind them, is obvious. Americans glory in their founding myths; Canadians are almost belligerently apathetic about theirs. Historical accuracy is, to a large extent, irrelevant. Frontier America, for example, was perhaps characterized as much by "civic republicanism" as by radical individualism. Small settlements, though republican and democratic in principle, nonetheless were tightly bound together through a belief in common good and civic virtue. And, just as Americans were less individualist and more collectivist than their founding myths led anyone (especially themselves) to believe, so too were early Canadians more concerned with freedom, equality and procedural justice than we seem willing to accept today.

The contours of modern Canada were shaped not through war or revolution, but through constitutional negotiation. Perhaps we do not read these debates because they are less entertaining than battlefield epics; perhaps we do not read them because we get enough of them in our daily newspapers. Surely no humane soul could denigrate any Canadian for failing to get educated about the late 19th-century ratification process in the local legislatures regarding the validity of the constitutional framework articulated in Charlottetown (circa 1864, not 1992). Yet the legislatures were the intellectual hub of ideas regarding the legitimacy of conflicting political ideas; and the failure to understand why people accepted some ideas and refuted others means that we have no basis upon which to challenge the current visions that are ostensibly based upon our collective intellectual traditions.

The force of Ajzenstat's insight is not simply to correct our perception of our past, but to caution us about losing the part of our political heritage that is most important to us now. The Fathers of Confederation, she notes, were not blindly ignorant about the diversity of cultures and values in 19th-century British North America, nor did they desire every individual to cleave to the same mould. By designing a political system that emphasized impartiality, political equality, deliberation and the rule of law--yes, quintessential liberal values--the founders

   expected the population of the new nation to
   take pride in their "identity" not because it was
   distinctive, not because it encapsulated a social
   vision, not because it incorporated a particular
   history or expressed particular social and economic
   values. Rather, they expected the population
   to be proud that the country's Constitution
   and laws would allow it to do well the things that
   all countries should do: promote equality, nondiscrimination,
   the rule of law, justice, civil peace,
   and prosperity.

Why, then, do contemporary Canadians seem to find so little pride in "doing well the things that all countries should do"? Why have we accepted a representation of our past that promotes an obscure Tory vision and stifles the story of the development of liberalism? What impassions us today is "national identity" as an unfurling of a cultural narrative: the transcendent beliefs and values we hold that make us distinct as a discrete social entity. Even those with a penchant for quantifying our sentiments have interposed themselves into the debate; thus we have Michael Adams arguing, in Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, with the benefit of prodigious survey data, that Canadians are clearly distinct in their values from Americans, and Edward Grabb and James Curtis declaring, in Regions Apart: The Four Societies of Canada and the United States, with the force of equally impartial statistics, that we are not.

The problem, of course, is that the study of institutions and procedures is as dull as--well, as constitutional negotiation. The dry, juristic study of how institutions and procedures work (or how they could potentially work better) cannot compete with the discussion of what it means to have an identity. Everyone can talk about what it means to "be" someone, or what it is to have one's dignity slighted. And it is important that we do so. But this does not exhaust the political realm. Indeed, "political science" was precisely the study of constitutions and institutions when it became an academic discipline almost a century ago.

II. So the desire to see ourselves, as Canadians, as having some clear set of cultural values overrides our willingness to see ourselves merely as wardens of a flexible, fair political system because it is a simpler and clearer way to define ourselves at a time when identity seems to count for so much. Why does the myth of organic collectivism become stronger the further we move away from the vestiges of loyalism, traditionalism, hierarchy and social order to be found in our colonial past? One reason is doubtless the atavistic urge to distinguish ourselves from our neighbours: we're communitarian, they're individualistic, end of story.

But could it be that the myth of Canadian Toryism has a more political purpose? The modern belief that Canadians' historical legacy is solidly set in a collective conservatism clearly emerged in the late 1960s, and reflects the focus on Canadian national identity that erupted with Canada's centenary celebrations. Two individuals best articulated the idea that Canada's past was firmly based upon organic conservatism rather than liberal individualism: the first was George Grant, whose darkly pessimistic Lament for a Nation accepted that the American values of materialism, technological fetishism and the homogenization of mass society had, by 1963, effectively permeated Canadian society. (These concerns, intriguingly, echoed those made by Le Devoir founder Henri Bourassa 50 years earlier.) The second was Gad Horowitz, who argued in 1966 that the "Tory touch" brought to Canada by waves of immigrants in fact produced a Canadian society tangibly different from that of the United States. In contrast to Grant's fatalism, Horowitz's assertion was powerfully forward looking: if Canadians came by their collective sensibilities naturally, then they would be less wary of the left-wing collectivism that unsettled the tremulous individualists to our south. Toryism, in other words, made Canada safe for socialism.

Thus the myth of a "Tory Canada" served the purposes of economic nationalism in the 1970s. Of what use is it now? The repackaging of superannuated ideas to make progressive ones more palatable is well established. Late 18th-century romanticism is one example: the anxieties underlying the growth of industrialization were addressed through reverence for nature; the growth of rationalism, through the embrace of religious mysticism; and the spread of individualism, through the sentimentalization of custom and culture. It is unsurprising that the articulation of Canada's past not only by Grant and Horowitz but by luminaries such as Seymour Martin Lipsett and S.D. Clark focused upon the expression of collectivism in Canada's past, as it contrasted sharply with Americans' own self-portrayal of themselves as heroic individualists pitted against the perilous threat of communism.

The evocation of Canadians' willingness to think in terms other than individualism is phrased with reference to tradition, culture, context and transcendence. The contemporary spin holds that tradition and culture are still of utmost importance to us as individuals--but not necessarily the tradition and culture of Great Britain. That a sense of belonging, of being able to define oneself in terms of a complex social community, is not only innate but also constitutive of a political right, has been the most dominant theme of political thought for the past two decades. Interestingly, a high proportion of philosophers who have developed this theme--notably Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka but also including Joseph Carens, James Tully, Margaret Moore and Yael Tamir--have been Canadian.

But if this vision of how politics ought to be structured is so compelling, why should it matter how we are to understand Canada's past? Why should it matter where we have been, if we like where we are going? On one level, it does not. The reason that Ajzenstat is so heretical (or, worse, unfashionable) is not because she so effectively undermines the romantic image of an idiosyncratic past, but that she clearly delineates the fault line underlying so much contemporary political debate: whether a nation can stand solidly on political values without an overriding sense of civic culture.

Many now hold that it is only through additional minority rights held against the majority that the cultural structures and practices of embattled minorities can be protected. Others, like Ajzenstat, hold that it is precisely this proliferation of particularisms that undermines political life, and that cultural differences are acceptable and desirable, but only if they do not distort the principles of neutrality and equality between individuals.

The truth about Canada's past is important because if Ajzenstat is correct in her reading of Canadian political history, this country proves that a nation can survive without a common cultural core. Indeed--and in contradistinction to those advocating group rights--it may be the only way for culturally diverse states to survive.

III. How persuasive is Ajzenstat's claim that we can (and in fact must) eschew cultural values as the foundation for political organization in Canada? The current intellectual climate is not propitious for such a position; the received view in the academy is that the structures that form one's identity are of a priori importance and must therefore be protected politically. And it must be admitted that the focus of early 20th-century political science on institutions and constitution making neither anticipated nor prevented the ravages of two world wars.

It is perhaps useful to examine more closely the processes and institutions that Ajzenstat believes can fulfill the integrative function of a modern liberal democracy, and especially a modern multicultural one. "Canadian commonalities," states Ajzenstat, are not to be found in a national cultural identity:

   Canada's founders did not build on a cultural
   foundation; they did not offer one interpretation
   of British North American history, one vision of
   the national character. And there is no such foundation
   today, and the search for it is fruitless.

Rather, our sense of collective self-definition rests "in the area of public law and in the institutions of democracy":

   Our identity as a nation rests on the fact that we
   are all, equally, entitled to peace, order, and good
   government. In short, our national identity rests
   on the fact that our national institutions are inclusive.
   All are subject to the rule of law. Parliament
   speaks for all.

Furthermore, the institution of federalism allowed for the establishment of a "rigorously neutral civic identity" at the national level, but permitted the potently divisive and intractable issues of race, religion and nationality to be expressed (and contained) at the provincial level.

The intellectual debate between the idea of "parliamentary sovereignty" and the principle of constitutionalism has been a longstanding one in Canada, and perhaps reached its apex during the discussions preceding the repatriation of the Constitution in 1981. As we now recognize the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we begin to forget that constitutionally entrenched rights are not the only basis for liberal democracy. It is salutary, then, that Ajzenstat forces us to revisit this other, more archaic basis of democratic political governance before we lose sight of it altogether.

In theory, parliamentary sovereignty is not simply a decision-making arena but, more importantly, a deliberative forum; the popular will is tamed through "vigorous, wide-open debate." The vicissitudes of an impetuous majority are balanced by a strong executive and by the representation of competing interests. The reasons why this account is unpersuasive to many today is perhaps the same reason that the Charter was accepted so readily by Canadians 25 years ago. Critics hold that Parliament is only a forum for those who can afford to have their interests heard; the rest are ignored. To the extent that more marginalized interests have been able to be heard at all, it has been because of their political activism in less formal political forums. When Locke developed his conception of parliamentary sovereignty, he was worried about the authoritarian tendency of the Crown, on the one hand, and untrammelled majoritarianism, on the other. The power of a complacent bourgeoisie to exclude others' voices did not concern him (as long as they were treated equally and fairly before the law). Yet if the opposition parties in two distinct houses are crucial in keeping the executive from pursuing its own narrow interests, then how can such a system be "inclusive" if more muted voices are simply never absorbed into the formal opposition?

Both supporters of constitutional supremacy and parliamentary sovereignty agree that today's Parliament leaves much to be desired. The former maintain that this is because of Parliament's failure to represent all Canadians effectively; the latter argue that it is because of "the intrusion of particular demands in national affairs." The former position is certainly the most prevalent, and there are many clear instances where the Charter has upheld the interests of the disempowered in ways that would not have been possible before 1981. But the Charter has also been instrumental in diminishing the ability of the government to govern in the interests of the nation as a coherent collective entity. The best evidence of this has been the 2005 Chaoulli decision, which enhanced the scope of individual choice in health care by seriously undermining the capacity of the state to provide an effective healthcare system for the entire community. Neither Parliament nor the majority of Canadians support the concept of private health insurance, but the Charter put it squarely on the political agenda.

Finally, the debate over whether Parliament is truly inclusive or not should not distract us from the possibility that the political value of "inclusion," like that of "neutrality," is in precipitous decline. Discrete cultural groups no longer think in terms of inclusion; they demand the opportunity to keep to themselves. Even if one chooses to dismiss Ajzenstat's views as archaic and obsolete, one still must ask how we are ever to "dialogue" with each other if we cannot, or will not, enter into a common political forum.

Note

(1) For more detailed analyses of this trial, see Kenneth McNaught, "Political Trials and the Canadian Political Tradition," University of Toronto Law Journal 24(1974), 149-164; F.M. Greenwood and B. Wright, eds., Canadian State Trials, Vol. II: Rebellion and Invasion in the Canadas, 1837-89 (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2002); and Jerry Bannister, "Canada as Counter-Revolution: The Loyalist Order Framework in Canadian History," in Michel Ducharme and Jean-Francois Constant, eds., The Liberal Order Framework in Canadian History (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2008).

Katherine Fierlbeck is a professor of political science at Dalhousie University. Her most recent books include The Development of Political Thought in Canada: An Anthology (Broadview, 2005) and Political Thought in Canada: An Intellectual History (Broadview, 2006).