To my Canadian friends

In the past few weeks, the President of the USA has issued explicit challenges to the sovereignty of Canada, both political and economic. In response to these challenges, some of my Canadian friends who lie on the more progressive and of the political spectrum have expressed a slightly disconcerting attachment to feelings of nationalism.

I understand where they’re coming from. Over the past five days Canadians have been engaged in a nationwide conversation about what it means to be Canadian, what our country stands for, and in some cases, whether we shouldn’t just join with the United States anyway. Ironically, it’s voices on the far right, who, over the past several years, have been loudly, proclaiming that they are “defending the integrity of Canada from Justin Trudeau and the woke mob” who are now saying that perhaps we should join the United States. So for the moment, we’re going to ignore those voices in this conversation because they have nothing to offer but to sow chaos, short term, outrage, and serve the interest of those who would seek to exploit this country’s resources and markets.

Instead I think it’s important that we think about what these feelings of national defensiveness mean and how they can translate into action.

My attachment to the idea of Canada is complicated. I’m not a nationalist, but instead, I would say that I believe in the project that Indigenous nations sought to co-create when they signed the original treaties. In other words, the people whose traditional lands Canada was established upon had, in most cases, a strong curiosity and sense of what might be possible with a co-creative relationship between different peoples, who offered different gifts to one another. Despite the subsequent centuries of dishonourin the treaties from the Crown side, Canada was nevertheless founded upon a set of fundamental relationships between the Crown of England and the Indigenous nations who were recognized in 1763 as the rightful owners of these territories.

The reason for protecting Canada as a separate container of collective effort is not that we have the best public health care or proper gun laws or a well regulated banking system or a generally more progressive attachment to equality and justice. These are outcomes of the kind of things we are working on. It isn’t perfect but here in this country we are running a different experiment in living together than the US is, and I, for one, prefer it.

In its most ideal form it looks like this: Our country is a federation of two levels of government established on the basis of relationships negotiated between the Crown and First Nations governments in most places. We are a treaty country, and in places where we have not concluded treaties with First Nations, Canadian law recognizes Aboriginal title as an existing layer of jurisdiction on the land. Our governments are supported by democratic and civil institutions which , in general are set up to work for the public good.

As a treaty country, the implication I have always taken is that we have to constantly work on the relationship not only with First Nations but with each other as well. The values that we have enshrined in our Constitution are related to what’s known as Peace, Order and Good Government. Again, problematic in many ways (not the least of which is that we have discovered that it is entirely possible to build a colonial state based on these principles), but if we take these as generative principles, a Constitution that sets out the powers of the federal and provincial government focused on Peace first of all is pretty cool. Order, while seeming like the need to control things, is nevertheless a value that enshrines stability and equality and access so that what happens in the country is predictable and stable enough that people can run businesses and work together and receive services. It enshrines equality and care before the law and in our social safety net. In the early days it was often freely exchanged for Welfare, which gives you a sense of what that value could embody.

And Good Government to me means one that is free of corruption, that has integrity, that stewards the public good for the benefit of the people. As a former public servant, I always took that role very seriously. When I was out doing third part consultation on the BC Treaty Process, I was acutely aware that I was at the working coal face of democracy participation. It was my job to make spaces for voices to participate in the act of nation building and active reconciliation through treaties with First Nations who wanted to enshrine their relationship with Canada in that form. Good Governance to me meant doing that work that left good relations on the ground.

I take these values to be the aspirational directions of travel we are moving in together. We disagree about how. We violate these principles constantly. There is no easy way to do it, but if you are Canadian, you live under a Constitution that is based on these values.

I just want to say that we have done this with mixed results in Canada through our history. We have some cool things here and we have also done some truly horrible things in Canada under the laws and principles enshrined in our Constitution. But this is the project and Canada is the container that I’m interested and committed to working within.

I distrust nationalism in any guise. Even in it’s progressive forms where I can see benefits (like the way Quebec nationalism has created incredible co-operative movements, credit unions and social safety nets) there is, very close to the surface, a vein of exclusion that can press differences into otherness and foster mistrust and hate. It is easy to take what has happened over the past week and generate a pro-Canadian stance that is also anti-American and also sublimates the real challenges we need to struggle with in this country. We don’t have to do that. I am not anti-American. My American colleagues and I have common cause in the world. We don’t need to adopt any kind of nationalist rhetoric or approach to defend the best of what this Canadian project is and to keep the vultures away so we can continue the hard work of trying to fulfill the promise of this place. We need only remember what we are trying to do here, and maintain the container of shared purpose, and double down on our efforts to show what is possible.