A rchive Date
[ 01-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://timecanada.com/story.adp?storyid=6
CANADIAN NEWSMAKERS OF THE YEAR
The Strange Case of Liberal Canada
Sometimes our self - satisfaction dissolves into a bland orthodoxy
By Irshad Manji
December 29 2003
What a fantastic year it has been for Canada’s Liberals. What a lousy year it’s been for Canada’s liberals. I don’t think I need to explain the former, so let me decipher the latter.
Sure, pot laws relaxed. And, yes, gays, lesbians and our countless straight supporters blazed trails on same - sex marriage. Even the Canadian Alliance’s family - values critic lost his job for suggesting that homosexual activity deserves to be illegal. But it’s precisely because he was fired that I’ve realized small - l liberalism is in trouble. When a socially conservative party punishes one of its own for being, well, socially conservative, then you know liberalism has not only won the day. It’s also calcified into a smug orthodoxy, undermining the very gift that liberals have given Canada - the power to experiment, appreciate paradox and thereby grow into a haven of tolerance.
Sounds lofty, and it sometimes is. I mean, where else can a separatist party, the Bloc Québécois, be legally elected to the supreme legislature of the land with enough seats to swear the oath as “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”? Where else could it fight for the sovereignty of one province with funds provided by taxpayers of all provinces? Where else would it have become the most vociferous parliamentary voice to preserve national social programs? Only in a country that embraces contradiction, tension and negotiation. These are the hallmarks of Canadian liberalism.
Why Canadian? Because they come from our history of being caught between Europe and America. Our welfare state, along with our public - education system, has been fashioned from - and balanced by - competition between Old World and New World forces: morality and freedom, orthodoxy and creativity, the common good and private rights, order and progress. Canadian liberals have struggled to reconcile such seemingly antagonistic goals, and from that struggle has emerged a social space in which it’s easier than elsewhere to develop pluralistic attitudes.
I certainly remember feeling that way as a kid, growing up in the ethnically eclectic Vancouver suburb of Richmond, running for student - body president (I won), playing volleyball (I lost), dancing, praying, acting and spending enough time in the library to become valedictorian. Here was a place in which a Muslim girl could be engaged - and not just for marriage. In the 1970s and ’80s, Canada struck me as a society under constant renovation. It was open - ended, the conclusions not yet known, if ever they would be.
That was then. Now I fear that Canadian liberals, in a fit of anti - Americanism, are losing our balance. Today many of us can’t run fast enough from whatever the U.S. appears to be advocating. But where are we going when we run? By ditching the struggle to reconcile Europe and America, what else are we sacrificing? Rationality, for starters. Maybe even humanity.
Take Ottawa’s position against the invasion of Iraq. How can liberal Canadians declare ourselves antiwar when the result of that stance is to protect a thug who’s been waging war on 27 million people for more than 30 years? I grant that some liberals agonized over this dilemma, but many didn’t: Jean Chrétien’s pride in shielding Saddam received a longer standing ovation at November’s Liberal leadership coronation than did Paul Martin’s affirmation of public health care.
And I will never forget the guy who graced one of Toronto’s antiwar protests with a swastika painted over the Stars and Stripes. I asked him, “Would you have the freedom to protest if the U.S. were a Nazi state?” As my buns were about to break off in the deep freeze of January, he replied, “Are you Canadian, or aren’t you?” Translation: Our fundamentalism is better than their fundamentalism. Welcome to yet another example of righteous orthodoxy - you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists - masquerading as a humane, inclusive perspective. It’s been that kind of a year.
In 2004, I suggest Canada’s liberals regain balance by posing tougher questions of one another, questions that are more than rhetorical. Here are the ones at the top of my mind: Is it legitimate to challenge people on the basis of their religion? I think it is, since religion is a choice. Is religion more of a choice than sexual orientation? I think so, but as a liberal, I need to be open to challenge. Does challenging Muslims automatically imply racism, even though Muslims are as multiracial as Christians and Jews? Does official multiculturalism help, hinder or hobble our capacity to ask questions of one another? What’s to be learned from younger Canadians, with our hybrid and fluid identities?
On that last score, I’ll share one insight. A young man e - mailed me recently to enthuse that in Canada “it’s Muslims who will make liberalism sexy again!” That’s because Muslims have oodles of questions bottled up. The moment we feel the permission to wonder is the moment that Canadian liberalism, built on the struggle to integrate seeming opposites, will come back to life. Maybe. It remains to be seen how the introduction of a Shari‘a court in Ontario will make liberalism “sexy again.” The court, which is really an arbitration board, will soon dispense judgments based on Islamic law. Defenders insist that these judgments will apply only to civil - not criminal - matters, and that Muslims, including women, won’t be forced to take disputes there. Still, the liberal in me must ask, if the Shari‘a court has to abide by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects individual liberties, then why isn’t the Charter good enough for all of us? Why the need for a Shari‘a law?
For now, I draw hope from the young Muslim who wrote me. His comment shows that he considers himself a full - fledged Canadian, entitled to dream and avoid caving to stark dichotomies, such as the one between Islam and the West, that have confounded much of Europe. He is not alone, as I’ve learned by talking things over with young Canadians for the past decade.
The irony is, this sense of optimism pays tribute to an American model of citizenship that allows immigrants and “ethnics” to claim their share of the national dream. Not so in many parts of Europe. A Dutch diplomat told me recently that the Netherlands has utterly failed to integrate Muslim immigrants. In Germany third - generation Muslims continue to be viewed as aliens rather than as Germans proper.
The other irony, then, is that Canadian liberalism needs the U.S. Abandoning American pragmatism now would be highly immoderate of us.
That wouldn’t be very liberal, would it?
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|