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Jennifer Welsh: Michael's point on the Canadian diaspora is intriguing, and I am indeed part of it here in England! The foreign policy establishment in Canada is starting to think a lot about how immigrants and diaspora communities are affecting the make-up of foreign policy. Some of this investigation is too negative: how Serb-Canadians and Lebanese-Canadians living in Toronto and Montreal are demanding particular stances on issues; or the alleged links between some immigrant communities and home-grown terrorism. This is no doubt part of the story.
But there are also the connections that hyphenated Canadians have to their former countries, and how these might be leveraged in more positive ways. How do Canadians living outside of the country contribute to Canada's advancement of its interests internationally? Does this diaspora have to be threatening to Canadian identity? Would it be so bad to think of Canada as a network of people and values whose hub is north of the 49th parallel? Interestingly, we even have a microcosm of this within Canada — in the relationships that aboriginals foster with the communities on reserves when they choose to move to larger urban centres.
John Allemang: It disturbs me to hear from Jennifer that this shapeless thing we can't quite define called "national character" is actually considered a source of power — at least in the opinion of the power brokers. I associate it much more with an Old World, pre-modern sense of nationhood which no longer applies in a dynamic migratory culture like Canada is forever becoming. And quite honestly, I'm never sure it was all that persuasive in countries like Britain, except as a device to ensure that everybody knew their place and all was right with the world. That, to me, is why it's so much easier to reflect on our national character in the nostalgic terms of childhood (our personal Old World, as it were), or as something other people choose when they decide to become Canadian — we have no idea what it is, but there must be something there because why else would these people disrupt their lives in order to travel halfway around the world to have it?
But aren't these two symbols of Canadianess mutually antagonistic? You don't need to be the Bouchard-Taylor Commission to recognize that the established values of nationhood and cultural tradition are in conflict with constant waves of newcomers and whatever enduring values they bring with them. Hasn't Canada set itself up for an ongoing loss of identity and an eternal crisis of confidence?
Jennifer Welsh: How can our national institutions keep working amidst all this diversity? John Stuart Mill had it right when he said that the greatest value of the nation, and nationalism, was that it made representative government work better. Common media, shared values, a similar historical experience — these all make institutions easier to construct and maintain. So what is the fate of Canada's institutional configuration if we don't have that common history and aren't reading/watching the same stuff? I know I sound like a social engineer, but citizenship has to be worked at.
There is also an international dimension to the revival of national character. Let's call it the debate over "democracy promotion" — the idea of fostering democratic systems elsewhere is motivating a lot of European and Canadian foreign policy. We don't want to admit it, but our conditional foreign assistance is hardly neutral: We are projecting and encouraging very particular kinds of programs and structures in other countries (not to mention pushing gender equality pretty hard).
In many places, we are absolutely not perceived as neutral. Our stance with respect to Hamas has definitely marked a trend toward taking sides. And let's not even talk about Afghanistan, where we are part of a very particular alliance pursuing a strategy that is anything but middle of the road.
What worries me is that we've become very sheepish about discussing and promoting values, as if it's American and pushy. But it can be done on our terms. What lies behind this is a kind of national character.
Michael Valpy: By the way, John, the notion of national character being considered a source of power, is called public diplomacy, and the rationale for it is that foreign publics will understand your foreign policy aspirations once they understand your values.
