Urgent: let’s be bold about our national identity

At a roundtable with the Progressive Senate Group last week, the seasoned business leader Thomas d’Aquino told Senators that Canada is entering the most serious crisis since the Second World War. He didn’t feel Canadians have come to terms with how serious this is. I agree. Canada is facing an existential threat that is real, dangerous, and unprecedented. And while national angst is high, we are still hoping this is all short-lived. There is a trade and economic threat, and—alongside the nonsense talk of the 51st state from the United States president—it feels like there is a threat to our national identity, nationhood, and sovereignty. There’s a threat to the core of the country, and an attempt to humiliate us as Canadians. It feels like a mean game from the country we thought was our best friend. So, it is time to think deeply about what we mean when we sing “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee?” What is it we are guarding? We want to guard our economy and our jobs. We want to guard our geography, our borders, our waters, and the North. But we also have to focus on fighting for Canada, the country, the people, our culture(s), our values, how we communicate with each other, and how we defend and build a stronger sense of nationhood. We need to guard what it means to be Canadian. It is not enough to not want to be American. We have the building blocks to define a Canadian identity, but they need to be reviewed, reformed, and rebuilt. This is what has changed in the last half century: we have a lot more people with strong distinct regions, an evolved sense of a Quebec nation and francophone reality across the country, a much more diverse country, a stronger identity of Indigenous Peoples, and in many ways a more educated and worldly population. We have a drastically changed media landscape, largely under threat, with a growing reality of online and social media, with strong benefits and huge challenges. All aspects of our Canadian culture are under some level of competition from the overwhelming American cultural juggernaut more than ever. Andrew Cardozo is an independent Senator and member of the Progressive Senate Group. Photograph courtesy of the Senate of Canada The death of traditional fact-checked and balanced media is rapidly disappearing, which is one of the more dangerous threats to our democracy. It’s a phenomenon that is affecting the whole world, include the U.S. So here’s my proposal: we need a national discussion on our Canadian identity—how to maintain it and how to grow it. We need to talk about the institutions we have, evaluate how effective they are, and how they can be reformed for the new world with all the challenges we face. We need more of these institutions, not fewer. The most important of the key building blocks we currently have is the CBC/Radio-Canada, to which all Canadians have access. The public service broadcaster was started by then-Conservative prime minister R.B. Bennett in 1932. It now has robust radio, television, and a suite of online and social media platforms, which provide a wide range of content, reflecting Canadians to Canadians, and sometimes to other countries, too. It builds Canada, and while not perfect, this is not the time to shut it down, but rather to reform and strengthen it. Now-former heritage minister Pascale St-Onge put forward her wish for CBC/Radio-Canada last month—not her government’s pledge after several months of active, albeit closed-door, review. With respect, it lacked boldness or a new vision that reflected the changing media landscape. And on the Conservative side, all they have come up with is “Defund the CBC,” which is a wildly popular slogan for their base. Both parties owe Canadians a better, more contemporary, and forward-looking proposal. The other cultural institutions include the Canada Council for the Arts, and a range of high-quality museums, mostly in the National Capital Region, but with two in Halifax and Winnipeg. Together with provincial, territorial, and local galleries and museums we have a lot of cultural content to be proud of. And then there’s our natural heritage—the land and marine national parks and waterways across the land. In this year of national uncertainly, and people avoiding travel to the U.S., Canadians should look to visiting these places and institutions and parks, and these entities should think about new incentives to attract people. So here we are with extreme national angst and concern about our identity. This would be a good time to use the great instrument that is a royal commission, which would travel the country, hear from Canadians, and put forward a new bold, diverse, yet uniting vision by the end of 2025. Failing a royal commission, with a whiff of bias on my part, I would suggest a special Senate committee to do just that. We have amazing people from every province and territory with a wide range of experience. I am proud to say that over the last year I initiated a debate on the future of CBC/Radio-Canada in which various Senators set out very imaginative ideas. Further, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications also undertook a study focused tightly on local programming of the public broadcaster. The study was interrupted by prorogation, but is close to completion and hopefully will resume when Parliament comes back. We heard many good recommendations about how to make the CBC and Radio-Canada more relevant across the country, and how to minimize any political bias. My plea to Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois is to dream big about building a renewed cultural identity infrastructure. This is an opportunity for Minister Steven Guilbeault as he assumes the newly named portfolio of Canadian culture and identity—yes, "identity"—to do something bold as is demanded by these existential times. My plea to the Conservatives is to re-think their opposition to the public broadcaster in light of this new and serious existential threat our country faces. This time in history demands all parties—and independent Senators—to set aside past ideas and dream big and bold. We seriously owe this to Canada, now and for generations ahead. Andrew Cardozo is an independent Senator and member of the Progressive Senate Group. He is an artist and a past CRTC commissioner. The Hill Times

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