LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium
2003 Lecture

The Right Honourable Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, PC

The negative aspects of group identity tend to be self-reinforcing. Treating others as less worthy or able makes us feel stronger, more righteous, more powerful. We are doubly affirmed, first by our kinship with other members of our "superior" group, second by the presumed deficiencies of those outside the group. Treating those whom we perceive as different or whom we do not understand with dignity and respect is much more difficult.

The force of this dynamic of difference should not be denied, but faced full on in its historical reality. As John Ralston Saul stated in his 2000 Lafontaine-Baldwin Lecture, "the past is not the past. It is the context. The past -- memory -- is one of the most powerful, practical tools available to a civilized democracy". The history of human beings is the history of oppression based on real and imagined difference. The Athenians invented democracy, but women and slaves were not recognized as part of the polis. The Romans treated the peoples they conquered as slaves. Medieval Christians crusaded against the Infidel. Societies from Russia to India relegated ordinary folk to the sub-human rank of serf or 'untouchable', denying them the most basic rights and opportunities. And in an atrocious distortion of group identity, the twentieth century witnessed the calculated dehumanization and destruction of Jews, gypsies and the mentally and physically disabled. We ignore this history at our peril.

This past is not our past; it is ever-present. Modern society condemns slavery, yet still women and children suffer its ravages. The world community decries discrimination, yet people are still treated as less worthy because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion or disability. In Canada, we vaunt our multi-cultural society, yet still racism, anti-Semitism and religious intolerance lurk in our dark corners. The modern world holds out the promise of inclusion, but delivers the reality of exclusion; the exclusion of refugees driven from their homes; the exclusion of women and minorities from mainstream institutions; even the more mundane exclusion of the schoolyard bully. We proclaim the right of every human being to life, yet so long as the memory of the events of September 11, 2001 remains we cannot deny that the stark goal of eliminating those seen as different dominates the agendas of many.

The imperative seems clear. President Wilson's observation that "nothing . . . is more likely to disturb the peace of the world than the treatment which might . . . be meted out to minorities" is as true today as it was in 1920. If we are not to perpetuate the tragedies of the past we must tame the dark side of difference. But how? Two solutions emerge.

The first solution looks at world history, deduces that human beings cannot be relied upon to treat those different from them with decency and dignity, and concludes that the only solution is to separate groups within autonomous nation states. Michael Ignatieff, in The Needs of Strangers, argues that ethnic groups "cannot depend on the uncertain and fitful protection of a world conscience defending them as examples of the universal abstraction Man", and therefore must be secured "their own place to be". The reorganization of Europe along ethnic lines and the creation of Israel reflect this thinking. And it is not without its virtues. As Georges Erasmus explained in his 2002 Lafontaine-Baldwin Lecture, self-rule confers a measure of respect and cultivates self-reliance and dignity. The sense of security gained from community self-determination is particularly important in cases where the countries of the world have been historically unable or unwilling to tend to the needs of given minority groups.

Yet for all of its attractions, the solution of finding an ethnic home for each of the peoples of the world does not offer the complete answer. First, in a world where most nation-states contain ethnic minorities and global movement of peoples is the norm, the ethnically defined nation state is difficult to maintain. Second, even if one could achieve and maintain the ethnically defined nation state, this would not prevent the confrontations between groups of states and ethnic blocks that dominate recent history. Third, the ethnic nation state solution only addresses part of the problem - the political part. It leaves untouched and even threatens to conceal other forms of discrimination and exclusion within the nation-state because it says nothing about respect or the essential value of human beings. Finally, as Alain Dubuc warned in his 2001 Lafontaine-Baldwin Lecture, nationalism, "if it is exalted, can easily become a tool of exclusion rather than a window on the world". We should not abandon the idea of the nation state as one means of attending to the struggles of a pluralistic democracy; to quote John Ralston Saul in his 2000 Lecture, "[d]emocracy was and is entirely constructed inside the structure of the Western nation state". Yet if the goal is to address the negative potential of group identity, the nation-state solution simply cannot go the whole distance.

This brings us to the second way of addressing the negative aspects of difference - promoting mutual respect and accommodation within the nation state. This approach rests on a single proposition -- the intrinsic worth of every human being. In historical perspective, the idea is revolutionary. Throughout human history, the powerful and privileged have always treated those they view as different as less worthy. When historians look back on the last half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, they will describe the idea that all people are equally worthy as one of the seminal ideas of our time.