LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium
2003 Lecture

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

The Canadian Experience

With this backdrop in mind, I now wish to turn to Canada's experience with the dynamic of difference and what it means for us as Canadians as we enter the 21st century. Formed as it was from powerful groups with different linguistic, religious and cultural attributes, Canada, from its earliest days, recognized the need to practice the habits of respect and tolerance and to enshrine them in the law through the language of rights. In order to form a nation, Canadians had to come to terms with difference by learning to respect other cultural and linguistic groups and by expressing a commitment to this respect through the provision of rights. Yet Canada was born in an era of ethno-nationalism, religious and linguistic intolerance, racism and gender inequality. These aspects of our past manifested as exclusionary, assimilationist, and discriminatory practices at various periods of our country's life. We must also look at these dark points in our past and be humbled by their existence. So a close examination of Canada's past can disclose both a strong foundation in the ethic of tolerance and inclusion, as well as the dark side of group belonging in the form of intolerant treatment. I want to explore both of these aspects of our heritage, in the hopes of ultimately demonstrating that, as Canada has matured and grown as a nation, we have embraced and cultivated the first of these traditions in order to do a better job of confronting the second - we have learned to value and institutionalize the ethic of respect for difference as a means of combating exclusionary thinking.

Canada is one of the few countries in the world which has from its beginning dealt with the issue of minorities and sub-groups by the two-pronged mechanism of the nation state and respect and tolerance of minorities within the nation state. Most of the world's countries grew up around and continue to adhere to the model of the ethnic nation state, often in the face of diverse ethnic groups within their borders. European nations like Germany and France still cling - with increasing difficulty to be sure - to the ideal of ethnic nationalism.

Canada's history is quite different. Other countries are only now awaking to the critical issue of dealing with the other in their midst. Canada, by contrast, was forced to come to terms with this reality from its very inception. The peace accords that ended the century-long wars between England and France in the late 18th century, left England in possession of France's former colonies in America. Two of the most important - Quebec and the Maritimes - lay within the territory of the future Canada. People in these lands spoke a different language and adhered to a different religion than their new rulers. England dealt with these two distinctive colonies in different ways.

The first epitomized the ethnic- exclusionary approach to dealing with minorities. England required the Maritime Francophones, the Acadians, to conform, at least to the extent of swearing oaths of allegiance to the British Crown. The failure to conform, perceived or real, led to the deportation of the Acadians to what is now the United States and to far-flung points of Europe. Many eventually found their way back, but only after the separations and sufferings that inevitably follow such dispersion. The treatment of the Acadians remains a paradigmatic illustration of an exclusionary nation-state policy.

The Lower Canadian French population, on the other hand, was too large and too firmly implanted to be uprooted and disposed of in this way. England had little appetite for a conflict with its colonists in Quebec. And so, in the end, to truncate a long and complex story full of historical intricacies, it acceded to the demands of Governor Carleton (who camped three years in London insisting on his position) that the French- speaking people of Quebec be allowed to retain their language, religion and civil law tradition. Although motivated largely by pragmatic considerations, the product was a commitment to accommodation, embodied in the Quebec Act of 1774 - respect and tolerance, implemented through the mechanism of rights. Half a century later, discontent with colonial strictures led to democratic movements and rebellion in both Upper and Lower Canada. Lord Durham was sent out from England to find solutions. Lord Durham's Report of 1840 turned its back on Canada's history of accommodation and tolerance and recommended return to an assimilationist policy that gave prime place to England and English traditions. But, under the leadership of Lafontaine and Baldwin, the colonials rejected Lord Durham's vision of the assimilated unitary nation state. The former colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that met in 1866 and 1867 to create the country of Canada had learned a critical lesson: the only way the new country could succeed was on the basis of a constitution that guaranteed mutual respect and tolerance. And so Canada was born, not of nationalism, but of the pragmatic necessity to accept difference.

This beginning created the space in which the colonies, soon to be joined by the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Prince Edward Island, the prairie territories, and later Newfoundland and Labrador, could come together and grow. Confederation and the constitutional guarantee of rights provided a mechanism through which the dialogue of accommodation could be pursued - a dialogue that is still being pursued today on all manner of subjects, from government provision of medical care and federal-provincial views on the environment to the rights of sexual minorities and Aboriginal land claims.

One of the most discussed issues regarding group difference in Canada has been the provision of guarantees for minority language rights. Language, as much as any other feature, marks the minority as different than the majority since language forms the basis of communication. Human beings seem instinctively to view those who do not speak their own language as outside their cultural group. It is thus no surprise that despite the reality that many countries are multi-lingual, a single common language continues to be seen by many as the essential glue without which a nation will fall apart. Thus the distinguished American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The Disuniting of America argues that it would be folly for the United States to permit Spanish to achieve any sort of official status. Schlesinger argues that "[i]nstitutionalized bilingualism shuts doors. It nourishes self-ghettoization, and ghettoization nourishes racial antagonism...Using some language other than English dooms people to second-class citizenship in American society".