"Why Reject the SPP - Our Core Values are Widely Divergent from the US" by Janet M Eaton, July 1, 2008.
"It is simply that we have different values and interests. We want to be able to reaffirm and preserve our founding myths, our historicial experiences, and the values that have shaped and defined us."
"To adopt a policy of deep integration would mean turning our backs on Canadian history, on our own narrative. In order to survive our ancestors created a country on the northern half of the continent of 'sharing for surival' fundamentally different from the American narrative of 'the survival of the fittest.' Generations of Canadians have been linked together across this great land with 'ribbons of interdependence' such as our national social programs, Medicare, out marketing boards, our policies of multiculturalism and bilingualism and the CBC. "
Throughout the 19th and 20th century Canadians historians, philosophers, and authors have elaborated on our cultural context and those myths that define us; however during the past two decades of economic globalization with its shifts to the private sector, de-regulation, free trade agendas, smaller governments , and shrinking social programs, reference to these writings have faded into the background. Now, as the SPP incremental negotiations by stealth continue under the radar screen of public scrutiny, it behooves us to recall these founding myths and to re-acquaint over selves with the unique history which has shaped our values and continues to influence our decisions and choices about the kind of Canada we want - as polls, surveys and citizen engagement initiatives continue to indicate.
Many of the academics, intellectuals and authors who have written about our cultural ethos and mythos have done so within a
Pierre Burton in his book of letters to Americans entitled “Why we Act Like Canadians: A Personal Exploration of our National Character” describes how our founding constitutional narrative of ‘peace, order and good government’ differed from that of life , liberty and happiness’ enshrined in the US constitution. He offered further comparative insights on how we Canadians were satisfied, as we settled the land, to have RCMP law enforcement officers as representatives, of a government we trusted, looking after us while Americans formed citizens committees when needed to keep the law and order as they moved westward..
Canadian philosopher Leslie Armour in his “The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community” gave us a deeper philosophical understanding of ourselves rooted in a strong social context with communitarian overtures harkening back to early immigrant waves that settled this country.
"Canadian history is marked by common experiences which result from the fact that both the French who came to Quebec and the highland Scots, and immigrants from Eastern Europe, for instance, were generally untouched by enlightenment individualism and so tended to reject the social contract thesis of the American revolution.."
He found that French Canadian philosophers rooted in St Thomas Aquinas and English philosophers influenced by Hegel both found common ground in rejecting ideas of Descartes and Locke and subscribed instead to the idea of knowledge as a property of community, transmitted by tradition and institutions and shared through community. This was in sharp contrast to the individualist world view adopted to the South where knowledge is relative to the knower and tends to be concerned with power to enhance the individual’s well being and to transform nature which is seen as something to be used.
These philosophical differences in knowledge shaped the origins of adult education in
Armour sheds further insight into values of knowledge as it relates to economics :
Political philosopher Bruce Powe in his Canada of Light offers us a further concept as a country forged , from the earliest days to the present age of telecommunications, by the development of communication infrastructure, and strategies i.e those links referred to by Barlow as the ‘ribbons of interdependence’, that unite us.. He notes that our history differs profoundly from that of the US with its individualistic story, its militarism and commercialism, its violent conquests of space and people, its millenarian sense of ‘Manifest Destiny’ where creativity and cruelty collide. In Canada, on the other hand he sees a country and people of ‘light’ which resonate with the principles of Quantum Physics and Relativity, a lightness in our makeup in which we share a common essence with the planets and the stars and a lightness of spirit in a country that exists in sharp contrast to other societies. He argues that our country is in fact a completely original model of what an enlightened polity might be for the 21st century.
"Uncle Sam’s frontier conjures up a long line of covered wagons moving westward across the plains while our’s involved crossing an endless expanse of gnarled, grey rock, pocked by millions of gunmetal lakes , with twisted pines, skeletal birches and stunted black spruce where no covered wagon could cross, only strong men sturdy enough to hoist a canoe on their backs or to shoulder a one hundred pound pack.”
He was talking about the Canadian Shield which sprawls across six provinces and most of the Northwest Territories , Precambrian rock the oldest in the world, muskeg, mountain barriers, wilderness Canada, the land of little lakes and he says if we are a more solemn people it is partly because the Shield and the wilderness bear down upon us, like a crushing weight.
"We have our own distinct identity and our own way of doing things and part of that identity is our tendency to constant self- examination. It’s not easy to explain to you Americans that we’re not only different but we also like being different and that implies no disrespect to you. "
References
Bruce Chapman. "Of independence and Faustian bargains: going down the deep integration road with Uncle Sam." February 2005. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives presentation
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