The Globe & Mail is running its request for nominations for the Canadian "Nation Builder of the Year" and they asked me to provide some historical perspective. Here's the piece that ran on Saturday, December 17:
If nations really were built, they would be conclusive evidence for a Theory of Unintelligent Design. What nation can anyone point to and say, yes, that’s exactly how I would have built one? Nations generally resemble sports of nature more than builders’ handiwork -- the duck-billed platypus more than anything assembled from constitutional Megablox. For Canada alone, think of all the enduring national elements no one would ever have consciously designed quite that way: constitutional monarchy, sovereignty-association, leadership conventions, the notwithstanding clause, Prince Edward Island….
Still, nations evolve faster than creatures. Individuals can get to mess with the national genetic code, and not all the changes they engineer are toxic. If we cannot provide the formula for a nation, we can at least inquire into the qualities of successful nation-shapers.
Show up and Stick Around
If you want to shape the nation, have patience. John A. Macdonald served forty-seven consecutive years in the national legislature. Mackenzie King was prime minister off and on for nearly thirty. Robert Borden was leader of the opposition for ten years and got thumped in two consecutive elections before winning the top job.
With Jean Chrétien finally retired and Ed Broadbent bowing out, this is a tough one for today’s aspiring nation builders. Today we like to put early best-before dates on politicians and leaders. But the continuing influence of June Callwood, Jane Jacobs, and, sure, Preston Manning shows we are not yet entirely immune to the wisdom of experience.
Have an Eye for Power
Like Gretzky knowing where the puck would be, successful nation-shapers knew how to move to where the power will be, even if it is not where their principles used to be. John A Macdonald opposed Confederation until almost the last minute, and then joined the parade so successfully that he is generally seen as its father. King stood foursquare against wartime conscription until it seemed vital to his hold on power. Mulroney campaigned against free trade until it suddenly seemed the strongest platform available
Paul Martin, budget-cutter turned big-spender, and Stephen Harper, prophet of firewalls and small government turned apostle of federal handouts, seems seem to be trying this route. It has worked for aspiring nation builders before.
Cultivate a Gift for Inspiration
We are suckers for inspiration in this country, and we’ll take it where we can find it. Our greatest francophone prime ministers, Laurier and Trudeau, won over English-Canada on their appeals to justice and tolerance.
Today women and minorities often have the greatest potential to shape the nation through their personal inspiration: think of Adrienne Clarkson and Michaelle Jean. Canada today could use a nation-builder from Jane-Finch, and another from Kachechewan, or others wearing turbans or chadors.
Play Well with Others
We assume nation builders ought to be heroes. But many of the great achievements of Canadian nation-building were like the double hockey golds at Salt Lake City: team victories. If Confederation succeeded in the 1860s where Meech flamed out in the 1990s, it’s partly because there were thirty-six Fathers to make Confederation and only eleven (white) guys at Meech Lake. Sometimes it takes a big room to shape a nation.
Today no situation in Canada offers greater potential for nation-building through teamwork than the backbenches of our Parliament and legislatures. In parliamentary democracies around the world, backbenchers routinely unseat prime ministers, rewrite legislation, and set national agendas. In Britain, Labour backbenchers defeated Tony Blair’s bid for excessive police powers.
It used to be that way in Canada. Exactly a hundred years ago, Clifford Sifton left cabinet for the backbenches, to lead the backbench revolt that rewrote Prime Minister Laurier’s plans for the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The admirable parliamentary resolution against honours and titles, the one that recently drove Conrad Black to renounce Canada, was a 1919 backbench initiative taken against the will of Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden
Sadly, more recent Canadian examples of nation-building from the backbench are hard to find. And our pollsters, pundits and political scientists endlessly propose new schemes to increase the irrelevance of elected legislators. But the power of the backbench remains there for whenever some courageous MPs decide to pick it up and wield it.
By that measure, the late Chuck Cadman looms large as a potential Nation Builder for 2005. It’s too bad he did the right thing for precisely the wrong reason. His constituents, he said, told him not to trigger an election when the fate of the government lay in his hands last spring. On that logic, we could save millions by replacing our MPs with pollsters. But Chuck Cadman MP did cast an independent and decisive vote in the House of Commons. That’s a rare and precious thing. If only it could become contagious.
