Reboot Alberta

Friday, July 31, 2009

Joe Clark's York University Convocation Address

I have never had a "guest blogger" on this Blog and this post is not technically that either. It is however the text of a recent Convocation Address given to the Graduating Class at York University and delivered by the Rt. Honourable Joe Clark.

I call myself a "Joe Clark Tory" and share his sense of what Canada is and can become. These days our politics are critically short of statesmen but Joe Clark, Peter Lougheed, Paul Martin and Preston Manning fit that discription to my mind. We could use a bunch more.

Here, for your reading pleasure, and with his permission, is what Joe recently said about Canada; a country still too good to lose.


YORK HONOURARY DEGREE

I am honoured to accept this degree, (I remember keenly that, a quarter century ago, when my political career took one of its sideways turns, York offered me a refuge at the Schulich School,) and I thank you all for inviting me to be part of a graduating class which has an unusual capacity to change and shape our world.

Fifty years ago, York University was born into an era dominated and traumatized by a Cold War between two superpowers who each had the will, and the nuclear weapons, to destroy the other. There was a name for that nuclear standoff. It was Mutual Assured Destruction. It had an acronym – M.A.D. – Mad.

Thirty years ago, this month, the promise of the steady evolution of China was shaken by the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Today, with some important lessons learned, China is one of the two most powerful nations in the world.

Short weeks ago, the caricature of Iran was of a vibrant society turned monolithic, controlled by its clerics. It is evidently not monolithic – and millions of its citizens, whatever their religious faith, are demonstrating a democratic faith which we can only envy.

Four days ago, a Canadian-led research team announced it has discovered where the AIDs virus hides in the human body. The team also announced it was moving its 25 scientists to the United States, because Canada has cut its science funding.

And, as soon as the weather allows, Julie Payette will be back in space.

This is a world changing faster than it ever did before. There is literally no predicting what you can do with your life – or what kind of world you can shape.

The American broadcaster Tom Brokaw coined a term for that cohort of his fellow citizens who survived a Depression, fought a world war, and built a superpower. He called them, modestly, “the greatest generation”.

We should not assume that our greatest generations are behind us.

And we genuinely modest Canadians should realize that some of the most promising capacities for future accomplishment are right here, in a Canada which combines wealth, and aspiration, and freedom, with a profound respect for the diversity that is the defining characteristic of the world that is emerging.

The transformations in this modern world can sharply increase Canada’s international influence and relevance. The Cold War was animated by ideology, and the post-Cold War by a faith in trade and economic growth. Now, the critical conflicts are rooted in culture, and stoked by poverty and inequality. In many cases, the causes have been latent a long time. Their catalyst is a general sense of shared grievance, or of holy mission. Those conflicts cannot be resolved by mere military power or “the magic of the market”. There is no real central command, no driving interest in economic growth.

So, where the roots of conflict are different, the remedies must be different. The issue now is bridging hostile cultures -- and the indispensable international attributes are the ability to draw differences together, to manage and respect diversity, and to earn and generate trust. Those are the traditional and genuine signature qualities of Canada, rooted not just in our history but in our behaviour, day to day. Our diversity, the growing equality of rights in Canada, and our example and success as a society are Canadian assets, as important, in this turbulent era, as our resource and material wealth.

And there is a warning. If we fail to invest our distinct international assets, our place in the world will decline. In the conventional terms of economic growth, there is a roster of countries which could overtake us. The Goldman Sachs projection of the world’s “largest economies by 2050” puts Canada 16th, a little smaller than Vietnam, a little larger than the Philippines.

But if we marry our economic strength with these new assets of international relevance, we can be a significant and positive influence in the world taking shape.

We have all learned to be suspicious of nationalism, and of the extremes and the violence to which it can lead. But a sense of nation can also be a motivating source of purpose and of pride, both an instrument and a guide to what we can become, as individuals, and as a community.

Beyond our wealth, our freedom, our ability to aspire: what distinguishes Canada?

I argue it is our tradition of diversity, which has characterized this large land literally for centuries.

Long before Europeans settled here, our Aboriginal peoples were as diverse as the geographies and climates which formed them – from the nations of the Plains, to the Woodland, to the Innu, to the art and seamanship of the Haida, to the caucus of the Algonquin, and the longhouse of the Iroquois and Huron.

And after Europeans settled, and disputed, and fought the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the side which won that battle did not treat the side which lost as a vanquished people. On the contrary. We kept the French language and the English. We kept the civil code and the common law. We kept for almost a century the seigniorial system of land distribution – fly today over the Red River in Manitoba, and see as evidence the long strips of farm land stretching back from the water.

We deliberately respected the minority – and the minority culture – and that set the pattern which made it possible for wave upon wave of different cultures – from Europe, and Asia, and the Middle East, and Africa, and the Americas, and everywhere -- to come here, and co-operate here in relative harmony and respect.

Of course, there are tensions in Canada, and prejudice, and discrimination, and bursts of violence. There is the continuing scar of the conditions of life of our Aboriginal peoples. And there are other vibrant multicultural countries. But Canada may be the most successful country in the world at bridging cultural differences. Our own culture is to respect cultures.

These qualities are in our history and our nature, but they are not our birth-right. They have always to be earned.

This country was built against geography, against north-south economics, against the prejudice that cultural differences should set people permanently apart. Yet now, we are wealthy, lucky, increasingly self-absorbed. Without some sense of common purpose or vocation, we could become smaller than our whole, burrowing in to our regions, or our economic sectors, or our private lives and diversions.

Canada has always been an act of will. We didn’t come together naturally. We don’t stay together easily. Confederation was an act of will. So was Medicare. So was equalization. So was the Charter of rights. So was free trade.

As graduates today, you each have your own plans and hopes and aspirations. But remember this about this country, whether you are a Canadian, or an admirer of Canada. Our future will reflect your will.

You could not have a better place to prepare. For all its 50 years, York is a relatively young University – others are more deeply rooted in the Canadian past. York’s distinction is as the University of the Canada that is emerging – as diverse as the country is, urban, occasionally controversial, accomplished and outward-reaching.

I wish you well, I wish us well, and am honoured to be part of this community of graduates.



IT IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY HE WAS ONCE CALLED "CAPTAIN CANADA"

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:18 am

    Joe Clark should be called "Captain Liberal". No wonder why he only survived 9 months and our current truly conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a far better man than Preston Manning or Paul Martin as mentioned in this blog) has led our nation for almost 4 years.

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  2. Harper is "truly conservative?" Have you seen the budget he just passed? What on earth was conservative about that? He has squanded the surplus he inhereted from Martin and has put us in a fiscal hole so deep that it will get more than a generation and many tax increases to recover from his "leadership." It is all his doing too. He is a one man show and a one trick pony.

    Harper has done nothing close to providing leadership for this country in his miscreant manner and manipulaitve politics. We are more regionalized, poorer, less respected in the world. And now in a recession so bad that he constantly lies to us about what is really happening to the economy.

    Thanks for the CPC "talking points" approach to your comment but next time provide some evidence and argument to prove (or at least support) your pathetic pronouncements.

    Harper is going down and taking the CPC with him next election. The Harper hacks better brush up their resumes and come to realize that they can't all work for the Fraser Institute.

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  3. Anonymous2:41 pm

    Despite being in power for nearly four years now, and not having much of an opposition to deal with for most of that time, the current Federal Government has not implemented any particularly good public policy. I'll give Harper credit for the Residential Schools Apology and national defense file.

    Anon at 10:18 - this is all we've been getting from the CPC - divisive and thoughtless rhetoric with no substance.

    Joe Clark is a Progressive Conservative in the mould of Disraeli, Macdonald, and Diefenbaker. Progressive Conservatism represents the socially conscientious and civically engaged philosophy and practice we have inherited from the lessons of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. The current Conservative Party is a bastardization of classical Toryism. It is an abomination. It is reckless, selfish, myopic, and intolerant. Don't you dare try to slur Rt. Hon. Clark. He served this country honourably for years, and made significant leaps in the areas of Canadian foreign policy and constitutional policy as Secretary of State for External Affairs and Minister of Constitutional Affairs, respectively. He's done more in for this country than the entire front bench of the current administration put together.

    The Liberals lost the last two elections, Anon, you didn't win them. And there will be a reckoning. Mr. Harper pales in comparison to Mr. Ignatieff. The latter is urbane, articulate, cosmopolitan, well-published, and thoughtful. I may not agree with all of Ignatieff's ideas, but he's at least had the courage and decency to speak about his views, past writings, and public comments. At least he never lied to the Canadian public in late 2008. He never pretended that there wouldn't be a recession or economic crisis, he didn't lie about the need for a deficit to maintain critical services and protect vital Canadian industries, and he didn't dither for political gain while the markets were crashing and housing prices plummeted.

    There will be a reckoning, Anon @ 10:18, and Canadians, while patient and understanding, will not forget the litany of incompetence that has so defined the Harper government's time in power.

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  4. Anonymous2:57 pm

    I think it may be too narrow to define conservatism by the size of your deficit -- I'm pretty sure that most Canadians would include social conservatism as a major ingredient in defining Harper as a conservative. And in that regard, he DOES have a group of fundamentalists basically making policy. I think it might be interesting to kick around the idea of seeing what it would take to get Joe Clark into the Liberal party -- not because I think we should move the Liberal to the right, but because a lot of Progressive Conservatives could be looking for a party, now that the CPC has stopped trying to hide it's intention to roll back human rights, reinstate homophobia as a socially acceptable position, bring the death penalty back into the public debate, remove power from judges by pushing for manditory sentences, censor the film industry by withholding funding etc. Would Progressive Conservatives join the Liberals? No, really, I'm asking..

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  5. Anon @ 2:57 - I am a former Federal PC who joined the federal Liberals a fews years ago. I am very comfortable there. I see more former Federas PCs in Alberta showing up and supporting LIberal candidates. Don't know if they joined the party but they are active and visible.

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  6. Anonymous9:28 pm

    I agree with the first post. Joe Clark is an embarassment to Canada and our history. He should not be honoured. Shame on those who gave him a degree - obviously degrees there aren't worth much.

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  7. Anon at 9:28 adds one more cowardly ignorant and unsubstantiated reactionary right Conservative comment. The more these dolts show up the more it shows the rest of us why they must be removed from political power and public office in the coming election.

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  8. Anonymous4:25 pm

    Wait a minute here. The Liberals on this thread like Joe Clark. The Conservatives don't. But wait, Joe Clark was a Conservative prime minister. Oh wait again, Conservative in name only, or in other words a complete impostor.

    Someone who's a Liberal who goes to a political masquerade ball a Conservative does not deserve any honour.

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  9. Anonymous7:33 pm

    Joe Clark is the last person I identify with. In 2000 he ran left of the Liberals. Is that what "progressive" means?

    Clark deserves nothing but the boot that the country gave him in 1979.

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  10. Wonderful address.

    I miss the likes of Joe Clark... Doug Roche... Don Mazinkowski... Flora McDonald and others from the era of Joe and then before that. Men like Robert Stanfield. These were still politicians who could work with people from other parties as long as goals were similar. The partisanship that exists today is pushing people to mistrust our own democracy.

    I can even throw a guy like Preston Manning into the mix, though he is no red Tory. He has always had an intelligent willingness to meet between party lines.

    The likes of men and women like them will not be seen in the current Conservative party. I wonder how Preston Manning feels about the closed caucus of the Conservatives and the tight control of cabinet ministers.

    All of this said, I am no liberal either. One minute they are for a carbon tax... the next they think the Oil Sands are the best thing since sliced bread. Where is the continuity and the integrity of position. It is all about power.

    Who do we vote for if the players change with every shift of the winds?

    Regards to all.

    Will the Berry Farmer

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