What kind of Canada Day are we going to have this year?
Will it be a day of celebrating what we have accomplished as a country?
Or will it be a day of recriminations, of selecting bits of history, without context or understanding to condemn what countless Canadians – whether born here or arrived here — have built over the years?
Given all the controversy that has erupted over President Donald Trump’s “51st state” taunts and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “elbows up” response, we enter Canada Day with a renewed awareness of how fragile our nation might be and a reminder of all the things we have not fixed over the years.
Trump’s taunts have sparked a resurgence of Canadian nationalism not seen since our 100th birthday bash back in 1967. But this year Canadians are also clearly wrestling with the question of “who we are” as a country as we pull out our Canadian flags, cancel our American vacations and look for “made in Canada” labels at the grocery store.
A recent Leger poll made the point well. Eighty-three percent of respondents claimed to be either “very proud” or “somewhat proud” of their country while only 15 percent disagreed. Thirty-four per cent felt that their pride had increased in the last few months.
So far, so good. But 52 percent said that Canada is losing a shared, collective identity of what it means to be Canadian.
Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once tried to answer the question of who we are by saying that Canada was the first “post national state” since the only thing we shared were abstract concepts like openness, respect, compassion, being there for each other, support for equality and justice. Noble concepts to be sure but he then concluded that “there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”
He followed up several years later by observing that one of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, “well, we’re not American.”
Is that all there is?
Many columnists and commentators have been wrestling with that question in the past few days. Some have tried to answer the question by reciting our many historical accomplishments from inventing the lightbulb and discovering life-saving adrenalin to the more recent creation of artificial intelligence.
Others, on a lighter note, pointed to our ability to produce some of the world’s best hockey players, our expertise in nuclear technology or our leadership in producing foods like lentils, canola and wheat for the world’s hungry.
But perhaps the writer who most clearly grasped the challenge was Dan Gardner in his Substack column entitled simply “Who Are We?” Shared values are important he argues, but what is more important is our shared collective story. That is how we need to answer the question of who we are.
He argues that the “woke left” thinks it is all about ethnic and racial identities and ignores the fact that a national identity, to be successful, needs to transcend ancestry. This is particularly critical for a country like Canada with its diverse population because it leads to “Balkanization and fracture.”
But the populist right, in his view, is no better, adopting a “hooray for us” approach that ignores the complexity and diversity of our history, an approach which can be equally divisive.
He argues that what we need to create is a civic identity, that yes, is built upon shared values, but that it is also built on a full understanding and appreciation of our shared history — both the good bits and the bad bits.
“Those who hope to make their nations stronger in the future must explore history in the present,” he concludes.
Understanding where we came from, without the blinders of political ideology, is the beginning of building a shared story of what we are as a nation and what is yet to come.
Happy 158th birthday Canada.
Janet Ecker is a former Ontario Finance Minister, Minister of Education, Minister of Community and Social Services and Government House Leader in the governments of Premier Mike Harris and Premier Ernie Eves. After her political career, she served as the founding CEO of the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, a public-private partnership dedicated to building Toronto region into an international financial centre. She currently sits on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, agencies and advisory committees.
Ms. Ecker received the Order of Canada for her public service contributions and was recognized as one of the “Most Influential People in the World’s Financial Centres” by Financial Centres International. She also received a “Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award” from the Women’s Executive Network and the Richard Ivey School of Business, among other awards. She is also one of the founders of Equal Voice, a national, multi-partisan organization working to elect more women.
