For some weeks, I have been
committing the moderate indignities that are of the lot of all authors selling
newly launched books. Even though I do not attempt to live off the proceeds of
the book sales, I’m obligated to the publishers to do my best to promote sales,
and am, of course, happy to do so.
It leads to interesting
encounters with an extraordinary variety of people in an era in which I can
speak from a specially wired and illuminated place in my home by Zoom or Skype
or equivalent methods to people and groups almost anywhere. Because my current
book (the first volume of my anticipated three-volume treatment of the modest
subject of the political and strategic history of the world), insofar as it
attracts any interest, could be appreciated by people who can read English
anywhere, I have so far spoken to people and groups in most states in the
United States and an appreciable number of British and Australian connections,
and I’m really just getting underway in Canada.
My reason for mentioning this is
that, throughout this process, I have found that Americans are intensely
curious about what they understand to be the destruction of human rights in
Canada. I have never known Americans to be so familiar with pending legislation
in this country as they are with Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which deals
with hate speech communicated over the internet.
Obviously, every responsible
person disapproves of the incitement of hate, other than in the rare cases
where it is objectively justifiable — no one would reasonably object to the
incitement of hate against physically belligerent Nazis or other racist terrorists
or almost all categories of those who commit unprovoked and premeditated
murder. And Bill C-63 does carefully establish that it is not aiming at matters
that merely humiliate or offend or insult people.
But it does provide for the
possibility of life imprisonment for incitement to genocide, and it allows
individuals to be placed under house arrest if it is believed they will commit
a hate crime in the future and outlaws speech that is “motivated by hate.” Last
week, I was the guest of a radio commentator in Wichita, Kan., who is
considerably better informed on the state of these discussions in this country
than any Canadian with whom I have discussed them.
Other than in the most egregious
or frivolous cases, I always feel it is my duty to defend Canada against the
criticisms of outsiders; all of us who are in the media of foreign countries
from time to time sometimes have to bowl for Canada (cricket expression), and
wave the Maple Leaf flag around a bit, and generally enjoy doing it. I have
attempted to reassure these Americans — who in every case expressed their
liking and respect for Canada, as well as their concern that matters must be
going horribly wrong if the government is threatening to send people to prison
for life for inciting genocide — while acknowledging that such a practice is
completely reprehensible.
My customary response is to
remind them that the Federal Court determined that the government’s invocation
of the Emergencies Act to deal with the Freedom Convoy, an episode that many
Americans seem to know a good deal about, was unjustified, and that they should
have no fear that the courts of this country will fail to provide whatever
moderation and amendment is necessary to the pending legislation.
In the case of the more
aggressive questioners, even though I’d been invited onto their programs and
podcasts to sell my book and not defend the present Canadian government, I
gently suggested that it would be more productive to concern themselves with their
own government, which is attempting to turn the criminal justice apparatus of
the United States, and now even its civil courts, into an appendage of the
dirty tricks division of the Democratic National Committee. That generally
throws them off the track (they usually agree).
I did not judge it appropriate
to offer my own concerns that Canada is a country that has been much too free
in bandying about charges of genocide, especially and very unjustly, in
reference to our historic treatment of Indigenous people. Nor did I see any
reason to discuss with foreigners my own reservations about trusting in our
courts to determine the motivations of accused people.
This is very unsatisfactory
legislation as formulated, and I can only hope that the debate process makes it
less worrisome and less prone to abuse. But it opens broader questions about
the current purposes of Canadian public policy. Our rate of economic growth
appears to be stagnating and our standard of living is not keeping up with our
peers. At the same time, rather than meeting its NATO commitments, Canada is
looking to cut its already paltry defence budget.
This is a time of weak and
bitterly divided government in the United States, in which the European NATO
countries and other allies are all raising their defence commitments and
attempting as best they can to fill the slack that has accrued in American policy-making,
while that country determines whether it accepts or rejects the Trump
phenomenon, which is essentially the reorientation of the Republican party to
be the champion of all those who have been under-served by the last 20 or 30
years of American economic growth.
All countries go through times
of introspection and comparative political incoherence and it behooves any
nation that has sheltered under the assurance of American protection to
begrudge such a time of self-reassessment in the United States, though it appears
that the current controversy will be resolved in November.
But Canada simply has to do
better. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute, which is a relatively new and
innovative think-tank, is beginning a study on the lack of a grand strategy for
this country. This is a point that I have raised in these pages from time to
time; if there is a strategy, it is a presumably well-intentioned effort to
make us a fairer and therefore better place. But too much behavioural tinkering
and meddling sedates and muddles a society. Governments must prohibit bad
things and encourage good things, but it has no standing beyond that to tell
people how to behave, and its personnel are rarely sufficiently distinguished
to have any standing to do so anyway.
We need to work out a
comprehensive plan of action with the meritocratic leaders of First Nations, to
uplift that community. We need a policy of environmental protection that
enables us to extract maximum economic benefit from all of our fossil fuel industries
and keep our gasoline and fuel prices low.
We need a tax system that moves
steadily away from the confiscation of income to taxing optional spending and
consumption. We should work toward a hard currency and a very positive climate
for capital investment. And we need a massive rebuild of our defence forces,
including the high-tech industry that supports them and the vast benefits of
adult education available to members of the Armed Forces.
When we have done all that, and
it would not take long, we will be able to exercise an influential voice in the
world, advocating peace through strength, influence by good example and
absolute reciprocal solidarity with like-minded free nations throughout the
world. Canada’s opportunities aren’t going away; we just aren’t grasping them.
These are my thoughts as I depart for the funeral of Brian Mulroney, my friend
of nearly 60 years.
National Post