Inspiring Canadians

Forty Brilliant Canadians and Their Visions for the Nation

Mark Bulgutch

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781771623360
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Forty influential and diverse Canadians with expertise in subjects such as Indigenous rights, climate change, social justice and race, gun control, higher education and poetry reflect on everything Canada is getting right—and what still needs to change to make the country even better.

Acclaimed journalist Mark Bulgutch collects inspiring stories and ideas from multifaceted Canadians whose love for Canada compels them to make this country a better place for all—ultimately revealing that equal parts critique and celebration is the key to a thriving nation. These chapters spotlight visions of a more sustainable, equitable, welcoming—and fun!—country from Canadians who believe in the possibility of an even better future.

Including: Perry Bellegarde on upholding the rights of Indigenous people; Adam Fenech on adapting to climate change; Najma Ahmed on ending the contagion of gun violence; Mack Rogers on how literacy solves problems; Laura Tamblyn Watts on securing the future for seniors; Katie Ward on the innovations of Canadian agriculture; Santa Ono on how higher education keeps Canada competitive; Michael Levitt on the value of an MP; Paulette Senior on equal opportunity for women; Kenneth Sherman on poetry and the human spirit; Michael Prince on ensuring dignity for people with disabilities; Donald MacPherson on how drug overdoses can be dramatically reduced; Kwame McKenzie on mental health and happiness; Duff Conacher on improving Canadian democracy; and many more.

This dynamic collection is sure to spark debate and showcase how the fabric of a country is defined by its multiplicity of voices, cultures, stories and ideas. Weaving together these diverse viewpoints, Bulgutch leads us into the future—compelling us to do the most Canadian of things: change the world, and our nation, for the better.

In Our National Interest Colin Robertson on why our foreign policy matters

Colin Robertson spent his career in Canada’s foreign service, representing us as consul and counsellor in Hong Kong, and in New York at the UN and Consulate General. He was the first head of the Advocacy Secretariat, minister at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, consul general in Los Angeles, and was a member of the team that negotiated the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and then the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Since his retirement from the foreign service, Robertson has taken on many roles, including vice-president and fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, distinguished senior fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, and honorary captain in the Royal Canadian Navy, assigned to the Strategic Communications Directorate.

Winnipeg may not strike many Canadians as a great international city, but that’s where I grew up, and I was always aware of being part of a larger world. I delivered the Winnipeg Free Press. John Dafoe was a legendary editor at the newspaper, long dead before I was born, but his influence was still felt. He had been an internationalist, and the paper still paid a lot of attention to international affairs.

Colin Robertson

Winnipeg was also the grain and beef capital of Canada, so I was conscious of international trade. And it was a multicultural city. So many streams of immigrants had settled there. We got our fruits and vegetables from a Russian lady, went to the north end to buy sausages from the Poles there and travelled a few kilometres down the road to St. Boniface for baguettes.

My father worked for the CBC, and that also had an influence on me. He was the producer of the supper-hour news, which included current affairs and cultural segments. He often brought some of the guests from his shows to dinner at our house. They were really interesting people. The director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet was probably the first gay person I ever met. John Hirsch, the great theatre director, taught me how to play chess. All that gave me a sense of the wider world.

At university I set my sights on becoming a history teacher, but one day Charles Ritchie came to speak to us. He was a renowned Canadian diplomat: ambassador to the United Nations, to the United States, to NATO and to the European Economic Community, and high commissioner to the United Kingdom. He made quite an impression, bedding ballerinas, dealing with the likes of Vincent Massey (Canada’s first foreign representative in history and later the first Canadian-born Governor General) and Lester Pearson (who won the Nobel Peace Prize and would eventually become Canada’s fourteenth prime minister). His stories captivated me, and I turned my sights to a career in the foreign service. It seemed to have everything I wanted.

I had a long, rewarding career, but I always remember my relatives in Winnipeg asking me why I was devoting my life to Canadian foreign policy. And I’m sure many Canadians today ask a similar question: Why should I care about foreign policy? My answer is this: because it matters.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of why it matters. Germs know no boundaries. Canadians are not able to fence ourselves off from the rest of the world. If we had done a better job of working with China in international institutions, maybe they would have let us know about the virus earlier than they did. Or look at climate change. We like to think we are being responsible in that area, doing our bit. The Chinese aren’t. It’s through foreign policy that we might be able to encourage them to be more responsible.

We live in a community. If your neighbour’s house catches fire, don’t you help put it out? Of course you do, because you don’t want the fire to spread to your house. You do it out of self-interest. There’s a visionary side to foreign policy. We like to think we do good in the world, and occasionally we can do good, but we do it because it serves our interests.

Everyone knows we are a trading nation. We sell a great deal to the United States, but if we put all our eggs in that basket, if we have only one buyer for our goods, they can set the price. Look at our oil and gas. Everything goes to the States, so we sell at bargain prices. We’d get 40 per cent more if we could sell to other countries. We do sell lots of other products abroad. It’s in our self-interest, then, to make sure those other countries aren’t in chaos. That’s what foreign aid is all about.

Canadians don’t produce enough babies to keep our population steady. So we need people from abroad to settle here. Otherwise our population will just get older, with fewer young people to work and pay the taxes to support them. If those immigrants that we need come from mayhem, from war-torn countries, we end up with refugees. We took forty-five thousand Syrians in five years starting in late 2015, and because we were quick, we picked from the front end. We got the best. We did the same with the Ugandan refugees in the 1970s.

We are a country that has one big neighbour, and fortunately that neighbour is the United States. If you doubt that we are fortunate, let me tell you about a conversation during my first posting at the United Nations. A few of us Canadians were complaining mildly about the Americans, and an older gentleman overheard us. He was a diplomat from Poland. He turned to me and said, “Would you rather be us? Our neighbours are Germany and the Soviet Union, who have both invaded us. You are the envy of the world, being next to the United States.”

Every prime minister I’ve dealt with understood that the Canada-US relationship was a priority. Pierre Trudeau put it most colourfully: during a speech in Washington he said, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

So we need to understand the Americans for our sake, but we also have to understand them because the US is our leverage in the world. Countries ask us to explain the United States because we look and sound like them. Everything we do in foreign affairs is done in the shadow of the giant next door. But there’s still room to make a difference.

Lester Pearson had this concept called functionalism. When Canada came out of the Second World War, we described ourselves as a “middle power.” We had the third-largest navy in the world, and we had made a major contribution to winning the war. Pearson thought we could be the engineers of the post-war world. We couldn’t be the architects—that would be the Americans. He said if you have a functional purpose, you can play a role in any foreign file. If you haven’t, you can’t. I think that is the principle under which we can make a difference. Do we have capacity? Do we have capability? And does it serve the national interest?

Canada helped create international institutions. It made sense to have these institutions, because otherwise the world would go back to what we’ve always endured—watching great powers fighting among themselves, and big countries dictating to small countries. To create institutions, you have to create rules. Canada had to become very adroit at using the rules, making a place for ourselves where we could make a difference. We found we could do that best by aligning with other groups, starting with the United States.

We have the talent and we know what diplomacy is all about. We find issues to pursue and very often the Americans say, “Okay, give it a try. You’ll have our quiet backing. We won’t necessarily get involved outwardly because then it becomes great power politics and it won’t succeed.” The human security agenda is a good example. In the 1990s our foreign affairs minister worked hard on a treaty to ban landmines. The US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, said to him, “There are divisions within my government, but we think what you’re doing is probably reasonable. Go for it.” More than 160 countries have signed that treaty now. That’s a success for Canada.

We are not strong enough on our own, but we can use our convening power because people like coming to Canada. When the Obama administration talked to Cuba about easing restrictions, the talks were in Ottawa. We were useful in the effort to end apartheid in South Africa. Ronald Reagan wasn’t at the front of that fight, but he was prepared to let Brian Mulroney have a go at it.

We play at the edges of great power politics. We’re in the G7, the G20 and NATO. These are the places we can use our influence to make some change in a positive fashion. And of course we are part of the United Nations. Some Canadians think the UN is just a forum for a lot of talk and no action. Even if it were just that, in the words of Winston Churchill, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”

In fact, disappointment with the UN usually comes from our visionary view of what it is supposed to do. It was never going to be the place where grand disputes would be arbitrated in a congenial fashion, but we cling to that notion and conclude it’s a failure. If you look at it from the principles of functionalism, it does work. The World Food Program, for example, was a Canadian innovation. It’s in the agencies of the UN—the UN Relief Agency, the World Health Organization and many more—that things happen, and that’s where we’ve often been useful.

In 2020 Canada lost a chance to win a seat on the UN Security Council. That was a wake-up call: the world was telling us that we’re not nearly as precious or as indispensable as we might think. They told us the Irish and the Norwegians are doing better. The Norwegians give 1 per cent of their GDP to international development. We give less than 0.3 per cent. The Irish have answered the call for peacekeeping. We’ve pulled out of that. Canada helped build many international institutions, and now we seem content to coast on our reputation.

The rest of the world hears us preach and considers it sanctimonious and hypocritical. In 1966, the US secretary of state Dean Acheson (whose mother was a Canadian) said that discussing foreign matters with Canadians was like listening to “the stern daughter of the voice of God.” The Americans have no time for it. The Russians have no time for it. The Chinese have no time for it. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went to China and told the Chinese he wouldn’t sign a trade deal without agreements on labour, the environment and gender equality. The Chinese looked at him as if he was from outer space. It’s of course important that we make our values clear, but ultimately realism has to have its day.

I think we should invest much more in our foreign service. It’s been the same size for about twenty years. We could grow it by a third, putting much more emphasis on foreign languages. We’re fortunate because we have so many people in this country who come with a second language. I work with a lot of generals, and they all tell me that diplomacy is a lot cheaper than defence.

We could be doing more in Africa, the fastest-growing continent. They need engineers, for example, and we have them. We also have roots there as a member of the Commonwealth and the Francophonie. Climate change is going to open sea lanes in the Arctic where we claim sovereignty. The Americans, the Chinese and the Russians all say to us, “Exercise that sovereignty.” That’s going to require some big investments.

We don’t have to do diplomacy in the traditional fashion, with our ambassador driving around in a limousine with a Canadian flag on the hood. In the United States, Canada has honorary consuls, but not enough of them—I think we have about fourteen. I’d put one in every state. They cost about $25,000 a year. We have one in Arizona. Let me tell you how he got there. This guy came to me and said he had put together a bunch of Canadian business people who wanted to drum up business in the state.

“Great,” I said. “Let’s make some objectives. There are ten direct flights a week from Canada to Phoenix. Let’s go for fifty in five years.”

“No,” he said. “Let’s go for a hundred direct flights in five years.”

His group invited the governor to come meet them. I got some free office space in the Tucson Chamber of Commerce. Lo and behold, in five years we had one hundred direct flights a week from Canada to Arizona. Canada is now the biggest investor in Arizona. We have a real trading relationship. That proved to me that you can actually make a difference if you have somebody like an honorary consul on site. Most diplomats are birds of passage, but diplomacy is all about relationships, creating networks. It’s who you know. Canada does $2 billion worth of trade with the United States every day. Paying an honorary consul $25,000 a year is quite a return on investment. I would put a network of honorary consuls in China too.

We are a multicultural country, and that gives us a better appreciation of the world as a whole. We have this natural empathy, because if you go into any classroom in Canada, it looks like the world. We are seen to be better diplomats than many others because, having grown up with multiculturalism, we’re not troubled going into a UN meeting. The place looks like Canada. The Americans can run roughshod over others to get what they want; we’ve learned to compromise from the very beginning—between English Canada and French Canada. It’...

Table of contents

• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Peaceful Coexistence and Mutual Respect: Perry Bellegarde on upholding the rights of Indigenous people
• Fairness In and Out of the Workplace: Hassan Yussuff on how unions are good for everyone, not just members
• The Doctor’s Prescription: Najma Ahmed on ending the contagion of gun violence
• The Biggest Success Story We’ve Ever Had: Laura Tamblyn Watts on securing the future for seniors
• Keep Your Eyes on the Road: Rob Duttchen on ending distracted driving
• An Excellent System: Santa Ono on how higher education keeps Canada competitive
• Sunshine, Rain and a Few Inches of Topsoil: Katie Ward on the miracle of Canadian agriculture
• There’s Nothing We Cannot Do: Gilles Leclerc on Canada’s exploration of space
• Elected to Make a Difference: Michael Levitt on the value of an MP
• The Time to Act is Now: Adam Fenech on adapting to climate change
• A Country Where Everyone Matters: Paulette Senior on equal opportunity for women
• The Unopened Treasure Chest: Kenneth Sherman on poetry and the human spirit
• Justice for All: Michael Tulloch on the integrity of the rule of law
• Connecting this Huge Country of Ours: Laura Tribe on how Canada must embrace the internet
• Standing Up Against Intolerance: Michael Mostyn on fighting the plague of anti-Semitism
• A Silver Bullet: Mack Rogers on how literacy solves other problems
• We’re All Part of Humanity: Michael Prince on bringing dignity to people with disability
• The Past Explains the Present: Elsbeth Heaman on why we should know our history
• Projecting Canadian Values to the World: Marquis Hainse on the critical role of the Armed Forces
• Feeding People: James McAra on how food banks tackle hunger
• The Place Where We All Live: Giovanna Borasi on how architecture builds community
• Advantages that Didn’t Exist Before: Christopher Waddell on how journalism creates the marketplace of ideas
• Follow the Evidence: Donald MacPherson on how drug overdoses can be dramatically reduced
• The Biggest Bang for Our Donation Bucks: Kate Bahen on how to pick your charities
• Monumentally Phenomenal Athletes: Anson Henry on Olympic athletes who do the impossible
• An Extraordinary Asset: Annie Kidder on the commitment to public education
• We Need Big Ideas: Kyle Matthews on Canada’s role in protecting human rights
• The Last Public Space: Julie McKenna on the wonders of the library
• Building a Resilient Society: Kwame McKenzie on mental health and happiness
• In Our National Interest: Colin Robertson on why our foreign policy matters
• A Very Young Community: Shireen Salti on welcoming Arabs to Canadian society
• We Have Smart People: Reinhart Reithmeier on investing in Canada’s science culture
• You’ll Never Feel More Canadian: Randy Ambrosie on why the country needs the CFL
• A More Accurate Representation of Canada’s Beginnings: Natasha Henry on Black history in our schools
• Ending a Slow-Motion Crisis: Tim Richter on solutions to homelessness
• The Gift of Laughter: David Merry on making Canadians laugh
• We Have Come a Long Way: Helen Kennedy on shifting the culture on gay rights
• Outdoor Communal Living Spaces: Adri Stark on why parks are for everyone
• Safe and Secure: Ali Ghorbani on how Canadians can fight computer hackers
• A Model for the World: Duff Conacher on improving Canadian democracy
• About the Author