A couple of weeks ago, Harvey Schipper, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto (with one of the most overwhelming/intimidating biographies I have ever read), published an article in the Hill Times that proclaimed:
 
“Canada is in a unique position to be a, if not the, world leader in preparedness. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to reframe our thinking of what a pandemic represents, and in so doing, we can potentially create a revolutionary and science-driven health economy.”
 
The piece goes on to describe a series of medically-informed steps that Ottawa could take in order to position itself at the forefront of “the advancement of global responsiveness.”
 
Schipper’s argument for Canadian leadership is, on its surface, compelling:

“Our biological and medical sciences expertise is, on a population and expenditure basis, world leading already… our diversity both provides the test bed for new interventions and links to other countries that no other country can match. Moreover, as a middle power with a track record of trust and success in forging new concepts for global well-being … we have specific advantages in terms of engaging the international community.”
 
His thinking harkens back to the logic underlying the functional principle, a Canadian recipe for foreign policy influence that was articulated with moderate success in the 1940s.
 
Canada, the story went, was not a great power, but there were times when it had the capacity to contribute just like one.
 
In such cases, should Ottawa invest the necessary political and/or human capital, Canada deserved to be recognized as a leading player on the world stage.
 
According to Schipper, when it comes to pandemic preparedness, the capacity is there. And there is no denying that Canadian interests will be well-served by better preparation in anticipation of Covid-19’s inevitable successor.
 
Presumably, then, all that is needed is political will.
 
Between 2013 and 2019, I made a similar – albeit far less eloquent – suggestion in lectures at my home institution, the Canadian Forces College.
 
If Canadians insisted on looking for global leadership opportunities, I argued, they could do worse than becoming the world’s pandemic preparedness experts.
 
Ever since Covid-19 hit, however, I have dropped pandemics from my text.
 
Ironically, my thinking can also be traced to the functional principle.

Only I am thinking about its less well-known caveat: opportunities for smaller countries to exercise global leadership are typically contingent on the degree of great power interest in the issue in question.
 
Put bluntly, the more the great powers care, the less space there is for everyone else.
 
Notwithstanding the underwhelming response from the White House, it seems to me that Covid-19 has brought pandemics to the direct attention of many of the world’s most powerful states.
 
It follows that the likelihood of a China or a Russia, or a new administration in the United States, tolerating Canadian efforts to dominate the preparedness realm is slim to nil.
 
Schipper’s call for Ottawa to embrace the opportunity to make an already capable public health sector “more resilient, flexible, innovative, and responsive” is still well-taken, but I suspect that the opportunity for Canadian global leadership on pandemic preparedness has long since passed.
 
***
 
I have been interested in the functional principle since graduate school. My most recent work on it can be found here.
 
If global leadership opportunities for Canada interest you, take a look at the work that the University of British Columbia’s Karen Jessica Bakker does on water security.
 
Recently, I was fortunate to get a sneak peek at some of the draft chapters from Stephanie Carvin, Thomas Juneau, and Craig Forcese’s forthcoming book, Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community. If you teach Canadian national security and intelligence, or if you want to understand how our system works, this book will be indispensable. Kudos to them for putting it together, and to all of their contributors for the great work.
 
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Late last week, I read a piece in the Economist titled: “Amateurs to the rescue: Politicians should take citizens’ assemblies seriously.”
 
The article is about the revitalization of an old idea:
 
Governments organize groups of about 100 randomly-selected citizens to recommend solutions to protracted public policy challenges.
 
“Ordinary people, it turns out, are quite reasonable,” suggests the author, pointing to citizens’ assemblies that have indicated a willingness among Irish Catholics to support equal marriage and an openness among US Republicans to immigration reform.
 
Since both British Columbia and Ontario have experimented with this method before, I briefly wondered whether it could help Canadians reach a consensus on the future of fossil fuel production in the Prairies.
 
For example, the current dispute between Western supporters of a resuscitated Energy East pipeline and their determined opponents in Quebec has become so heated that, no matter the ingenuity and creativity of our public service, it is hard to imagine a politically-imposed solution that might please both sides.
 
Nevertheless, I’m not certain that the problem is intractable.
 
Most reasonable Canadians will concede that, at some point (we can disagree on how far in the future that point might be), the Prairie provinces will have to wean their economies off of fossil fuels.
 
At the same time, it is hard not to feel sympathy for the tens of thousands of Westerners currently employed (directly and indirectly) in the extractive industry when they are called upon – often in sanctimonious tones – to abandon their livelihoods while millions, if not billions, of people around the world remain dependent on oil and gas (and will find it elsewhere if we don’t produce it here).
 
If only Canadians from across the country could sit down together, free of the partisan shenanigans, and try to sort this out…
 
It did not take me long, however, to reject such an approach as unworkable.
 
The problem, as I see it, is language.
 
According to the 2016 Census, less than 18% of Canadians are bilingual. As a result, a random sampling of 100 citizens would have trouble speaking to one another at all.
 
Irvin Studin, who briefly contested the Conservative party leadership last spring, advocates a national languages strategy to ensure that we all become multilingual.
 
But I suspect that, rather than uniting us, any federal initiative that orders Albertans to learn French and demands that the government of Quebec promote English language education would do the opposite.
 
A bottom-up approach offers greater promise.
 
I therefore hope that provincial leaders in Alberta and Saskatchewan make French language education a priority in their “building back better” budgets.
 
Not only is learning a second language good for the brain, it might also be the best chance for Western Canada to make a compelling case for a fair and just national transition to a post-carbon economy.
 
***
 
On the history of bilingualism in Canada, see Matthew Hayday’s So They Want Us to Learn French. The Canada West Foundation produces fascinating reports on Western Canadian politics and policies.

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The recent toppling of a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, in Montreal has brought out the worst in too many Canadians.
 
The initial culprits this time – the statue has been targeted before – justified their behaviour at an otherwise peaceful protest as follows:
 
“We offer this action in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of Tio’tia:ke, Turtle Island and across the globe, and all those fighting against colonialism and anti-Blackness in the struggle for a better world.”
 
Although I sympathize with their desire for a better world, I can’t imagine how they thought their actions would help get us there.
 
For one, the vandalism took attention away from the original intent of the demonstration – a call for police reform.
 
Second, although I don’t claim expertise in this area, it appears to me that the deliberate violation of Canadian law runs counter to the spirit of reconciliation.
 
As I understand it, Gusweñta, or the Two Row Wampum treaty (the meaning of which is meant to guide the management of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and European settlers) stipulates that “each nation will respect the ways of the other as they meet to discuss solutions to the issues that come before them.”
 
Third, the protestors prompted, as could have been expected, a barrage of puerile and unnecessarily partisan responses that have inflamed matters further.
 
When pressed, the prime minister was less confrontational, noting that “We are a country of laws and we are a country that needs to respect those laws, even as we seek to improve and change them.” But he stopped there, never offering a way ahead.
 
At least Premier Jason Kenney proposed a solution – Alberta would repair the statue and have it installed in Edmonton on the grounds of the provincial legislature – but his pledge to mobilize the power of the state against what he called “roving bands of thugs” was (quite understandably) interpreted by critics as just another act of colonialism.
 
The lack of empathy from all sides is disturbing.

Those claiming to seek an end to systemic discrimination need to understand that to effect lasting change in a liberal democracy you must appeal to citizens from across the political spectrum.
 
Resorting to deliberately provocative, illegal, activities when you aren’t satisfied with the pace of change will only set your cause back.
 
At the same time, passionate defenders of Sir John A. Macdonald’s political legacy must stop underplaying the extent of the trauma caused by the residential school system.
 
It is unreasonable to ever expect survivors of residential schooling to privilege the prime minister’s critical role in negotiating Confederation and managing our country in its early years over his callous approach to Indigenous peoples and communities.
 
How do we move forward?
 
I’m partial to the suggestion that the statue be restored and placed in a museum (or statue park) where Macdonald’s legacy could be properly contextualized and debated.
 
In the longer term, we might draw lessons from the experience of Yale University.

In 2016, when it faced calls to rename campus buildings that memorialized divisive figures, Yale formed a Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming.

Its final report – a product of four months of consultation and reflection – is thoughtful, inclusive, and thorough.
 
I recognize that the emotions in the case of Macdonald run particularly deep, and that statues aren’t names on buildings, but unilateral, deliberately divisive “solutions” get us nowhere.
 
Surely, we can do better.
 
***
 
If you’d like to read some good Canadian political history, check out the work of Penny Bryden and Matthew Hayday. Bryden is working on a much-needed history of the Prime Minister’s Office. Hayday is writing a biography of Joe Clark. On Indigenous issues, I’m consistently impressed by the work of Douglas Sanderson.

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