Workshop during UCC's triennial conclave focuses on Canadian issues (11/08/98)

Workshop during UCC's triennial conclave focuses on Canadian issues

by Yuriy Diakunchak and Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj

WINNIPEG - A workshop on "Canadian issues held here on October 10 and 11 in the Lombard Hotel's Wellington Room during the 19th triennial conclave of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress sought to refocus the community's wandering attention back to concerns about Canada's multiculturalism policy and the contribution Ukrainian Canadians can make to the unity debate.

Since delegates were often seen rushing from the Wellington Room to attend discussions on matters such as war crimes prosecution or relations with Ukraine, it was difficult to gauge whether the delegates, the UCC's rank and file, share the UCC leadership's interest in this area.

At any rate, thanks to the resolutions passed at the congress, the UCC is fully up to date on matters federalist and constitutional. According to the first, "the UCC supports the principle of Canada remaining a united country with its present geographical boundaries," which means that the UCC (including its new Montréal-based president, Evhen Czolij) is arrayed against those seeking to establish a sovereign Québec.

However, the second and third resolutions represented an olive branch extended to the home province of the new UCC president.

That resolution stated that "the UCC supports the Calgary Accord," an agreement reached by first ministers of nine of Canada's provinces (Québec did not sign) and two territories on September 17, 1997, stipulating in Point 4 of the accord that "the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Constitution of Canada mandates that the Charter is to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians."

Point 5 of the Calgary Accord noted that "the unique character of Québec society, including its French-speaking majority, its culture and tradition of civil law, is fundamental to the well-being of Canada."

The third resolution affirmed that "the UCC recognizes Québec's distinctive status within Canada."

According to Adrian Boyko, outgoing chair of the UCC's Government Relations Committee, and moderator of the workshop, the unity debate in Canada has always been framed as a tug-of-war between the two so-called founding nations of Canada, the French and the English. The role of Canadians of non-French and non-English backgrounds is mostly relegated to side-show status.

But with 42 percent of Canada's population now falling into this heterogeneous group, Mr. Boyko claimed that it is time for change.

"We [non-English, non-French communities in Canada] are not suggesting a rewrite of the Constitution to include every single language or culture. What we are saying is that 42 percent of Canadians are neither English nor French, and our institutions must reflect that reality," Mr. Boyko said in an interview after the congress.

"What you have in Canada is a vast territory pretending to be English and French, which it is not," he said. Mr. Boyko noted that Canada is an amalgam of the various peoples who have immigrated to the country and thus Canada's institutions should reflect this.

Walter Luciw, a Plast representative from Toronto and a participant in the workshop, supported the idea of re-examining the two founding nations assumption behind Canada's nationhood. "We have to make it obvious to the two founding nations that things have changed as a way to save the country," Mr. Luciw said.

Mr. Boyko said he seeks a shift of power in Canada, a re-balancing away from the bipolar English-French axis to a mono-polar but multicultural arrangement that is still bilingual, in accordance with the country's Constitution. According to Mr. Boyko, it's not enough to have politicians of many backgrounds if the bureaucracy behind the elected officials remains almost exclusively ethnically Anglo-Celtic and French. "The central questions are: Who has power? Who doesn't?"

Though in recent years it would appear that certain elements within Quebec's independence movement are the strongest critics of expanding the recognition of Canada as a multicultural country, Mr. Boyko said he believes the strongest opponent will prove to be Ontario.

"It is the center of power. It has control of Canada's economy and power structure," he noted. As a result, Mr. Boyko said he prefers to view Quebec as a potential ally. An important aspect of his strategy is to assure Quebec that Canada will remain a bilingual country and that Quebec's distinct status within Canada is unassailable.

Mr. Boyko said there is no set timetable to achieve this redistribution of power, but all of Canada's communities must work together in applying pressure on the government to make changes. However, uniting with the Québecois, or even French Canadians outside "La Belle Province," on this issue is far from a simple proposition.

Many French Canadians, and Québecois in particular, have considered Canada's multiculturalism policy, as introduced by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1971, as an attempt to dilute their "compact with 'the other founding nation' [the English]" in the country. In order to keep the non-English and the French segments of Canadian society polarized, the establishment did little to dispell this illusion.

A participant in the workshop, Rénald Rémillard, political and legal affairs manager for the Society for Franco-Manitobans, said: "I think it is very important that multiculturalism is not seen as a dilution of Québec's presence in Canada. One cannot be at the expense of the other."

Mr. Rémillard stressed that in Québec the concern is with "a national project [of maintaining] a French identity and presence on the North American continent." Mr. Rémillard said that those who don't share this concern don't understand the fundamentally different approach Québecois have to constitutional issues.

However, the Franco-Manitoban activist did not address the function of multiculturalism as a means by which people of non-French and non-English background feel included in the process of nation-building.

Also, while Mr. Rémillard spoke of the need to embrace distinctiveness and show tolerance toward Québec, he skirted another issue: that province's Péquiste government has shown little inclination to defend the interests of French Canadians outside its borders.

Another panelist, University of Saskatchewan political scientist Prof. Bohdan Kordan, said that, without Québec, multiculturalism is a non-starter. "The best that we can do concretely is to offer unwavering support [for special status for Québec]," he said.

But when asked if the multicultural community should expect anything in return, Prof. Kordan suggested this was not a relevant question, that support should be given without any quid pro quo arrangements spelled out beforehand. "If you craft a position that is considered legitimate in Québec, you can expect a positive response from Quebeckers to multiculturalism," he said.

Dr. Howard McConnell, a law professor at the University of Saskatchewan, gave two presentations concurrently, one titled "Unity Issues from the Perspective of Minority Groups in Canada," and the other "Issues Uniting and Dividing Canada and Its Communities."

In the former, the legal scholar addressed in both abstract and concrete terms how minority group rights are secured and protected, and what conditions must exist for petitions addressing transgression of rights to be successful. He pointed out that even the most deeply entrenched minority rights have to be validated frequently so that they are accepted and part of a "supportive political culture," rather than taken for granted.

Dr. McConnell said the "judges are just as prone to overreact in times of stress as anyone else," citing the example of the internment of Japanese Canadians and Americans in World War II. "Japanese Americans derived no benefit from the U.S. Bill of Rights; in fact Earl Warren, the district attorney in Southern California at the time, facilitated internment, and yet eventually became known as a great liberal Supreme Court justice who championed such rights."

The law professor said Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides a codified enforceable ideal of rights to which minorities aspire, as opposed to simple rights of duty, which provide a minimum of social order. He said that it raises the level of debate, and provides the media, also a social arbiter, an effective searchlight with which to look for violations of rights. "Nobody wants to be identified as a violator of rights," Dr. McConnell said.

He described the varying legal opinions immediately following the enactment of the multiculturalism policy, with people whose traditional distrust of judges as a bulwarks against progressive change in society expressing their opposition to the idea.

When Section 27 of the Charter of Rights further enshrined multiculturalism in the Constitution in 1982, legal expert Peter Hogg said that "it may prove no more than a rhetorical flourish," while Judge Walter Tarnopolsky expressed his confidence that it would have real impact.

This brought Dr. McConnell to the second of his presentations, in which he presented multiculturalism as a force that brought Canadians together, despite the reservations of those, such as French Canadians, who believe that it derogates from their position of primacy.

He said that the vision of Pierre Trudeau has come to pass, with minority groups feeling they have an instrument with which to overcome barriers to participation in the society, and inter-group interaction in at least one official language has been fostered.

Dr. McConnell said that in the U.S. multiculturalism has had a more difficult record, criticized by the country's top intellectuals (such as historian Arthur Schlesinger) for diluting common national allegiance. Also, it has given identity politics a tinge of meanness, for example in the clashes between the African American and Jewish American communities.

But he concluded that in Canada, while the "multiculturalism policy is not free from flaws, the preservation of heritage has been a source of enrichment rather than strife."

"In Canada we emphasize commonality rather than separation." Dr. McConnell concluded. "We do not live in antagonism, but seek ways to make a contribution to society."

Other UCC resolutions adopted at the congress thanks to this workshop reflected Mr. Boyko's activist approach to "redressing imbalance" and securing minority rights.

Resolution 5 favored "the appointment of a multicultural commissioner within the government of Canada," who would act as an ombudsman ensuring that the government's ministries and agencies were in compliance with the Multiculturalism Act and to underscore that all government ministries and agencies were accountable for their adherence to the Multiculturalism Act.

In Resolution 7, the UCC resolved to monitor the representation of Ukrainians on various federal boards and commissions to ensure that citizens of Ukrainian descent are properly represented and to ensure the full recognition of the multicultural nature of Canada.

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