Chantal Hebert, I’d rather you had turned it down

I know it’s unseemly to be judgmental between Canada Day and the Fourth of July. However, I was disappointed to read that the Toronto Star’s political columnist Chantal Hebert agreed to accept the Governor General’s appointment as new officer of the Order of Canada.

She’s better than that.

On most days, Hebert’s column is the best thing about that paper. She’s shrewd, unsentimental, and doesn’t seem to worry about what the powerful think about her work.

The Order of Canada is quite different; it’s all about reputations. It is the highest honor the Canadian establishment can confer on a Canadian. Its recipients are recognized for living up to the motto “Desire a better country” and, in accepting this recognition, they must wear a lovely white and red pin.

It’s one of those inventions young countries use to build national pride. It’s for being constructive. That’s fine. But, being constructive is not an important element of great journalism.

Political journalism doesn’t deliver better government, more rational elections, or less mediocrity in public affairs. It’s not in the nation-building business. Exceptional political journalism, however, does serve free speech and, in that service, demonstrates that the best way to the truth is through sharp debate.

Its sine qua non isn’t superior intelligence or a loving grasp of their host country—it's independence. Consequently, it doesn’t feel right; it looks presumptuous for the powers that be to honor those whose first order of business is to keep them honest.

This is obviously a minority opinion. Some nights on the national news you’ll see at least two of those special pins kibitzing with each other. What they say may be authoritative and, usually, one is on the edge of retirement or already resting in a think tank, but it still looks terribly cozy.  

Chantal Hebert is too young to be tame. But that pin may cause me to wonder.

The Americans are surprisingly more reserved about how they parcel out their awards. This year, Barack Obama presented 12 Medals of Freedom, compared to 70 appointments to the Order of Canada. No active Washington pundit was named. Bob Dylan was recognized for his lyrics. Unfortunately, of course, he hasn’t had anything dangerous or coherent to say about politics for a generation.

Canada Day can’t be like Independence Day

It’s not modesty or a reluctance to spend money on smoke and mirrors that makes Canada Day less interesting and less impressive than America’s Fourth of July.

Independence Day celebrates those who signed a declaration of independence—a piece of evidence that in 1776 could have sent its authors to a British gallows.  Canada Day marks the passage of a British statute to federate the administration of five of its North American colonies.

Canadians are easily as smug about modern Canada on the First of July as Americans are proud of their past glories on the Fourth of July. On Canada Day, however, we can’t literally—and generally don’t—talk about being independent. We see Canada as an ideal place to live. Boasting about being a “beacon of liberty” is strictly American practice. Besides, we are no such thing.

For those of us who take our liberal values to heart, there is something bittersweet about Canada’s national anniversary. It’s like celebrating the birthday of a healthy, law-abiding, gainfully employed thirty-year-old son who still lives at home.

It is said by almost every Canadian political analyst that Canadians have absolutely no appetite to bother to reform their constitution. Look at what they live with: a British head of state, an unelected Senate, and no formal process to check the prime minister’s power to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court—the arbiter of our constitutional rights. We turn out to vote, just like Americans, even though only one of our governing institutions is elected by the people.

Allan Fotheringham, a cosmopolitan and distinctly Canadian writer, expressed his embarrassment in a column entitled “When Will Canada Grow Up?” He concentrates his fire on the monarchy and concludes on a nearly optimistic note:

“Canadians only lack one political leader with the courage to cut the irrelevant ties to Mother England. When will this immature, silly country eventually grow up? Not for a while.”

Click on: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1015810--when-will-canada-grow-up

Unfortunately, the problem is bigger than timid leadership and the influence of British loyalists.

Canada has a prime minister who now wants to democratize the Senate. He’s stirred almost no active grassroots support. Indeed, appointed Senators, political opponents, and premiers in every region seem completely free to distain the idea. Polls have shown for years that the monarchy is little understood or appreciated by a majority of Canadians from every region. Yet it persists unchallenged, from sea to sea. 

Is it possible that Canadians are generally happy about living in a less than mature democracy? Like the art of bonsai, has Canada’s democracy been so cleverly managed, so constrained for so long that it is destined to never be more than a houseplant?