Is There a Canadian Philosophy?: Reflections on the Canadian Identity

Notes

DEMOCRACY IN CANADA: "CANADA" AS A SPONTANEOUS ORDER damental to the common democratic culture is appropriate for inclusion in the Canadian, or any free, way of life. Practices of such a sort actively endanger the very multicultural tradition that permits their expression (philosophical gymnastics that try to heal the conflicts between such minority practices and universal human rights notwithstanding). Only those tradi­ tions, practices, and customs that adhere (or can be made to adhere) to these general principles of Canadian democratic culture—the Canadian philosophy—will insure the contin­ uance of the coincidence of expectations that sustain the spon­ taneous order we know as "Canada." In the light of these conclusions, let us now turn to the questions that opened this chapter, questions concerning rights, sovereignty, and the nation­state. 1. The propensity to violent, mass action is one of several instinctive reac­ tions that humans still retain, which sometimes still overcomes culturally deter­ mined restraints. 2. See diZerega(1989): What characterises all spontaneous orders in social life is theirpolycentricity, wherein participants pursue their own purposes and interact through a system of mutual adjustments rather than by being coordinated in terms of a specifiable goal.(209) 3. The Royal Proclamation of 1763, which defined the relationship be­ tween aboriginal and non­aboriginal people in North America, sent a clear mes­ sage: aboriginal people were not to be "molested or disturbed" on their lands. Aboriginal lands were to be acquired by fair dealing. 4. The leading edge of which was "protection," which took the form of compulsory education, economic adjustment programs, social and political con­ trol by religious and federal agents, and so forth. The Province of Canada, in 1857, passed an act to "Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes" (see the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996, chap. 1).See also p. 39: "Legislation, especially the Indian Act, interfered with economic activity on re­ serves by restricting the flow of capital and limiting the decision­making capac­ ity of First Nations governments and entrepreneurs." 5. This ability to follow rules without their being explicitly known to us is indicated by the difficulties encountered in developing "expert systems," that is, the ability of experts to do what they do without their necessarily being able to state explicitly how they do so. The "tacit dimension" of experience is discussed by Michael Polanyi (1962 and 1967). See also Madison (1990, 84­112) and Hayek (1973, 76­78). 6. See also in this regard Chapter 1, p. 38. 165 IS THERE A CANADIAN PHILOSOPHY? 7. The idea that contemporary democracy owes a debt to the traditions of First Nations has finally been acknowledged in the federal government's "State­ ment of Reconciliation: Learning from the Past": The assistance and spiritual values of the AboriginalPeoples who welcomed the new­ comers to this continent too often have been forgotten. The contributions made by all Aboriginal Peoples to Canada's development, and the contributionsthat they continue to make to our society today, have not been properly acknowledged. Thegovernment of Canada today [Jan. 7, 1998], on behalf of all Canadians, acknowledges those con­ tributions. (Reported in Hamilton Spectator, Jan. 8, 1998, p. A13) No individual or culture acts by itself; rather, we invariably act within his­ torical and cultural contexts. Recall Iroquois leader Cannassatego's advice to Benjamin Franklin that the colonists unite on an Iroquois model at the Lancast­ er Treaty Council in 1744. 8. Hayek (1988) argues that "forming superindividual patterns or systems of cooperation required individuals to change their 'natural' or 'instinctual' responses to others, something strongly resisted" (13). 9. Nor may full coordination be desirable. AsMario J. Rizzo (1990) writes: [The] defiance of the clean distinction between equilibrating endogenous forces and disequilibrating exogenous forces makes the comparison of systems, along lines of the degree of coordination, impossible. We could not then compare the actual state of co­ ordination in two systems, each subject to the same data. If the process of adjustment is unique to a particular system then the data is also unique to that system. This isbe­ cause, in the full reality of a dynamic world, the process of adjustment and the process of data change are the same. From this it clearly follows that more actual coordination is not unambiguously preferable, from a social perspective, to less coordination. Aso­ ciety with rapid advances in technology, many discoveries of new resources, and even frequent changes in tastes may be a wealthier society, despite a lower degree of achieved coordination, than...