Has Canada Forgotten How to Dream?

In September of 2003, the Economist magazine declared in a cover story that Canada was "now rather cool."1 At the time, Canada was primed to become the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriages (Belgium and Spain were the first two), and plans were proceeding apace to decriminalize marijuana. Ottawa at last began to take tepid steps towards addressing climate change, and Environment Minister Stéphane Dion released his Project Green plan in 2004 which independent analyses have found would have gotten Canada more than half of the way towards meeting our Kyoto reduction commitments.2 The Liberal government soon after forged an historic pact with the country's Aboriginal leaders to finally begin to address the deplorable living conditions faced by our First Nations at home, while abroad Canada championed efforts to fight global poverty through a massive US$55 billion debt forgiveness initiative aimed at sub-Saharan Africa.3 It was the year of Live 8, and there was a certain hope and optimism in the air for the country's, and indeed the world's, collective capacity to rise to the formidable challenges of a new century.

Five years on, and that hope is nowhere to be seen. On a number of crucial fronts, Canada, far from progressing or even treading water, has instead regressed: Kelowna, Project Green, the decriminalization of marijuana; all progressive and innovative policies which symbolized a new Canada on the rise; all abandoned by the new Conservative government, with Canada left to stagnate and stutter ever since.

But in fact it is worse. The rise of Stephen Harper's Conservatives did not simply signal a routine change of government, nor a simple shift from left-of-centre to right-of-centre as Canadian tradition has often had it. After four years of Harper rule, Canada is smaller as a country; we are more divided as a people, narrower in scope, more modest in our expectations, more limited in aspiration. Indeed, such is Harper's goal. His politics of almost imperceptible incrementalism have sought to gradually but persistently lower the bar to the extent that Canadians no longer expect much of their government, nor dream of much for their country. In the minds of many Canadians, Harper has succeeded in blunting the hard edges of his Reform/Alliance persona, manipulating his image so extensively as to arrive at the current public incarnation: odourless, inoffensive, neutral, grey. Strategically, it seems quite a coup. For as much as he fails to ignite or inspire Canadians, he has also learned to no longer enrage them. We arrive as a result at the oppressive and immobilizing complacency so often bred of mediocrity, with Canada facing years of protracted drift and decline.

Unless, that is, there emerges an alternative, a leader with the capacity to call Canadians back to the collective dream which once inspired us, and to remind us of the unfulfilled promise which Canada forever aspires to. Can Michael Ignatieff be this man? To this, Canada eagerly awaits a reply.