O Canada moment

The CBC recently chose its “Seven Wonders of Canada” after inviting Canadians to submit entries and to cast a vote for their choice. I think my choice would have been Canada’s diversity. We can be proud of the role that the Liberal Party of Canada has played in bringing that about.

Three things about this Wonder stand out to me. The first is that, in Canada, English and French, and Catholic and Protestant more or less managed to live together and build a nation. The second thing is that the resulting institutions that we inherited from Canada’s founders have been built upon to make Canada a multicultural society that includes immigrants from around the world.

The third part of this Wonder is that, 140 years after Confederation, the descendents of one of Canada’s founding people’s, aboriginals, are still, as a group, seriously disadvantaged. The Liberal Party must push the Government of Canada to make the sacrifices to correct this.

Finally I’d like to relate a personal anecdote about Canada’s geographic diversity. I was working in Paris in 1998 and had decided to attend a seminar about European Monetary Union and what might happen to government bonds issued by the different European countries. The subject of this seminar turned out to be the history of bonds issued by a jurisdiction with an economic diversity similar to Europe – the Canadian provinces. For me, that was an “O Canada” moment!