The Canada that can be
Foreword
Time for Canada
Henry Mintzberg
On February 21, 1905, Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier remarked in the House of Commons that “the twentieth Century could be the century of Canada.” Famous words, apparently wrong. Or were they just premature. Maybe the twenty-first century could be that of Canada — if we have the courage to follow our natural instincts. Canada has something special to offer this strange world, at this strange juncture: America with the edge off.
America, the United States so called, has offered a great deal to the world: a lifestyle of openness, energy, and innovation, together with substantial wealth. But that has come with some unpleasant baggage that is increasingly unpleasant these days: a certain angst, the insecurity of excessive mobility, individualism and self-interest carried to extremes.
Now the world is grabbing it all, with a vengeance. People everywhere, it seems, wish to become more American, or more “global”(which is the same thing). That is a process we as Canadians understand well, because we have lived it longer and more concertedly than anyone else. So while continuing to grab some of it, and having to deal with those who wish to grab all of it, most of us have developed a certain cynicism toward it too. That can makes us pretentious, but it has also bred a healthy skepticism that helped us chart another course.
We Canadians love to distinguish ourselves from Americans. It is a sport in the country well ahead of hockey (indeed, carries into hockey). We sit in our maple trees like panthers, waiting to pounce on any difference that goes by. Somehow that something makes us feel less threatened by it all.
I once got into a cab in the north of England and was promptly told by the driver that he was not English. “I am a Yorkshireman,” he proclaimed. Go explain that to a visiting bushman from Papua New Guinea, I wanted to tell him. Likewise for us in Canada. And yet, these days especially, I believe the differences that exist do matter. That edge being off is important. It can allow Canada to become a model to the world.
Why is it that year after year Canada ranks first in those United Nations surveys of quality of life? I have a neighbour in Prague (where I am spending some time now) who used to work for Statistics Canada and ended up running the Statistical Institute here. He laughs whenever I talk about this. Sure, he says, Canadians designed the instrument so Canada should come first. But he has it wrong; that is more like an American perspective. The Canadian perspective is that Canada comes first despite the fact that Canadians designed the instrument. That is one of the key little differences. As a colleague once remarked, Americans say: “Hey! Get off my car!” Canadians say: “Get off my car…. eh?”
I think we come out so high on these surveys because, leaving the weather aside, we have it both ways: almost all the wealth and openness of America without a number of its most pressing problems.
History has put us in a different place: in North America, without being quite American. With a different territory has come a different past — no revolution, no slavery, a long thin country dependent on the intervention of government instead of a great big rectangle responsive to individual initiative. We also inherited, or at least retained, a system of government that challenges its leadership at every turn — in Parliament and on television — rather than placing it on a pedestal from which it must inevitably fall. So we don’t much believe in heroic leadership in this country, which in my opinion is one of the major problems now plaguing the United States, in business no less than in government.
From these and other historical differences, we diverged from America along a number of other important lines. For one, we actually believe in government. When a Canadian says “somebody should do something about that,” he or she almost inevitably means government. Not least of the things we expect from government is protection, for everyone, including the disadvantaged. Sure governments in Canada have gone overboard on some of this, as in an unemployment insurance system that was so easily manipulated, just as they have erred on the other side more recently by excessive cuts in medicare. But it is a sign of the times that we are supposed to apologize for our generosity while elevating selfishness to some sort of high calling. Thank goodness we have retained much of that generosity.
The Tolerant Society
If Americans relish individuality, we favour tolerance. That word, to my mind, captures Canada best. We are a tolerant society in a world becoming increasingly mercenary. Call that meek, if you wish, so long as you realize that meek may not be a bad thing in a nasty world. We pay a price for this — what other country on earth allows an independence movement to set the question, hold the referendum, and count the ballots? — but it also translates into a certain respect for each other. That makes this country a rather comfortable place to live in a world increasingly prone to discomfort.
Tolerance is perhaps most clearly manifested in our role as international peacekeepers. Evident exceptions notwithstanding, we take to that role rather naturally, and perform the job rather well. Being in between, blaming no one, seems to be in our genes. Americans go into that role and all too often act like cowboys in search of some Indians.
I also see this characteristic in my own field of management. I once ran a “Canadian Deans Panel” at an international conference. Present were the deans of the Harvard, Stanford, and London Business Schools, all Canadians. Perhaps this was a coincidence, but I chose to see it in terms of that Canadian characteristic. Maybe as a tolerant low-key people, we tend to produce leaders who manage quietly instead of heroically. (Incidentally, as I was developing these ideas some years ago, I came across an article by colleagues at École des Hautes Études Commerciales, the large francophone business school in Montreal, who described leadership in Quebec in rather similar ways.)
Maybe business school professors prefer quiet leadership. Indeed, maybe “knowledge workers” in general do, because Canada seems to do well in that sphere. We have by far the most collegial universities I have ever come across; we are especially strong in the field of consulting engineering services; and we have a health care system that, to paraphrase Churchill, may be the worst in the world except for all the alternatives. We may not be able to run trucking companies worth a damn – that is what a chief executive of CP once told me — because that takes tough cookies, but we seem to do fine with professionals. Maybe we should let the Americans run our trucking companies while they let us run their health care!
Here is how the man who built up Bombardier, Laurent Beaudoin, described that company’s management style, in the McKinsey Quarterly in 1997: “We are very Canadian in the way we handle acquisitions. We hardly ever lay people off. Experience has shown that if we treat them well and give them the right opportunities to grow, they will be productive and create jobs for others.” Contrast that with another Canadian company, Nortel, which may have grown with a Canadian style of managing, but seems to have caught the “global” disease since then. Having not met a promise to the financial markets to grow by 30% — Nortel could now only conceive making 15% — it announced huge layoffs. Slash left and right to satisfy the bloodthirsty crowds of the Wall Street arena. “Still, Nortel must carefully wield its cost-cutting knife and protect product development,” one financial analyst said, in a Reuters story. A letter came to us from a Nortel manager who headed up a team in product development. He was worried about his funding being cut, his team was demoralized, and he himself was looking for a job elsewhere. A mad world indeed.
Meg Graham, a colleague at McGill, likes to talk about the St. Lawrence Valley, from Quebec City through Montreal to Ottawa. Not exactly Silicon Valley, she believes, but something built by people with a different lifestyle. Perhaps that takes the edge off, just a little bit, so that they can manage a little more quietly. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know one thing: It could be true if we have the courage to recognize such differences and make something of it.
All the characteristics mentioned above are obviously not ours alone. They can be found in the United States and everywhere else. The difference is that while America tilts away from them, drawing others along, Canada remains where it has long been, with a tilt toward them. And that makes all the difference. It brings me to what may be the most important characteristic of all in this country: balance.
A Triumph of Balance
The world is fast going out of balance now, to the right, much as the states of central and Eastern Europe earlier went out of balance to the left. The reason, I believe, is the assumption that “capitalism has triumphed.”
This belief is both fallacious and dangerous. Capitalism never triumphed at all. Balance triumphed. While the communist states were utterly out of balance, with so much power in the hands of the state, those of the west — Canada not least, but the United States and many others — balanced strong government with solid markets and a vigorous social sector in between. But now, failing to understand this, people everywhere are in the process of emasculating their governments while allowing their social institutions to be captured by market forces and corporatist attitudes.
Capitalism is not good because communism was bad. Rampant individualism is no better than uncontrolled collectivism; “free enterprise” is no less an aberration than “democracy of the proletariat.” What matters is free people — free to be our individual and collective selves, free of the dogmas foisted upon us by myopic economists and the insatiable rich.
We manage to retain some semblance of balance in Canada. It seems to be intrinsic to our nature. We believe in capitalism alongside strong government. We provide opportunity together with protection. We are a country in which much of the population herds just to the left of centre. Some other countries swing between left and right, from one extreme to another. We stay in the same place.
America does not swing. It has been moving steadily to the right for years, slower under Democrats, faster under Republicans. Britain has been doing much the same thing, albeit now in the name of some mysterious “third way.” Canada, in contrast, does offer another way, and it is not particularly mysterious. In a world of excess, we somehow maintain balance.
All of this may sound self-satisfied — we have that inclination in Canada too, at least when we compare ourselves with the Americans. But far stronger is our inclination to self-deprecate. And so a little recognition of what is good in this country — or, should I say, what we should realize as good — is hardly out of order, especially in a world that needs more tolerance, more comfort, more generosity, and especially greater balance.
Courage of our Convictions?
Examples of where we have failed to follow national instincts are instructive. Fifteen years ago, we had legislation that required pharmaceutical companies to license patented medicines to generic producers at moderate fees. The pharmaceutical industry was threatened by this — worried that other countries might follow — and so mounted an aggressive campaign to have it rescinded. Eventually a Canadian government acquiesced. Now that same pharmaceutical industry, in a supreme act of arrogance, challenged an African country in its own courts to stop it from importing AIDS medicines from generic producers at a small fraction of the price. The intellectual “property” of these companies must be protected at any cost in human misery — and at any price they care to set. Capitalism finally triumphed. We had it right in Canada years ago; we just didn’t have the courage to stay the course.
Another example concerns advertising. Thirty years ago, a federal minister, worried about deception, proposed legislation that would have subjected certain advertising to a credibility screening by a lay panel. It was laughed out of Parliament — at least by the vested interests. So uncontrolled advertising continues to demean us. Freedom of individual expression, including the freedom of corporations to speak as if they were individual people, remains unchallenged by freedom from expression: the right to privacy, to peace and quiet in public places. I believe we had that one right too, if only we had the courage to see it through.
Imagine if the governments of Saskatchewan and Canada had backed down on medicare, in the face of pressures from the United States not unlike those mounted against that pharmaceutical legislation. Imagine further if medicare was instead being proposed today. Now that would be laughable — state funding for almost all health care! Unthinkable in today’s world. Instead, we do have medicare, which despite its problems remains immensely popular in this country. The unthinkable becomes natural when people have the foresight and the courage to make it happen. “All change seems impossible,” wrote the French philosopher Alain, ”but once accomplished, it is the state you are no longer in that seems impossible.”
All of that is to conclude what I am calling our national instincts are not bad, eh? Indeed, they are often rather good, especially when juxtaposed against the world we now live in. We get into trouble when we deny them, when we are afraid to go our own way. What makes Canada such a pleasant place to live is not just that it is so overtly like the United States, but that it is so covertly unlike it.
When the world was flat, location mattered. You had to be in the centre of things — in Athens, or London, or New York, wherever. In this respect, the world remained flat long after Columbus sailed. Only recently, with the development of communications technology, has the world become round. Moose Jaw is now as good as New York, if you are hooked up. There is no centre on a sphere. The centre becomes wherever people do what is needed; they draw the attention of others and thus become the hub of a network. Well then, as a model for society in the twenty-first century, why not Canada? Eh?
A Mexican diplomat reportedly quipped that while Mexico is a problem looking for a solution, Canada is a solution looking for a problem. The world has a problem. Canada offers a solution. If we have the courage to be ourselves, if we have the confidence to follow our national instincts, this can be the century of Canada. Quietly.
