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It was in 1947 that "Canadian citizen" replaced "British subject" as the legal description of a voting participant in this democratic society. One might think that by now the transition would be complete, the concept of our citizenship mature. It is not. It has not kept up with changes in the world around us. Canadian law on citizenship and immigration is in need of another radical revision.
Most of us are proud to belong to a nation welcoming diverse peoples and accepting many cultures. But present law permits, even encourages, confusion of loyalties and plurality of citizenship. The sense of a Canadian identity is increasingly diluted. It need not be.
In the beginning, in the 1867 escape from colonies to nation, what it meant to be Canadian was plain. It was to be different from American. As the United States emerged from its bloody civil war, and found purpose in the manifest destiny of rolling west and potentially north, determination to have no part of it was equally strong in the British and the French.
The BNA Act was soon supported by the National Policy of tariffs and the railroad. That was not enough, however, to build an economy from sea to sea. Farmers from a cold climate were needed to break the Prairie sod. It was immigration from central Europe that made it possible for Quebec and the old British colonies to grow into a nation state. We remained a dynamic economy. In the mid-twentieth century, particularly, remarkable and diversified growth called for many new workers. At first they came from Britain and Europe, but prosperity there soon diminished those sources. The temper of the 1960s in any case called for openness to all peoples, who have since come especially from south and east Asia.
It is, however, a new imperative that calls for them. Canadians have become much less productive of offspring. Our fertility rate is barely two-thirds of the population replacement level. We are, of course, far from unique in that respect. But our population is already slight in relation to our resources. Smaller numbers would damagingly increase the burden of infrastructure overheads imposed by our geography. They would reduce the economies of scale possible for an economy whose manufacturing and service sectors are already challenged by growth elsewhere. Much as the world as a whole will eventually benefit from lower birth rates, it will be a long time before both economic and social pressures cease to call for migration to Canada, migration substantial in relation to our otherwise declining population.
HEARTS NOT LEFT ELSEWHERE
Our national problem is to reconcile this need with the basic political fact that no democracy can thrive without some widely shared sense of community, of some things done differently because they are done together. We are a North American society, sharing many characteristics with our neighbour. But we have combined them with a stronger sense of community concerns. One aspect of this was brought home to me long ago by Prime Minister Pearson. When we were reminiscing together over an after-work Scotch, he said that in all his international dealings, and unilingual though he was, the people with whom he felt most at home were neither American nor British, but northern Europeans.
That was close to fifty years ago, in a different world. But the essential point remains. While Canada takes second place to none in the value it places on individual freedom and enterprise, we strive to do so within an equitable and equable society that combats inequalities of opportunity. Such is the community spirit of French Canadians as much as British, of most newer as well as earlier immigrants. It is the spirit that has guided our sometimes significant contribution to world affairs. We want immigrants who will in their diversity contribute to the development of that Canadianism. We do not want immigrants who dilute it by leaving their hearts elsewhere.
Citizenship can neither be bred by preaching nor be enforced by law. It can be encouraged or not. At present it is not. Canada's national interest requires, first, a major change in the legal terms on which migrants come. After three years as residents they may, if they wish and satisfy a minimal test, become citizens. But if not, their permission to reside and work here continues. So does access to the hospitality of our multiculturalism. Legally, we minimize the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship. We give substance to the jibe that, by making so light of being Canadian, we are the hotel among countries: a place to which you come and go at your convenience, in escape from the obligations of a household.
