What is a Canadian Citizen?

In a country partly defined by its diversity, what connects those who call themselves “Canadian”?

Co-authored by Erin Tolley, Trudeau scholar and PhD candidate in political science at Queen's University.

When pollsters ask us what makes us most proud to be Canadian, we tell them it is our democracy, our humanitarianism, our peacefulness, and the country’s geographic beauty. Some mention hockey, or multiculturalism, or the Canadian flag. When we cast our gaze across the country, however, the responses vary, with significant differences shining through. There is, it would seem, no single way of “being Canadian” or showing pride in this country.

This is not surprising, given Canada’s enormous geographic reach, a population that includes Aboriginal Peoples and hundreds of ethnocultural communities, and a federation that is sometimes sharply divided along linguistic and regional lines. Indeed, we are partly defined by this diversity, which is not just an outgrowth of our past, but is intertwined with our future, as hundreds of thousands of newcomers arrive in Canada each year. They work, they go to school, and most become citizens.

As a result, we often think of ourselves – proudly, it bears noting – as a country of immigrants, but we are also a country of strangers. When flights to Paris and Rome are cheaper than those to cities within our own borders, or when the warmth of a Caribbean beach beckons in the dead of winter, many Canadians opt to explore locales much farther afield than those in their own backyards. As a result, many Maritimers have never ventured west, scores of Western Canadians have never dipped their toes in the Atlantic, and most of us have never been anywhere near the northern territories.

This gives us a fractured – and somewhat insulated – picture of what Canada is, who Canadians are, and what it means to be a citizen of this country. Moreover, as globalization expands the bounds of citizenship while simultaneously loosening its bonds, questions arise about the strength of our attachments, what it means to belong, and how we are connected to those who also call themselves “Canadian.” This is, of course, also occurring in a context of increasing diversity and changing migration patterns, with settlement in this country being viewed no longer as a permanent condition necessarily, but perhaps a temporary stop along the way. Here, tensions may arise over the definition of what it means to be a citizen and over the balance between rights and obligations, responsibilities and privileges.

In some cases, the patterns are repeated across the country, with the tenor of the debate resonating regardless of location. But in other cases, the conversation is deeply and uniquely local. Too often, debates about citizenship presume a shared vision, and as a result, important differences are erased or rendered irrelevant. Local voices and individual communities may be muted as discussions revolve around questions of “nationhood” and “national identity.” What is the link between local, regional, and national understandings of citizenship? What binds us together as members of communities and of a country?

These questions will be grappled with in a conference series commencing this month in Vancouver. The first installment of Citizenship from Coast to Coast to Coast will be hosted by the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues and kicks off a collaboration with the Trudeau Foundation that will see sister conferences hosted in Iqaluit in spring 2011 and Halifax the following fall.

Citizenship from Coast to Coast to Coast aims to spark a conversation about citizenship, to discuss what it means to be a member of a community and of a country, and to examine how notions of citizenship at the city level are related to and diverge from those at the regional and national levels. Four themes will be explored: the nation and the city; sovereignty and self-rule; belonging and inclusion; and language. Participants will be drawn from universities, governments, and the community sector, and an emphasis will be placed on integrating theoretical, practical, and applied perspectives on citizenship, while grounding the “national” conversation in this country’s diverse local and regional contexts.

Canada’s debate on citizenship too often occurs at “the centre” with its overly narrow and inward-looking vantage point. In this way, it excludes the country’s peripheries, fails to consider both urban and isolated regions, and does little to connect the many ways that citizenship is experienced and expressed. It’s time to engage in a more responsible conversation about citizenship.