Thank you.
History is bound to be a major topic during a birthday party for a country. Certainly, some of the projects that would come forward under “Mix-Up and Move Around” would have to do with history. Of course, all of these new immigrants from different worlds—in very large proportions now—need to know some of the history that predates them in this country, although they're now making history themselves here.
The approach I'm taking is that you have to have a strategic heartbeat for something like 2017. It needs a brand, in the sense that this is what this year is about. It can't just be scattershot, where you have 500 good, worthy causes that come forward and you say, “Okay—these, these, these, these, these.” Then there's no overarching way to understand what we're doing or why we're doing this.
I'm proposing that there be an overarching idea to whatever you want to do, whether it's trying to revive history, or doing a national tour of kids from all around the country and traveling all around the country—which really is a Mix-Up and Move Around classic case—so that you don't have to decide all of these projects for yourself, but you know what you're looking for, and you tell everybody what they need to do if they want support. In a strategic vision where you say, “This is what this is about and not other things”, your worthy causes are subject to the sacred cause of knowing thyself, because this is the biggest challenge we have going forward. I'm more interested in the significance of going forward of what we can do this year than looking back so much, although history can be part of it.
How much can we strengthen the good road we're on, and not go into the ditch on multiculturalism, by framing the year and saying that whatever you have to do or want to do—whether it's in the arts, sport, conferences, or business—you've got to mix-up and move around if you are to get support for 2017. That's the core issue.
There's a wide variety of things that you would hear from across the country. Let's say you announce two years earlier what your approach will be, and you say that by 2017, all of you have a chance to come up with all these great projects. Some would be “crazy Canuck” projects and some would be serious projects, but they all have to go through the filter of mix-up and get out into the country and know thyself. That means you'd be off the hook of this risk of incoherent worthy causes, which are there every other year. History has a different value for different people in different times.
Thinking about the GTA, where I spend a lot of my time now, I am very concerned that they get to know the present—the country as it is, other parts of the country, other communities in the country—more than the past, because the parochialism that's developing among different groups with very different backgrounds is profound. When you look at the GTA, the residential distribution of populations in different parts is clearly such that it's quite common that many people—some say south Asian people in Brampton, or Asian people in Markham—may go downtown once a year in Toronto, and their children hardly ever do, maybe on a school trip or something.
We have many people in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, or Winnipeg who have never been to another region. They've hardly been out of the cities they live in, and have no idea where they live or who else lives there. This is an opportunity to say to all of those people, "Be creative. You guys have all the ideas, but you have to mix yourself up, and you have to get out there if you want to be part of this particular season's agenda.”