I don't know if I have deep thoughts, but I do hope that at the end of this you will go away saying, gee, I hadn't thought about it that way.
Many years ago I was teaching a course at the University of Toronto on the politics of Canadian cultural institutions. As a result, believe it or not, I've actually read the 1920 Aird commission on radio, the Massey commission, the Fowler commission, the O'Leary commission, the Davie report, and the Kent commission. Of course, I have followed all of these issues since.
My takeaway is that the work of this committee, studying how Canadians are informed about local and regional experiences through news, broadcasting, and digital and print media, continues a very deep tradition of concern in this country for making space for Canadian voices and Canadian choices.
To be clear, the core focus has been, and I would argue should be, on ensuring that we make space for Canadian voices and choices to the benefit of Canadians and not exclusively through the lens of the companies who do the work.
Why are Canadian voices so important? I also happen to be the chair of Writers' Trust of Canada and was in town last week for our Politics and the Pen dinner. In some remarks I was making at a reception at the U.S. ambassador's residence the night before, I told a story I had heard from Governor General David Johnston. He was hosting a dinner for Angela Merkel at Rideau Hall, and after dinner she took him aside and said she had only one question: how do you do it?
What she was asking, of course, was how we in Canada manage to find more strength than division in our diversity.
Now, having lived and worked in New York City and having owned papers in New York, L.A., and Chicago, this is a question that I've been thinking about for some time. What makes Canada so unique? While we always aspire to be better, to the world we are a model for finding strength in our diversity. Why is this? As a country of east and west, north and south, first nations peoples, French and English, immigrants from more than 200 ethnic groups, seeing the world through others' eyes has for more than 150 years—sometimes difficult years—become who we are. It's in our DNA, and it's who we aspire to be. I suspect that nowhere will you recognize this more than in our political discourse.
If there is a particular Canadian genius, it is perhaps easiest to discover in the work of our writers and our artists. They tell our stories. They help inform the Canadian imagination, our way of seeing the world through others' eyes, finding strength in empathy, not antipathy—even, and perhaps especially, when we disagree.
My takeaway is that rarely has there been a time when Canadian voices are so important. They are important to Canada in continuing to build strength from our diversity, and they are important as an example to the world of how this gets done.
Do Canadians care? At the risk of suggesting that I don't have a day job, I'm also the chair of the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. A couple of years ago, we introduced the notion that Canada is an arts nation. You often hear that we're a hockey nation, which has been pretty tough this year; if you're from Toronto, it has been tough since 1967.