Welcome to part three of today's lectures on Canadian values. So where do these Canadian values, where do these Canadian orientations come from? How did we acquire these values that we talked about in the last video?
How did we develop these? values? Why is it that our values are different but also similar to the United States? And the fact that they are actually quite similar is surprising given Canada's history with having you know three nations at our founding the British the French and indigenous nations. The fact that the United States is, again, the melting pot.
Canadians are supposed to be this cultural mosaic. Why, you know, the Americans had the Civil War, this American Revolution, and Canadians did not. We didn't have an armed rebellion against the British.
So why are our values so similar? Why are they so different from our original countries like Britain and France? So this is a complex question. Values can come from many sources.
Values can change. for many different reasons and and the question about value change is something you can explore if you take more courses in political science where we actually dig deep into theories and and evidence about values not just in Canada but across societies but also values in smaller groups as well but but for now for today we'll focus on one source of values and that is that some political scientists argue that most of our Canadian values that we've been discussing up to to this point, were actually imported. They were implanted into Canada through immigration. So it's not something that just spontaneously emerged. That much of our values today are the result of immigration, of French and English settlers coming, immigrating to Canada and bringing with them their cultures and using those cultures to develop their colonies and society.
So these scholars developed a theory called fragment theory, fragment theory. fragment theory argues that Canadian culture Canadian values were created by English settlers and French settlers coming to Canada between roughly 1760 up until the early 1800s who each of whom brought particular European ideologies with them to North America and that they use these ideologies that they brought with them to create their new societies they took fragments of British ideology and French ideology and brought them to Canada. And while French and British cultures continue to develop in their own ways, in Canada, the French and British implanted cultures took root here and took a different direction because, first of all, they were interacting with each other outside of Europe and also for some other reasons, interacting with indigenous cultures, having to live in a new...
land and very different physical geographic spatial environment than the rest of Europe. Now, so they brought these ideologies with them. Now ideology, the term ideology, refers to a cohesive set of values and beliefs that organize how groups of citizens live and behave towards each other and towards, you know, the government. So an ideology is a set of values, a cohesive set of values that cluster together in a logical manner.
And that these sets of values, the ideology, represents a rational or a cohesive. of way that citizens believe they should live, that citizens believe how they should behave and treat each other and the government. So there are basically three main types of ideologies.
There's more, but three main types of ideologies that exist across the world in any society. And these terms may or may not, but they probably will be familiar to you. These three main types of ideologies are liberalism, conservatism, and socialism. Now these three terms have evolved over the course of history that liberalism the ideology of liberalism has morphed over time same with conservatism and socialism there's been different and there's been different variants of these various of these these three types of ideology so if we think about classical definitions of these of these ideologies classical liberals believe in maximizing individual freedom so they believe that the individual is the most important unit and that it's all about a society should be about maximizing the freedom of individuals to pursue the good life government if there is a government should have minimal involvement in society it should basically basically be limited to creating a very free and safe economy or market individuals can trade with each other and they can engage in voluntary exchange in a safe and free manner. So basically government stays out of the way, doesn't regulate, it just makes sure, it basically ensures that when two individuals enter into a voluntary contract, the job of the government is to make sure that contract is enforced.
So classical liberals believe that by maximizing individual freedom, that everyone then will have an equal opportunity to succeed and become happy. This sounds like... America, right? It's about the land of opportunity.
It's about having a society where if you just work hard enough, you can succeed. You just have to work hard enough. You have the freedom to succeed. It's up to you to choose that path if you want to succeed. That's sort of the classical liberal, classical liberalism.
In contrast, classical conservatives believe in hierarchy and social order. So they believe that everyone is born into a social class, and that really you should not be moving social class. whatever you're born into that's your class okay if you're born to the lower class you're you're lower class if you're born to the upper class then you're born into the upper class and that's a there's a there's a strong social order in society between upper and lower classes okay and then we're born into that. It's a rigid, rigid social order. But just because there's different classes doesn't mean that it's a free-for-all.
Instead, classical conservatives believe that each order has their own sets of obligations to society. So, for instance, those in the upper class, the belief is that those who are born into the upper class have a duty and an obligation, a moral duty and a moral obligation, to help those who are... beneath them who are in lower social classes okay and those in the lower class have a duty and obligation to be deferential and respectful of those located in classes above them so it's a very hierarchical rigid social order with upper classes and lower classes but that each class has sets of obligations and duties to each other the upper class has a duty to to help those who are below them and those in the lower lower class have a duty to be respectful, to be obedient, and deferential to those who are located above them.
And through recognizing the social order and hierarchy by fulfilling our obligations, society is going to function well and people will be happy in society. Classical socialists, on the other hand, they believe that social and economic equality should be maximized. So it's not about freedom. It's not about individual freedom. It's about collective equality, social...
and economic equality. So rather than individual freedom, rather than competition and voluntary contracts, rather than minimal government, instead the government should be heavily involved in facilitating cooperation. We can't trust individuals to do it.
You need government in there to ensure that equality of opportunity and the equality of outcome can be achieved. So that means instead of everyone having individual private property, private property rights, and using that property to engage in voluntary exchange, the government should own all the property. And so that it can ensure that everyone, there are no upper and lower classes, but that the property, land, infrastructure, buildings could be.
be used to ensure that everyone is treated equally and can have and has equal equal outcomes equal equal equal lives so you know so that's what so you need governments you need governments to own everything you need governments to allocate housing security education health care and the like so when british settlers came to canada and to the united states what did they bring well they brought with them the ideological tradition of classical liberalism to both Canada and the United States. So British settlers came to North America. They brought with them the ideological variants at the time. And at that time in Britain, was a britain was very much a classical liberal kind of a very classical liberal ideology was dominant and so where individual freedom and minimal government are the key principles and so british settlers brought that to canada the united states and implanted those ideas here in canada when french settlers came to canada in the during this period of 1760 to the 1800s they brought with them classical conservatism right so they brought the ideas of social hierarchy and social order, rigid social hierarchy, rigid social order.
The Catholic Church was the dominant actor. It was the Protestant Church in the English case. But in the French case, it was the Catholic. The Catholic Church was a very dominant actor, very rigid social order, but also they believe that Catholics and Catholic leaders, the Catholic upper class, have a strong obligation. to help others, especially for those who are poor than yourself, right?
Who are disempowered or less wealthy than yourself. So if you think about Canada, Canada's ideology, its values were rooted in these two ideologies. ideologies, right?
Classical liberalism from Britain, classical conservatism from France, and it may be that, you know, that these two things, these two ideological fragments are the reason why we're classified as moderate in terms of our traditional secular rationalist dimension that we discussed in the previous lecture. You know, maybe the, you know, we sway to the, we sway to the traditional side because of the French settlers, maybe, and it could be that we sway. way to the other to the to the rational side secular rational side because of the of the classical liberals from britain perhaps now while these immigration waves were clearly important there were other waves as well other immigration waves as well that occurred before confederation that helped developed uh canada and its values into what it looks like today and there of course there were some other waves after confederation but what's What's really important according to fragment theory are the immigration waves and the ideological fragments brought to a country before a country is formed. That's where you, if you want to understand the roots of a country, of a settler country like Canada or Australia, you need to look at the fragments that were brought by settlers to those countries to figure out and look at what those fragments are to give you clues as to why we have the. The ideology that we have today.
The ideology that we have today is a function of, it stems from the roots that came from the original settlers before our country was formed. So another, besides the British and French settlers, another important wave of immigrants were the Loyalists, the United Loyalists from the United States prior to Confederation. These were British subjects that were fleeing the United States due to the American Revolution. They were afraid of the Americans overthrowing.
Britain and all of the British values, the British liberal values. And so a bunch of these British loyalists fled to Ontario, for instance, and to Canada. And they brought with them at this, now, as I mentioned, these immigrants come and they come to the new world, but these ideologies aren't stagnant.
They change over time. They change through interacting with other cultures, like Canada, you know, classical liberalism, British liberalism, French conservatism, mixing, creates its own mix. Or living in a new geography, developing, you know, a particular lifestyle in an Arctic country might be very different.
If you take that culture and try and stick it in. In a tropical climate, it may lead you to have different sets of values. So in the United States, individual liberalism or classical liberalism had started to develop into something called a Tory touch or reform liberalism. And United Loyalists brought these ideas to Canada.
And what a Tory touch or reform liberalist ideology is, is these people still... still believe in classical liberal ideas. They still believe in maximizing freedom.
They still believe that the individual is the most important unit in a society. But reform liberals or Tory-touched liberals believe that not everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, that some people are less able, don't have the same kinds of privileges, the same kinds of starting points as others. Some people are further ahead in the race than others. And so these These reform liberals believe that society has an obligation to help everyone at least start with the same opportunities. Everyone should have the same basic levels of education and health care before they start competing, before they go out and try and maximize their individual freedom and pursue their happiness.
So the idea of reform liberals is that society and the state has an obligation to help everyone have equality. of opportunity that everyone should have just start roughly around this have roughly the same sets of characteristics and opportunities at the beginning but after that they're on their own right so you know the state will give you some basic education the basic health care so you have the equal opportunity but it's up to you to make that opportunity If you don't, well, that's too bad, right? The state's not going to help you.
If you can't get a job, despite having the same opportunity as everyone else, the same opportunity as everyone else, well, then that's on you. That's sort of the Tory touch. So it's different, right? The classical liberals are about maximizing individual... freedom you're on your own whereas reform liberals say well that's important you know we agree except that not we need to basically level up the playing field a bit at the beginning so everyone has everyone has everyone truly has equal opportunity to succeed so the The argument for fragment theorists is that these three immigration waves between 1760 up to Confederation, British settlers from Britain, French settlers from France, United No Loyalists from the United States, that these three ideologies came together, mixed with each other, mixed with the geography of Canada and the spatial characteristics of our country, and developed a Canadian set of values that we sort of observed.
today. And by having these three waves implanted in our society prior to Confederation, that these three ideological fragments created the basis for Canadian socialism to emerge. If you think about the United States, they never had They had some reformed liberalism, but they didn't have the conservatism from French settlers. They didn't have this sort of classical conservative thing.
But this classical conservative element paves the way for socialism, because it's a social obligation about helping others. And so people argue that, you know, because we have the French conservatism, because we have the United Loyalist Tory-touched liberalism, this creates the basis for, again, Canadian socialism to eventually emerge. And that's why today we have a very strong welfare state compared to the United States. States.
We have a very strong feeling of social citizenship. We have a strong feeling of social obligation to help others, right? And that it's not just about individual survival, although that's important, but the collective survival. collective self-expression survival.
It's why we have a leftist socialist party, the new democratic party, a socialist party on the political left of the ideological spectrum, who believes in strong government intervention in society, who believes in facilitating both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. So where do our distinct Canadian values come from? Well, it comes from immigration, or a major source of it is immigration. It comes from British, French, and United Loyalist settlers coming to Canada, bringing their cultures and ideological values with them. These values, ideologies, and cultures intermix to form a distinctly Canadian culture.
Cultures aren't stagnant, however, right? And indeed, other waves of immigration after Confederation continued to... to reshape Canadian culture and Canadian values to make it more distinct based on the number of immigrants and where those immigrants came from. So later ways of immigration, for instance, came from Eastern Europe.
And many Eastern Europeans chose to settle in the prairie provinces. And indeed, this idea of multiculturalism, the cultural mosaic, the fact that we're a multicultural society, that the idea of multiculturalism came from the prairie provinces, arguably. It came from Alberta, which is kind of a surprising thing.
If you think of Alberta, one of the things you'll, if you talk to other Canadians about Alberta, they don't think of it as this multicultural province. They sort of think of it as a very right-wing, American conservative style, maximizing freedom kind of place. But this is actually the place where multiculturalism, the idea of a multiculturalist policy, came from. Many Eastern European immigrants moved to Alberta. And the premier at the time, Henry Strachan, Strom.
He was a social credit premier, Henry Strom. He raised the idea of a multiculturalist policy, a multiculturalist Canada, not only to appease the many Eastern European immigrants and Eastern European voters in his province as the election, provincial election got closer, but also as a way of countering a national debate that was going on at the time. You know, there was this idea, a national debate, a struggle over what does it mean to be Canadian? What does it mean to be Canadian? Canada and a number of federal and provincial politicians were arguing that Canada is a binational country.
It's an English and French country. And Alberta and some other provinces didn't like this rhetoric. They didn't like the idea of a binational or any kind of national idea. And so they thought by raising the multiculturalism argument that they could say, look, Canada is not a country of English and French.
It's a multicultural country. It's English, French, but also... Eastern European and American and a range of other cultures that came here.
So later on, we have other immigration waves have sort of similar effects. That later waves of immigration especially after World War two came from African and Asian countries now many of these African and Asian immigrants simply assimilated into the dominant cult culture right although they but they also tried to keep of course their own identity given the multiculturalism policy and multicultural character that was developing in Canada in the 1970s and onwards, 1960s and 70s onwards. It's a lot of them assimilated, but a lot of them also kept their religions, kept their cultural practices, and these have helped to shape Canadian values in subtle and gradual ways, especially in urban areas where a lot of these immigrants settled. in urban areas, in big cities, for instance. And, you know, you start to see some very important differences between urban and rural areas in Canada in terms of the kinds of values.
If you look at elections in Ontario, for instance, you know, you can see different parts of the province vote for different parties, perhaps reflecting these sort of different immigration patterns that have occurred in Canada. So immigration... is only is one is only one way although a very important way in which culture and values and a country's you know country's values and cultures can be shaped and reshaped there are many other forces and one of which is its popular culture that popular culture the the products of popular culture not only express canadian values they reflect some of these things that i've just talked about in this video but they can also reshape right They can reshape Canadian values. They facilitate conversation among Canadians.
So you watch a play or you listen to some music that has some commentary saying, Canadians are tolerant or Canadians are intolerant. And that sparks conversations among Canadian citizens. We talk about our art and we talk about the messages depicted in paintings or depicted in stories or in movies, the stories that are told. And we argue. and debate about whether or not these stories are right or wrong or but also other artists produce you know their own artistic endeavors that counter or fight these fight these these disagree with these these expressions of popular culture and so we'll in the next video we'll talk a little bit about about you know popular culture how does it reflect Canadian values that we've talked about in these last two videos And how does it reshape, perhaps, our values over time?