{"id":261433,"date":"2002-03-01T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-03-01T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/searching-for-certainty-inside-the-new-canadian-mindset-book-review\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T19:28:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T23:28:00","slug":"searching-for-certainty-inside-the-new-canadian-mindset-book-review","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2002\/03\/searching-for-certainty-inside-the-new-canadian-mindset-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset (compte rendu)"},"content":{"rendered":"

What are Canadians really like? Traditionally, we are depicted as meek, bland and full of self-doubt. In his recent \u201cbiography\u201d of North America, New York Times correspondent Anthony DePalma confirmed the prejudices of many of his readers by describing Canadians as annoying whiners who are obsessed with their search for national identity. What’s more, according to DePalma, we’re egalitarian anti-entrepreneurs who are resentful of individual initiative and suspicious of success.<\/p>\n

Darrell Bricker and Edward Greenspon’s voyage inside what they call \u201cthe new Canadian mindset\u201d is a refreshing answer to these outdated stereotypes. Believe it or not, Canadians are an assertive, optimistic, self-confident and worldly people busily pursuing excellence. We’ve made our peace with globalization and become more ethnically diverse than ever, while at the same time shedding the national \u201cidentity deficit\u201d that gnawed away at us in previous decades.<\/p>\n

To reach these conclusions, Bricker and Greenspon plow through wide fields of public opinion data. They are particularly interested in how views on major issues shifted over the course of the \u201cNervous Nineties,\u201d a decade during which Canadians were visited by a recession, a series of national unity crises, government cutbacks and eroding public services in the pursuit of a zero deficit. It was also the decade in which Bricker and Greenspon’s own generation began to assume positions of leadership. Theirs is the generation that was inspired by Trudeau’s idealism and then taxed to pay down his deficits; that first learned to type on a typewriter but now can’t imagine life without computers; that has a rock ‘n’ roll record collection gathering dust in the basement and a new CD collection upstairs; that voted against free trade in 1988 but now questions the anti-globalization protestors; that was born before universal public health care was established, grew up taking it for granted, and now worries about living to see its demise. Perhaps more so than the post-war generation that preceded it, and the wired generation that followed, this generation has had to change courses in midstream and, as a consequence, reassess its expectations of employers, governments, and itself. Bricker and Greenspon conclude that although Canadians’ often jolting journey has led them to abandon many of their long-held opinions about the economy and public policy, it has not shaken their commitment to more fundamental values. \u201cThe new Canadian mindset,\u201d they argue, \u201cis steeped in the traditions of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

While offering a number of insightful observations about a series of topics\u201d\u201dfrom the economy and the changing work environment, through globalization, the Internet, education, health care, culture and identity\u201d\u201dBricker and Greenspon take the time to develop a number of more general themes.<\/p>\n

The first is that the experience of rapid change during the 1990s left Canadians more self-reliant and more questioning of authority. Here, Bricker and Greenspon echo the now familiar \u201cdecline of deference\u201d thesis. But they add some important nuances. Canadians have not become alienated or cynical, but rather are more knowledgeable, more discerning and more demanding. They are less willing to place their trust in any institution, public or private, that has not earned it. This is what they mean by \u201cthe search for certainty.\u201d In their view, Canadians want to be reassured that they will in fact get the results they are looking for, whether in the marketplace, or in the public realms of health care and education. Increasingly, they argue, we are reassured, not by promises, but by performance, accountability and transparency. As a result, both producers and governments \u201care going to have to be able to articulate their visions and persuade consumers and citizens not just of their intended destination, but of how they plan to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second theme is that Canadians remain wedded to what the authors call the \u201cTory gene.\u201d According to Bricker and Greenspon, Canadians have become fiscal conservatives, but not neo-conservatives. The 1990s destroyed our faith in government handouts and mega-projects. Yet Canadians are as committed as ever to the Tory idea \u201cthat we are not different groups in a society pitted against one another so much as parts of a common organism\u201d\u201dand that if one part is hurt so are the others.\u201d This \u201cessential Canadian quality\u201d is evident in the support shown for public education, the opposition to private health care, and the insistence that governments have a role to play in humanizing globalization, investing in human capital and protecting the most vulnerable members of society.<\/p>\n

Bricker and Greenspon make their argument about the \u201cTory touch\u201d emphatically and effectively, and by doing so breathe new life into an old idea. They show that Tory and small-l liberal elements sit comfortably together within the Canadian mindset: Canadians hold fast to both, without seeing any contradiction. This helps to explain the limited success of political parties that appeal to only one of the two ideologies, and no doubt will further encourage Joe Clark in his quest, not to unite the right, but to dislodge the Liberals from the center.<\/p>\n

A third theme the authors develop is that Canadians have bought into globalization. Not only have we reversed our opinion on free trade\u201d\u201d choosing to support agreements we had previously opposed\u201d\u201dbut we embrace technological change and have decided that we have the necessary tools to compete internationally. In short, Canadians are forward-looking, selfconfident and \u201cwilling to test the fast waters of the new global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bricker and Greenspon’s strongest and most original point about globalization is that Canadians have accepted world economic integration while at the same time becoming more, rather than less, secure in their sense of national identity. More specifically, they argue that globalization may actually be enhancing our sense of national identity: \u201cIt may well be that globalization has produced an opposite and equal reaction\u201d\u201da new outward-looking nationalism.\u201d In saying this, they do not discount the concerns raised by the critics of multinational corporations or the World Trade Organization. In fact, they understand more than many commentators that there is a genuine democratic deficit, and that Canadians, propelled by the \u201csearch for certainty,\u201d will support efforts to \u201chumanize and democratize the governance of the global order.\u201d This even-handedness serves to make their overall argument about Canadians and globalization more convincing.<\/p>\n

Finally, although multiculturalism is not a major theme of the book, Bricker and Greenspon’s treatment of it is one of their most important contributions. They show that the idea of multiculturalism is no longer something to be added on to our understanding of the country, more or less as an afterthought. Rather, Canada has become first and foremost a multicultural society, both demographically and in terms of its identity. The demographic facts are well-known. Regarding identity, Bricker and Greenspon emphasize how comfortable most Canadians and especially younger Canadians are with the country’s growing diversity\u201d\u201dand how this remarkable comfort level has become part of how we see ourselves and what we value about the country. \u201cThe triumph of multiculturalism in Canada,\u201d they argue, \u201clies in the wonder of its becoming more of a unifying symbol of Canadian identity than a force of divisiveness.\u201d Enlisting with philosopher Will Kymlicka, Bricker and Greenspon demonstrate unequivocally that, despite constant sniping by some, multiculturalism has been a success that is unmatched anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n

The book is curiously silent on a few points of interest\u201d\u201dfirst and foremost, the presence or absence of differences both among Canadians of different regions and between anglophones and francophones. Perhaps we can infer from this omission that such factors are much less important to the new Canadian mindset than they were to the old, but it would have been better to make the point explicitly. Nor are differences of opinion between men and women discussed, despite their significance in cases such as health care and social policy.<\/p>\n

The authors also avoiding a number of difficult questions relating to the capacity of governments to respond to the demands that a more assertive public is placing on them. To cite but one example, will governments succeed in making our water safe to drink and our food safe to eat? In fairness, however, this is a subject for another book, and not one on the recent evolution of Canadian public opinion.<\/p>\n

In the end, the book will displease only the minority of readers who fall into the following camps:<\/p>\n