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Question 12: Values and CultureWhat are the best means for Canada to make its culture and experience known
abroad? |
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| Contributor: | 1851 |
| Date: |
2003-04-30 22:43:29 |
| Answer: |
A nation's foreign policy should reflect its demography. Canada may be the most multicultural country in the world and the cultural diversity of Canada is growing rather than diminishing. Nevertheless, Canadian unity and its sense of identity may be stronger today than it has ever been. Canada should build on this strength and use it as a resource on which to do more nation building. Not only should we build Canada's domestic reality from this basis, we should build our international presence using this same foundation. By gaining the loyalty of new Canadians by treating them with respect and dignity and giving them a good life in Canada we will then have the ingredients to forge bonds of friendship with the people of every group on earth through the multicultural reality that is Canada. These new Canadians will be loyal to Canada and most will want to benefit their ancestral homelands as well. This will enable Canada to build its security through amity. If we are friends with every nation and group on earth, we will not have to worry about enemies. Our security will be the security of the open hand of amity rather than security of the closed fist of enmity. We will fear no terrorism, because we will have the loyalty of all of our citizens. If any people from their ancestral homelands have malevolent intentions to Canada, Canada will have the cultural skills and resources to counteract actions such malevolent people may plan.
To achieve this goal, Canada should make peace and amity, based on justice, the central value on which to build our nation. We should continue to welcome people from every nation on earth, but we should make a condition of citizenship an agreement of new Canadians that they will reject violence as a means of resovling conflict, and they will not support violent conflict as a means of change in the countries from which they emigrated to Canada. Canada should also make it a crime to send money to support violent conflict in any other country. And if a naturalized Canadian citizen opts to fight in the war of another country, this person should forfeit Canadian citizenship.
Canada should cultivate an international image as the world's foremeost nation of peace and our contribution to the world should be pecebuilding and peace making.
Canada should implement a cultural exchange program of 60,000 young people going to all other parts of the world annually and 60,000 people from all other countries coming to Canada annually to further forge bonds of fiendship between Canada and every other country of the world. This could be finaiced by redirecting the money we now spend for defense and security. This could be bolstered by establishing Canadian Peacemaker Teams. These teams would go to be peacemakers and peace builders in countries where there is war or where conflict that could lead to war is evovling. These Teams would be trained in peacemaking and peacebuilding skills at a Canadian Peace University, which would also be financed by redirecting our defense and security funding. These Teams would consist of people with the ability to communicate with the people of the countries to which they were going because they would be the children of immigrants who came from those countries. These ideas and many others are excerpted from Canada @ Peace: Coactive Security. A draft of this book was presented to the Hon. Bill Graham at the foreign policy dialogue at the Univesity of Alberta in Edmonton on April 23, 2003. This presentation of this book to the Minister constitutes part of this submission. |
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