Address by Dr. Milton K. Wong at the Inter-institutional conference 2002 – Ismaili council for Canada Toronto, Ontario September 14, 2002
Making space or taking space?The link between Pluralism and sustainability
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for inviting me here today. I am honored to be among such esteemed company, and to be able to feel first-hand the enthusiasm and energy as the leaders of the Jamat Institutions look to their future.
I have been asked to speak today on the subject of pluralism-a broad topic, to be sure, and one that has challenged some of the greatest thinkers in this country. Although I by no means fall into that elite camp, I too have spent years considering the question of cultural coexistence in Canada.
I think it would be helpful to clarify early on what I mean by the word “pluralism.” A standard definition is this: a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious or social groups maintain an autonomous participation in, and development of, their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization.
Last year, his Highness the Aga Khan urged the leaders of this organization to take apart the puzzle that is pluralism in Canada so that its individual pieces could be quantified and reassembled elsewhere in the world. The idea of adapting Canada’s pluralism for other nations is a laudable goal. But is it realizable? Is pluralism exportable?
The answer, I think, is a definite maybe. There’s no secret formula, I’m afraid. We can’t just wade in to a dictatorship and flash our charter and nail up a few anti-racism posters. It’s going to be a little more difficult than that. But I’d like to tell you how I think we might begin to make it happen.
It’s appropriate to my topic that I am speaking to you today in an airport. I have always enjoyed the excitement of airports-the sense of urgency and expectation. Airports are, like the seaports of long ago, transitional places: places were people arrive to new lives, new hopes, new opportunities.
When the terminal development project going on here at Pearson International is completed in 2003, this airport will be able to accommodate more than 50 million people. Last year, almost 30 million people passed through these three terminals, and of those, tens of thousands were be immigrants and refugees. If we multiply those numbers by all the other major airports in the country, we can safely speculate that this year, Canada will make space for approximately 250,000 newcomers.
Making space.
Let’s think about that idea for a moment. What does it really mean? Moving over. (Pause) Getting out of the way. (Pause) Giving room. But not just physical room. Certainly Canada has an abundance of physical space: we are the second largest country in the world and there is a full square kilometer of land for every three Canadians. But Canada offers its citizens plenty of other kinds of “space” too. I am thinking here of political space…educational space…legal space…religious space…commercial space…cultural space.
Ours is a country built on concession and compromise, a land that I think owes much of its inclusive nature to the partnership of two forward-looking men: Robert Baldwin and Louis LaFontaine.
In the early 19th century, LaFontaine was a lawyer whose career in politics began when he was elected to the Lower Canadian Assembly at the
age of 23. He was respected for his dedication to French Canada.
Baldwin was also a lawyer who entered politics early in life. He was committed to changing the Canadian political system.
In the winter of 1841, elections were called after the reluctant union of Upper and Lower Canada-what was, essentially, English and French Canada. LaFontaine ran in a Quebec riding called Terrebonne. But on election day, 200 armed thugs prevented his supporters from voting, and he lost the election.
Meanwhile, Baldwin had been elected in two different ridings in what is now the Toronto area. He consulted with the constituents in one of those ridings-Fourth York-to see if they would agree to elect LaFontaine in his place. Then he asked LaFontaine in a letter if he would agree to run in a by-election in Toronto.
LaFontaine agreed and campaigned in Toronto on a platform of French-English cooperation. He won his seat with a generous majority. Meanwhile, Baldwin’s gesture-his making room for LaFontaine-won him the support of francophone reformers in Lower Canada.
The requirement for accommodation-for giving up something in order to gain something greater-was permanently entrenched in our constitution in 1982. But it has been part of the collective unconscious of our nation for far longer.
We may not be the richest country in the world, nor the most productive, nor even the best educated, but we are perhaps the most tolerant and accepting, and for the social, spiritual, and psychological elbowroom we give our diverse populations, we are greatly envied by the rest of the world.
But we shouldn’t allow ourselves to grow too smug. It’s my fear that we in the West take our space-in all its different senses-too much for granted. Acquiring space-displacing indigenous cultures, planting flags for distant kings and countries-is a fundamental part of western history and a hallmark of the 20th century. From the Golden Age of Greece to the Age of Exploration, from the Industrial Revolution to the Space Age, we have been driven by a need to claim more: more land, more money, more status, and ultimately, more power.
But recently we have begun to hear murmurs of dissent, pessimistic voices claiming that our reach has exceeded our grasp, that space in its myriad forms is not infinitely expandable. As the Suzuki Foundation’s Declaration of Interdependence points out: “Our home, planet Earth, is finite; all life shares its resources and the energy from the sun, and therefore has limits to growth. For the first time, we have touched those limits.”
Now, I will tell you that the idea of limited growth came as a bit of a shock to me. After all, I’m in the growth business! In North America, we are taught from an early age that growth is everything. But it’s simply not true. Unlimited growth is not sustainable. There isn’t another juicy pie, somewhere else, for us to start feasting on. We’ve got one pie to last all of us, for all time. And we’re chomping through it in a dangerous hurry.
Recently, this point was driven home to me by a series of three seemingly unrelated experiences.
First, my interest in cancer research allowed me the privilege of meeting the late Michael Smith, the Nobel prize-winning researcher from Vancouver. From Michael I learned that every living thing-you, me, that flower over there, the starfish that lives in my tidal pool back on the west coast-shares almost 98 per cent of the same DNA genetic code. All this time I’ve been making a big deal about multiculturalism and valuing differences and it turns out that we are all more alike than we are different. So that was my first epiphany: at a cellular level, we are all related.
Next, I had the opportunity to hear Canadian astronaut Julie Payette’s convocational address to the graduating class of Simon Fraser University. As Julie described her cosmic voyage, I was struck by the imagery of her unique view of the earth: I left the ceremony more aware than I had ever been that we are all sharing space within the same protective shell.
My last “Eureka!” moment was in New York City, while visiting the American Natural History Museum with my wife, Fei. We went to see a new show called “The Beginning of Time”, and the very first line of the movie buried itself in my brain for the rest of time. “Since the beginning of time,” said the narrator, “matter is no more and no less than it is today.”
No more. And no less.
And that’s when the penny dropped for me. Here we are, all sharing the same DNA genetic code, scattered across this fragile blue marble earth, surrounded by all the matter that has ever existed and will ever exist. Can you imagine that the air we are breathing now contains the very same trace amounts of argon-an inert gas that’s been with us since the inception of time–as the air breathed by the dinosaurs and Julius Caesar?
Suddenly I realized that there is no such thing as “growth”. Our space is limited; our pie is finite. What we use excessively here, we deplete there. When we take too much for ourselves, we leave too little for someone else.
Now some of you may well be asking: where is Milton going with this? What does this have to do with bringing pluralism to the rest of the world? Well, I will tell you: the sustainability of this planet has everything to do with that quest.
We live in a world where so few have so much, and so many have so very little. And it is not a matter of if we are going to remedy this situation, but how and when. As Prime Minister Chretien himself pointed out in an interview that was broadcast this past Wednesday-September 11th-the west’s grasping ways are fueling a dangerous resentment among the world’s have-not countries. We can either give our poorer brothers and sisters the tools and resources to acquire their fair share of the pie-and soon-or they will try to take it from us in desperation. Or, they will take resources without regard to consequences, just as the west has done in the past. Think of what has already happened in Russia, where Lake Baikal (Bye-koll), the world’s largest source of fresh water, is now so polluted that is has recently been declared dead. Or think of China, where the Three Gorges, one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, will soon be flooded for hydroelectric power.
A sustainable planet can provide food and shelter for everyone. But even more, a sustainable planet can provide the stability, security and abundance that a society needs to begin to make space for all its citizens-space for good government, for universal health and education, and for the rule of law. In is in this context that sustainability is the foundation upon which pluralism can begin to be built. Without these infrastructures, any discussion of pluralism in a global sense is moot.
So let’s get practical. How do we get there from here? How do we begin to create the infrastructure that allows a civil society to take root and flourish?
Well, we can begin at the personal level by admitting our own excesses. We can redefine our needs and priorities so as to limit our footprint on the earth. We can do like my mother did in the 1930s, “using it up, wearing it out, making do, or doing without.” I remember as a little boy, about 9 or 10, having to roll up old newspapers and take them down to the poultry man so that he could wrap his chickens in them-and I was not allowed to take any money for my efforts. Maybe we need to return to this conservation psychology. Maybe we should start asking ourselves, when we feel lured by the siren song of Madison Avenue: “Am I making space in the world? Or am I taking space?”
To tell the truth, I am guilty of not practicing what I preach. Shall I tell you what I drive? A real gas-guzzler: a Toyota SUV. But what will I drive next? A gas-electric hybrid. I promise. Because I am obliged to change the way I impact this planet, and so are all of you.
Thirty years ago, American author Duane Elgin wrote a book that is perhaps even more relevant today, a book called “Voluntary Simplicity.” It is premised on the perspective “that the manner in which we live our ordinary lives does make a difference”, and that the individual is not powerless to make a difference in the face of massive institutions and massive forces such as environmental pollution and resource depletion. Elgin says: “Who we are, as a society, is the synergistic accumulation of who we are as individuals. A society cannot move toward greater frugality any farther or any faster than we, as individuals, will support in our own lives.”
Now, I don’t really expect that you will leave here today and change your lifestyles completely. But as Elgin notes, even “small changes are beautiful.” I would ask you to consider: how much is enough? And who else on this planet will have to pay-and for how long-to fulfill your desires?
Because when we begin to make space in our hearts and minds for the world’s dispossessed, it becomes easier to make space in our personal finances for charitable giving. Did you know that Canada has an appalling record of international giving? (Insert statistic here). If what we give is a reflection of who we are and what we value, then are we happy with the image we are seeing in the mirror? When we give to our neighbours across the continents, we are in fact giving to ourselves. Because when our neighbour is at risk, we too are at risk; when our neighbour is unstable, we too are unstable.
That is the personal level. Now, let’s talk about the civic level. First of all, you can be confident that you are already contributing to global sustainability by virtue of your faith and your leadership within this organization. But you must extend your leadership outwards; you must actively reach out to the broader community-to our cross-cultural business allies and our political leaders-to share our ambitious agenda and to ensure its prominence in the field of international development work. Our conversations and dialogue must extend beyond ourselves…beyond these meetings…beyond the Jamat Khana.
In an article written last November, Business Week magazine hailed the Aga Khan Foundation’s rural development work, saying, and I quote, “its grassroots philosophy could be a model as the world seeks to rebuild a post-Taliban Afghanistan.”
The article goes on to assert that “it is hard to overstate the impact” of the Aga Khan’s contributions to northern Pakistan-the construction of more than a hundred schools for girls, the development of dozens of small businesses, and the building of bridges, canals, and mini-hydroelectric plants.
Last year alone, as you well know, the Aga Khan Foundaton Canada undertook 60 social development projects in nine countries overseas, along with 16 initiatives here at home to enhance Canadian understanding and support of poverty alleviation and human development.
That, my friends, is sustainability in action, and it’s those kinds of stories that must be shared more often with our national and international leaders. The message is simple: all around the world, the Aga Khan Foundation is laying the groundwork for sustainable civil societies. It is helping whole nations to develop the capacity to create the psychic and social space necessary to support a pluralistic culture.
Do you want to know how hard a task you’ve set for yourselves? Let me pause here for a moment to remind you just how hard a task it has been here at home. Sure, Canada has a long history of making space; but this country has done its share of taking too.
We took space from the aboriginal cultures one hundred years ago-but we are finally giving it back through on-going treaty negotiations. We took space from the Chinese immigrants who built this nation’s railways when we imposed an immigration head tax on them. We took space-both literally and figuratively-from the Japanese when we interned them during the second world war.
The building of Canada as a pluralistic society is an on-going process. Fortunately, we are nation of immigrants; we are used to adapting and accommodating. The strength of this nation is deeply rooted in its immigration policies. But the road is not always smooth. Sometimes, we have to expect conflict before compromise, and challenge before change.
As leaders in this arena, you are part of a continuum. Your efforts do not mark the beginning of the process of change and growth, and they will not mark the end. You can only strive to advance the cause of pluralism in the time you are given on earth. And also, to share your values and objectives with those who follow after you.
In 1972, Canada made space for the Ismaeli community, and enhanced its reputation as a model of pluralism to the world. The Ismaeli community, in turn, nurtured that space, and became-with thanks in great part to this foundation-a model of international responsibility to Canadians.
This weekend, we are here to rededicate ourselves, at the personal level, and the civic level, to a vision. Let us make space in our imaginations for the seemingly impossible task of bringing the gift of Canadian pluralism to the people of the world’s most beaten and battered countries.
Thank you.
Ismailimail 