Honourable colleagues,
There is a certain essay by Cicero called “The Second Philippic” which was written to expose the power of the state against freedom of speech and freedom of thought—and the power of one man, Marc Antony. It is a brilliant proclamation and shows Cicero at his best and bravest. It was delivered in the Roman Senate, and Cicero paid for writing it with his life. His hands were cut off and taken to Marc Antony, as proof that Cicero would never write again.
Cicero lived in a dangerous time.
When Vasily Grossman completed “Life and Fate,” his grand novel about the battle of Stalingrad, it had to be sanctioned by the Cultural Section of the Central Committee, the wise Soviet think tank of art and culture.
They took a year to answer—and said that it was anti-Soviet. They did not accept it for publication. It is published now and it is, of course, a wonderful book, showing fascism and communism to be mirror images of one another, in depravity and contempt for human liberty.
There is a great scene in that book where an elderly Babushka, upon seeing a German youth coming out of the last pocket of German defence in January of 1943, is ready to yell and spit and curse him for what he has done to her people. But seeing the 19-year-old boy, a soldier of destiny, now terrified, starving, and alone, she stops and says: “OK, here then,” and hands him a piece of bread.
Nothing in the book is more significant than that moment. For that moment shows it to be absolutely Russian, and for all mankind, absolutely universal. That the way to fight such mechanized violence and hate is with simple compassion and forgiveness.
Something that is all too rare today, in Canada and elsewhere.
We have become a land of scapegoaters and finger-pointers, offering accusation and shame, and believing we are a woke society.
Cultural committees are based as much in bias and fear as in anything else. I’ve seen enough artistic committees to know that. That is what George Orwell says we must resist—the prison of self-censorship. This bill goes a long way to construct such a prison.
Solzhenitsyn’s “In the First Circle” was smuggled away from the Soviet Bloc as well. One of the grand scenes in it is of a novelist, a favourite of Stalin, sitting down to write a novel and saying to himself, “I will now write the truth.” But feeling in his mind Stalin’s eyes upon him, decides that he cannot and says, “The next novel will be the real one.”
The idea of any hierarchy deciding what a man or woman are allowed to write to fit a proscribed national agenda is a horrid thing.
I am wondering if anyone on the staff of our Minister of Heritage understands this? In Germany it was called the Ministry of National Enlightenment, and every radio was run by Joseph Goebbels.
Complete ideological manipulation in the name of national purity.
No decree by the CRTC could, in any way, tell us what Canadian content should or should not be, or who should be allowed to bob their heads up out of the new murkiness we have created.
Like Orwell’s proclamation, the very bill suggests a platform that decrees: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” And Bill C-11 certainly spells out who they are.
I am not speaking solely of the internet, because I am too old to know it. However, this will bleed over into any performance we tend to create, and we will have government officials holding a book of rules telling us if we are Canadian enough. Or worse, who can write what about whom.
You see, I am not Canadian enough—I never have been. I grew up in a place East of Canada called the Maritimes, and have fought for every inch of soil in my fictional world, that for years dismissed who I was, and especially who I wrote about. I did so without complaint, but I know who the gatekeepers are. They are still here, telling us in C-11 that we have progressed, are more understanding, and our value system has evolved to be inclusive. This statement is a transparent endowment to those whose support they need and whom they desire to influence. But it is a terrible insult to the great writers in my country that I know.
This is not opening the gate to greatness, but only to compliance.
The writers I know don’t need to advance to fit an agenda, and neither do the songwriters or bloggers. When this bill mentions how we have evolved, it is simply a suggestion to comply.
Some of those who have so evolved into the new Canada have torn books away and slashed many writers I so admired. An evolution of sanctimony and an advancement in quelling the voices we disagree with.
By this bill we have entered the very realms we have fought to depose over the last 70 years. C-11 might be more subtle than the German Stasi or the Cultural Committee of the former Soviet Union, but never think it is not intertwined.
The very bill suggests a favouritism brought forward by a notional knowledge of what Canada should be, and what groups we are now allowed to blame.
It also suggests that there is no communication or interplay between writers of different ethnicities. That identity politics is positive because it teaches a bland society about new voices. Or about trauma, which only certain people are allowed to say they know. It is a balkanization of freedom of expression; it is so narrowminded that it defeats the very thing it proposes and destroys the principle set forth by Terence over 2,000 years ago: “I am human, so nothing human is alien to me.”
That is, we understand because we identify, not because we are being taught a lesson.
One night, after my reading at Harbourfront in Toronto, two people approached me. One was the great Irish writer Roddy Doyle, telling me he had long admired my work. The other was the First Nation writer Richard Wagmesse, telling me he started writing because he was influenced by my work. Both were very kind, lived thousands of miles apart, one Irish and one First Nation, and the writing had little to do with identity politics—but it did have much to do with identifying.
I do not know who would be able to tell me what Canadian content is and what it is not. But I know it won’t be in the Minister of Heritage’s power to ever tell me.
We have yet to make a great movie about hockey, a great movie about Juno beach, a great movie about Dieppe, or a movie about the young Canadians fighting in Hong Kong. Our actors, and singers, and writers too have gone away—because they had to. For too many in power have no knowledge about these things.
We have filled the world with our talent but not because of the Minister of Heritage.
We have spread our books and movies across the world, but it is not because of some formulaic law. We have insulted so many of our authors and singers, our actors and painters, by not paying attention to them, and then claiming them when they go somewhere else. They come back to get the Order of Canada, and to be feted at Rideau Hall.
Drake is known worldwide not because of the CRTC. Thank God Drake was not up to them. Or Leonard Cohen or Gordon Lightfoot, either.
You see, we have gone back to the age of Cicero without even knowing it. In that age, scapegoating was considered a blessing and mob action against one person was considered justice.
It was Christ, actually, who taught us scapegoating was a great lie. And pleaded with us by his death never to return to that state.
This law will be one of scapegoating all those who do not fit into what our bureaucrats think Canada should be. Stalin again will be looking over our shoulder when we write.
We have come such a long way from Cicero.
