Adrienne Clarkson on How To Fix Democracy

Welcome to the third series of How to Fix Democracy. For the first series a couple of years ago, I had the good fortune to travel to Budapest to interview of the great scholars of nationalism and belonging, the Canadian writer and ex-politician Michael Ignatieff. He ran the Canadian Liberal Party for a few years, and he’s very well known as the author of Blood and Belonging, his critique of nationalism and identity. And for our third series to kick off, we are back in Canada. In the pre-COVID days of course, we could travel; today we’re doing this on Zoom. But I have the great honor of having as our first guest in our third series the Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson. She was the Canadian Governor General between 1999 and 2005, and amongst many other things that she’s done in her remarkable life, she’s the author of another book about belonging, Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship.

Andrew Keen: Madam Clarkson, welcome to How to Fix Democracy.

Adrienne Clarkson: Well, if you can tell us how to do that then maybe your series is worthwhile.

Andrew Keen: Well, Madam Clarkson, that’s your remit. I’m just the interviewer. You are, of course, familiar with Michael Ignatieff and I’m sure his work. Like Ignatieff, you’ve involved intellectually in your life, you’ve committed a lot of time to thinking about belonging. You wrote a book about belonging. You’ve even argued that belonging is — and I’m quoting from you book — the interest of my life. What is it about belonging that has so intrigued you throughout your life?

Adrienne Clarkson: Well, I guess it’s because at the age of two and a half, I was rudely interrupted in the path of my life which was as a comfortable upper middle-class child in a British Crown Colony called Hong Kong by the Japanese invasion and conquering of that place. And we were thrown out onto a Red Cross ship and brought to Canada with one suitcase apiece, my father, my mother, and my brother, who was five — no, seven, and me, who was nearly three.

And so, we had to start over again. So, that whole idea of where you belong and where you are, has always fascinated me, as — as it must. And of course, I always think that Canada was one of those places, a little white country full of white bread and white people when I arrived in 1942; it was not wildly open to immigration at that point. In fact, yellow people, like Japanese and Chinese were not considered to be terrific as Canadians. They interned the Japanese who had been born in Canada, who had been born — some of whom had been in Canada for three generations, took away their belongings, put them in virtual concentration camps, the Canadian government that is because they were supposed to maybe be able to guide submarines from japan to the Coast of Canada. The Americans did the same thing with their Japanese Nazi population. And so, we don’t have an attractive background in Canada. We’ve not been great. The one thing that I would say about Canada is that it is capable of change. And it has been changing. And so, when I arrived in this country, I arrived; we were refugees, and we were taken in. There was kind of chaos I guess of wartime. The Red Cross had a role to play in it. But at the time, there was a law on the books in Canada, called The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, which had been specifically put in, in order to exclude Chinese immigrants’ emigration to Canada because of course, the Chinese travel everywhere. My own background it’s not strange that I should not be in China or even in Hong Kong which is close to China because for three or four generations, my family was part of the Chinese Diaspora. Part of my family was in South America, particular — Dutch Guiana as it then was. Part of it was in Java/Jawa/Djawa. My mother grew up in — in, what is now, Indonesia, for the first 10 years of her life, her father having gone there to do business. So, there’s that kind of movement of things; I was not a deeply-rooted in-China kind of person.

But in Canada, there was a — a law that was exclusive that said you could — you had to pay a tax of $100 in order to come into Canada, if you were allowed at all, if you were Chinese. And that was only taken off the books in the late ’40s. Somebody doing a PhD at the University of British Columbia sent me a photocopy of that ledger which is written in by hand and it has my entry in it at the age — you know still after the War they kept it up. And it has my entry in it. And of course, what is really interesting about Canada is there I am in the entry of Chinese to be — who were allowed in under — even under exclusion, because they took a certain number, and then within what is that — that was 1949, within 60 years, 55 years, I became a Governor General of Canada.

Andrew Keen: So, are you suggesting Madam Clarkson that what — excusing borrowing this term from the Americans — what makes Canada great is its escape from blood and belonging, from the fact that Canadian sense of identity of nationhood and citizenship has been emancipated from identity, from cultural identity?

Adrienne Clarkson: Absolutely. And I think what I — I discuss a lot because I have a foundation which is called The Institute of Canadian Citizenship, which I founded upon my leaving office, is that people are — do belong in Canada. And this is so noticeable during COVID. I just mentioned this. During COVID, we’re having doctor after doctor and you know nurse after nurse and government official after government official on TV every night telling us things. And they try to rotate them a bit, sort of like a repertory theater. But you, I would say that 60 to 70-percent of those people that you see in authority in medical care, in the social activities having to deal with COVID are not white people. They are of — from all over the world and — and their names are different than the McDonald(s), the O’Neil(s), the Smith(s) that were in the country when I came to it. And this is something that is a transformation. And Canada has been able to do that transformation. And I would say that a lot of that has to do — and this is where I of course know Michael’s work and — and I’ve been a friend of his for years and years, that the aboriginal element in Canadian life is one which has made a great deal of difference. We have not been wonderful in terms of following up on that, but we do recognize, everybody does recognize that Canada could never have been explored in any way, shape, or form without the help of aboriginal people. When the French arrived here in the 15th and 16th centuries, they could not with an inhospitable climate that we have except for two months of the year when it’s boiling hot, the other 10 months there it’s — it’s muddy or it’s frozen or rocky, etcetera, they could not have gone anywhere except by water and water meant canoes and canoes meant the indigenous people. And so, the indigenous people were the people who showed us the way into our country. And we had a wonderful relationship with them until about 1820 when things were working out and then the Orange Order and various things happened, and it became a disaster over the last you know 180 years. We’ve been trying to fix it. We aren’t there yet, but this is the work of people like me of our lifetime and the generation who is coming up now, two generations coming up now, to make that work. That is so key because we have gotten so much from indigenous people. We have borrowed so much from them. And their idea of belonging, their idea of the circle which I talk about in — in Massey Lectures, which is the book you talked about is that they do everything in circles, so they say all we have to do to include you is to let go of one hand and you come in and you hold our two hands and you’re part of the circle.

Andrew Keen: Madam Clarkson, put that a little bit more concretely.

Adrienne Clarkson: Well, they had a notion actually that they could welcome and include people. And so, the idea of citizenship, that’s so European and — and as my husband would say Westfalen and nation state(ish), it is basically not that kind of thing. It is the fact of if — it’s like ubuntu that I also talk about in my Massey Lectures, ubuntu is in Africa, which is I exist because you exist, and I wouldn’t exist if you didn’t exist. And it does come into a lot of our Western philosophy. Hannah Arendt whom I quote a lot, talks about this that we have this sense of being with the other because we are able to be with the other, and that’s how we are able to perform our most human acts is in the context of other people. That you can’t just be by yourself. And — and I think that the indigenous thing has more and more in my lifetime taken on a greater understanding because when I was growing up as a child, we knew about the aboriginal people. We talked about them as — as being admirable, etcetera, and having done all these things. But they were not included in many ways. And now we’ve come to terms with the fact that we have to include them. Our Truth and Reconciliation Commission has given forth a number of recommendations which I hope the government will implement. They’re all sensible; they’re all doable. And I think we have a recognition of what the aboriginal people have done and how indigeneity has affected our view of — of life.

Andrew Keen: You mentioned Madam Clarkson, your husband, John Ralston Saul. He was on our show. And again, I don’t want to put words into his mouth, but he seemed to be suggesting in my mind at least that there may be some degree of incompatibility between early 21st century capitalism and early 21st century democracy. In your focus on the idea of sharing and citizenship, do we need to temper, control, reform, globalize capitalism to enable 21st century citizenship?

Adrienne Clarkson: I think we’re going to have to; yes. I don’t disagree with my husband at all, although that’s not how we spend a lot of our time talking. We do have wonderful conversations. [Laughs] And I do agree with him. I do think that we are having to temper ourselves because we really cannot continue to invade greenbelts around cities and continue to worship the car and do all of these things. And I’m — I’m — I really am part of that whole movement and not different from many people of — of — of my time. I do believe that in Canada we have a real ability to open up our minds and to look beyond not only our own homes and our own societies, but to other societies.

Andrew Keen: Madam Clarkson, let’s talk about the gorilla in the room, the United States, which of course is a particularly large gorilla when looked at from Canada. You’ve talked about the Canadian model for citizenship and democracy in the 21st century, inclusive, inspired by the aboriginal thinking. Are you suggesting that the American model is the other, the reverse, the dark side of early 21st century politics?

Adrienne Clarkson: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I — I think that we are aware it’s not — we always say the Americans as our Prime Minister Trudeau (Father) said, the Americans are the elephant, and we are the mouse. If it rolls over, we’re — we’re finished. [Laughs] And so, we’ve always been very careful about the Americans. And we have the benefit of knowing —

Andrew Keen: But you’re the mouse that roared.

Adrienne Clarkson: Perhaps. [Laughs] We have the benefit of the little mouse who knows everything about the elephant and the elephant doesn’t know anything about us. They never mention us. It’s as though we don’t exist. Trying to understand it is something that we are always doing because we have to be very careful.

Andrew Keen: But has America taken the wrong road, the wrong fork in the road, Madam Clarkson, when it comes to immigration with this obsession on keeping people out and seeing citizenship as a zero-sum game?

Adrienne Clarkson: I think so because you know in Canada, we want to have more people and as everybody says to us, of course you want to have more people. You’ve got that huge country, the second largest land mass. Well only a part of it you know like within 1,000 kilometers is habitable by what we think of as habitable. And so, we don’t have that big a country. But what we do want is we have a big country in our minds. We have a big country in our heads. We have a big country thinking that we can bring the world here and transform people. That’s really what’s interesting. The Americans always say that. They say you know bring me your huddled masses, but we don’t have a myth. We just say come and see what you can do, and it will make you different. And what I’m fascinated by is — and I say it all the time at citizenship ceremonies — that when you come to a country, when you come to Canada and to the United States, both big immigrant countries, you are transformed. You are not the same person that you would have been had you stayed in Serbia or France or Sri Lanka. And that is fascinating to me because I’ve always wondered what would have happened to me had I stayed you know in Hong Kong, etcetera.

Andrew Keen: You’d probably be out — if you stayed in Hong Kong, you’d probably be out on the street now. You may even be in jail.

Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson: Exactly. [Laughs] I might have been in jail. I’m certain I would be in jail. And I certainly would never have been Governor General of Canada.

Andrew Keen: We can’t change our history of course, Madam Clarkson, either Canada or the United States for better or worse. But what can the Americans in the early 21st century learn about citizenship from Canada? What one or two very concrete things outside the historical context because we can’t rewrite the stories just as you can’t go back to living in Hong Kong. America can’t unwind its history.

Adrienne Clarkson: I think Americans should learn to have confidence in themselves again. I think what we’re seeing, and nobody talks about this much, but I think we’ve seen a crisis in confidence. And I think that loss of confidence is very sad because I think the — the United States that I knew when I was growing up as a little girl, the United States of — of the Marshall Plan that reconstructed Europe, places — when I first went to Europe in — in 1960-’61 as a 20 year-old university student to travel around, and I went to places, you know where malaria had been done away with because of the Marshall Plan. So, I wish that the Americans could get that confidence back again because what I’m very worried about when I see things that are happening is that I think it’s a crisis of people who don’t believe in themselves really anymore and have to shout about when they were something. And I wish they could just say, we’re going to be something now —

Andrew Keen: Perhaps America needs to re-educate itself about its history, its role in the world, and of course, above all else, in the context of this conversation, the idea of citizenship. You’ve been in and out of the universities all your life. You are in many ways — you’re a journalist but also an educator, as well as a politician. Can citizenship be taught? Does it need to be formally addressed in schools and universities?

Adrienne Clarkson: Yes; I think it needs to be taught. I think we were taught — we were certainly taught not as citizenship, but as part of our civic duty. We didn’t have civics; I think the United States, they have courses called civics. We had history. But in any case, we learned how hard it had been for Canadians to come out of the — to get the vote, for women to get the vote, for people who didn’t have property to get the vote. And I am now lobbying for 16 year-olds to have the vote because I believe — . When I was Governor General, I traveled a lot in the country, and I — and I visited schools and did various things. And I found that the kids who were about 16, 15 and 16 years old were the smartest kids who were concentrating on ideas all the time. When they’re 15 or 16 they’re really focused, and they take it seriously. And the latest environment march that we had in — a year ago in September, I looked around and they were all 14, 15 year-old kids doing the signs, giving the speeches. And I would like us to lower the voting age to 16.

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Andrew Keen: Yeah; this is particularly resonant given that we’re talking at a time where America has just gone through a presidential election between two 70 year-old men. Going back to this idea of bringing 16 year-olds formally into the political process, should they be educated about citizenship before or after? Is citizenship indeed in terms of education, is it an ongoing process? Is it something you learn about throughout your life? What do you know about citizenship today that you didn’t know when you were in your 20s or 30s or indeed when you were 16?

Adrienne Clarkson: What I do — what I do know is that it isn’t about voting. It seems to me that we’ve gotten totally and hideously obsessed with voting as being the mark of citizenship. And I think that’s really not necessary to think about it. The mark of citizenship is, do you care about fracking? Do you care about the fact that they are going to take that whole greenbelt in your city of two million people and develop it into high-rises and amusement parks or I don’t know what? Those are — the concerns of citizenship are really what is most important.

Andrew Keen: Isn’t that a loaded definition though of citizenship? If I said to you, well, I don’t care about fracking, are you suggesting that I can’t be a citizen?

Adrienne Clarkson: No; not at all. I’m not suggesting that. It’s just that you haven’t found your way to become a citizen. [Laughs] If it’s just because you’re against fracking, it doesn’t mean that.

Andrew Keen: I’m on my way. But it — are you suggesting that the citizens can only think in a certain way about the environment?

Adrienne Clarkson: No, no, no, I’m not at all. I’m just saying that I think we’ve narrowed it into voting. And I have — you know before I was Governor General and when I was doing a lot of other kinds of things, I was a non-governmental observer at — for instance in Chile for the return to democracy in 1987. And then I went back when they had their first vote in ’88 and Aylwin won as President. And so, you see how important things — voting becomes when you’re in a dictatorship or when you’re coming out of a dictatorship. And it is the thing of democracy; it’s important. But I think citizenship means you know that you don’t just throw your garbage out in a bin and then when it gets — when you bring your bin back in, if there’s a few pieces left there you leave it on the street. You bring that back in. That’s caring for other people — is citizenship.

Andrew Keen: What do you make, and we covered this in our movie, How to Fix Democracy, the resurrection of the Greek notion of citizenship with citizen assemblies? I know they’ve also been experimented with in Canada. But do you think this is a good way of enriching 21st century notions of citizenship through lottery, bringing people in to actively engage in policy-making?

Adrienne Clarkson: Well, I think it’s very good to bring people in to talk about anything and to bring people together physically. I think that is — that is something that I’m always for. However, Andrew, I am somebody most influenced by Edmund Burke and the elect — speech to the electors of Bristol. And we have, in Canada we have inherited the Westminster System which came out of the Magna Carta, and we — that has kept us together, the good parliamentary system that we have. And I think in that parliamentary system when you elect somebody you elect them and you say okay, I think that you’re going to — you know you’re going to do the right thing, so I’ll elect you. And then a bunch of those people choose the person that’s going to be their leader. And then that leader if he has enough people elected becomes the Prime Minister. We don’t vote for anybody directly in Canada who is our Prime Minister. It’s just like Britain. And I think it’s a very, very fine system indeed, and we’re very lucky to have it. And I think that with that system comes the idea that we have a representative that we vote for. And if we don’t — and we vote for him and he’s said things to us or she said things to us, and she said that she was going to do this and that, and then she didn’t do it, then the next election you just throw them out. And that’s what Burke said in his speech to the electors of Bristol. You have elected me, and if you don’t like what I do, then throw me out. But until then, I will — I will follow my conscience and do what I do.And I think that is what representative democracy in a parliamentary system is about. And I respect that totally. And it’s not perfect. But it works very well.

Andrew Keen: Let’s end on a personal note. You’re a very personal writer even with these big philosophical ideas of politics and citizenship. You talked about arriving in Canada. It was in 1941 as a little girl. Your life in many ways is an advertisement for the achievements of Canadian democracy and the citizenship that it brings with it. Had you not arrived in Canada, perhaps even in the United States, what do you think your life would have become, and in what sense are you a walking advertisement for the principles of citizenship?

Adrienne Clarkson: Well, I think I am an example and — and you know when you’re young you don’t really want to think about that too much. But as I’m now going to be 82 in about three weeks, I can say it. Which is that I do think that my life example — is an example of something which yes, chance played a huge part in it. And I — because I spent a good deal of time, from the time I was 21 until I was 25 in France, where I went to do graduate studies and know enormously about their — their — their history and their life, etcetera, I could have gone to France, as many, say, people did. And the French have always had a welcome for friends. And I think in France, I probably could have and would have succeeded quite well. And I don’t think that I — you know as I say, in the United States, I don’t think so. I don’t think I could ever have gotten to the top job for one thing because it’s — it’s impossible if you’re not born in the United States. And I think going to Britain would have been — I would have probably done fine but I would not have done what I did here. I wouldn’t have become bilingual in English and French and all the things — and I wouldn’t have loved nature the way I do, the way — the way — you know when you’re — . That’s the thing; I came from a group of people who never thought nature was — was wonderful I suppose. But my parents did. Once they were introduced to the fact that they could have a property with a — if they earned enough money, they could have a property on a lake and spend time fishing and swimming and have nobody around them and no crowds and — and none of that, they thought it was wonderful. So, you know there are many things, and love of nature is one of the things that I think I would never have had if I hadn’t come to Canada. And that’s a big blessing to my life and a boon to my mental health to say the least. And I think; yes, I think after Canada, France probably would have been a place that I could have made my way in. But I would never have had the kind of life that I had and the friendships and the — the intimacy of life that I have in — in Canada, because — because of the — the smallness of the country, because when I was growing up, we had you know first of all, 18 million people. I think we’re now at 38. But I grew up in a — in a town which was the Capital city of Canada. It had 100,000 people in it. And so that kind of intimacy of — of knowing people and you know we were kind of exceptional because there weren’t that many refugees being taken in. They were exceptional in — during the Second World War. After the War, we took a lot of refugees and that was — that was terrific. But during the War not. So, I really think that it was fascinating to come to a country that had not had that kind of experience through — since about the 1890s when they received hundreds of thousands of immigrants to people, the west, and do all of that. But for me, Canada has been it. If I had been in the United States, I think you know — I said to my father once before he died, if we had been in Hong Kong and there hadn’t been the communist, none of that, what would have happened? And he said, well you know I’d just would have continued with my business and we would have sent you to one of the American universities like Radcliffe or Vassar you know. And then I said what? And then he said, well, then you would have married a stockbroker and lived on the Upper East Side. [Laughs]

Andrew Keen: Well don’t say that. My daughter is at Bryn Mawr and I hope she doesn’t end up with a stockbroker on the Upper East Side.

Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson: Well, [Laughs] —

Andrew Keen: Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson, it’s really been an honor and a wonderful conversation to talk so broadly and personally. The — the subtitle of your book Belonging is the Paradox of Citizenship. If there is a paradox of citizenship, I think if it comes to your life it’s a good paradox. So, we should embrace and celebrate paradox. I want to thank you so much for kicking off our new series How to Fix Democracy on citizenship in such an inspiring and thoughtful way. Thank you so much.

Adrienne Clarkson: I’ve enjoyed it so much, Andrew.