The Rights Revolution by Michael Ignatieff Read Free Book Online Page B

self-government in areas essential to a group’s survival — poses enormous problems for the majority of Canadians. What’s wrong with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Canadians want to know. Don’t you trust it to protect your rights? Don’t you trust us? The demand for special rights appears to cast doubt on the very jurisdiction of these institutions, for neither aboriginal communities nor Quebecers necessarily accept the application of the Charter in matters directly relating to their survival as a people. They say, “What right do you have to impose your rights on us?”
    Most people in this country are deeply attached to thegreen-baize version of political space: one space for all; one set of rights for all. The minority nations see political space on the patchwork model: self-governing spaces for each; each nation master in its own turf. To this, the majority then asks, “What space remains in common if each nation insists on its own?”
    The majority also believes that giving some citizens special rights to protect their language or their lands grants privileges withheld from other citizens. These privileges become a grievance when their exercise excludes other Canadians. If aboriginal peoples gain exclusive rights to land, for example, this may deny other Canadians access to the land or resources in question. Canadian fishermen on both coasts resent the fact that certain waters are claimed as aboriginal fishing grounds under formal treaties signed centuries ago. 6 Here two economically vulnerable groups of citizens are competing for an increasingly scarce resource on which both depend for their livelihood, but one group appears to have a privilege that tilts the balance in their favour. Likewise, in cases where Native nations have established jurisdiction over lands and proceed to levy property taxes on non-aboriginal landholders (who do not have voting rights on tribal councils), these landholders believe that a basic democratic principle — no taxation without representation — is being breached. 7 Such people also believe it is unfair that they are subject to federal, provincial, and aboriginal taxes while their aboriginal neighbours are, in some cases, exempt from all but aboriginal taxation.
    Many of these disputes are now before the courts.
    In a similar vein, Quebec legislation restricts both the use of English in public signage and the free choice of immigrants to choose the language of instruction for their children. To some anglophone Quebecers, these are privileges of a majority that encroach upon the rights of a minority. Since the passage of Quebec’s Charte de la langue française, Bill 101, in 1977, there has been recurring conflict between two incompatible visions of how a political community should run, one putting primacy on individual rights, the other on collective rights. 8
    Quebec’s language policies appear to violate the ideal of the state’s neutrality. Some English-speaking Canadians have had difficulty acknowledging the very idea that any government should privilege the identity of one group, one language, and one culture over any another in its policies. Certainly, Pierre Trudeau saw the Canadian state as a neutral arbiter, and he sought through bilingual legislation to ensure that it favoured neither national community.
    In fact, despite its supposed neutrality, the state has always privileged the culture of the English-speaking majority. The very need for bilingual legislation, for example, reveals that the Canadian state had at one time actually favoured English over French in the delivery of services.
    No liberal state, therefore, is actually as neutral in its relationship to groups as it purports to be. In supposedly secular and neutral liberal democracies, the designation of Sunday as a day of rest, together with the nomination of Christmas and Easter as public holidays, privilegesChristian denominations over others. Its holidays and public symbols usually reflect the