Brand Canada

With Canada's evolution into a charter nation, other countries, plagued by authoritarianism, may want to follow our lead.

As the world attempts to make the 21st century less cruel than the murderous 20th, the advancement of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law is a moral necessity. A country that does not respect the rights of its own citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbours.

The two great revolutions of the 20th century – the Russian and the Chinese – went wrong because their leaders opted for absolute personal power rather than respecting the rights of hundreds of millions of their fellow citizens. Autocracy spawned the murderous regimes of Stalin and Mao, terrible in their impact on their own societies and deadly to their neighbours in Eastern Europe and Tibet.

Today the authoritarian viruses bred in the communist parties of China and Russia continue to plague their peoples. China has burst from its cocoon to become a dominant player in the world economy, and military power will not be far behind. The future of the 21st century will turn to the question of whether China evolves peacefully into a law-abiding state that ends the Communist Party’s monopoly on power or whether it will be racked by upheaval as its citizens inevitably demand political freedom in addition to material progress. Russia appeared to have turned the corner towards freedom under Mikhail Gorbachev, but has slipped back to semi-authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin. Russia continues to be a great power – not least in the Arctic, which is of particular concern to Canada – and whether it resumes its democratic advance or moves backwards to its Stalinist legacy is second in importance to China’s future.

In influencing such large possibilities, Canada can have only a modest role, if any at all. But our own evolution provides one model for players and countries desiring of democratic change – in the past generation, we have become a “charter nation.” The adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 made human rights central to Canada’s self-definition. The substance of our charter, with rights expanded to include language, aboriginal traditions, and diversity, has something to say to a world grappling with issues of ethnicity and pluralism. And the political impact of the charter – Parliament and the executive sharing power with the judiciary – all under a firewall of constitutional law is a bulwark against autocracy. Countervailing institutions rather than concentrated power is still the best way to guarantee liberal democracy.

The issue of our time is the future of world demos: in the sweep of history, Canada’s recent evolution into a charter nation is a signpost that others may want to follow.