Our Fundamental Values

Freedom and Connection are prime values of the United States and Canada respectively.

They are not mutually exclusive but coexist in creative tension. Each country has chosen to emphasize a different end of this balance, and this explains why Canada and the United States have developed along both parallel and divergent lines. These two poles exist in practically every civilized society that adheres to a democratic tradition.

Freedom has become a cliché for some Americans. It is much more. It was the quest for religious liberty that brought religious dissenters to New England. It was the desire for economic and political self-determination that led the Thirteen Colonies to cast off the yoke of the British Empire.

It was the quest for free land—“free” in both senses of the word—that drove the colonists inland. It was the issue of freedom for slaves that strained the Union to the breaking point of the Civil War. And it was yearning for completion of that campaign that rang out in Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech at the Washington civil rights rally.

The formation of a nation was a byproduct of the quest for freedom. Though they had fought side by side for independence, it took six years after the revolutionary war for the colonies to agree on a constitution. It took another 90 years to accept racial equality as a principle of citizenship. And it took the 2008 presidential election for Afro-Americans to have a sense of connection to US institutions up to the highest office in the land.

In Canada the priorities were reversed with a sense of connection first and self-rule later. In the late 1700’s this was a deliberate choice. British governors recognized that to give democratic institutions to a bi-racial colony would put Catholic and Protestant, French and English at each others’ throats. So they focused on “peace, welfare and good governance” while the republic to the south offered “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

When separate French and English uprisings failed to end British rule in 1937-38, a handful of progressive politicians worked together across linguistic lines for reform in the colonial framework. The “responsible government” they achieved in 1846, paved the way for other British North American colonies to come together in the next three decades.

The promise of railways was a key component in the Confederation agreements. Canada was a product of technology—first canals and railways, later state radio and television in French and English. In the US, technological connections followed political structures.

While the US began by severing ties with Britain, Canadian independence was a protracted affair. Canada did not have its own voice internationally until 1918, its own final court until 1949 and the unfettered power to amend its own constitution until 1982.

This difference in emphasis reflects in our presences internationally. As a revolutionary state focused on freedom, the US will unilaterally sacrifice and intervene abroad to challenge despotism. As an evolutionary state based on connections, Canada prefers to act in concert with other states through such agencies as the United Nations and NATO.