Keep discourse civil

Editorial

Back when Joe Clark was trying to turn the Progressive Conservative party from a Western rump into a national alternative to the Liberals, in the late 1970s, some redneck members of his own party would greet Clark's occasional comments in French with the dismissive and divisive call for the leader to "Talk Canadian."

Such comments are almost unthinkable now, as bilingualism and multiculturalism have become accepted facts of Canadian life to even the most rigid traditionalists. The civility of discourse between English and French in Canada has improved dramatically over the past three decades.

In fact, civility in public discourse should be a source of enormous pride for Canadians, on numerous fronts. Most significant is the language being used around the issue of equal marriage for same-sex couples. Supporters and opponents, with a few rare exceptions, have maintained a degree of respectfulness for each other while debating a very contentious issue of social policy. Canadians should acknowledge that even this ability to communicate is a success, regardless of where the national consensus leads in the end.

The same-sex marriage debate could be a model for civil discourse as we approach other policy issues, especially as a federal election looms. Especially since one of the most alarming sources for uncivil discourse is turning out to be religious differences among Canadians. A poll conducted for the Association for Canadian Studies this month reported that Canadians believe religious issues, rather than language or any of the other challenges facing us, will provide the greatest fodder for national disunity in coming years.

What a rising sense of religious conflict might mean for Canadian Jews remains anyone's guess, but suffice to say Jews have uniformly unhappy historical experiences with inter-religious conflict.

But the source of Canadians' concern over emerging religious schisms is probably not based on the Jewish experience, so much as it recognizes the fact that many Muslim Canadians, since the beginning of the War on Terror, feel that they have become suspect, by mere fault of their religion or skin color. Muslim Canadians are feeling isolated and vilified, much as Jews have felt through much of our history.

As usual, there are lessons that have gone unheeded.

Segments of the anti-Israel movement in Canada – many of whom are Muslim, many of whom are Christian and a few of whom are Jewish – have used the most inflammatory language possible against Israel, language that cannot help but harm Jewish Canadians' feelings of security and comfort. And despite impassioned, incessant requests to halt the use of imagery like that which equates Israel to the Nazi regime, Israel's critics insist the use of such language is appropriate to the issue, regardless of whether it is an affront to some Jews.
The Jewish community in Canada is uniquely placed to share its experiences with Muslim and other Canadians, in order to fight the possibility of further religious rancor in future. Arguably, no other ethnocultural group in Canada has as much to offer in this urgent civic debate. But the Jewish community itself is isolated and struggling to put out figurative and literal fires of our own.

The Jewish community has been hurt and chastened by the level of debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the extent that some are questioning whether decades of preaching inter-religious tolerance have simply fallen on deaf ears. In the National Post this week, columnist George Jonas urged Canadians to rededicate ourselves to the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," based on the assumption that, since anti-Semitism seems unlikely to ever disappear, the best Jews can hope for is a more universal abhorrence of murder, rather than a specific interdiction against killing Jews in particular.

After at least four years of warning that some Canadian criticism of Israel reaches levels that threaten social cohesion right here in Canada – and being rebuffed as over-reacting – Canada's Jewish community can be forgiven for reacting to predictions of further inter-religious strife with a depressing lack of surprise. The insensitivity to Jewish concerns about uncivil discourse over the past years should send shudders down Canadians' spines. For the most part, it hasn't, which leaves us wondering what hope there is for genuine rapprochement between Canadian religious groups.

So, as Canadians embark on a journey to the heart of our notions of religious tolerance and diversity, we should hope that the discussion of these issues in the public realm take as their model the civility we've seen in the discussion of gay marriage or French-English relations, and that it will not, we hope, take as a model the inflammatory, insensitive and isolating tone that Canadian Jews have suffered, ostensibly over the Middle East conflict.

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