Former prime minister Stephen Harper joins editor-at-large Sean Speer to talk about his new book, Flags of Canada, which chronicles the political battles and passionate discourse that gave us the iconic Maple Leaf in 1965. He argues that Canadians must tap into their national pride and independent identity in the face of open hostility from American President Donald Trump.
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SEAN SPEER: Welcome to Hub Dialogues. I’m your host, Sean Speer, editor-at-large at The Hub. On this episode, we’re talking to former Canadian Prime Minister STEPHEN HARPER about his new book, which sheds light on part of our history. Most Canadians are unfamiliar with that. As you’ll hear in our conversation is the Canadian flag and the cultural and political battles that led to the country adopting the maple leaf as a symbol of national pride. Former Prime Minister Harper makes the case that it’s time that Canada taps into this national pride and cultivates an independent identity in the face of open hostility from American President Donald Trump, former Prime Minister Harper, welcome to Hub Dialogues and congratulations on the book.
STEPHEN HARPER: Great to see you, Sean, thanks for having me.
SEAN SPEER: It’s great to see you too, sir. There’s so much to talk about these days, including, of course, your new book, flags of Canada, which I read over the weekend, and would encourage our listeners and audience to check out. I wanted to ask you a bit about the book, why you decided to write it, what are some of the big underlying themes that you explore, and why you think it’s particularly important in the extraordinary moment we find ourselves. One thing that struck me is the extent to which there is a renewed interest in flags. These days, the online vexillology movement is rich and growing. Several US, states and cities are redesigning their flags. What do you think explains the growing interest in flags and why, as I asked, did you decide to write the book now?
STEPHEN HARPER: Yeah, a lot of questions there. First of all, why I decided to write it? I, you know, I tell people I’ve had this interest since I was a kid. I grew up in the 60s. Was a period of pretty intense Canadian nationalism. It’s how I grew up. The flag debate was on. Of course, I’m old enough, just old enough to remember it had a flag collection. Read a little bit my father was the term vexilology, or vexillologist. Did not exist then, but he had an interest in knowledge of this well, and you may know, Sean went on to publish, later in life, the definitive guide to regimental to military flags in Canada. So he was actually quite accomplished in this field in his own right. Anyway, he sparked that interest. I had that interest, and, you know, I kept it as an adult. I can’t say I spent a lot of time on it, but what happened was to be bought in the early days, early months of COVID, when I wasn’t able to travel, I was sitting in my basement during the day, during doing business video conferences, and then at night, watching streaming videos and getting fat and drinking too much and and I just said to myself, geez, I’m not leaving my home. I better get a project of some kind occupy my mind. So actually, that’s when I, myself and my artist, Greg, we started working on this. And so it really was a COVID project. And, yeah, that’s, that’s basically the origin, and it’s, frankly, I’d say, from point of view of interest, really coincidental now that it is coming out at a time where interest in the flag is really at a kind of a recent high.
You asked about why the growing interest in flags? Look, I don’t know if there’s growing interest Sean. One of the phenomena of the Internet age is that people who have interests everywhere can get together. You know, I also, as you know, I’m a hockey researcher, and I belong to a hockey research organization, like I belong to a vexillologist organization. It used to be you were lucky as a young person, if you had one or two friends who did this? Well, now those one or two friends in different cities all over the world form internet clubs of hundreds of people. And so I think that’s part of explains those people are interested. More interest. Are more interested. I think in the United States, what’s happening the big interest there, of course, as you mentioned, is the redesign of state flags, because the truth is that most American state flags, unlike Canadian provincial flags, really were not the subject of a lot of historical thought. Basically what happened is the state crest was often just thrown on a blue background, and detailed crests are really, really in the modern age, not considered good designs for flags. So a lot of US states are looking at their flag for that reason alone. But look, it’s, I say. I don’t know whether it’s a worldwide it’s a bigger issue than it was, but certainly those who are interested are talking. More with each other than they ever did before.
SEAN SPEER: You mentioned your artist, Greg, Prime Minister, but before we get into the book itself, I want to ask about his illustrations. Why did you think it was important to include handwritten depictions of the historical flags or something like 50 or so in the book, rather than rely on online versions?
STEPHEN HARPER: Yeah, good question. And it’s it’s not that online versions are inaccurate. A lot of them are very accurate. Early on, I decided Sean, because we’d be using a lot of illustrations, I just decided I didn’t want to get into copyright issues when I eventually came to publication and getting a million permissions. And I suspect a lot of these things are probably public domain anyway, but I didn’t know that Greg did the illustrations in my hockey book some years ago, and wanted to do these. And look, I thought he did a great job, just for those who don’t know Greg, so I call you the artist, longtime friend of mine. Greg is actually legally blind, and as I say, so, the illustrations are more remarkable in that regard. And unfortunately, by the very end, I was actually doing a little bit of just the touch ups myself. Greg is no longer it kind of his ability to do this ended with the book. He really is not in a position to do this kind of of work any longer. So which is, which is sad. But look, he did. He did a great job on and I think they look really well. And, and look, we also want to, because the it’s often young people or kids who are interested in this stuff. We want to, you know, to show kids that, you know, drawing flags is kind of a fun thing to do. And, and you can do it well.
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, you write early on in the book, sir, that flags are fundamentally wrapped up in identity history and our collective narratives. I really like, for instance, your history of the evolution of the flags of New France through the 19th and even 20th century and its contribution to the durability of French Canadian nationalism. Why don’t you talk about the bigger insight here?
STEPHEN HARPER: Yeah. So look, there are, when you say flags represent history, identity, collective narratives, I would qualify that good flags do. There’s lots of flags that are not very good. And often what makes them not very good is they have no meaning, no deeper meaning. The most the most impactful flags are not just colorful illustrations, but they do speak to the collective identity of the group they represent, whether that’s the territorial group or an ethnic group or a religious group or whatever and and I actually think that, in a strange way, flags in and of themselves. If they have that kind of connection, and they are historically durable, they can actually generate and sustain in and of themselves, the identity, for example, when we had Confederation in 1867 originally four provinces, Ontario, Quebec, Nova, Scotia, New Brunswick, a lot of people don’t love so few people know Canadian history. Sean, I know you’re trying to approve that, but a lot of people don’t know where was the most ferocious resistance of the four provinces that joined to joining, most of ferocious resistance was in Nova Scotia. People would say, oh, it had to be Quebec. It was not. It was Nova Scotia. And I think part of the reason it was Nova Scotia is Nova Scotia had a flag that early, and so Nova Scotia had a kind of a visual depiction of their collective identity that went back at that point, you know, a couple 100 years. So I think, I think flags in and of themselves can, can embody that identity and carry it forward in a way that that is, it’s a bit peculiar, but, you know, we’re human beings, right?
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, the book is chalk full of fascinating historical details that I encountered for the first time, including, for instance, the idea that the American flag itself finds its origins in an earlier version of the Canadian flag, the red ensign. Talk about the backstory there.
STEPHEN HARPER: Yeah, this was one of the things look I’ll tell people I knew, you know, obviously the outline of the book. I knew the story from my reading as a kid and later, but I actually learned some things in the course of researching and writing this book. And one of the things I learned was that the Canadian and American flags have similar origins, which I suppose shouldn’t be as big a surprise when you think about it, given that they both were, you know, kind of fundamentally came out of British jurisdictions, British imperial jurisdictions. So just talk for a second about the American flag. Go back to the Revolutionary period, the British Red Ensign. And. For those who don’t know what that is, the British Red ensign is just a red flag with the Union Jack in the upper left hand corner, the basis of the flag of Ontario today. So your viewers was, many of your viewers will have seen that the British Red Ensign was the flag British flag most commonly shown and flown in the Americas, in the British colonies of the Americas. And so it very much became, unofficially, kind of a flag that British colonialists identified with. And in the early revolution, what happened was, frankly, probably under the guidance of George Washington, but we don’t know for sure, the American rebels decided to sew six white stripes onto the red ends and creating 13 stripes to represent the 13 rebellious colonies with the Union Jack in the corner.
This is, this is the part people don’t understand. The first American flag, national flag, had the Union Jack in the corner. Why? After all, they were rebelling. But they were rebelling initially against parliament, Parliament that had passed all these acts they disagreed with, when which they had no representation, the colonists, initially, the rebels, initially believed that if they kind of fought back, the king would step in, recognize their rights and force parliament to treat them fairly. Of course, the king took took the opposite position, and at that point, they declared independence. And that point they had to change the flag, and they replaced the Union Jack with white stars on blue. But that is the origin of the American flag in case of Canada. You know, even before Confederation, and certainly after Confederation, we had a series of red ensigns with a national crest on it, just like the Ontario crest is on today, that were the unofficial flags of our country. That was obviously when we adopted the official flag in 65 we didn’t adopt the red Ensign, but we still adopted the dominant red color of our flag. So you know, there is that link between both both flags.
SEAN SPEER: You mentioned the adoption of the modern flag in 1965 another insight from the book that I encountered for the first time is the extent to which the debate really finds its origins in Confederation itself. Help our audience understand the basic continuity of that debate and why, Prime Minister, it persisted for so long.
STEPHEN HARPER: Well, look, fundamentally, you know, as I, as we just started saying, flags are rooted in history, identity and culture and the history of Canadian nationhood and its identity and culture are all complex. They are not like the United States. I mean, even I said there, obviously just described the origin of the US and its flag. There’s a little bit of complexity at the beginning. But basically the US stories of British, British colonies, rebel, form a united government, become an independent nation. That’s not what happened in Canada. What happened in Canada was you had a series of events that developed the notion of Canadian nation for the first and most important thing to know, and I’m sorry if I’m taking too much time, please, first and most important thing for people to understand is that the concept of Canada comes from the French comes from the French Canadians. There was no concept of Canada before the French Canadians, before the arrival of European explorers and settlers, there were, you know, hundreds of indigenous nations. There was no concept of a pan continental country, not even, not even a concept of what we would call a provincial kind of country These were, these were local, localized entities and nations with constantly shifting boundaries. Under the French the term Canada comes to be employed to describe the French inhabitants of North America, and they develop a conception of a French speaking pan continental state. So that’s the original Canadian obviously, eventually New France falls, you get Britain, and then you have the American Revolution.
What happens then is a large number. There were small numbers of Anglophones before, but large numbers come north who disagree with the revolution, and then those two groups and others fight together in the war of 1812 and establish a Canadian identity. Is no longer just French, it’s French and English and others, but it is still given the war of 1812 history. It’s an identity within the British Empire and and it’s it has to be in the British Empire Sean Canada’s Canada’s the Confederation comes together, the formal unity of all these colonies comes together in 1867 for two reasons, one that a lot of people will be able to cite, and that is, um. The the end of the American Civil War, the perception of the Americans not entirely fair, but their perception that Canada and Britain were on the side of the South, and therefore there’s tremendous worry about invasion from the Union army. You actually have a secretary, I think he was Secretary of the Interior, but I can’t remember. Secretary Seward actually had a detailed plan for the absorption of Canada in the United States, more than one state, by the way, and so this is alarming. It’s alarming to French Canadians who will lose their identity. All the things that cause Confederation cause alarming to French Canadians who will lose their identity. Alarming to British Canadians who, you know, who have always who were opponents of the American Revolution and loyal to the crown, threatening, by the way, to indigenous peoples. Because notwithstanding the mistreatment of indigenous peoples in Canada, it has been historically, a lot better than what they were facing in the United States, and which is why the indigenous were given a choice always fought on the British or Canadian side, obviously threatening to black people who were who, you know, had long been free in Canada, were not free in the United States until, until Lincoln.
So you have, you have this fear of invasion. But the other thing you also have Sean that people forget is in 1864 the US cancels free trade with Canada. People forget we had a free trade agreement in the 1850s and 60s, which the American canceled. So between the cancelation of free trade and obviously the economic threat and then the threat of invasion, we pull the country together, but it’s under the British Empire, and everybody, including Quebecers, probably actually, especially Quebecers, want to be part of the British Empire. The British Empire provides security. The British Empire does not usually demand the assimilation of other groups. And Britain itself is a composite country, you know, so and frankly, the British Empire is, by the standards of the time, their system of government is a is relatively free and democratic compared to many others. So for all kinds of reasons, Canadians want to be part of the British Empire. But that that evolves very slowly. Canada’s going from a completely autonomous Confederation within the British Empire to an end, fully independent sovereign state, happens over many steps, and it’s not one point in history. And all the while, the flag is being debated. And so what would have been an acceptable flag in 1867 which frankly, probably would have been the Union Jack, not even the Canadian Red Ensign by 1965 that whole perception has changed.
SEAN SPEER: Let’s pull the conversation up to the debate in the 1960s and in particular, John Diefenbaker and the Conservative Party’s opposition to the flag today, it’s often treated as out of touch and reactionary. Talk about the mood of the debate and the extent to which the Conservatives were on side or offside public opinion.
STEPHEN HARPER: Well, first of all, Sean, I think the first thing that needs to be corrected is this was not strictly a liberal versus conservative debate. This was actually kind of a free vote in both parties. Certainly John Diefenbaker and the vast majority of the conservative caucus were for retaining or making the red ends and the official flag and the Liberal Party, certainly the Prime Minister Lester Pearson and the vast majority Liberal Party were for a new flag based on based on a maple leaf, or Maple Leafs based on the maple leaf symbol and so, but it wasn’t the there were not iron party lines. There were people on different sides in both parties. Anyway. Look by by the 1960s and say so now we’re talking in my lifetime, right by the 1960s for most Canadians, I think even of British background, which I obviously am, my parents were, Britain has no longer part of our political identity. My father and mother. Would you know? If you ask somebody, my father thought about these things, he would tell you he was proud of the British traditions, the crown, the parliamentary system, but my father did not believe Britain was his country in any way. It was his heritage. Yeah, and, and, but that was not true until my father’s generation, really that that was a common view, and there were still people, even in my father’s generation, who’s thought that our connection to Britain and the British Commonwealth was still inextricably linked to our political identity as Canadians. So that view still existed, and it was very common among older Canadians, obviously very common. We still remember at that period, we had a lot of British immigration coming to Canada. So there were still a lot of recent British immigrants.
You know, I growing up in Toronto, one of the biggest, one of the biggest radio programs was CFR bees, calling all Britains huge audience of British people living in Canada listened to pro by the way, 1963 that program was the first program ever in North America to play a Beatles record, Beatle mania, which had hit Britain long before, or months before it came to North America. Anyway. So you had that. You had those lots of people still that identity, even though it had shifted. And then, of course, you had the additional complication, Sean of war veterans. By the Second World War, the red Ensign during the war really became the, clearly, the Canadian flag, as opposed to the Union Jack, or as opposed to some other flags, it became the main flag of the war effort. So a lot of these veterans who had fought under the flag had a ferocious loyalty to that flag in and of itself, regardless of whether or whether or not you know their identity was necessarily British. So I say you had still a bit of mixed identity, but it had changed, and was changing rapidly, and certainly by my generation.
I mean, I, you know, I, I am very proud of my British heritage, very proud of the much of the history of Britain. But no way do I think of myself as British like I’m, I’m not a British person, but that so that was shifting. So they were, you know, so deep. And Baker himself was a guy who, even though he’s part German, right, the only by the only Canadian of non British and French extraction ever, which is amazing. We talk about a multicultural country, but we’ve only had one prime minister who wasn’t fully British or French, and that was John Diefenbaker, and but he had a partly British extraction. He was extremely proud of it. He’d also been a lifelong defender of the Union Jack. And was from, you know, he was an older generation than my father. He was from the generation where, although Canadians saw themselves as an independent nation, they saw themselves as an independent nation inextricably linked to Britain, politically in an international sense.
SEAN SPEER: Sir, your comments about how identities change and evolve. There’s a good segue to the next question I wanted to put to you. Many of us are currently revising our histories to account for voices and perspectives that were left out of previous versions. We’re also, of course, working to bring our society’s growing diversity into a new national identity. How does the flag interact with those efforts? Should flags be immutable, or is it appropriate to redesign them over time, in your mind?
STEPHEN HARPER: Well, the fact of the matter is Sean, as you know, and you’ve learned from reading the book, the fact of the matter is that flags change a lot over not over the years, sometimes over the decades, but they change a lot over the centuries for various reasons, often because, fundamentally governance regimes change. Look, I would say that the Canadian today’s Canadian flag, in a sense, transcends that like historically, a lot of flags were derived from Royal emblems or emblems of state, and those things were very intricate, and they incorporated multiple themes. For example, Canada’s coat of arms today is not a, you know, it’s not a single is there’s not a single shield. There’s a shield that contains the royal marks of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and three conjoined maples, which is the royal mark of Canada, if you were and that, by the way, in cloth form, is the flag of Canadian flag of King Charles the third but if you were designing a national flag today, that would raise all kind of questions, well, why is there nobody in there other than French or people from France or from the British Isles? What Our flag has done is, instead, it’s not about the modern flags are less complex. They’re not about the complexity of identity. They’re about usually single themes of identity, the single for over 200 years, the single most common symbol identified by people who live in the land of Canada, whether they’re French, English or whatever. Has been the maple leaf, and so in a sense, it just rises above all of that complexity in that debate, the debate you refer to is real. It shouldn’t be ignored. But we actually have a flag that doesn’t need to adapt to that. And frankly, my view, shouldn’t adapt to that. In other cases, it’s different. The part of the reason you asked about the redesigning of American flags is many of the crests, they’re exclusionary, or they’re controversial for the way they depict certain histories, and you know, they’re just not necessarily appropriate today. But there’s nothing about Canada’s flag that shouldn’t endure for a long time to come, providing the country endures.
SEAN SPEER: If I can pull back a bit, you’re clearly someone with a strong interest in attachment to Canadian history that was part of your governing agenda as prime minister after the past decade or so, sir, one gets a sense that there’s a hunger for renewed commitment to our national history and a shared sense of identity. Let me put it to you. Do you agree with that characterization? If so, what do you attribute it to?
STEPHEN HARPER: Well, I think there’s two. I think that’s true. It’s very true. Sean, I think, I think there’s two or three things, let me talk about a big thing, and then something more specific, to Canada. I do think that the modern world, the kind of globalized internet, modern world, you know, you interviewed me about my previous book this and I hate to say it, but kind of the Davos elitist agenda that kind of kind of dismisses all collective identities as anachronistic. I just don’t think that’s how people live. You know, we have this ongoing debate in politics and philosophy, are are human beings fundamentally social creatures or fundamentally individuals? I think the reality is that we are both like we’re very complex beings. And I don’t think that healthy, most healthy human beings have no collective identity. And certainly the mass of people, the ones who aren’t very rich and very mobile and very connected, actually rely on on those greater collective identities and and the loyalties and the bonds that they create. So I do think there is a rebellion in the world against this kind of, as I say, Davos, elitist agenda that you know, unless you’re you’re in that kind of class, you’re kind of somehow and a human being from a dinosaur age, I just think it’s just, it’s wrong and people don’t like it. So I think you have that generally.
I think specifically in Canada, look, I don’t mind saying, I think we’ve had a government sorry to get political here, but we’ve had a government that has been very outspoken about the fact that, you know, they don’t really believe in Canadian nationhood, certainly not as a cultural expression. The Prime Minister has been famous on this he’s also the guy that lowered our flag the half mass for what, like a year and a half or something. It was no other country’s ever done that, very different than his father, by the way, who, you know, who in many ways, is associated with Canadian nationalism. Certainly this government, if anything, seemed allergic to it. And then, of course, now we have, you know, for the first time in my lifetime, first time in my parents lifetime, not my grandparents lifetime, but the first time in, you know, now what’s three, four generations that we suddenly have the prospect of a United States that is not a friendly country, a hostile country, which was, you know, so, so core to why Canadian identity existed in the first place. And so I think these recent events have also sparked that, I gotta say, Sean, you asked me about the origin of this book, and I think a lot of people would think that what’s going on with Trump that I just came up with this book and all these statements with credit and the other prime ministers about the flag, it turns out to be a wonderful marketing time that I did not perceive in any way in 2020.
SEAN SPEER: Well, what one thing you have written recently, sir, is an op ed across the post media chain. We’re speaking today on February 20, where you reflect on the provocations from President Trump and what it means for Canadian nationhood and what ought to be our collective response. Why don’t I just ask you to reflect a bit on thinking on these issues?
STEPHEN HARPER: Sure, look once again, just on the context of this, I don’t need to get into the details. We can debate what President Trump means or doesn’t mean. But what we have had happen, I think, is very significant. What we have had happen is for the first time since, like World War One, we’ve had an American President express open hostility to the existence of Canada. It’s, it’s, frankly, if you told me this three months ago, I would have thought it was a joke like it, you know, on America first and everything you know, obviously we get the President Trump’s a different kind of President. But I never perceived that there was a hostility the existence of Canada and. And I don’t know how deeply he means it, but he’s expressed it often enough that it’s clearly he means it on some level, and we just haven’t had this and, you know, so it’s look it’s something where we’ve I think it’s an opportunity for the country to take a good look at itself, because I think we’ve been vastly under realizing our potential under under, realizing our potential for independent wealth and independent action.
By the way, I don’t buy for a second that we are fundamentally a drain or a dependency on the United States. I think it’s a mutually beneficial relationship, overwhelmingly. But the fact of the matter is, we have over relied on it. And there’s lots more we could be doing ourselves, but it, you know, it does in a way, it takes us back to our roots, the the the origin of Canada, the unity of people of French and British background, the desire for separate systems of government, governance, identity, you name it, you know, goes back like was. It was. It was the narrative of hundreds of years, first the struggle of the French against the British, then the struggle of the French and the remaining British against the Americans. And that went from, you know, the 1600s until the First World War. And it was only in 1940 that United States, rather the United Kingdom, became our principal ally. I won’t get into details, but you know about the Ogdensburg agreement, the most underrated event in entire Canadian history. And then, of course, 1988 89 under Brian Mulroney, free trade, immensely profitable, economic integration. But all of a sudden, you know we, we have to kind of take a look at ourselves. I think this will all pass. I just hope we don’t miss the opportunity to to not just, you know, rediscover this history and identity I think we should be very proud of, but also to look at how we are not realizing our potential as a true independent country, because I think we aren’t.
SEAN SPEER: Well said, sir. I just want to take up your point about identity, because, as you know, there can be a tendency to define Canadian identity in negative terms. The current Prime Minister recently went on American television and essentially said, we define ourselves as not being Americans. This strikes me as a rather thin conception of Canadian identity. Whatdo you think? How do we cultivate a thicker, more positive model of Canadian identity?
STEPHEN HARPER: So, you know, I’ve, as, you know, Sean, having worked for me, you know that I’ve always been a strong Canadian nationalist who’s very, you know, knowledgeable and proud of our history and identity. I’m, you know, I, I’m, at the same time, who’s been very pro American. I, I think the United States is a marvelous country, amazing creation, created out of a revolution. Almost no country is created out of revolution succeed. The American experiment did. And so, you know, I have, I see no never saw any contradiction of being pro American and embracing the importance of that relationship to us while also understanding that we’re just not the same. I when I go to the United States, I’m acutely aware that I’m not American. It’s hard to describe. Obviously, there’s subtle differences in speech and language and in other other cultural attributes, but they’re real. I often have my Quebec friends will say this to me. You know, Quebecers who grow up in a strictly French environment often kind of with kind of that sovereignty, nationalist kind of education system in the background being kind of growing up thinking, well, English Canadians and Americans are the same, but they’ll tell you, when they start traveling the English Canada, United States, they tell right away they’re not the same. And it’s not.
It’s not that I think the Americans are worse or we’re better. It’s just that it’s it’s different. It’s a different history, different system of government, different. You know, different culture, different. You see it in business, different business culture, a different way of relating to the world. I can, I put tangibles on that. It’s hard. One of the ways, quite frankly, and it’s a contradiction. One of the ways is that back to the link to back to the kind of dual origins of Britain and France, and back to the nature of British identity itself, our cultural identity and political culture identity Canadians has never been homogeneous. It’s just the reality that there are these different perspectives on the country, whereas the United States has a homogeneous political culture. Now that’s, I think, the official political culture. The underlying reality Sean that I find, is Americans are much more, on a personal level, much more tribal than Canadians, their loyalties to school, to first. Eternity to our intents, whereas Canadians, in spite of our more nuanced and varied identity, there’s actually not those kind of tribal barriers are just not that great. On that level. On a kind of a social level, we’re much more individualistic. But on a political cultural level, it’s a more complex identity. It’s just different. It’s just different. It’s, you know, somebody said to me, if an American said to me, what, I guess Doug Ford faced this on Fox, like, why don’t you want to join us? Why do you hate us? You know? Well, you know, there’s lots of other families I admire, but they’re not my family, right?
SEAN SPEER: Sir, as we wrap up, we’ve been talking about the relationship between flags and these broader questions of Canadian identity, particularly in this extraordinary moment. And one thing I thought a lot about over the years, including having spent time in your office, is how much of this sense of identity can be galvanized and shaped on a top down basis, through government programs or initiatives, and how much of it must ultimately be bottom up. How would you respond? What’s the balance between political leadership and a more organic form of culture evolving over time?
STEPHEN HARPER: Yeah, look Sean, you won’t be surprised for my answer very much has to be bottom up. You can’t impose culture from above. Now, what you can do through flags or through cultural programming or whatever is you can if you have, if you really are locked into the genuine culture, you can express it. You can bring it out. You can find ways, through artistic or other expression of embodying it, but you can’t manufacture it. And embodying it is important. You can preserve it and sustain it, but you really cannot manufacture and I look, I think there was a time when organizations like the CBC and the NFB did great jobs of of capturing Canadian culture. You know, I grew up this. This is really dating me. I grew up in the 60s with a show called The Forest Rangers, which is a wonderful embodiment of kind of Canadian culture of the era. I think that’s changed. I think so much of what we call culture today is just, you know, just support for industrial products or for what somebody wants the country to be rather than what it actually is.
SEAN SPEER: Final question. At the backdrop of our conversation has been this moment of heightened nationalism, which, as you set out in your post media op ed today, so it can be pulled in different directions of varying utility for the country. How do we channel those popular sentiments in a constructive and prosperous way?
STEPHEN HARPER: Sean, you may or may not recall that for a period of my prime ministership, when we were defining our place in the world and our approach to other countries, I used the term what I called enlightened sovereignty. I do remember it well. And the reason I used that term was that, you know, at heart, I am fundamentally a nationalist, and I thought my responsibility as prime minister was always to Canada first, but that, you know, to also understand that given the complexity the world and Canada’s engagement in the world, that that isn’t just about Canada, only that has you know that that you have to see the linkages of your interest to those of others and form beneficial relationships. And so look Canada. Unlike the United States, there never has been isolationism in Canada. In fact, it’s been the opposite. Canada has always been kind of fundamentally linked in the world with a major power, first with France, then with Britain, and then, you know, not politically, but in all kinds of other ways, with with America. And as a consequence, we’ve always been engaged in the world as those big powers have been engaged in the world. And we need to stay engaged in the world, because the reality is that our country has to be an open trading country to be prosperous, and always has been.
I think the opportunity for us now is to say that, you know, while these relationships have been and remain vitally important, France is still important to us, Britain is still important to us, America is still very important to us, that why don’t we really become a truly independent country, globally engaged, globally competitive business culture, etc, but one really capable of independent action, capable of selling our goods and services, not just to each other, which we can’t quite do today, but around The world, capable of defending, our asserting our sovereignty over all of our land, sea and skies. And people say, oh geez, that’s expensive. This is we are the 10th largest economy in the world, like we sometimes think, because we sit beside the United States. We’re small. We’re not small. We’re only small in relation to America. We’re a huge country, a huge a. Prosperous country with, frankly, that is, frankly, vastly under realizing its potential for prosperity. And so let’s, let’s use this opportunity to, while retaining those relations, including, obviously the critical American relationships, will remain important for our security and economy for forever, at the same time, be just a more independent country on all of these things, a genuine sovereign nation. And this is our opportunity to look at ourselves and say, rather than get mad by what Trump is saying, let’s just get on with really building this country.
SEAN SPEER: What a brilliant way to wrap up our conversation. The book is Flags of Canada. Right Honorable Stephen Jay Harper, Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister, thank you so much for joining us at Hub Dialogues.
STEPHEN HARPER: Thanks Sean.
