| Introducing Inroads | |
Making Inroads into Solitudes | ||
| Canadian intellectual life needs a genuine meeting of minds, which begins from the clash of opinion. Too much writing in Canada is not genuinely interested in pursuing opposing ideas. Academic journals restrict themselves to their respective disciplines and impose their own set of intellectual blinders. Too many political and social journals limit their pages to writers who share a narrow ideological line. We wrote these words last Fall as we announced our plans to publish a new journal. Each issue of the journal will feature a central theme which forms the basis for discussion and debate. To the metaphors we have already invoked - minds meeting and opinions clashing — we might add a third — making inroads into intellectual solitudes. In this first issue which is devoted primarily to the constitution, we have striven diligently to do that with respect to the classic solitudes of anglophones and francophones. But there are other pairs of solitudes. One is that between those who define themselves as socially concerned progressive Canadians (many intellectuals and professionals, leaders of feminist, union and other advocacy groups), and those who see themselves managing the thousands of enterprises, big and small, that comprise the national economy. In all countries tension exists between these two, but in Canada — particularly in Canada outside Quebec — this tension has degenerated into the political equivalent of autism. Switching from Canadian Forum to Report On Business is not to read different perspectives on the same issues; it is more like reading about two different countries. Like other nations, Canadians enter the 1990s with diminished faith in the ability of government intervention to foster long-term growth. The demise of the Soviet Union has symbolically put an end to the idea of a non-market road to industrial prosperity. The advent of the single European market, of North American free trade, of Latin American market reforms, and of export-led growth of the Pacific rim countries implies that prosperity depends on markets. But what kind of markets? We Canadians seem incapable of answering this question. The practical Canadians in business are prone to mistrust any comprehensive, government- controlled plans for enhancing markets or correcting fundamental market failures: while the socially concerned among us in dismiss considerations of international comparative productivity or a weighing of costs and benefits of public spending as thoughts unworthy of those seeking justice and equality. Neither group is willing to distinguish between, on the one hand, the speculative excesses of developers in world property markets and, on the other, the impressive productivity gains of farmers in the North American plains, or German iron and steel makers, or Japanese automobile manufacturers. As we put it in our invitation in the Fall: We are tired of the ill will and extreme partisanship that characterize current Canadian politics.... We are concerned about the inability of Canadians with different points of view to find practical solutions to the constitutional, economic and social problems facing them.... We believe this is the right time for Inroads. Competitiveness and employment policies will be the focus of the second issue of Inroads; the bulk of this first issue provides a handy guide to Canada's constitutional crisis. The Constitutional sands are shifting so rapidly that we get sand in our eyes as we sit down to write. Nonetheless, the need to understand is now, and better a blurred vision of the crisis than none at all. |
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