"My encounters with Spain"

Notes for an address
by the Honourable Stéphane Dion
President of the Privy Council and
Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs

At the Honorary Doctorate Conferral Ceremony

Carlos III University of Madrid

Madrid, Spain

November 13, 2002

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In receiving this honorary doctorate from Carlos III University of Madrid, my thoughts turn to my parents, who raised me to respect academia and knowledge, to my wife Janine, a fellow academic who has helped me more in my career than I will ever help her in hers, to our daughter Jeanne, who is already of an age to share her parents’ passion for learning, to all my nearest and dearest, and all my friends. I also think of my professors and fellow students at Université Laval in Quebec City, where I studied political science, and the sociology program at the Institut d’études politiques in Paris, where I completed my doctorate. Nor can I overlook the Université de Moncton, in our province of New Brunswick, which gave me, in January 1984, my first opportunity to teach political science, and especially the Université de Montréal, where I was a professor of political science from September 1984 to January 1996.

I fully believed I would remain at the Université de Montréal throughout my entire career, until the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, convinced me to come defend my ideas in the political arena. Although he lured me from academia, which I believed was my only professional universe, I thank him for having associated me with what he has accomplished in politics, from solidifying Canadian unity to improving Canadians’ quality of life.

Another thought comes to mind: I find it extraordinary to be receiving this honorary doctorate from a prestigious Spanish university at the invitation of its Rector, Mr. Gregorio Peces-Barba Martínez, one of the "Fathers"of the Spanish Constitution. On my intellectual journey, there have been meeting points with Spain that today’s ceremony invites me to elaborate on.

Let me take you back to the mid-1970s. I was then twenty years old and was studying political science at Université Laval. The prevailing sociological trends at that time were very fatalistic. They were teaching what I would call a deterministic conception of human societies. Both structuralist Marxist sociology and Parsonian functionalist sociology tended to define the individual as a pure product of the conditioning he had received since childhood. He was for all practical purposes, no more than the result of his environment, his national culture and his class origins. Very little was made of his free will.

Human societies were described as being paralysed by the weight of conditioning, incapable of true change. Or, if they did change, it was owing to the inevitable impulse of major societal determinisms, such as the evolution of modes of production, in the face of which the free choice of individuals counted for almost nothing.

This fatalistic conception of human societies tended to devalue liberal democracy, which in effect makes individual freedom not the only, but the primary value. So, why base political society on the free individual if that freedom is but an illusion? As a student, I often heard liberal political institutions described as a democracy, formal or artificial, behind which the real societal determinisms were played out. Collectivist theories were in vogue. Some trends of political sociology saw a determinism in national cultures such that, for example, they reasoned there was an almost insurmountable incompatibility between Catholic and Latin countries and so-called Anglo-Saxon-style democracy. The Marxist trend, for its part, announced the inevitable advent of communist collectivism.

It is noteworthy that the international situation did not seem at all promising for democracies. Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and a part of Mediterranean Europe were all under the yoke of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. In countries such as France and Italy, about one quarter of voters supported parties openly hostile to pluralistic democracy. Such ideas penetrated labour and university campuses in all Western democracies. American democracy, for its part, was discredited by the aftermath of the war in Vietnam and the Watergate crisis.

However, what happened in the years that followed was the very opposite of a contraction of democratic space and individual freedom. Humanity experienced one of the most positive phenomena in its entire history: the dazzling advance of democracy on all continents. And where did that global disturbance come from? From Greece, from Portugal, from Spain, in short from the Mediterranean, eternal cradle of civilization.

I have long thought that one of the heroes of the 20th century is your king, His Majesty Juan Carlos I. Rather than listening to the fatalistic voices claiming that the Latin peoples were not made for democracy, he believed in the democratic destiny of a Spain ready to assume its pluralism. Through that belief, it was not only the destiny of Spain that was played out, but perhaps, that of humanity as well. For it is hardly simplistic to say that when it became clear that Spain would not go backwards and would become democratic, Latin Americans said to themselves: We are as capable as the Spanish!

And so the great democratic wave swept over every continent, even bringing down the Berlin Wall. There was nothing inevitable in that fortunate event, which was not the result of any historical determinism. It was rather the result of courageous choices, resembling those of your king. And so today, knowing that nothing is inevitable, we must not take that progress for granted. We should instead further solidify democracy and the values on which it is based.

But, let me return to the young political science student I was in the mid-70s. As far as I remember, I have always had a rather wilful temperament. This led me to be somewhat sceptical of the theories I was being taught on the fatalism of social determinisms. It was not that I denied how each of us is influenced by our social environment and the political culture of the society to which we belong. It seemed to me, however, that these collective forces exert an influence on the free will of each of us without destroying its decisive nature. Some excellent professors reinforced that opinion. In particular, I wish to mention my father, Léon Dion, a respected academic of liberal thought. I think also of the supervisor of my masters thesis at Université Laval, Vincent Lemieux, one of Canada’s most renowned political scientists. I must also acknowledge the great French sociologist Michel Crozier, who supervised my doctoral thesis.

Michel Crozier taught me that the essence of human societies is the margin of freedom enjoyed by each of their members. The behaviour of every human being retains a margin of unpredictability, what Crozier calls the blur zone. Every human being seeks to reduce that unpredictability in the behaviour of others. Hence the power struggles inherent in human societies. It is pointless to deny the reality of those power struggles and hide behind the false security of determinist theories. We must instead try to gain a better understanding of that part of indetermination in individual behaviour which gives human societies their true vitality. No social behaviour can be understood without referring to individual behaviour.

That methodological individualism has inspired my work as a researcher and marked my teaching with my students. It has also helped me develop my own political thought about what is right and desirable within society. I believe in a balanced liberalism, based on individual freedom, but which seeks to guide it toward the solidarity of citizens. In my research and my writings on public administration, I have always taken pains to place at the core of my thought, public service, that wonderful humanistic value. Public service fosters both the primacy of the individual over the public administration and the necessary role of the state to better encourage mutual assistance.

This balanced liberalism has also inspired my position on nationalism. As a Francophone Quebecer, I have always been surrounded by a very nationalistic society. Quebec is the only majority Francophone province in Canada. The proximity of the United States gives the English language an enormous force of assimilation. Under such circumstances, it is easy to imagine that Francophone Quebec will always be nationalistic. But having observed nationalism in my society, Quebec, and having seen its effects elsewhere in the world, I have come to the conclusion that, while nationalism can be a good thing, it can also degenerate into a dangerous and harmful force. Nationalism plays a positive role when it bolsters the desire for mutual assistance that inspires the members of a given society. It is harmful and potentially dangerous when it becomes the only ideological lens through which life in society is perceived.

Nationalism can bolster a human group’s desire for mutual assistance. The ultimate value must remain the human being, rather than the nation. The reason is simple: only flesh-and-blood individuals have a tangible existence; they alone are capable of feelings, freedom, happiness.

How to ensure that nationalism remains a principle of mutual assistance, and not an incitement to turn inwards, or even to hate others? I believe the answer lies in consistently promoting pluralism of identities. In a liberal society, it must be accepted that citizens have different ways of defining themselves in relation to the community. The important thing is that this pluralism of collective identities creates a dynamic conducive to mutual assistance and understanding.

That is why I have come to the conclusion that collective identities can be added to but not taken away from. I am both a Quebecer and a Canadian, and I have no desire to choose between those two identities. There is a Canadian dimension to my Quebec identity which the latter could not deprive itself of without being poorer for doing so. In the same way, my special attachment to Quebec does not make me any less open to other Canadians. On the contrary, it makes me want to put my individual talents and my Quebec culture at the service of all my fellow Canadians, in the same way that I willingly accept their contribution.

Individual freedom, public service, solidarity of citizens, pluralism of identities, these are the values that have forged my thinking and that led me into politics. They inspire me as Canada’s Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, in the efforts I have been making for almost seven years to improve the capacity of the Canadian federation to always serve Canadians better.

These values have not come to me solely from my experience in academia and in government. A number of experiences in my life have marked me as well. I would like to mention one in particular. In May and June 1976, at the age of 20, I hitchhiked the length and breadth of the Iberian peninsula. I experienced some moments of unforgettable intensity by talking with Spaniards of all ages. As you can imagine, I had some passionate political discussions. My knowledge of your language was much better at the end of those two months than it is today. I dream of finding the time to relive such a Spanish experience some day.

I felt clearly at the time that a major upheaval was in the making in the Spain which had barely emerged from Francoism, but I could not have predicted how it would turn out.

I returned to Madrid as a young professor on the occasion of the World Congress of Sociology in June 1990. I found a Spanish capital so brimming with freedom as to be almost unrecognizable. In just over a decade, your country had experienced a political and social liberation which reminded me of the somewhat analogous evolution that my society, Quebec, experienced from the early 1960s. In a single decade, Quebec shook off its conservative and clerical traditions and indeed transformed itself into one of the most dynamic and effervescent societies in North America.

In September 1991, I participated in an international seminar on linguistic planning organized by the "Consello da Cultura Galega" in Santiago de Compostela. I vividly recall attending an animated debate among linguists seriously discussing the possibility that Portuguese was, after all, only a Galician dialect! That high level seminar helped me better gauge the full richness that the diversity of spoken languages represents in democracies like Spain and Canada.

When I next returned to your country, it was as a guest lecturer in Madrid and Barcelona, in December 1995. At that time, I was reflecting intensely on my future, as the Prime Minister of Canada had just privately informed me that he wanted me to join his government to help him strengthen Canadian unity. Two months earlier, a referendum had been held in Quebec, in which the secessionist government had asked Quebecers to approve a confused proposal of sovereignty accompanied by an offer of political and economic partnership between Quebec and Canada. By a slim majority, Quebecers had rejected that proposal.

I will not hide the fact that my stay in Spain in December 1995 contributed to my decision to enter politics to promote my ideas. I recall, in particular, the exchanges I had in Barcelona with professors who were convinced that the future of that magnificent city would never be as promising unless it agreed to be profoundly Catalonian, Spanish and European at the same time. My interlocutors believed, as I do, in the force of plural identities in society. They also believed that identities can be added to, but never subtracted from.

This stay in Spain helped me realize just how much the debate we have in Quebec, as to whether we ought to accept or reject our Canadian belonging, is a universal debate. I told myself that Canada could do better, at the dawn of a new century, than offering the world the spectacle of its break-up. On the contrary, it had to show the rest of the world that it was both possible and desirable to have populations of different languages and cultures living together in mutual assistance, tolerance and harmony within a single state.

I am convinced that democracy urges us to accept all our fellow citizens, without distinction of race, religion or regional belonging. Secession, for its part, is equivalent to choosing from among our fellow citizens those we accept and those we want to transform into foreigners. So, there is a contradiction between secession and democracy which makes these two notions difficult to reconcile. It is not the vocation of citizens in a democracy to transform themselves into foreigners in relation to one another. I owe that conviction, in part, to the exchanges I have had with citizens of your country.

In fact, a country gives itself the best chances of improving when all its citizens feel a strong solidarity to one another and when they see their differences of language, culture or religion as complementary, never as a threat or a source of division. I know this is the ideal you are pursuing in Spain, encouraged by your success, and without backing away from a terrorism that the government I belong to firmly condemns on behalf of all Canadians.

The contexts are different, but the quest of both Spaniards and Canadians is the same. Know that you are not alone in your efforts to build a society ever more tolerant and open to its own diversity. Canadians, as well, clearly see that their country will not progress toward greater well-being and prosperity except through unity in diversity.

That, at least, is what a life filled with travel, study and action has taught me. The significance of the honorary doctorate you are awarding me today is above all an encouragement to me to continue this quest for the ideal of freedom and human solidarity.