Online reaction to a Postmedia story Thursday night on the committee’s decision was resoundingly negative — and in the House of Commons on Friday it didn’t get much better.
“Conservative members on the Canadian heritage committee have launched a review of history teaching at provincial schools. Conservatives already intervened politically in the War of 1812 advertisements, they are remaking the Museum of Civilization in their image, and yesterday we saw the first Canadian in space being removed from Canadian space history for political reasons,” New Democrat deputy leader Libby Davies told the House during question period.
“Why are Conservative MPs now intent on telling provincial schools what they should teach?” she asked.
Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq was the go-to for the government and she replied with a simple statement: “We have no intention of telling the provinces and/or territories how to teach history. We have been very clear about wanting Canadians to reconnect with their proud history and heritage.”
To be fair, the committee’s study doesn’t say anything about it – or anyone else – forcing the provinces and territories to pay any attention whatsoever to this report, if and when it should be tabled. They don’t have to and probably shouldn’t — all the more reason to suggest the whole thing is a waste of time, as NDP MP Guy Caron did in front of reporters on Friday.
So, again, why bother? Why would the Conservatives risk more bad publicity and attacks on their so-called “secret agenda”?
First of all, it seems that looking at this as simply a strong-arm move from a government bent on getting its version of Canada out there is actually too simplistic. Reforming the image of Canada as a multicultural, progressive and – above all – ‘liberal’ country is going to take both nuance and tact, neither of which this committee study necessarily suggests. It also takes time, which is never guaranteed to any political party.
Perhaps it would be giving too much credit to the Conservative hive-mind to see this as a deliberate ploy, but it strikes me that this is not a team that will worry too much that people are talking about what it thinks should be the highlights of Canadian history, just so long as people are talking.
Back when the Globe and Mail broke the news that the Museum of Civilization was to be renamed as the Canadian History Museum, they described it as a “rebranding,” which is an accurate description. It doesn’t simply mean a name change or even an aesthetic one. ‘Branding’ is about something much more interesting.
“Branding plays on deeply psychological and social meanings that consumers get from products – personal identity, distinction from others, social class, and taste standings,” Patricia Cormack wrote in her chapter of Political Marketing in Canada: ‘Double-Double: Branding, Tim Hortons, and the Public Sphere’. “Consumers can become extremely loyal to a particular brand and continue to consume it over decades.”
Whatever conversation about history comes out of this committee story, there will be a dividing line within it. On one side will be the Opposition, talking about how the Conservatives have some weird agenda – a storyline everyone is very familiar with by now and that you probably either believe or don’t – and on the other side will be the Conservatives, putting out a thought bubble on what we might want to consider important in our history.
Again, whether that’s deliberate or not is debatable, but for the Conservatives, the fallback rhetorical position on any criticism is simplistic, yet effectively bulletproof: What, you don’t think we should be talking about our history?
From that point the discussion would delve into semantics — something which, by and large, most people don’t care about. Others (like me) might pick a fight over things like how it encourages an essentialist perspective on our past, or how – as John Tosh once put it – traditionalist views of history tend to suppress difference and change in order to uphold identity. But nobody really has a lot of time for that kind of thing. The basic answer is that, of course, everyone does think we should discuss our collective history. In terms of branding, that’s all that matters, politically.
So, think of this less as a deliberate ploy to align the Conservative party with a particular historical vision. For the Conservatives, that’s the kind of thing they hope happens by coerced coincidence. All they want to do is talk history, and any way to get that conversation started is probably fine with them. If you happen to notice that a lot of those historical things are also things the Conservatives like to promote and link to Canadians’ sense of Canadianness — well hey, all the better.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Colin Horgan
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