Out of Order

Let be be finale of seem,
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

– Wallace Stevens

“Canadians think of their country as an empty vessel, and are always searching outside Canada for people and things to put in it” – so said an article published on our defunct website ten years ago. That seems perfectly appropriate for a country which, in an article published there five years ago, I compared to a cargo cult As the latter article has it, “We have provided [Canada] with what seem to us to be all the characteristics of a nation, but on closer examination these characteristics turn out to be in large part primitive imitations of the real thing.”

My intention now is to enliven your intellectual life with a series of articles about the cargo cult institutions provided for us Canadians. Today we’ll be looking at the Order of Canada.

The Order of Canada, according to the Governor General’s website, is “the centrepiece of Canada’s Honours System and recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.” The Order was a brainchild of Lester Pearson’s, who already had a Nobel and so can’t be accused of creating an honour for himself to get. It was established in 1967, and its Chancellor is the Governor General. Members of the Order of Canada are selected by a shadowy group called the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada, which is currently chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Any Canadian may nominate someone for membership, but nominations are not publicized, deliberations about the selection of new members are secret, and decisions not to select someone are not explained.

I must admit that I have never been impartial about the Order of Canada, which I have always considered to be profoundly elitist and consequently un-Canadian. What sociological and anthropological evidence there is suggests that Canadian culture – or, at least, the culture of the great majority of Canadians – is egalitarian. For decades before the establishment of the Order of Canada, Canadians had been forbidden to accept honours in the higher ranks of the Commonwealth orders of merit, such as the Order of the British Empire, and few had complained about being denied the opportunity to lord it over other Canadians (of course, Conrad Black was young then).

But then separatism put in an appearance. All of a sudden people started thinking that perhaps Canada was a bit too decentralized and sectionalist for its own good. Furthermore, the separatists were arguing that Canada was not a real country. National institutions like those of real countries were needed, and Centennial year offered a golden opportunity to create some.

And so we got the Order of Canada. Unfortunately, in importing the idea of the order of merit, Canada didn’t look closely enough at foreign models. As a result, like cargo cult reproductions of airport control towers which omit important components of real airport control towers, such as radar systems, Canada’s order of merit ended up a feeble imitation of real orders of merit.

Our two mother countries provided models that we could have followed. France has four orders of merit and the United Kingdom sixteen, each intended to honour achievement in different fields. In France and the United Kingdom honours are also widely distributed; for example the Légion d’Honneur alone has over 110,000 members, or one for every 550 French citizens of all ages. Consequently, French citizens have a reasonable chance of being acquainted with a member of an order of merit, and a reasonable chance of success if they aspire to become members of one themselves.

But Canada decided to do the exact opposite. The Order of Canada is an omnibus order, intended to honour people in all fields. Consequently the goals which members are supposed to have achieved are only stated vaguely. The Order's motto is Desiderantes meliorem patriam (those desiring a better fatherland), which the Governor General's website makes even vaguer by translating it sloppily, as They desire a better country. That translation could as easily describe people who hate Canada and leave it. Even a good translation doesn't exclude many people. We all desire a better Canada, don't we? Those young fellows who supposedly wanted to behead Stephen Harper probably thought that would make Canada better.

The Order of Canada is also highly exclusive. Currently there are about 5,600 members of the Order of Canada, or one for every 6,000 Canadians of all ages. Consequently, its members tend to be important people. In fact, they consist largely of:

1. people of the type that politicians hang around with, and
   
2. people of the type politicians would like to hang around with.

So the members include a lot of rich people, retired politicians, journalists, sporting figures, and TV stars.

The members do appear to be highly worthy. When you exclude 5,999 of every 6,000 Canadians from the Order, you're going to end up with a highly worthy membership. However, you are going to exclude a large number of worthy people, and your membership will not be drawn from the great mass of the people. The members of the order of Canada are largely:

• distinguished people in the professions, sciences, culture, education, social service, sport, and journalism,
  
• philanthropists (a category which includes a large proportion of the entertainers), and
  
• big shots (including a fair number of provincial cabinet ministers of varying degrees of distinction).

I’m not saying that the Order of Canada is a private club for politicians and their friends, but that to a large extent it represents the limited perspective and experience of the ruling classes of this country. It includes chiefly people from their exalted and exclusive circles, and the chances of an ordinary Canadian being inducted are less than his or her chances of winning the lottery. In other words, the vast majority of Canadians have no reason either to be interested in the Order or to aspire to belong to it, and overwhelmingly they are not interested in it and do not aspire to join it.

If we must have orders of merit, they should have as their goals the provision of good examples, the encouragement of achievement, and the provision of outward and visible signs of important national ideals. A small, elitist Order of Canada cannot accomplish these goals. Canada could easily accomplish these goals, however, by following the Légion d’Honneur and having more grades of membership. The Order of Canada has three grades, while the Légion d’Honneur has five. The lowest two grades of the Légion d’Honneur contain over 95% of the members of the order. The Governor General would have to rub shoulders with people who wear ready-made clothes, but at least he would have contact for once with people who attended public schools and do their own housework.

We could also at least have subdivisions within the Order of Canada designating fields in which accomplishment is rewarded, with clear standards for membership in each division. That would also help eliminate the impression that many members got in because they know a politician.

Well, we could have a post office that delivered the mail, too, as well as armed forces that actually could exert armed force, and a health care system that actually cared for people. We could. Really. To do that, though, we would have to realize that institutions do not make a country, but rather that a real country creates institutions which arise from its culture.

I don’t know that Canadian culture needs an order of merit at all. There are other ways to honour distinguished Canadians without establishing an exalted caste. If we must have orders of merit, let’s carefully adapt the best foreign models to the requirements of Canadian culture instead of cobbling together a slapdash impersonation whose underlying assumption is that only one Canadian in 6,000 is really accomplishing anything for the country.

Out of Order © John FitzGerald, 2006, 2011