Justin Trudeau’s Unity Strategy

The Tyee.ca

Justin Trudeau was in North Vancouver recently to sign an agreement awarding credits for Katimavik participation in Capilano College’s Global Stewardship program. Unlike the sponsorship scandal consuming the Canadian media, the Katimavik news, even though it was fronted by the good-looking and affable son of Canadian political royalty, went almost entirely unnoticed.

But maybe it shouldn’t have; the two have more in common than one might guess.

“What’s Katimavik?” you ask. Good question. Started by the Trudeau government in 1977, Katimavik organizes 17- to 21-year-olds from across Canada to volunteer in three regions of the country over nine months. In all, 22,000 have gone through the program since its inception. It’s now sold to youth as a way to make friends, travel, and get work experience. When it began, however, it had an additional subtext: to keep Canada from splitting apart.

With the Quebec separatist movement and western alienation both on the rise, the idea was to have young Canadians learn the other official language and bond with both their youthful peers and with people in their various host communities across Canada. By “walking a mile in many of different pairs of shoes,” young Canadians would humanize “the other” — whether that other was Quebecois, anglophone, immigrant, western, eastern, rural, urban, or senior — and gain a sense of perspective that would overcome ugly stereotypes and petty regionalism. The host communities would gain similar benefits.

From good works to golf balls

So, as a unity strategy, how does it stack up along side the sponsorship program’s $100 million dollars worth of golf balls, lapel pins and other more nebulous outcomes?

Firstly, the money probably goes a little farther and gets spread around to more people through Katimavik. The program is no gravy train: participants (1,150 this year) live communally in groups of 11, splitting cooking, cleaning, and other chores. They share bedrooms with up to three other people; they bake their own bread, and they don’t have TVs. They volunteer 35 hours a week, doing things like working with people with disabilities or fixing hiking trails, and make $3 a day, with a $1,000 bonus if they complete the program. The in-house joke of calling participants “Katimavictims” seems apt.

The results? For about $8,700 per head, participants get work experience and develop life skills, and Katimavik calculates that since 1977 its participants have contributed $100 million worth of service to Canadian communities. In terms of Katimavik’s success in bonding Canadians, however, stats are understandably scarce. Katimavik alumni groups and nostalgia-filled list-serves abound, but how much “unity” they represent is anyone’s guess.

Advocates showed true devotion

However, Katimavik does inspire incredible devotion in those associated with it. When Katimavik funding was axed in 1986, founder Jacques Hébert went on a Ghandi-esque 21-day hunger strike. Although funding was not restored, the Senator, along with many others, kept working for Katimavik’s reinstatement.

When I participated in Katimavik’s international exchange “sister” program Canada World Youth in 1991, we had our orientation in the old national Katimavik centre. A former Katimavik staff member had stayed on as a caretaker, maintaining the centre in the hope and belief that one day Katimavik would return; his dedication was almost heartbreaking.

His faith was, thankfully, rewarded. Katimavik did start up again in 1994 with non-government funding; federal funding for the program was restored four years ago.

In contrast, those associated with the sponsorship scandal generally have often been self-serving and glibly unwilling to take personal responsibility for their involvement.

I was never a “Katimavictim,” but Canada World Youth was organized along similar lines. After the aforementioned orientation I spent three months living and working on a Quebecois dairy farm.

Real lessons in alienation

My host “mom,” Esther Désy, was a huge-hearted, chain-smoking dumpling of a woman who was the emotional centre of her rural village. Besides working from dawn to dusk rearing the last two of her five kids and running the farm with her mild-mannered husband, she was always visiting lonely seniors or inviting a boorish and often-ostracized family over for coffee.

“We take them as they are, and they take us as we are,” she would explain, lit cigarette dangling from her mouth as she hand-rolled her daily tobacco supply. She may not have been much of a role model for physical health, but as a walking textbook for community-building, Esther was unbeatable.

In contrast, Esther’s older brother, a man who had to be in his 60s, once cornered me at a family get-together and lectured me on how Quebec francophones had been treated in the past by anglophones. “My eldest sister was a Bell Canada operator for 40 years and all that time she couldn‚t even answer the phone by saying ‘Bonjour!’” he informed me heatedly as part of his diatribe.

It didn’t matter to him that I was way too young to have had any part in the discrimination. It didn’t matter that I was a guest of his family’s; nor did it matter that my parents were Polish immigrants who had themselves faced similar discrimination. The experience gave me visceral insight into the pain that likely fuelled and still fuels Quebec’s separatist movement.

These kind of experiences changed the way I saw things, and certainly created more of a bond with my fellow Canadians (even those prone to diatribes) than a free maple leaf lapel pin would have.

Katimavik (and Canada World Youth) are grassroots and community-based. They engage ordinary people face to face as they live and work in ordinary communities. They nurture tolerance, appreciation of diversity, and service, ideals many would call the best of Canadian culture.

Did Chrétien just forget?

In contrast, the sponsorship program seems to have been based on the belief that you can buy patriotic loyalty with trinkets and propaganda (or at least keep a few Quebecois ad agencies on the Liberal side if the cheques are big enough).

Jean Chrétien knows all about Katimavik. He was in the Trudeau government that started the program, and he was standing beside Jacques Hébert when the elderly Senator broke his protest fast over Katimavik's dissolution. Nevertheless, when Chrétien was worried about Canadian unity, he decided to sink $100 million into the sponsorship program rather than fund Katimavik, or something similar. Chrétien’s real values are obvious.

Justin Trudeau’s real values are also obvious. Trudeau could probably spend his time in far more glamorous and lucrative ways than serving as chair of Katimavik’s board. But there he was at Cap College a few weeks ago, hamming it up with the Katimavictims and Global Stewardship students, encouraging them to service while serving himself.

Of the two value sets, Justin Trudeau’s or Jean Chrétien’s, Katimavik or sponsorship, I know which one gets my vote.

Dorothy Bartoszewski is a writer in Vancouver.