Citizen Dion
It matters that he joined France
Kevin Steel - January 15, 2007
It's déjá vu all over again. Shortly after Stéphane Dion won the federal Liberal leadership, Dec. 2, he faced a controversy over his French citizenship. Would he give it up? Canada went through an almost identical controversy just over a year ago, when Quebec journalist Michaelle Jean was appointed Governor General, and she gave up her French citizenship before taking office in September 2005. Would Dion now do the same?
Historian Jack Granatstein of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute sensed last year that the public wants leaders like the Governor General to be only Canadian. And, says Granatstein, "I think Canadians feel the same way about Stéphane Dion--that someone who aspires to be prime minister should be only a Canadian. I'm not sure that's correct, but I'm sure that's how they feel." A Globe and Mail web poll, Dec. 10, showed 59 per cent (of 50,793 votes) troubled by Dion's French citizenship, and an earlier Bourque news site poll showed 76 per cent (of 3,969 votes) against having a French citizen as prime minister.
Apparently Canadians want their citizenship to mean something beyond residency in Hotel Canada. Yet, since 1977, Canada has allowed dual and multiple citizenships--for a total now of about 700,000. Citizens can live abroad and retain Canadian passports indefinitely, and do so in unknown numbers. Until Jean's appointment, it was never an issue. Now, Granatstein says, "We need to grapple with all of these things. The whole area of citizenship has to be looked at--rights and obligations. If we don't do that, we're going to keep falling into these messes." He adds, "I have no doubt, if pressed, Canadians want people to be only Canadians, especially their leaders. But when they think about it a little more, they begin to recognize the difficulties."
In the midst of Dion's inaugural crisis, the C.D. Howe Institute issued a report, "The Passport Package: Rethinking the Citizenship Benefits of Non-Resident Canadians," discussing these difficulties. The dual citizenship debate began last summer, during the Israel-Hizb'allah fighting in Lebanon, when Canadians discovered they were responsible for evacuating 40,000 fellow citizens from a war zone--and forked over $85 million in tax revenue doing so. Despite that generosity, the evacuees complained endlessly about the effort, and 7,000 returned to Lebanon shortly after hostilities ended. Canadians asked, who are these people? Canadians? Or foreigners holding passports of convenience, contributing nothing, paying no taxes, but relying on Canadians to bail them out of a crisis? The C.D. Howe report recommends these dual citizens living abroad pay for the true cost of their passports.
Dion's French citizenship catapulted the citizenship debate to the opposite end of the spectrum, from those who don't live here, to those who occupy Canada's highest offices. The controversy began when Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant argued, in his Calgary Sun column (Dec. 4), that a national leader ought not have even the appearance of divided loyalties. The issue was immediately picked up by talk radio. Dion's dual citizenship had been revealed in 1996, shortly after Chrétien made him federal intergovernmental affairs minister; his French-born mother had registered her children at the French consulate to preserve their citizenship under French law. Yet, when then asked by other media outlets whether he would give it up, Dion stated bluntly he would not, and he challenged anyone to give him a reason why he should.
As the week wore on, despite the Liberal publicity machine's best efforts, the controversy would not go away. Even Dion's defenders conceded he might give in. The National Post's Andrew Coyne stated flatly on Dec. 7 that anyone questioning Dion's patriotism was "either a fool or a scoundrel"--but then questioned the new leader's stubbornness: "The message one hopes public figures would wish to send is this: that Canadian citizenship is a precious thing," he wrote. And that same Thursday, CBC's The National host Peter Mansbridge asked Dion about the issue almost as an afterthought. After affirming his "100 per cent" loyalty to Canada--and therefore zero per cent loyalty to France?--Dion wavered. "If it's a problem for a significant number of Canadians, and if it's a liability that may keep Mr. Harper in power and prevent us to do the three-pillar approach that I want to be true for Canada--to bring together, more than [any] other country in the world, economic prosperity, social justice, environmental sustainability," he said, "then I will do this sad thing then, to renounce my French citizenship that I received from my mother. As everyone, I love my mother. I love everything she gave to me, including that. It's part of me."
In short, Dion would give up being French to get Canadian votes. Conservative pundits then had a field day, poking fun at his apparent willingness to trample his own mother to get elected. Yet jokes aside, Dion seemed genuinely befuddled at the possibility anyone could question his loyalty, given his record as a cabinet minister and academic, battling Quebec separatists. He apparently sensed no conflict between his ardent Canadian federalism and his affection for a motherland with which Canada has had some fundamental disputes.
Battling Quebec separatism has often meant battling France. Dion's motherland has injected itself into Canada's unity debate like no other nation. In 1967, Charles de Gaulle stood on the steps of Montreal City Hall to cry, "Vive le Québec libre!" Into the 1970s, France had undercover agents stirring francophone separatism in New Brunswick, Manitoba and Quebec. Prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau both had to issue sharp rebukes to France. And just before the 1995 referendum, Parti Québécois premier Jacques Parizeau claimed French support for a sovereign Quebec from then Paris mayor, soon-to-be French president, Jacques Chirac, stating France would "accompany" Quebec on the road to independence.
Yet Dion remained oblivious as to why Canadians might feel uncomfortable with a prime minister defending his French citizenship. In his CBC interview, Dion instead charged that there had been no controversy over the dual English-Canadian citizenship of former Liberal leader John Turner, who became prime minister for three months when Trudeau retired in 1984. Turner was leader of the Opposition for six years, but his English citizenship never became an issue, so he neither agreed nor refused to surrender it.
Micha‘lle Jean's now defunct French citizenship has caused problems for Dion--and in ways beyond its merely setting a precedent. The first news reports last year about Jean's French citizenship were positive, with the Ottawa Citizen merrily promising, "Canadians will not only have a new governor general when Micha‘lle Jean moves into Rideau Hall--they'll also have a new French governor." The Prime Minister's Office claimed her French citizenship was not really a factor in her selection, as if it were an asset. Unfortunately, the Citizen had implied erroneously that Jean had become French in 1990, simply by marrying French-born filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond. In fact, she deliberately joined France in 2004, which Canadians learned only as her and her spouse's separatist sympathies came to light. That double whammy caused public support for her appointment to plummet from 59 to 38 per cent. Still, in the year since, all has apparently been forgiven, granted her satisfactory performance, and her decision to cease being French is now considered wise.
The uncertainty over the nature of Jean's citizenship may have tarnished Dion; his claims that he never held a French passport nor voted in France seem murky. Beyond his rights as a French citizen, what of his obligations--about which he has said nothing? Did he avoid compulsory military service? French consulates in Canada have refused to answer--refused even to return the Western Standard's calls. According to the French civil code's Article 23-8 (1973), nationals forfeit their citizenship if they are employed "in a foreign army or public service or in an international organization of which France is not a member, or more generally providing . . . assistance to it"--providing the government so rules. France waived that provision for Jean, saying her post was merely symbolic. They wouldn't have that excuse with Dion, so if they waived it again, Canadians might ask why.
Fraser Institute immigration and citizenship expert Martin Collacott says modern dual citizenship began in Italy in the 1920s. Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini wanted Italian nationals living abroad to be "serving the motherland, using their influence to benefit Italy," says Collacott. So the issue of lingering obligations has always been there. Collacott does not worry about Dion's loyalty; nevertheless, "while I don't think anyone can have any doubts about his total commitment to Canada, as a general principle, and to send a message to all Canadians, I think it would be a wise gesture on his part to divest himself of his French citizenship," he says.
Dion argues that dual citizenship makes him a better leader in an era of cosmopolitan globalization. But University of Lethbridge political scientist John von Heyking, co-author of the book Cultivating Citizens, says he believes Dion hasn't thought that through. Dion seems to adopt the liberal cosmopolitanism of Michael Ignatieff, "that the best kind of citizenship presupposes an ability to choose where you are going to live, and if you chose wrongly, hopefully [having] an exit strategy," von Heyking says.
Dual citizenship has its origins in liberal democracy's uniquely Christian roots, notes von Heyking. In the pre-Christian world, a citizen's whole identity was wrapped up in his patria, and no moral appeal was possible beyond the needs of the fatherland. The gospel introduced the notion of serving first God and then Caesar, an idea developed by St. Augustine as 'living in Two Cities,'" he says.
From this, liberal democracy inherited the belief that citizenship obligations must be qualified or limited by all-important freedom of conscience, in a hierarchy of first God, then the state, and only last one's personal desires. But "Dion isn't talking about that," says von Heyking. "He's a kind of liberal cosmopolitan who says, well, we'll keep the part of liberal citizenship that says citizenship is [limited]," but only as a matter of personal preference. Instead of a hierarchy of obligations, with politics clearly subordinate to divine morality, "we're going to flatten it," says von Heyking, so any individual can--tourist-like--choose citizenship "in this country or that," according to the tastes of the moment.
Viewed like this, the flatness of liberal cosmopolitanism lacks any hierarchy of loyalties, being governed only by a revocable postmodern assertion of this is where I chose to live. So one may reasonably question Dion's loyalty, like the loyalty of any transient resident of Hotel Canada, without being either a fool or scoundrel. But then one might have to ask, should not the loyalty of all of us go deeper?
