Cultural Diversity and National Identity in Canadian Political Philosophy

In 1981, Leslie Armour published The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community. ¹ In many ways it was a very prescient work; one which anticipated a decade of communitarian/liberal debate which had previously lain dormant beneath a protracted postwar intellectual obsession with the resolution of the opposing claims of utilitarian and deontological theory. With respect to events in the wider political rather than intellectual world, one can reread The Idea of Canada and find answers and a response to the real crisis of the Canadian national community which occurred a decade later as Canada witnessed a second Quebec referendum, the failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, and a widening gulf between East and West, French and English speakers, Quebec and Ontario, and Quebec and Ontario vis-à-vis the rest of Canada.