The Just Society

Some of the events which shaped Boomers was the concept introduced or made popular by Pierre Elliot Trudeau, of the idea that Canada was a Just Society.  As I and my generation were growing up in Canada, we came to accept Multiculturalism, we came to believe in Canada as a Just Society. It was in 1968, that Pierre Trudeau campaigned saying Canadians wanted a just society. He asked for support for one nation, with two official languages.

For Trudeau, “…freedom [was] the most important value of a just society, and the exercise of freedom its principal characteristic.” ...the value with the “highest priority in the pursuit of a Just Society had become equality.” This emphasis on equality of opportunity enveloped Trudeau’s entire platform during the 1968 elections, a platform that spoke to Canadians as his Liberal government won a majority in Parliament. He won, not only the election but the heart and soul of many of the Boomers.

We believed in this dream. Some of us took longer to understand the dream but in the end, the dream of a building a just society became what we saw ourselves doing (Both the right and the left believe in this concept, but have different ways of trying to achieve this ideal). In the US, Boomers also found this idea of a just society as appealing but they were fighting to get out of the Vietnam War so they could not move this ideal forward as fast as we could in Canada.

Many of my generations looking to the US are now realising that the dream is being destroyed by the actions of the American Government.  Mr Trudeau Senior, helped Boomers believe in the good in people and to build on the good and use that to create a just society. Mr Trump uses fear to destroy our faith in people. Tapping into our fear first using the random Terrorist attacks and then the recession, and now immigrants and refugees, the neo-conservative religious right are consolidating power to move their religious agenda forward.

In the US progressives are losing, their society is losing. A few years ago, we had an election in Canada and rejected the idea of a society that unpleasant and hurtful to the poor, the homeless, women, minorities, and the weak.

Judging how well minority rights are protected is one way to assess how democratic a society is in practice. In Canada, we are building on the dream that we as Boomers believed would be part of our legacy, my hope is that my American friends regain control of their government in the 2018 elections so they can continue to build the idea of a just society.