Peter Munk delivers opening remarks to a debate on humanitarian intervention at a Toronto restaurant on Dec. 1, 2008.
During the last federal election I interviewed Michael Ignatieff's opponent in Etobicoke lakeshore, the former Progressive Conservative incumbent Patrick Boyer. A law professor and prolific author, Boyer was/is intellectually accomplished, articulate and consequently, unintimidated by Ignatieff's imperious manner and Ivy League/Oxbridge resume. Boyer suggested that, generally speaking at least up until that time in October of 2008, the Canadian press had given Ig something of a free ride.
Boyer chalked this up to a combination of insecurity and obsequious deference in the face of Ig's international bona fides. As a sidecar to this argument, Boyer pointed out the parochial nature of Canada's broader political discourse. There is, he said, little or no interplay between politicians, journalists and academe. They tend to operate each in their silos. A figure like the Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, writing regularly for a major daily (in his case the Telegraph at £200,000 per annum) and carrying on at the same time as a major public figure for his party (arguably third after George Osborne and David Cameron) is pretty much unthinkable here. Public discourse goes on in three separate locations with a sort of deaf antipathy between them and ne'er the twain shall meet.
Last week in Toronto I met with two guys who broadly agree with Boyer's assessment and are trying to do something about it. Patrick Luciani and Rudyard Griffiths run a couple of ongoing programs aimed at elevating the public discourse in Canada: the Munk Debates and the Salon Speaker Series. Centered in Toronto but emanating from a variety of locales across the country, these debates, panels and solo speakers, sourced from all over the world, aim to discuss and debate the crucial issues of the day. They are decidedly anti-parochial in spirit. Griffiths suggested, with a mischievous grin, that they are the opposite of Heather Reisman's moto (put into harness to promote her book chain, Indigo) that the world needs more Canada. "Our view is that Canada needs rather more of the world than the other way around."
The most recent of these debates - "be it resolved climate change is mankind's defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response" - brought combatants from Britain (George Monbiot pro and Nigel Lawson con) Denmark (Bjorn Lomborg con) and Canada (Elizabeth May decidedly, even stridently, pro). The climate-change debate was the fourth in the biannual series and future debate subjects will likely include religion and that most sacred of Canadian cows, universal health care. The main benefactor for the debates is the Canadian gold bug (Barrick Gold Corporation) and gazillionaire Peter Munk. He's very much a presence, giving a short(ish) speech before each event extolling the virtues of free/elevated expression. One can't help but note a certain irony given Munk's very public complaints calling for the regulation of so-called rogue NGOs, including one devoted to bird dogging the operations of Barrick itself. The subject, perhaps, of a future debate?
(Photo: Peter Munk introduces a debate on humanitarian intervention in December of 2008. Arantxa Cedillo for The Globe and Mail)