On the ideological conditions of Canadian independence

Abstract

n all countries certain ideological conditions are assumed to be related to national development and education is always a primary social agent in the attempt to effect this relationship. It is possible to study these assumptions, their manifestation in education, and their actual relationship to national development only by attacking a specific instance of ideological influence on policy. Here, the instance is the effect of international professional migration as that migration raises critical questions of appropriate human resource utilization for economically progressive and politically autonomous development in Canada. Such an inquiry necessarily involves the political identity of Canada, the system of external relationships which has characterized Canadian development, the internal perceptions of these relationships as they impinge on a given problem, and the meaning of national development for Canada and in the ideological sector. Although regional variables must be considered in any discussion of Canada in North America or of Canada-U.S. relations, they will generally be kept implicit here in order to focus directly on national questions. This means as well that regional variations in level or process of development must be minimized in favour of a national development profile. While this involves some error of generalization for any nation, for Canada it involves such error extended by relational factors; that is, the development level and process is no more nationally uniform in Canada than in the United States and may be, furthermore, comparable for peculiar regional situations in both countries (e.g. prairie farm economies, urban, industrial areas of the midwestern United States and southern Ontario, etc.). In addition to regional questions, it is problematic to attempt to use static, simplified categories to define development level. We know that development is a process rather than a state, that nations are not permanently categorizable, and that the development identification of a particular nation attains precision only as it is removed from simple dichotomous terms and stated comparatively along a continuum. Beyond this, particular problems may require an alteration in the general assignment of development category for a nation at a given time. These framework problems may be handled by making development 24