Presentation of the Governor General's Literary Awards

Rideau Hall, Wednesday, December 13, 2006

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Last month, in conjunction with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, we held the first installment of Art Matters – Le Point des arts. Over two days, 30 audiovisual and new media industry specialists explored the role and impact of new technologies on artistic creation and Canadian society. The workshops were a great success and left no doubt as to the importance of such discussions, which we will continue to organize around the presentation awards for the arts.

Earlier today, Art Matters examined the theme of freedom of expression and literature, bringing together 25 individuals, including 10 laureates as well as members of PEN Québec and PEN Canada. The discussion was led by author Aline Apostolska and enthusiastically opened by Pierre Thibeault and Alan Cumyn.

I proposed this theme after having reread a text written by Walter Benjamin in 1935:

“Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling.”

I replaced “film” with “literature” and wrote: There are many kinds of prisons, and literature can knock down the walls, to which Aline added: But how and to what extent?

We are able to laud literature’s ability to knock down walls all the more given the freedom we have in Canada to express ourselves as we wish. But we are also acutely aware that freedom of expression is fragile. It is threatened equally by the powers and regimes that fear and suppress it and by the individuals who abuse it, who shirk their responsibilities towards it as they claim the right to say and write anything.

We cannot today speak of freedom of expression in Canada without also examining the responsibility that our society’s intellectuals have toward the written and spoken word, their limitations and restrictions. We cannot ignore the role of the writer to educate and promote civic engagement, a role that stems from the refusal to blur the line between the duty to inform and ensure respect for the right to the truth and argument, and its polar opposite: the right to “say everything.”

In 1670, Spinoza anonymously published a book entitled A Treatise Partly Theological and Partly Political. Spinoza was prudent. His detractors had already accused him of being an atheist, and he was well-aware of the cost: censorship at every turn. His work showed that the freedom to think and to publicly express one’s thoughts—even though they may not be the truth, even though they may be an outright lie—is no threat to religion or the civil peace guaranteed by the State.

To write is not to take up the arms of war, unless it is a war of ideas; it is to accept the confrontation and controversy that are key in the search for truth while refusing to stoop to banal insults and indignities. Spinoza shows us the way, where freedom of expression is grounded in responsibility, discussion and sharing, as opposed to the path taken by his censors, who clung to a very narrow interpretation of the Bible. It wasn’t the first time and certainly won’t be the last that sacred writings or the words of prophets would be used to justify censorship.

Even today, over three centuries after Spinoza’s writings, freedom of expression teeters on a thin line. True, the Canadian writer is backed up by a charter and a State that protect that freedom. And we are a long way from the censorship committees that prohibit, condemn, lock up, exile or even execute dissidents.

Although the State no longer organizes censorship, we are not yet free of the censorship yoke: there still exists censorship imposed by individuals or lobby groups, community prejudices, religious positions, market interests. These new pressures on literature result, often through legal means, in the pre-eminence of “politically correct” writing and a kind of hidden self-censorship by the writer.

A free society cannot exist without dreams, without imagination, without creation.  We celebrate creation this evening by paying tribute to our artists. But at the same time, we should remember that free speech will forever be a delicate conquest and one that is never carved in stone.

Today, Art Matters gave us the forum to debate this issue as we prepared to honour tonight’s award recipients. It also reminded us that the State’s role is to ensure that we all have the right to express ourselves, that the writer’s role is to act responsibly, and that a democracy is not simply the free circulation of ideas. Canada has a duty to support and shelter those who are threatened elsewhere in the world. Which is what we are doing through PEN Québec and PEN Canada. And which is something else we can celebrate tonight.

Thank you.