The Three Conferences

As Canada continues to grow on the basis of immigration, and globalization shifts both the composition and meaning of citizenship, the way that citizenship is embraced, identified and defined is challenged. Tensions arise, some patterns are repeated across the country while others are unique to particular locations.
 Vancouver Conference: Citizenship Without the Nation, Fall 2010 - The two day conference was held at the Liu Institute for Global Issues from October 29 - 30, 2010. The conference explored how regional and local dialogues intersect with the national discourse on citizenship. There is significant work on citizenship at the national level, but the same issues take on very different meanings in the Vancouver context given the mix of residents in the city, the languages they speak, and the city’s geographic location. Sessions considered how people belong to neighbourhoods, cities, regions and nations. Participants were asked about the possibility of belonging to several communities at once and interrogated what happens when the promise of national citizenship fails to deliver locally. The counterpoint was also addressed: what happens when the local fails to live up to the national ideal?
Iqaluit Conference: Isolation, Identity and Inclusion, Spring 2011 - The focus for the Iqaluit conference will be to engage with those who live in the Arctic and to explore their thoughts on Canada and citizenship. Using the dialogue sparked in Vancouver, the conference will examine where opinions meet and divide on these same issues. Participants will include local Inuit (lawyers, activists, and community workers), the so-called “Southerners” who work in the North, and ideally new immigrants who have chosen to settle there.
  Halifax Conference: Crossing Canada: A National Dialogue, Fall 2011 - The Halifax conference/workshop will have a regional component and national collective participation, building upon the ideas and discussions raised in the earlier conversations. Participants will take the fruits of the first two conferences to discuss the future of Canadian citizenship in all its guises.

Relevance: The Nation and the City
How does the Canadian nation manifest itself at a local level? Does an individual city (Vancouver, Iqaluit, Halifax) matter to the Canadian nation? How does this work at the level of the citizenry, civil society, and local government? How do you become the citizen of a city? How does local citizenship intersect with national citizenship in the urban setting?

Sovereignty and Self-Rule
What does sovereignty mean to understandings of citizenship? What does government or governance do to citizenship? What levels of sovereignty play out in experiences and understandings of citizenship? Do land and self-governance equate to sovereignty? Do nested sovereignties mean nested loyalties?

Belonging and Inclusion
Should the goal of citizenship be inclusion? For whom and where? At what level? Local, regional, national? Is it possible to have simultaneous loyalties to the nation and the city? Is this desirable? If yes, how can we achieve it? Is it possible for everyone to be included under the citizenship umbrella? How are those who are disenfranchised or transient engaged? Is anyone excluded from citizenship? What does that tell us about the nature of Canadian citizenship on the coastal peripheries?

Language
What role does language play in participatory citizenship? How does language policy define citizenship? How does citizenship define language policy? In a country such as Canada’s, where certain language rights are constitutionally protected while others are not, how does the use of non-official languages in public institutions and forums fulfill, or circumvent, ideals of national citizenship?