Charles Blattberg shows that while a just politics based on dialogue is at the core of Canadians' sense of ourselves as citizens, our current forms of dialogue are inadequate. To some, we should be pleading before authorities responsible for upholding a unified foundation for our politics. Pierre Trudeau and his followers, for example, advocate a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that trumps any values not contained within it. To others, we ought to be true to the longstanding Canadian political tradition of compromise and so negotiate our conflicts, a form of dialogue that strives for accommodation rather than trumping. Blattberg argues, however, that both of these approaches have largely failed us. To him, the preferred form of dialogue in Canadian politics today should be that of conversation. As he shows, only conversation aims for the genuine reconciliation of conflict; only it will help us realize the common good that is at the heart of a truly patriotic Canadian politics.

Charles Blattberg is associate professor, Department of Political Science, Universit? de Montr?al. Educated at Toronto, McGill, the Sorbonne, and Oxford, he is the author of From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First and Shall We Dance?

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