Sir Wilfrid Laurier's liberalism is expressed in his speech in 1877...
"There are some men who accept change as a noble condition of living in a society." Liberty, the widest possible margin of liberty, this is why you've got to stop preaching at people. The churches must not interfere in the politics etc., etc....nor can you bring into politics the cradle of the Empire.
And I think that he saw the Catholic bishops and the English speaking Orange Lodge and the jingoists as being part of the same process who wanted to impose a structure and limit liberties of people. I think he believed in a government for the people. I think that he was able to broaden the democratic process in Canada, to a certain degree. Sir Wilfrid Laurier would have loved the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Canadian people that Mr. Trudeau gave us in 1982 he would have loved it. And I think he sees himself in that. I think that he would have accepted multiculturalism without batting an eye and had it been part and parcel of the process of life at that time.
So I think that there is liberty, openness, the need for change, and that the people live with their traditions, and the traditions become part and parcel of the reality, but they remain individual. There's a speech that he gives about the currents and all of that merging into the St. Lawrence River and yet remaining the same. He believed in that. So those are all the elements of his liberalism.
I don't think there was social policy in those days because these were all taken over by churches and by philanthropy. But I think he would have approved of the Canadian safety net he certainly would have, yes.
