Commentary by: Nathan Gilbert and Walter Ross

Marvyn Novick believed strongly in the link between nationhood and our collective responsibility for children. In his Foreword to John O’Neill’s, The Missing Child in Liberal Theory, Marvyn contends that “nowhere is the incipient decline of Canadian nationhood more evident than in the neglect of the next generation.” Marvyn illustrates a remarkable capacity for foresight in his observation that “it is not only the traditionally disadvantaged who are at risk, but growing numbers of the next generation who are vulnerable to lives of despair and diminished prospects”. This insight is even more relevant in today’s tangled world than when written in 1994.
It is not surprising that O’Neill’s ideas resonated with Marvyn and that O’Neill acknowledged that his work had benefitted from close discussions with Marvyn. Within this book of critical political theory, John O’Neill pinpoints the central weakness of the reigning neoliberal world-view. The kids are absent. According to O’Neill, modernism had stripped away collective responsibility and abandoned the current generation of young people to a “competitive life of privilege and risk”1. Referencing C. B. MacPherson’s ‘possessive individualism’, O’Neill responds: “We know of no political institution other than the welfare state” that can encourage an ethic of civic responsibility through norms of reciprocity for the “stranger, the ancestor and the newborn”. Both civic responsibility and reciprocity were core ideas throughout much of Marvyn’s work.
Marvyn’s foreword to O’Neill’s essay offers an easy to read short summary of O’Neill’s book. But Marvyn does more. He situates the conversation within the Canadian nation state and broadens the political spectrum by referencing George Grant’s 1965 book, Lament for a Nation. Grant’s lament is that of a traditionalist criticizing the homogenizing influences of an emerging global capitalism in a world in which the “purpose of life is consumption” and “borders are an anachronism”. By extension and in Marvyn’s words, little regard is paid to future generations and the “life quality and life chances for children”.
Marvyn made a substantial contribution to the Laidlaw Foundation’s Children at Risk (CAR) Program which commissioned the O’Neill treatise. The CAR program, the largest sustained multi-year commitment of resources in the Foundation’s seventy-year history, funded research on the life chance perspective on child development, as well as Campaign 2000, the cross-Canada coalition to end child poverty. Marvyn was instrumental in developing the next phase of the Foundation’s work on the prospects of young people, focusing on social responsibility for civic life. In the 1996 draft social mission, he wrote: “Creating and sustaining civic life requires all the institutions of society to pitch in and become engaged”. Later, he again worked with others to contribute fresh ideas and new language, notably the language of inclusion, to advance a children’s’ policy agenda and to inform subsequent Laidlaw Foundation initiatives.
In the 25 years since Marvyn wrote the foreword to The Missing Child some things have changed but many have not. The introduction of the Canada Child Benefit is evidence of progress. But children are too often an afterthought. We demand lower taxes while shortchanging the education of our children. Capital is more disconnected than ever. History will not look favourably on the current levels of inequality that we tolerate and which limit the life chances of so many. Nor will history look favourably on our disregard for the natural world and the inevitable consequences for future generations. For whatever reason we seem to be unable to control let alone shape these forces.
In these precarious times the rumblings of discontent are magnifying. At the level of theory political economists increasingly are challenging the prevailing neoliberal growth assumptions. And people are taking to the streets to express their outrage. Perhaps we are even beginning to acknowledge the seven generations wisdom of Indigenous peoples. So, for our children and grandchildren, the struggle continues.
Re-reading the foreword to The Missing Child is a reminder that Marvyn continues to inspire us, not just his gift of foresight but also his intense passion for the struggle.
A link to the forward can be found here.
1 From Marvyn’s speech to the Catholic Press Association (reproduced in this volume).
Nathan Gilbert is the former Executive Director and Walter Ross is the Past President of the Laidlaw Foundation.