Another Unfortunate Clash of Cultures

How perfectly awkward. How utterly un-Canadian. How miserably unacceptable in a country and a society that prides itself on freedom, equality, egalitarianism. How unwholesomely inappropriate that a foreign culture can see its way through to the importation of an unlawful social custom - demeaning to women and injurious to children - into Canada.

Worse, that these men, practising polygamy in a country in which it is clearly unlawful, take advantage of the country's social services networks to claim welfare payments in the support of these "additional" wives and their children. To live inclusively in a country like Canada lifestyles must reflect core values. Children are placed at a distinct disadvantage when they become secondary dependents.

Not only are the laws of the land meant to reflect social customs recognized through long-accepted and inherited values being flouted, but revenues taken through the general taxation pool meant to assist those whose financial condition leaves them within the less privileged segments of society, are being drained illegally.

Yet it has been revealed through a published report that an estimated "several hundred" Toronto-area men in polygamous alliances receive welfare benefits for their many wives. In their defence, a representative from the Canadian Society of Muslims points to a portion of the Ontario Family Law Act that recognizes the legitimacy of spousal designations when such unions took place prior to immigration.

Yet it is clear that The Family Law Act was designed with the intent to protect vulnerable women and their children with a view to helping in the settlement of affairs with the ending of their marriages. Municipal and provincial officials remain quite clear in their interpretation of the status of these multiple-marriage cultural contracts. Social benefits can be claimed for only one spouse.

"They should know that in Canada there is no polygamy (practised and recognized by law) and that only one wife is covered (recognized)", according to Madeleine Meilleur, minister of community and social services for Ontario which administers and funds the social assistance program, titled Ontario Works.

This is an issue that goes well beyond the illegality of men with multiple wives taking advantage of welfare and social benefits within the province. If a man - in Muslim countries that recognize and permit and encourage a social convention such as polygamy - takes it upon himself to obey and indulge in Koranic-derived inspiration of many wives, how can he then not be prepared to support them financially?

This male-centered conceit that a society's vulnerable women should be taken advantage of to pay homage to a latter-day male vision of achieving his very own harem, and claiming it to be God's will, may have its place in socially-backward cultures. It is entirely inappropriate in a western, democratic culture where women are seen to have equal rights to men and where children are raised to absorb this social and cultural atmosphere.

This is yet another example of the unwillingness or inability or inadequacy of immigrants hailing from foreign cultures to adapt to and accept the prevailing culture of the host society.