Embracing Multiculturalism

Well, there's a surprise.

After forty years of official institutionalized multiculturalism augmented by a sense of self-congratulation that we as Canadians are so relaxed and open about welcoming foreigners to a country that was built on immigration to begin with, we seem to have become more wary about the concept. Used to be that American-style homogeneity of assumed culture and social mores was looked at askance by Canadians in favour of our more relaxed mosaic of cultures.

Well, it did work rather well for a while. And then the wheels came off the bus of multiculturalism. The separate little ethnic cliques and culturally-tied, and religiously-inspired congregations that some might term ghettos, others distinct communities did work quite well. And we were, as an enlightened society, proud of ourselves for all of that, the acceptance of differences, the positive regard for others, the overall tolerance.

Then came the understanding and realization that something had gone awry. Somehow, those newer immigrants hailing from other more exotic locales in a newly-opened and pacific gesture of welcome to the international community, were bringing with them not only their heritage cultures but also ethnic and tribal enmities. Suddenly there were symptoms appearing within the public sphere of one religious or cultural or ethnic group in opposition to the other.

And the situation began to degrade. Because some groups were incubating within themselves a more aggravatingly hostile and ideologically/religiously fundamentalist track that would have inevitable repercussions against the entire indigenous social compact. With the rise of global terrorism, first witnessed when the Palestinians began co-opting planes to send their message of dissatisfaction to the world.

And then the Sikhs, agitating for a homeland of their own in India, brought their business of violent opposition here. And the largest congregation-in-exile of Tamils settling in Canada bringing with them their unrepentant and entitled agitation against Sri Lanka, fund-raising with the considerable assistance of sympathetic Canadian politicians, began blackmailing Tamil Canadians into compliance.

A rising Middle East-derived population of hyphenated Canadians further complicated matters and brought with them their derisive slander of Israel, and compounded sleeping anti-Semitism to awaken a movement where it became respectable and desirable for the Canadian left to rise to their cause and condemn both Israel and by association, Canadian Jews for their support of Israel.

And the background to all of this is the rising global Islamism that equates Islam's fortunes with violent jihad in an elevated movement to return to a position of global supremacy. So that home-grown jihadists inspired by the bloody exploits of foreign jihad which has thus far victimized more Muslims in their countries of origin than the explosive attacks against Western targets, have become a world-wide concern.

Need we wonder now that a new poll surveying Canadian attitudes to multiculturalism (not pluralism) demonstrates cooling attitudes among Canadians to the concept? Canadians, it would appear from the conclusions reached by the Association for Canadian Studies based in Montreal, appear by a large margin to "like interacting with different cultures".

That large majority slenders down to a minority who continue to support multiculturalism.