Multiculturally Divisive

"If the white men of Canada can't overcome the fear of rebuke from the enforcers of fear, Canadians can't ever have an honest debate about the state of equality, race, culture and the place and space for religion and other languages in Canada."
'This guilt cum fear was quite evident in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s broad brush swipe at those who had sought assurances of thorough security checks on the refugees to be let into Canada. Instead of arguing we must welcome refugees but after proper security checks, her words implied that these security concerns were a mask for racism."
"We are not post national — whatever that means. But we are a country of the world; our core identity and core values make us so. If we do not defend that core identity and the core values that define us, they will wither away."
"That there is no mainstream means there are many streams. It also implies that the streams never merge and mingle; the streams live on parallel to others, isolated and apart from each other. If so, how do we build a society with high degree of social solidarity and cohesion?"
"But the real need for equality and social justice for all has also spawned the much despised political correctness preventing us from being honest with each other. Politicians afraid of “ethnic backlashes” revel in silence policed by the so called multiculturalists who might be more appropriately called multicults — the practitioners of a fierce brand of exclusivist Multiculturalism that ought to be renamed Multicultism. Under these circumstances when politicians do speak they utter non sequiturs, simply bromides."
Ujjal Dosanjh, former B.C. premier, former federal Member of Parliament

According to this former federal cabinet minister, the political correctness that has afflicted our government and for that matter governments throughout the western world of democracies, has hampered our ability to think and to act in our own best interests. That government can and should demand of new immigrants that they make an effort to transform themselves into citizens of the country, valuing the nation's laws and freedoms to make them their own as they meld into the prevailing social fabric is not to ask too much of people.

It is insensitive, evidently, to expect that migrants aspiring to share the liberties and opportunities, the equality and the fairness guaranteed to citizens, extend that recognition that they have an obligation to respect those values, even if they run counter to the religious tenets they bring with them from abroad, keeps us silent. For we fear being labelled racists, being identified as bigots, being held in contempt as insufficiently respectful of other cultures and the heritage that religion has wrought.

J.P. Moczulski for National Post/Files   Zunera Ishaq: “I do respect Canadian society as it is.” But not enough to remove her niqab when she took the Oath of Citizenship and voted.

In the process, we see our own values held delicately aloft within two pinched fingers of rejection, in favour of new citizens cleaving to the priorities and values and customs and often enough baggage of bias they bring with them as they establish a presence in their adopted countries, a presence that seeks to echo the presence prevailing in their countries of origin which failed to give them the opportunities they sought for pragmatic social and economic and educational advancement.

Mr. Dossanjh, now in private life, has seen first-hand what that baggage is capable of producing in enmities and violent repression culminating in acts of terrorism. His point is that politicians have too careful an eye on re-election, on retaining the votes of those who can support their return to power, to want to chastise them or demand of them that they become true Canadians, eschewing those areas of their past which does an injustice to the liberties of democratic liberalism.

In his own province of British Columbia the large presence of Chinese-speakers gives them the audacity to introduce Chinese-only signage in public spaces that exclude those of non-Chinese origin. "The fear of being branded racists has paralyzed the Richmond (B.C.) politicians", he charges, of the area where the signage controversy rages. In another instance he cites Ontario's premier denouncing as 'racist' citizen calls for more careful security checks before Syrian refugees arrive in Canada.

"I don't hear too many politicians saying 'When you come to this country, learn English, or French, or both'. ... We have silenced people into not being able to express pride in the country", he emphasized in an op-ed article recently published widely in Canada. He made a stringent effort to warn federal officials of the "wave of hatred, violence, threats, (and) hit lists" within the Sikh community, before Canada's worst terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182 occurred.

The current incumbent of the federal Vancouver riding seat Mr. Dosanjh once held is now Canada's Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, a former high-placed official with the Canadian military reserve. And he asks of the current government which has resolved to withdraw Canadian military involvement in the war against Islamic State: "What message are we sending to people across the world? That Canada is willing to walk away from the actual war to bring about peace?"