How much diversity do Canadians want?
TheGlobeandMail.com – Opinion
Oct. 11, 2016. MARGARET WENTE
Justin Trudeau has made diversity and inclusion the cornerstone of his brand. “Diversity is Canada’s strength,” he tells the world. There’s a lot of virtue in this. We are among the most successful immigration countries on Earth – one of the rare places where high rates of immigration are not contentious, and where anti-immigrant rhetoric has no respectable place in public life.
But the Prime Minister wants us to go way beyond tolerance for cultural differences. He wants us to love and celebrate them. Which can be a stretch. Should we really be celebrating women who wear the niqab? I don’t think so.
That’s where Kellie Leitch, a contender for the federal Conservative leadership, comes in. Her “Canadian values test” for prospective immigrants, an idea widely loathed by the elites, has a lot of traction with the public. One opinion poll found that a whopping two-thirds of Canadians – not just Conservatives – think it’s a good idea.
The CBC and Angus Reid did their own recent polling on this subject. The results disconcerted many. Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said “minorities should do more to fit in with mainstream society rather than keep their own customs and languages.” (According to the survey, long-time immigrants agree.) So much for decades of official multiculturalism.
What do these findings mean? Are Canadians becoming more intolerant? The Toronto Star’s Bob Hepburn, for one, is worried. “A backlash against more immigration appears to be spreading,” he warned the other day. Others think that the rise of Trumpism and of anti-immigration sentiment in Europe have simply emboldened Canadians to unleash the inner racism that has always lurked just beneath the surface.
I’m not all that alarmed (for now). According to a recent Ipsos poll, only one in three Canadians think immigration has been generally negative for Canada – a proportion that has remained steady for a decade, despite immigration levels that are among the highest in the world.
But the Liberals’ aggressive immigration strategy will surely test Canadians’ goodwill. In the past year, the government brought in 320,932 immigrants and refugees – one-third more than the year before. It’s the largest influx of people to Canada since the West was settled in the early years of the last century, and Immigration Minister John McCallum wants to keep it up. He says we need all these people to make up for demographic decline and to boost the economy of stagnant regions.
These arguments are largely spurious. Immigration can bring economic benefits. But it can’t do much to offset the impact of demographic decline. Nor will immigration revive the fortunes of flagging towns. Newcomers are going to move to where the jobs and opportunities are. They are going to compete for housing and health care and teachers and other public goods and services that are sometimes in short supply.
Yet in liberal discourse, any resistance to immigration on any grounds makes you a racist, and any questions about immigration policy are perceived as illegitimate. People get frustrated by that. They’re also frustrated by a narrative that, in their view, only goes one way. They feel they’re constantly being harangued by their betters that it is they who must accommodate the newcomers. No one ever talks about what the newcomers should do to accommodate them.
And so they’re not thrilled when Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s Premier, dons a head scarf to meet with the woman who insisted on her right to wear the niqab during the citizenship ceremony – and then tweets that it’s “an honour.” They are not thrilled when their Prime Minister promotes inclusivity by visiting a mosque where the women have to sit upstairs. They don’t like it when a Muslim boys’ soccer team refuses to play against girls.
Kellie Leitch taps into that sentiment. I don’t doubt for a moment that Canada has its share of racists – but if the Liberals ignore the genuine concerns of people who think accommodation should go both ways, they’re asking for a backlash.
Many progressives (including, I suspect, Mr. Trudeau) hold a romantic view of immigration as a sort of global social-justice project, which obliges us to share our good fortune with as much of the rest of the world as possible, while declaring that every other culture is just as good as ours is.
Thankfully, most Canadians don’t share this woozy notion. They pride themselves on their tolerance. But they’re also hard-headed pragmatists. They think immigration policy should serve our national interests, and that our leaders should not forget it.
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Tags: globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, participation
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The writer answers her question on whether we should be celebrating women who wear the niqab by stating “I don’t think so”. I don’t think the niqab-wearing women go about looking for people to celebrate them for no reason just as Ms. Wente wouldn’t expect applause for this article. My question is why does the niqab bother people so much? If we can all celebrate Queen Elizabeth II and compliment her style in wearing all those gorgeous hats, how does some other woman’s hair covering change the “Canadian culture”. What is essentially different in the niqab and a hat? Other than the fact that some of us see it as a symbol of the repression of the Moslem woman.
Some may want to argue that Moslem women do suffer oppression, but that does not change the fact that some of the niqab-wearing women, wear it of their own free will. That they have embraced the spirit of modesty or whatever values they have attached to it.
How would imposing our own values on these women be any better than whatever perceived oppression we seem to vehemently believe that they face. In other words, remove one form of oppression and impose another, not minding that this is what they have known all their lives.
What is this “Canadian values test”, and who decides what values Canadians hold dear to their hearts? Let’s start with the value of equality and fair treatment which I believe most people would value in this society; how equal and how fairly treated did Kellie Leitch and her party treat children in Attawapiskat by canceling their school project? What were the values associated with the residential school system and the sixties scoop? How do we live in the same nation but some Canadians cannot get something as basic as clean drinking water, but we chant “Canadian Values test”?
I doubt that the liberals give credence to the view that we must accommodate the newcomers in every single quirk and culture that they may bring over, or that newcomers should not be accommodating of the Canadian lifestyle. What suggestions does Ms. Wente have concerning immigration? Build a wall like Donald Trump would like to do in the US or start a gang of miscreants to go on a niqab unveiling spree of Moslem women already in Canada?
I certainly agree that accommodation should go both ways, that newcomers should embrace the Canadian culture of accommodating others and of course Canadians doing what they have come to be known all over the world for, as generally nice people, but also having in mind that the security of Canadians is important.
We must learn to embrace the Indigenous people’s ways. If they had adopted our attitude centuries ago, some of us would most likely still be in Europe; or be facing life in Canada, as second class citizens.
We can do better.