The Smorgasbord of Cultures that Will Be Canada in 2031

Photo from Toronto Star article: 
"A city of unmatched diversity"

The National Post's editorial  on Thursday had a short column: "What Canada stands for." Of course, the article starts with the biggest fallacy of all when it states:

Canada has always been a nation of immigrants 

Canada started as a country of British and French settlers, who claimed territory after territory, some by peaceful means, others through epic wars, to build a nation. Eventually, the British took the upper hand. Vast areas of land needed to be developed, especially in the prairies, and Canadians allowed Eastern Europeans, mainly Ukrainians, to develop parcels of often difficult land. Other European immigrants came in waves, but not as different peoples to do what they will. The came to a country already established with its own culture, laws, religion and society. These fluxes of immigrants, almost exclusively from European countries, had to subvert their identities and nationalities to that of their host country. They had to speak English, had to accept the dominant socio-religious structure of the country, and had to bring up their children as Canadians first and foremost.

But the next part of the sentence certainly rings true:

[A]nd it will become more so [a nation of immigrants] in the next 20 years. 

Yes, thanks to the policy of multiculturalism, the acceptance of immigrants who have no cultural connection with Canada, nor any desire to connect to it, Canada will become a nation of immigrants with nothing to tie them together.

The op-ed goes on to say:

According to a report released yesterday by Statistics Canada, by 2031, up to 28% of the population could be foreign-born. The number of people following a religion other than Christianity is expected to double to 14%, up from 8% in 2006. 

Who are these foreign-born? They are from countries where there is no natural social, cultural or historical association with Canada. They are from civilizations and countries as far and diverse as India, China, Somalia, Mexico. In short, they are almost all non-Europeans.

Here is a thought: A Chinese and an Indian (or a Somali and a Mexican) are far less likely to find points of interest in their culture, language, religion than a German and an Italian. However much Europeans divide themselves into distinct groups while in Europe, their commonalities are easier to find than their differences once they arrive at the shores of the New World.

They have long historical connections starting from Greece, going on to Rome, Jerusalem, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment the two World Wars, and an infinite number of more points of intersection in between these epic periods in history. A German is as likely to have some attachment to Michelangelo as is a Frenchman or an Englishman, and even the nihilist Dadaists of the pre-WWII period do pop up in European artists' imaginations. And these European immigrants brought this rich cultural heritage to Canada, with which they could all, at some level, associate. Canadians even looked (and look) back, to some extent , to European examples for their cultural developments.

How can a Chinese Buddhist’s culture have anything in common with a German’s or an Englishman's and ultimately a Canadian's? And here's an even more radical thought, which the multi-culti brainpower hasn’t thought about: How is a Chinese Buddhist to have anything in common with an Indian Hindu, or a Somali Muslim with a Mexican Catholic (who believes in his own brand of saints with the Mexican Patron Saint Guadalupe dictating a distinct Mexican culture very different from the Spanish influence since, for one, she was a Mestizo)?

At one point, immigrants from different parts of Europe had two things going for them when they arrived in Canada:

a). They had some intersecting points of cultural agreements with each other, and with the dominant Canadian culture.

b). There was no official multiculturalism which kept them tied up in their ghettoes, thus they were forced to blend and mix with the rest of the country. AND, they could do this because of point a)., where their cultures weren't too different from each other’s.

Now, flash forward to 2010. With the triple dose of a). official multiculturalism, b). cultures with little or no commonality with the dominant one, and c). cultures with little or no commonality with each other, it is no surprise that Canada is slowly parcelling off its land to 1001 different ethnicities and races, who are content to barricade themselves behind their exclusive territories. Here is an astonished journalist who reports that by 2007, there were 254 ethnic enclaves in Canada’s three biggest cities – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – up from SIX in 1981.

Official Canada in 2031 may look hybrid and mixed, as the above op-ed indicates, but the private Canada will be frighteningly exclusive. And this will have in turn engendered public exclusiveness, where groups of people segregate in their own towns, cities or municipalities, start their own shops, manage their own offices, and retain their own languages, religions and cultures.

But wait, hasn’t this happened in 2010? Toronto suburbs (still part of the Greater Toronto Area) such as Brampton and Markham are already there. Brampton is now 57% visible minority, the majority of which are Indians. Markham, a Chinese enclave, is 65% visible minority.

I won't go through the rest of the article, since it is the usual liberalized view of immigration, which doesn't take into any account these inassimilable characteristics of post-1967 immigrants (when the Immigration Act of 1967 removed all restrictions on non-European immigrants). But, the article ends off with this insipid suggestion:

Canadians need to define our values so that both immigrants and the native-born have the same expectations of what Canada stands for — and what it does not.

Even if Canada were to define more precisely what it stands for, immigrants are much better at defining who they are, and are not likely to give up their identities any time soon.