Multiculturalism and ventriloquists
If this policy has the magic to put together Canadians of every origin, why it is not
applied to put together Francophones and Anglophones?

 by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES  

It took terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City to force Canadian journalists to finally look at multiculturalism as a national issue. Too bad they focused on multiculturalism in Great Britain, and not Canada. It's true, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, Canadian reporters and columnists began probing Britain's multiculturalism, but didn't touch Canada's. I guess they're afraid to say what they think about our own country and have to borrow some foreign ventriloquists to do the job. Or, perhaps the Canadian media still don't want to deal with an issue considered a domain for the belittled “ethnic” media.

Whatever the reasons are, I, a Canadian citizen who arrived here from Italy 25 years ago, welcome the opportunity to debate this issue, the Canadian one.

Last week Canada's two national newspapers, the National Post and The Globe and Mail, published two stories about this “Canadian characteristic” and the impact on British culture.

Declared John O'Sullivan in the Post: “For the last decade or so, multiculturalism has been the reigning doctrine in Britain almost as much as in the nation that invented it, Canada.”

Well, Canada didn't invent multiculturalism, it only re-marketed colonialism. In fact, it was not Pierre Elliott Trudeau who “invented” it, but Canada's first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. The seeds for multiculturalism were planted when Macdonald repudiated Thomas Jefferson’s American doctrine and said, “A British subject I was born — a British subject I will die.” It was then that the hyphenation of Canadian citizenship started.

But did Macdonald make the right decision? Without debating the reasons for his decision, I believe it was the right one. Every individual has the right to retain his or her own heritage.

Of course, that statement fostered the determination of the French and the Canadian aboriginals to do the same thing: to entrench themselves into their heritage. The winning anglo component of the Canadian mosaic tried to find a balance with the other two groups, resorting to geography, culture and money.

They created Quebec and gave French Canadians the right to defend their own culture, but within their geographic boundaries and within an anglo framework. At the same time, aboriginals were relegated to reserves and showered with a lot of money, which disrupted their traditional way of life because you can’t balance cutting trees, polluting lakes and destroying animal species with a cheque from Ottawa, no matter how big the cheque is.

This shaky balance becomes more precarious at the beginning of the last century with the arrival of a new wave of immigrants. The arrival was the result of a reciprocal interest: the immigrants needed to work and Canada needed people to work. It was not a marriage of love, indeed one of convenience. It’s important to stress that they did not bring with them multiculturalism, in fact they tried hard to integrate and even assimilate into their new country and become Canadians, period. Furthermore, in the first part of the last century, they were not even concerned about their cultural status because they were too busy working in the forests, building railways and providing food and shelter for their families.

Nonetheless, because of their origins, they were periodically roughed up with head-tax and internment during the two World Wars. Those events reinforced their resolve to integrate themselves into the mainstream. But despite their efforts, they were refused Canadian citizenship. Not the one on paper, that’s easy, but the one in the minds of the founding groups.

That was then. Today it's a different story and more complicated with the arrival of new immigrants and new technology. The balance engineered in the two Treaties of Paris (the first in 1763 when New France was surrounded by the British, the second in Paris in 1783 when the American Revolution ended and Canadian boundaries were recognized) becomes shaky and obsolete.

Today, Quebec separatists, still unable to digest the defeat on the Planes of Abraham, realize that the 1763 treaty was not enough to protect their culture in the Internet era and globalization, and they believe that a new country would make the magic of stick. At the same time, the anglo component realized that the second Paris Treaty was not enough to protect them from falling into the American melting pot because technology is reopening the debate over the Canada-U.S. boundaries. Moreover, aboriginals, who are on the verge of being obliterated because of the deterioration of the environment, are more and more determined to defend their rights as Canada's First Peoples.

And to further complicate the historical dilemma even more, the former immigrants are now being replaced by their children whose presence in Canada is not a marriage of convenience, but an act of love. Canada is their country too.

It is in this context that Pierre Trudeau kidnapped the power in 1968 and prioritized his interests. The first one was to bring together the “two solitudes.” It was a national problem but also a personal one. Unable and unwilling to choose between Elliott (his mother’s last name), whose place was in Ottawa, and Trudeau, whose soul was in Québec City, he decided to bring provincial Quebec politics directly into the heart of federal English establishment. He was, probably, hoping to “dilute” the dispute in a federal context and bring together Elliott and Trudeau. René Lévesque often taunted P.E.T. on this issue, provoking his sanguine reaction: “Mon nom est Québécois but my name is a Canadian name also and that’s the story of my name,” he shouted six days before the 1981 referendum at the Souvé arena.

However, while Trudeau was trying to Canadianize Quebec, he had to deal with another “problem”: the new generation of immigrants. They, clearly, were not part of Canada's “two solitudes,” nonetheless he realized he needed a new definition for them since the old one, “immigrants,” was obsolete. At the beginning of the 1970s and immediately after the “October scare,” Trudeau decided to deal with the “immigrant issue” and invented the word “multiculturalism.”

Now, in the Canadian mosaic started by John A. Macdonald, everybody had a place and a label: the anglophones, the francophones, the natives and the ethnics. However, while in the rest of the world, and in Trudeau’s mind, multiculturalism was hailed as the mantra to deal peacefully with cultural differences, in Canada it was considered only a container for Canadian ethnics, regardless of their birthplace, culture and race. Multiculturalism never became a policy for all Canadians. In fact, if this policy has the magic to put together Canadians of every origin, including Arab Canadians and Jewish Canadians, why it is not applied to put together Francophones and Anglophones and put to rest the Quebec issue?

The reason is because multiculturalism, a philosophy that allows citizens, as John A. Macdonald would agree, to retain their heritage, has not been accepted by the “three solitudes” of Canadian society.

The natives do not accept multiculturalism: “I am not a Canadian” Matthew Coon Come shouted on July 12, 2000, after his election as Grand Chief of Assembly of First Nations. His predecessor, Phil Fontaine, reacting to the premiers’ national unity proposal in August 1997 in Calgary, said aboriginal people deserve more than to be “lumped in” together with the “multicultural citizenry.”

In Quebec, Jacques Parizeau lamented about “money and ethnic votes” that helped force the Canadian citizenship (imagine that!) upon him in October 1995.

Even the “multicultural” Liberal Party, whose electoral fortunes are mainly due to the so-called “ethnic vote,” has a cautious approach to multiculturalism, especially when it talks about nominations and candidates. To get an idea of what the Liberals think about nominating multicultural candidates, take a look at the April, 1993 issue of Toronto Life magazine, in which the then Liberal Rainmaker, Senator Keith Davey was quoted as saying: “Left to its own devices the party in Toronto would have 20 Italian candidates, seven Sikhs, seven Greeks and a WASP in a pear tree.”

Canadian multiculturalism promotes differences but is unable to handle them because it's unwilling to accept equality amongst them. John Lloyd, in the Nov. 8 issue of The Globe and Mail, wrote, “Multiculturalism, as we practise it, is passive. It is best described as being indifferent cohabitation. You leave me alone and I'll do the same service for you.”

The “two solitudes” Trudeau was talking about, are now four and the predominant culture is the one of “we” and “them.”

Can things improve? Of course, and Canada is in the best position ever to improve the situation. There are, however, a few elements to keep in mind.

First, multiculturalism is not here because of the immigrants, they find it here when they arrive. Second, multiculturalism was not “invented” to please the immigrants, but to foster the original desire of one the founding cultures to protect its heritage.

Third, multiculturalism does not have to be preached, but must be practised (by all).

Fourth, multiculturalism is not about tolerance, but understanding and acceptance. Tolerance is the sugar-coated version of racism.

Fifth, cultures cannot be melted by law (otherwise Soviet Union would still be alive).

Sixth, multiculturalism is not a Canadian or Australian issue any longer; indeed it's an international one since demographic barriers have crushed all over the world.

Lastly, if we don’t accept these observations, it's too bad. Multiculturalism, the real one, is already here. And I believe it's time to face the reality, and take a different perspective about who we are.