COMMENTARY: Politicians and multiculturalism (07/14/96)

COMMENTARY

Politicians and multiculturalism

by Nykolai Bilaniuk

One of the platitudes most bandied about is that Canada is a nation of immigrants. To strike a bold simplification for the sake of argument, let us say that immigrants come in two basic flavors: those who come wishing to preserve their own language and culture while also participating in and constructing this country's polity, and those who wish to assimilate.

Of course, within ethnic groups, individuals decide the issue for themselves, but some general trends are in evidence. Most long-settled immigrant groups - Amerinds, Na-Dene, Innu (even these peoples arrived from elsewhere), the French Quebecois and the Anglo-Saxons, for example - tend to wish to preserve their cultures (which are also expressed in the forms of political and legal institutions they favor), while more recent immigrants typically do not.

Ukrainians and Jews are something of an anomaly. Many of these individuals are more recent arrivals, but want to preserve their identities.

The preservationist and assimilationist factions have different agendas, and this guarantees that consensus on the value and meaning of multiculturalism is difficult, if not impossible, to attain. The picture is further complicated by those who have opinions on the merits of preserving others' languages and cultures. Among those whose opinions are the most potent are the politicians who try to run the society.

In a democracy, politicians try to maintain as broad a constituency as possible, and their success is often measured by the extent to which they have told as many people as possible something close to what they want to hear. As a result, they often express views that are not consistent, and occasionally can be found making appeals to irreconcilable opposites.

Paradoxically, however, politicians also wish to be perceived as individuals who act on principle, which they often confuse with consistency.

The results of this mesh of paradoxes when politicians appear in public can be quite disturbing. A manifestation of such a disturbing mesh was in evidence at a recent event sponsored by the National Council of Ethnic Canadian Business and Professional Associations, with five representatives of Canada's national political parties addressing the matter of unity and multiculturalism. While it can be said that all five of these party representatives were fundamentally inconsistent in their application of principles, they were not equally offensive.

All proclaimed that everyone is equal before the law. Some, particularly Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois, asserted that French and aboriginal languages and cultures need pro-active government support to survive in Canada.

A few, including the Liberal Party's Maria Minna, the New Democratic Party's Simon de Jong and Progressive Conservative Sen. Consiglio de Nino (and definitely not the Reform Party's Jim Abbot), said their party favors multiculturalism, which is designed to ensure that everyone feels accepted and integrated in this country and that diversity of languages and cultures is economically and culturally beneficial to Canada.

The mesh of contradictions

This set of views, as articulated that day in Ottawa City Hall, is riddled with contradictions, which this writer hopes to point out.

First, if French needs government support to survive, then in all probability all other languages except English also need active support to survive. Ditto for the cultures. If the politicians truly feel that the diversity of languages and cultures is beneficial to Canada, they should be prepared to give support to all people who desire it. All citizens pay the same taxes, after all, and should be offered the same benefits.

Second, if government policy supports only French and "aboriginal" (i.e.. Amerinds, Na-Dene and Innu minorities), then there are three classes of citizens: first class are those who, no matter how small a community they represent in their locale, are entitled to government services and cultural support in their language of choice (English, French); second class are those who get that support only in selected locales ("aboriginals" on reserves); third class are those who are not entitled to support, even if they are the majority in their locale and desire such support (Ukrainians in Vegreville, Icelanders in Gimli). Thus, everyone is not equal before the law.

Third, if the justification for maintaining the above three unequal classes of citizens is the chronological order in which the immigrants' ancestors arrived in Canada, then there are some consequences to consider. New immigrant groups can never share the same rights as earlier immigrants, even if they have been here for centuries or become the majority.

Also, new immigrants from England or France should not be entitled to the special privileges conferred on the previous immigrants from those places. But if they are, then Norwegians should also enjoy special privileges, because some of their ancestors lived in Canada, having arrived in the 10th and 11th centuries, before anyone in England or France ever heard of the place.

Fourth, if the justification for maintaining a privileged status for English and French is that the speakers of these languages constitute the largest pluralities, then one must be prepared to take away or modify those privileges if they lose their pluralities. Also, why stop at precisely two languages? Why not make only one language and culture official, why not 100?

Political honesty gauge

Although complete fairness and consistency would require some solutions that are politically or practically impossible to implement, these awkward issues do allow us to size up the relative honesty of politicians. Ironically, it turns out that those who are ostensibly the least supportive of multiculturalism are actually the most honest about the issue.

While Mr. Duceppe danced around the issue on the day in question, in fact the Bloc Quebecois favors a policy of active inhibition of the English language, and a policy of neglect that will probably lead to the demise of other minority cultures in Quebec, but they admit this transparently: "Quebec defines itself as a French society," the BQ MP said. In effect, this is inequality based on French chauvinism: the French culture deserves to survive, others do not.

The Reform Party favors government inaction on language and culture, probably recognizing that the minorities will eventually assimilate completely under this policy. However, this policy, if it were taken to the American extreme of the abolition of official languages, offers at least the theoretical possibility that a minority culture could take permanent root and operate openly with government money driven by local demand, as the Hispanic culture is beginning to do in parts of the U.S.

The Tory (Progressive Conservative) Party appears inclined to fully maintain the privileged status of English and French under the Constitution and the law, neglecting minority cultures in terms of diminished budgetary appropriations, but also reducing government spending on English and French culture. This would, at least, have the effect of leveling the playing field a little bit.

The NDP and Liberal parties favor spending on multiculturalism, but not as a means of preserving minority languages and cultures for the good of the country, even if they do on occasion claim otherwise. Instead, the purpose of multiculturalism in their view is to foster "acceptance and integration" - thinly veiled euphemisms for assimilation.

These parties' opposition to true multiculturalism can partly be explained by budgetary constraints, but the underlying causes are deeper. Fundamentally, there is a lack of will involved, or even an active opposition to what is often derided as "the divisive aspects of multiculturalism" and "Balkanization."

Since the majority of new immigrants want to assimilate anyway, they are not really the targets of this policy. The policy of active assimilation paid for by everyone's tax dollars is directed primarily against those immigrants who want to preserve their languages and cultures. Ukrainian Canadians, take note: you are probably the No. 1 target of government-sponsored assimilation.

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