Kenney on multiculturalism

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

On Monday, March 14, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney attended a citizenship ceremony in Vancouver, where he announced the release of Canada’s updated citizenship study guide, Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship.

According to a government statement, changes to the guide include a section that “emphasizes that a newcomer has a responsibility to embrace Canadian democratic principles and that past experiences in warfare or conflict do not justify bringing violent, extreme or hateful prejudices to Canada,” “[r]ecognition that gay and lesbian Canadians enjoy the full protection of and equal treatment under the law, including access to civil marriage” and “[th]e addition of forced marriage among the practices that are not tolerated in Canada.”

About the challenges of multiculturalism in Canada, at a time when several European countries are calling their multicultural policies a failure, Kenney told the Independent: “There is a risk that, with our current velocity of immigration, we’ll end up reinforcing the already existing ethnic enclaves, which will render it more difficult for people to integrate into the broader society.

“The secret to the success of the Canadian approach has been that we encourage people to celebrate and maintain fidelity with what’s best about their own particular cultural backgrounds while fully integrating into the broader mainstream.... We need to maintain that balance. My concern is, with these levels of immigration, if people in large numbers move into the same neighborhoods, next door to people of the same cultural origin, that could retard integration, particularly with modern communications technology, with kids watching TV, movies and entertainment and [playing] computer games from their parents’ country of origin.

“So, I don’t know the solution, to be honest with you, but I do know that’s the challenge. The second main challenge I’d point to is the need to ensure that people do not import into Canada ancient enmities from their countries of origin,” he said, mentioning the revised Discover Canada, which includes “special language around this because I find that the most problematic forms of racism and hatred in Canada today are not ‘old school European versus visible minority racism,’ it’s hatred amongst people from the same countries or regions of origin, whether it’s the Sinhalese Buddhist monastery in Toronto getting fire-bombed by, presumably, extremists from the country of origin, or the Lebanese Sufi mosque in Montreal being vandalized by people from the Wahhabi mosque down the street. This kind of thing is of deep concern to me, which is why we have refocused the multiculturalism program to emphasize building bridges of understanding between different communities and interfaith dialogue.”

Among Kenney’s many engagements while in British Columbia was a dinner at the Richmond Country Club, hosted by Jewish Advocacy for the Conservative Party. In the interview with the Independent that took place prior to that event, the minister explained that “the Conservative party has been the party of diversity and the strongest party with respect to immigration in Canadian politics.”

He noted that “it was the Conservative administration of John Diefenbaker that eliminated discrimination on the grounds of race or country of origin in 1960 and also brought in the first legislative protections for minority rights through the bill of rights. It was the Mulroney government that tripled Pierre Trudeau’s immigration levels; Trudeau slashed immigration levels by 50 percent during the 1980s recession, Brian Mulroney tripled immigration levels to about 270,000 newcomers in 1992/1993. And our government has welcomed more newcomers than our Liberal predecessors. The facts speak for themselves.

“I would also point out,” Kenney continued, “that the first non-Caucasian elected to Parliament was Conservative Douglas Jung, the first black Canadian MP and minister was Lincoln Alexander, a Conservative, the first Muslim Canadian MP was a Reform party and then Conservative member, the first Hindu MP was a Reformer-cum-Conservative, the first South Asian woman elected to Parliament, Reformer and then Conservative Nina Greenwald, the first Japanese Canadian MP and minister is Bev Oda, and the first Canadian of eastern European origin in a cabinet was Michael Starr in a Conservative cabinet. We have had the most diverse slate of candidates in each of the last four federal elections and I suspect we will again.”

He added that the Conservative party is also the one that “has demonstrated greater sensitivity to some of the historical injustices committed to minority communities,” and gave several examples, including, under Conservative governments, the federal apology and redress for the Japanese-Canadian internment during the Second World War, and the federal apology for the Chinese head tax. He expressed some frustration that, “notwithstanding all of those facts,” there are those “who claim that it’s an anti-immigrant party.” He also spoke candidly of the Harper administration’s support for Israel and the reaction it has elicited.

“It certainly has not been a position that we’ve taken for any domestic political advantage,” said Kenney. “To the contrary, I think the evidence is pretty clear that, on the whole, this has not been a politically prudent position for us to take, but it’s been a principled one. Most of us in the Conservative party who feel very strongly about this came to this conclusion long before we had, very frankly, strong relations with the Jewish community. I think it was the Second Intifada, the rejection of Israel’s good faith effort to forge peace and then, of course, 9/11 and the entire spirit of rejectionism and hostility towards Israel, the emergence of the new antisemitism, all of this coming into focus in the past 10 or 15 years, I think really clarified the issues for many of us who may have been less focused on the Middle Eastern conflict in previous times.

“The prime minister really, truly believes what he says. When he says that threats to the Jewish people are ultimately threats to the broader Western world, he believes it, and I think it’s true as well, and that’s why we’ve taken the positions we have. Yes, they have not been, on the whole, politically popular, and I really do take offence when some people suggest that we’ve taken these positions calibrated to win support in the Jewish community. Quite frankly, it’s a community of 320,000 people who tend, I’ll be very blunt with you, to be focused in urban core constituencies, which are the least accessible to the Conservative party, so it has been, actually, contrary to our political interests. We’ve done it for reasons of principle and we will continue to.”

Another stance the Canadian government has taken in this vein is to boycott the 2009 follow-up meeting to the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which turned into a forum for antisemitism. When asked by the Independent how the government is working on such issues as racism on a global scale, given the proclivities of the UN, for example, Kenney said, “This is really difficult, because so many of the UN institutions are dominated by a majority of countries who don’t have democratic values and the classic example of that is the United Nations Council for Human Rights ... one of whose members was, until two weeks ago, Libya, which was, by the way, in the vice-chair position for the preparatory committee for Durban II. And Iran was on the preparatory committee, a state whose president has explicitly called for the elimination of a democratic member state of the UN, Israel, so this is bizarre and it is difficult sometimes to work within those structures.

“That is not an excuse to completely absent ourselves, to withdraw from all the UN,” he stressed. “We have to be there to try, as best we can, to influence the debate at multilateral institutions, but, more and more, I think we do have to find other fora to raise these issues, which is why, for example, Canada hosted the inter-parliamentary conference on combating antisemitism, which involved parliamentarians from 54 different countries.... The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is basically all the former Warsaw Pact and NATO countries, also has a special rapporteur on combating antisemtism and a process to deal with other issues of xenophobia and racism. Yes, we will stay engaged in the UN process, but we’re not naïve that that’s going to be easily remedied and that’s why we’re looking for other fora where we can raise a voice to authentic threats to human dignity.”

While some 25 members of the group No One Is Illegal protested Kenney’s arrival at the citizenship ceremony Monday, there hadn’t been any other incidents as of press time. The minister’s other stops included participation in various community roundtables, attendance at the CORSA Foundation’s pre-gala reception, remarks at the Bridge to SUCCESS Gala, meetings with a variety of media outlets and attendance at a Nowruz festival to celebrate the Persian New Year.

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