[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Oexmelin]

More ambivalent than where? Clearly the Torontonian view is well represented in the media, but I'd have nowhere the certainty you seem to have about, say, the Maritimes, or Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

[crazy canuck]

It is a bit misleading to imply Bermier's views are most supported in Quebec.  During the Conservative leadership race his supporters were primarily amongst the BBs of the West.  There is a reason he was called the Albertan of Quebec.

I never implied his views were supported in Quebec. I have no idea who supports him, or where they are from.

Rather, I outright stated that it wasn't surprising he was from Quebec. The implication is that his views were formed based on where he was from, as ambivalence towards multiculturalism is much more common in Quebec than in the other major provinces ... with the possible exception of Alberta.



I mean, is it even a controversial point that Quebec as a whole is more ambivalent about multiculturalism?

There is no material difference between claiming his views are supported in Quebec and that they are informed by the views held in Quebec.  Especially when his views are reflective of the libertarian wing of the Conservative party and the former Reformers which of course are supported and informed by those who live in Alberta.

To your question - yes.  Alberta.

[Malthus]

There is no material difference between claiming his views are supported in Quebec and that they are informed by the views held in Quebec. 

I strongly disagree.

It is entirely possible that a man can have his views formed by the place he came from, but that later in  life, when he's a politician from a particular party, his views may no longer gain traction in his home province.

Especially when his views are reflective of the libertarian wing of the Conservative party and the former Reformers which of course are supported and informed by those who live in Alberta.

Is your claim that ambivalence towards multiculturalism is a function of Albertain libertarianism, and has no place in Quebec?

If so, we have a debate ...

Canadian-style multiculturalism poses a grave threat to Quebec culture, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe told Quebec's travelling commission on integrating minorities on Tuesday.

If Canada continues to treat Quebec like every other cultural minority, the end result will be assimilation into the dominant North American English-speaking culture, Duceppe said.

"Multiculturalism as a model of integration does not work in Quebec.

"Immigrant cultures and beliefs must merge with Quebec's culture and beliefs if the latter is to survive. They are coming to a nation with values, a culture, and history. The model developed in Quebec reflects that reality," he told theBouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation, at a Tuesday hearing.

"It's in total contradiction with the definition of a Canada that is bilingual and multicultural."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/canadian-style-multiculturalism-doesn-t-work-in-quebec-duceppe-1.676463

https://globalnews.ca/news/826797/no-room-for-multiculturalism-in-quebec-former-prier-says/

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-scorn-for-multiculturalism-in-quebec-yields-troubling-results

https://www.macleans.ca/general/quebec-isnt-a-multicultural-society/

Compare the quote from Duceppe to what I wrote above:

This leads to many conflicts within Canada. For example, Toronto in particular (as well as other places in Canada, such as Vancouver) is a highly "multicultural" city, with a population from everywhere on the globe. The Native Canadian and French populations of Toronto are tiny in proportion. Montreal is also a multicultural city, but Quebec as a whole is very wedded to the older notion of the ancestral French culture being given official priority; Quebec as a whole tends to have very ambivalent feelings towards official multiculturalism, seeing it as just another way that "English Canada" undermines their culture.

[Malthus]

More ambivalent than where? Clearly the Torontonian view is well represented in the media, but I'd have nowhere the certainty you seem to have about, say, the Maritimes, or Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

I'm pretty certain none of those are included in "major provinces". 

[crazy canuck]

There is no material difference between claiming his views are supported in Quebec and that they are informed by the views held in Quebec. 

I strongly disagree.

It is entirely possible that a man can have his views formed by the place he came from, but that later in  life, when he's a politician from a particular party, his views may no longer gain traction in his home province.

Ok, but your first post made the argument that his views were consistent with those held in Quebec.

And the rest of your post now appears to be trying to make that same argument.

Is your claim that ambivalence towards multiculturalism is a function of Albertain libertarianism, and has no place in Quebec?

If so, we have a debate ...

No, my claim is that ambivalence (I would use a less polite word) within Alberta is a function of right wing politics within that Province.  It is not surprising that BB saw absolutely nothing wrong with those tweets while they are being condemned by the leader of the Conservative party.

If you are going to quote Duceppe to reflect all of Quebec, would you mind if I quote Ford to reflect all of Ontario?  Then again Ford is actually in power. 

[Malthus]

Ok, but your first post made the argument that his views were consistent with those held in Quebec.

Depends. His libertarian leanings do not, but his attacks on multiculturalism do.

That said, I have no idea whether this specific tweet storm is gaining approval or otherwise in Quebec.

No, my claim is that ambivalence (I would use a less polite word) within Alberta is a function of right wing politics within that Province.  It is not surprising that BB saw absolutely nothing wrong with those tweets while they are being condemned by the leader of the Conservative party.

If you are going to quote Duceppe to reflect all of Quebec, would you mind if I quote Ford to reflect all of Ontario?  Then again Ford is actually in power. 

Ford is certainly representative of significant trends within Ontario, and I would be foolish to deny it (however much I may regret it).

Similarly, it is simply anti-factual to deny that there is a very significant element within Quebec itself that has concerns with Multiculturalism. There is a plethora of evidence for that fact. It seems weird to me that it is, apparently, worthy of debate.

It simply is not surprising that a politician from Quebec would find common ground with some Albertains on this issue, because both provinces, while having little else in common, at least share that trend: that significant factions in both provinces dislike multiculturalism.

This article, from way back in 1994, describes why the dilemma around multiculturalism is particularly relevant to Quebec (as well as to Native Canadians):

Indeed the official bilingualization of Canada, just like the policies on multiculturalism that were to follow in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Constitutional Reform Act of 1982, were all premised on a narrow egalitarian conception of society and politics: Canada is comprised of a large variety of people with different ethnocultural backgrounds; they must cherish their different and distinct individuality, they must respect each other's right to express it but, at the end of the day, they are all Canadians and they must all be treated equally by the federal state, their ultimate representative.

Behind the apparent generosity and humanism of such an approach lies a strategy of containment of Quebec's administrative and political aspirations. The message is clear; Québecois are Canadians too, and they cannot invoke their being a "founding nation" of the country to claim special status or privileges within the Canadian federation. This message was repeatedly driven home in no uncertain terms by large segments of the Canadian population outside Quebec during intense public debates over the constitutional future of Canada between 1987 and 1992. Governmental attempts to accommodate some of Quebec's minimal demands were met twice with public reprobation: in 1990 with the demise of a federal government-initiated proposal for constitutional reform -the so-called Meech Lake Accord - aimed at appeasing Quebec's historical demands by entrenching its distinctive character and special status in the constitution, and aghain in 1992 at a national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord, a watered-down version of the Meech Lake package. Both the Meech Lake and Charlottetown acords were presented by their proponents as an ultimate effort to keep the country united. Both have had the dubious distinction of further exacterbating the senitment of exasperation which Quebec and the rest of Canada feel for each other.

By becoming the mainstay of national identity. Canada's "ina bilingual framework" has reinforced the identities of minorities that have no territorial base other than the Canadian political community. It lends support to a political cutlure increasingly bent on removing all references to duality, to the notion of two founding majorities, and to that of a distinct political community in Quebec. In the current Canadian political framework, one identity is worth as much as another: a hierarchy of identities, as the idea of two founding nations implies, can no longer be tolerated. Unsurprisingly, aboriginal peoples maintain today that they are the one and only original founding nation, and representatives of immigrant communities are making clear that they cannot endorse a two or even three-nation definition of the country.

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/identity-politics-and-multiculturalism-quebec

The point is this: you can have multiculturalism or you can have two (or three) officially supported 'founding cultures' that are treated as central and foundational and given significant extra group rights: but it is incoherent to have both at the same time!

Thus, it is no surprise to see that those with a stake in officially supported group rights, and who feel under pressure and threat from the majority -- Native Canadians and Quebecois -- are leery of multiculturalism. If every group has officially the same rights, that implies stripping the existing rights away from the founding peoples.

[Jacob]

Native peoples are leery of multiculturalism?

[Valmy]

Native peoples are leery of multiculturalism?

I can certainly see why they might be.

[Jacob]

Native peoples are leery of multiculturalism?

I can certainly see why they might be.

That's great that you can follow the hypothesis in the abstract. My question is about the actual position of Native peoples in Canada - if they indeed do have a prevailing attitude on the subject.

[Malthus]

Native peoples are leery of multiculturalism?

The article I quoted was from an Native advocacy website, "Cultural Survival".

For a more formal and academic view, and a more recent one, here's a paper on this exact subject:

Aboriginal Peoples and Multicultural
Reform in Canada: Prospects for a
New Binational Society

David B. MacDonald

Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 39(1) 2014 65

file:///C:/Users/AtwoodE/Downloads/17224-53630-1-PB%20(2).pdf

As I outline here, multiculturalism sits uneasily with many Aboriginal people, in part because multiculturalism as promoted from 1971 was not designed to recognize Aboriginal distinctiveness, but developed from 
the same liberal traditions that created the assimilationist White Paper of 1969, with a desire to convert collective rights into individual ones (Resnick 2005; Borrows 2008/2009; Turner 2006).
Multiculturalism and its promise of "tolerance" (within western institutions) and formal equality insufficiently recognize the sui generis or inherent rights of Aboriginal peoples which existed before colonization and continue still. Aboriginal people are, through the expedient of multicultural policies, often placed alongside perceived ethnic minorities.

(Sorry, a PDF)

In summary, as founding peoples, many Native Canadians feel that they and their cultures should have (and to an extent are in fact accorded legally) a special status, which implies greater legal collective rights than other, non-native Canadian groups. They do not wish their cultures be treated as "equal" to those of (say) Sikhs or Vietnamese, even assuming Canadian society achieves perfect equality in that respect; as they have pre-existing group rights, enshrined by treaty, that predate the existence of Canada as a nation, they feel this "equality" would be a dimunition of rights.     

This, they recognize, is contradictory to multiculturalism, which by definition does not privilege any one group's culture an officially-recognized enhanced status: the whole point of multiculturalism is that all cultures are to be treated with equal legal validity and respect (contrary to previously existing policies, which of course heavily favoured the majority culture - European and Christian - and sought to legally privilege it). While no doubt native groups have no quarrel with the elimination of officially recognized European-Christian cultural hegemony which is also a product of multiculturalism, they (or at least, many of them) do not wish to see the reduction of their own group rights in the bargain.   

[crazy canuck]

Thus, it is no surprise to see that those with a stake in officially supported group rights, and who feel under pressure and threat from the majority -- Native Canadians and Quebecois -- are leery of multiculturalism. If every group has officially the same rights, that implies stripping the existing rights away from the founding peoples.

I will leave it to people who actually live in Quebec to deal with your assertions regarding the views held in that province.

You are certainly wrong about the notion that First Nations view multiculturalism as a threat to their rights.  Rather they take the position they are nations equivalent to Canada.  From that perspective, it does not matter to them how Canada might deal with other cultures within Canada.  First Nations would say that the Courts have already recognized their unique rights which are protected under the Constitution or by Treaty, and for many First Nations - both.  It simply makes no sense to suggest that First Nations rights are in any way affected by how the government might treat other cultural groups within Canada.

[crazy canuck]

Native peoples are leery of multiculturalism?

The article I quoted was from an Native advocacy website, "Cultural Survival".

For a more formal and academic view, and a more recent one, here's a paper on this exact subject:

Aboriginal Peoples and Multicultural
Reform in Canada: Prospects for a
New Binational Society

David B. MacDonald

Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 39(1) 2014 65

file:///C:/Users/AtwoodE/Downloads/17224-53630-1-PB%20(2).pdf

As I outline here, multiculturalism sits uneasily with many Aboriginal people, in part because multiculturalism as promoted from 1971 was not designed to recognize Aboriginal distinctiveness, but developed from 
the same liberal traditions that created the assimilationist White Paper of 1969, with a desire to convert collective rights into individual ones (Resnick 2005; Borrows 2008/2009; Turner 2006).
Multiculturalism and its promise of "tolerance" (within western institutions) and formal equality insufficiently recognize the sui generis or inherent rights of Aboriginal peoples which existed before colonization and continue still. Aboriginal people are, through the expedient of multicultural policies, often placed alongside perceived ethnic minorities.

(Sorry, a PDF)

In summary, as founding peoples, many Native Canadians feel that they and their cultures should have (and to an extent are in fact accorded legally) a special status, which implies greater legal collective rights than other, non-native Canadian groups. They do not wish their cultures be treated as "equal" to those of (say) Sikhs or Vietnamese, even assuming Canadian society achieves perfect equality in that respect; as they have pre-existing group rights, enshrined by treaty, that predate the existence of Canada as a nation, they feel this "equality" would be a dimunition of rights.     

This, they recognize, is contradictory to multiculturalism, which by definition does not privilege any one group's culture an officially-recognized enhanced status: the whole point of multiculturalism is that all cultures are to be treated with equal legal validity and respect (contrary to previously existing policies, which of course heavily favoured the majority culture - European and Christian - and sought to legally privilege it). While no doubt native groups have no quarrel with the elimination of officially recognized European-Christian cultural hegemony which is also a product of multiculturalism, they (or at least, many of them) do not wish to see the reduction of their own group rights in the bargain.

Ok, I see again where you go wrong.   You have conflated a concern about assimilation with the sorts of concerns Bernier talks about when he addressed multiculturalism.  Surely you see the difference and how SCC decisions since the article you cited gives First Nations the unique protections I addressed in my post above?

[Malthus]

Thus, it is no surprise to see that those with a stake in officially supported group rights, and who feel under pressure and threat from the majority -- Native Canadians and Quebecois -- are leery of multiculturalism. If every group has officially the same rights, that implies stripping the existing rights away from the founding peoples.

I will leave it to people who actually live in Quebec to deal with your assertions regarding the views held in that province.

You are certainly wrong about the notion that First Nations view multiculturalism as a threat to their rights.  Rather they take the position they are nations equivalent to Canada.  From that perspective, it does not matter to them how Canada might deal with other cultures within Canada.  First Nations would say that the Courts have already recognized their unique rights which are protected under the Constitution or by Treaty, and for many First Nations - both.  It simply makes no sense to suggest that First Nations rights are in any way affected by how the government might treat other cultural groups within Canada.

As noted in the article I posted, that's not how native Canadians see it.

They see the officially-recognized status as separate pre-existing nations with unique group rights are under explicit threat from multiculturalism ... and they are right.

Of course, under the the laws as they currently stand, there is no threat because the laws fully reflect the "three founding nations" of Canada position (while giving some official nod towards multiculturalism).

But native Canadians are not, as a group, stupid - they can see as well as anyone else that the two positions are contradictory, that they being "separate nations" is a legal construct that could be changed, that they having legally-different group rights makes no sense in terms of multicultural ideology ... if it is taken seriously.

Similar with racial equality and native status - it makes no sense to simultaneously believe that racism is an unmitigated evil, and that the worst sort of racism is that enforced by government fiat, and yet to support native legal status. The only reason this isn't considered an outrage is that native Canadians are so very disadvantaged in this country, that anything that smacks of taking away more rights from them is unequivocally seen as 'punching down' and so in itself racist. 

These are issues of severe cognitive dissonance for the political left in this country, so it is not surprising that discussing them gets negative attention.

[crazy canuck]

Thus, it is no surprise to see that those with a stake in officially supported group rights, and who feel under pressure and threat from the majority -- Native Canadians and Quebecois -- are leery of multiculturalism. If every group has officially the same rights, that implies stripping the existing rights away from the founding peoples.

I will leave it to people who actually live in Quebec to deal with your assertions regarding the views held in that province.

You are certainly wrong about the notion that First Nations view multiculturalism as a threat to their rights.  Rather they take the position they are nations equivalent to Canada.  From that perspective, it does not matter to them how Canada might deal with other cultures within Canada.  First Nations would say that the Courts have already recognized their unique rights which are protected under the Constitution or by Treaty, and for many First Nations - both.  It simply makes no sense to suggest that First Nations rights are in any way affected by how the government might treat other cultural groups within Canada.

As noted in the article I posted, that's not how native Canadians see it.

They see the officially-recognized status as separate pre-existing nations with unique group rights are under explicit threat from multiculturalism ... and they are right.

As noted above, the one article you posted, is not only now dated because of more recent SCC decisions which leave no ambiguity about the unique rights First Nations now enjoy, but you are mischaracterizing the concern.  The concern has been about the attempts at assimilation.  Not a concern about other cultures also being part of the mosaic of Canadian society.

[Malthus]

Ok, I see again where you go wrong.   You have conflated a concern about assimilation with the sorts of concerns Bernier talks about when he addressed multiculturalism.  Surely you see the difference and how SCC decisions since the article you cited gives First Nations the unique protections I addressed in my post above?

Huh? I'm answering a specific question - whether Native Canadians have concerns about multiculturalism.

I severely doubt additional legal protections address those concerns - all they do, is shield the rights at issue from change. Multiculturalism, as an ideology, remains contradictory to different groups having legally different group rights.