Multicult Democracy, Red in Tooth and Claw

Among the proles:

For instance, I thought the election was about the economy. And it was. But just below the placid surface of Ontario politics there is a sea of social tension and percolating class warfare that a riding like Don Valley West epitomizes. The northern half is home to the palatial mansions of the Bridle Path, one of the wealthiest enclaves in the country, while the south is flanked by Thorncliffe Park, its rows of 40-storey tenements literally bursting with new Canadians and boasting the highest concentration of Muslims in Canada.

The north largely votes blue with the electoral map getting redder the further south you go. It’s your classic tug-of-war over the redistribution of wealth, but it is also ground zero in a major reckoning this country is going to have to come to grips with: What, if anything, constitutes Canadian values in a multiethnic country?

Straddling that divide would have challenged Mackenzie King himself. Naturally the pale faced WASPs of the Bridle Path want religion kept out of the schools, partly out of fear of the Muslim hordes and partly out of their deep seated suspicion of religion in general. This is not to say that the Scrooge McDucks of the Canadian Establishment are all militant agnostics. The pious among the upper 1% of the income spectrum tend to prefer the genteel confines of an Anglican or United Church. It's the enthusiastic religions that make them uncomfortable.

It is a maxim of modern Canada that the religious should be seen and not heard. The Christians should not be heard because they hold radical beliefs, which were once quite conventional. The Muslims should not be heard because they too hold radical beliefs, but radical beliefs (i.e. very socially conservative ones) that do not fit into the mushy concepts of multiculturalism. In the Cult of Multicult the villains are always old angry white folk with John Deere caps, the heroes are colourfully dressed and skinned immigrants.

The reality, as this thwarted PC candidate in Don Valley has come to understand, is that not all the immigrants are quite as smiley faced as imagined. She uses the term "reasonable accommodation." To those less enamoured with the Multicult ideal the word appeasement might come to mind. Not all the Muslim immigrants seek to retain the bigoted ways of their homelands. One congregant of a local mosque told candidate Andrea Mandel-Campbell:

What I don’t understand,” said one man, “is what an imam is doing in a public school. The girls should not be separated, we’re in the 21st century after all.” He went on to add, “That is also why I don’t think it’s right that my tax money goes to pay for the Catholic school system.”

One of the recurring themes in my multiculturalism posts is that it will likely be the immigrants who destroy the Cult of Multicult. A policy driven in no small part by white liberal guilt can only be destroyed by the objects of that guilt rejecting it. Of course the WASP elite could stop feeling guilty about their country's history, but let's not hope for miracles. A great number of the Muslim immigrants to this country have no desire to return to the barbarism of their homelands. They like their Canada peaceful, prosperous and essentially secular in its public institutions.

So you're a nominally conservative political candidate, and with the Ontario Progressive Conservatives the emphasis is on the word nominal, how do you handle this tricky issue? You could try the old Wilfrid Laurier approach and say that whatever our divisions we should above all be Canadian. That would, of course, be the correct approach. With some limited exceptions at the federal level, as with Jason Kenney's tweaking of the citizenship test, that is exactly the approach that is not being followed.

Appealing to our common Canadianism would imply we have a working definition. We once did. It was, however, a very British definition of being Canadian. This was not a contradiction. Most Canadians until the second world war thought of themselves as being culturally British, as opposed to Americans. This worked well enough until first the British Empire collapsed and then Quebec nationalism surged.

Our British identity was by the 1960s seen as horribly old fashioned. Britain was sliding down the league tables and so was the prestige of being British, even in the narrow cultural sense. With Quebec nationalism entering a militant phase it was decided that to modernize Canada, appease Quebec and integrate the wave of non-British immigrants that arrived after 1945, the British elements of the culture would be junked.

Away went the Red Ensign, the Maple Leaf Forever and pious talk about the Magna Carta. After briefly flirting with the concept of biculturalism, the Canadian political and cultural establishment decided to opt for multiculturalism. It seemed to solve the immediate problems at hand. Canada would get a new identity, the Two Solitudes would be downgraded to just two among many different ethnic groups, and the new immigrant groups would not feel alienated.

There is subtle difference between being cosmopolitan and being multicultural. Both believe in cultural diversity, the former, however, assumes universal values. I suspect that Trudeau had a cosmopolitan understanding of what Canada would become. The Canada as a sub-arctic Balkans was likely not his goal or that of multiculturalism's early advocates in this country.

Had the experiment in multiculturalism been accompanied by an insistence on maintaining a core Canadian identity, it likely would have worked out. The only plausible core identity in early 1970s was a British derived one. Even a generic check list of "modern values" has a certain slant: liberal democracy, individual rights, rule of law, market economies, equality between the sexes and religious toleration. Uncontroversial stuff, eh? Yet each of those concepts were either pioneered or evangelized by the British Empire. 

To much of the Canadian elite, once militantly pro-Empire, anything that smacks of British influence is now old fashioned and "colonial." That many of these values are now widely accepted in cultures that were never under the sway of Westminster does not register. This is about aging boomers reliving their adolescent rebellion against their parents generation. The cultural crises of today are seen through the lens of the 1960s.

If we are to cross the type of political divide seen in Don Valley West, and repeated elsewhere in Canada, there must be a push toward a common Canadian identity. This will mean a partial revival of the British inspired values of the past. Not a crude regurgitation of the past, but a recognition of where this country came from in order to better allow us to move forward. Few "new" Canadians will want to integrate into a country that does not believe in itself.

 

Comments

[nomdeblog]

An excellent post and your basing it on the epiphany of Andrea is a good launching point to all the elephants in the room.
Some thoughts:

- Why was she learning so many well known riding issues on the job? Where was the candidate training? ….same place as the PC common sense policy?

- “With Quebec nationalism entering a militant phase it was decided that to modernize Canada, appease Quebec and integrate the wave of non-British immigrants that arrived after 1945.” That meant multiculti Upper Canada became fractioned, 200 Solitudes, while Quebec eschewed immigrants and remained unified; thus enabling Quebec solidarity to produce several PMs in a row over the last half century (PET, Muldoon, Chretien, Martin) and thus the Liberals dominated the game of appeasement goodies both to Quebec and the multiculti silos in Toronto. Queens Park is carrying on the silo appeasement with soft goodies like “reasonable accommodation” and hard cash. If the PCs want to “cross the type of political divide seen in Don Valley West, and repeated elsewhere in Canada, there must be a push toward a common Canadian identity.” Is there any hope the Ontario PCs are ready to do that???

- If Andrea is ready for a Trillium Party she should let us know; either that or start a Tea Party movement to have the PCs remove their P or die along with the Federal Liberals because they have no purpose.

- “…the Cult of Multicult. A policy driven in no small part by white liberal guilt can only be destroyed by the objects of that guilt rejecting it” Actually this is mostly about progressive elitists willing to be taxed by Big Government to keep the unwashed out of their sight and away from their duty to foster something concrete for the rabble to assimilate to. To fix that, “This will mean a partial revival of the British inspired values of the past” … ergo PMSH is reviving “Royal” and other symbols…that will be his legacy; the One Worlders at the CBC will hate it.