Dutch foreign minister praises Canada as an ‘immigrant society’

Nice reminder by the Dutch that despite the various controversies that emerge from time-to-time, Canada largely has it right in terms of immigration, integration and multiculturalism. European history and patterns of immigration (guest workers, often from former colonies) are vastly different to immigrant-based societies like Canada, Australia and the US, which encourage full participation and becoming citizens:

“I think it is mind-boggling that a huge nation like Canada, with all its diversities, with so many recent immigrants from all parts of the world, with all their different cultures, can maintain this level of social tranquility and integration of difference, acceptance of difference in this society,” Mr. Timmermans told a crowd at a Dutch Embassy and Centre for International Governance Innovation breakfast event at the Rideau Club on May 2.  …

“Still I think Canada has a lot to teach us on this front because we have begun to doubt whether our societies can handle diversity, and diversity has been attacked especially by the extreme right,” he said.

He said there’s been the re-emergence of an old notion in Europe of finding someone else to put the blame on.

“The second step always becomes slowly and gradually dehumanizing that group so that at some point it becomes acceptable to say that they should leave society,” he said.

“We in the Netherlands have reached that point that a politician says we could do with less people of a certain ethnicity in Dutch society.”

“I would have never thought this possible, but it happened,” he said.

Dutch foreign minister praises Canada as an ‘immigrant society’ | Embassy – Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper.