Canada’s multicultural ideal is fraying. This is how we hold on to it

Not a bad take:

What does Canada owe its immigrants? And what do immigrants owe Canada? This unspoken contract, rooted in mutual respect and opportunity, has defined our national identity for decades. It now feels strained.

To strengthen it, we must learn to manage contradictions without facing the ruptures seen in other liberal democracies. And we must acknowledge the deepening sense of anxiety, injustice, and exclusion that many Canadians now feel. This requires more than slogans about unity. It demands policies that protect vulnerable communities, education that teaches context, and leaders who resist the temptation to pander to outrage. It also requires moral imagination to make space for different stories, different hopes and different griefs, without turning from the work that justice demands, and without forcing false equivalence. It also requires a daily choice: for Canadians to remain curious about each other’s histories, and for immigrants to invest in the civic fabric of their adopted home.

I write this not as someone who claims to speak for every immigrant. I can’t. My family’s story is just one thread in Canada’s immigrant fabric. But I know what it feels like to carry the weight of a name across continents. I know what it means to feel both grateful and unmoored, proud and uncertain.

Canada does not promise a life without tension. It promises something harder — and better. The chance to sit at a kitchen table, decades from now, with snow falling outside, and to tell your children: We didn’t run from the past. We built a future strong enough to hold it.

Arjun Gupta is a law student at the University of Ottawa. 

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