Ibbitson & Bricker: We must not allow immigration to become a major cultural concern for Canadians
2025/10/09 5 Comments
Perspective and a warning by Ibbitson and Bricker:
…Put all this together and the difference between Canada and the two largest members of the Anglosphere becomes stark. While Canadians still focus primarily on the impact of new arrivals on housing and social services, many conservative Americans see immigrants as a cultural threat, while Britons possess a race-and-culture-based hierarchy of who is most welcome.
Within Canada, Quebec is always sensitive about language and identity. But compared to the U.S. and Britain, the cultural backlash toward immigrants in Canada is still relatively muted. The central concern is the ability of governments to manage the flow.
That has enormous political consequences….
But confidence in Canada’s immigration system has been shaken by the belief that the system is out of control. In response, the federal Liberals have announced cuts to the level of permanent residents, temporary foreign workers and international students allowed into Canada, while taking steps to expedite the asylum claim process.
The risk of resentment remains. If political leaders are unable to do what it takes to restore confidence in this country’s immigration system, we could see in Canada what we are seeing elsewhere: whites resenting non-whites; rural residents estranged from urban; ideologies hardening and polarizing; and resentment toward immigrants becoming the dominant political issue.
You have only to look south or east to see what happens after that.
Source: We must not allow immigration to become a major cultural concern for Canadians
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
Your link is broken. This is the right one: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-immigration-cultural-concern-canada/
Thanks. Fixed.
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Anglo-Canadian culture, which is not a “thick” deeply textured and rooted culture, is pretty flexible in this regard and immigrants and what used to be called “visible minorities” are present across the political spectrum from right to left, so we should, I believe, remain relatively free of the sorts of reaction that we see in the UK and US, and not only there – in much of Europe and elsewhere (South Africa, interestingly). But we really do have to maintain our openness and the government has to demonstrate that it is in control of the situation. Note the distinction between “thick” and “thin” cultures comes from anthropology and doesn’t imply a value judgement, but it does have practical implications when a society is facing high levels of legal or illegal immigration.
Yes, the distinction between thick and thin, or deep versus light that I often used, is important as “thin” and “light” recognize the broader society and related integration, rather than living more or less as separate communities. Agree on the advantages of our flexibility but it is being increasingly tested, with perhaps Gaza/Hamas advocates and Canadian Jews being the most recent example (elements of the Canadian Sikh community being another).
I agree that the “national consensus” is being strained. There are lots of conflicts in the world and people from those conflict areas will naturally bring aspects of the conflicts with them and that can spill over into domestic politics and create cleavages that were not there before – and this can create problems for the general governability of the society. Canada is already a difficult proposition where many groups – provinces, indigenous, NIMBYs of various kinds – can have a veto power over any large-scale enterprises or energetic decisions. Stagnation is dangerous and often calls forth an authoritarian response – or disintegration.