Tristin Hopper: Poilievre says there are too many ‘heritage months’ in Canada. There are 17

He has a point. But virtually impossible to remove any from the list, or any weeks or days, as each has a constituency. The most a government could do would be not to add anymore:

At a B.C. town hall last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said there are too many federally recognized heritage months, and that it’s “kind of getting hard to keep track of which month is for what cause or for what group.”

The spur for the question appears to have been a Liberal MP’s recent attempt to have July declared as Somali Heritage Month.

In reply, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani sponsored a petition for Canada to never declare another heritage month ever again.

“End the tokenism practice of recognizing a day or month in commemoration of any ethnic or heritage group; and celebrate Canadians for the sake of being Canadian not based on ethnicity or ancestry,” reads the text.

According to the Department of Canadian Heritage, there are 17 “heritage months” that are officially observed by the Government of Canada.

This is obviously more than there are months in the calendar, meaning that some months are concurrently recognized as multiple heritage months at the same time.

The busiest single month for this happens to be the current month. Right now, Canada is officially recognizing National Indigenous History Month, Italian Heritage Month, Filipino Heritage Month and Portuguese Heritage Month….

Altogether, there are now just 20 days, all of them in December, in which the Government of Canada isn’t officially commemorating something.

Source: Tristin Hopper: Poilievre says there are too many ‘heritage months’ in Canada. There are 17