ICYMI: Divided, Canada stands to lose what makes it great – Naheed Nenshi

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi at the September LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium:

At our best, we’ve figured out a simple truth: We’re in this together. Our neighbour’s strength is our strength. The success of any one of us is the success of every one of us. More importantly, any one failure is all our failure, too.

When Canada works, it is because of that tolerance and respect for pluralism, that generous sharing of opportunity with everyone. It is because of that innate sense that every one of us, regardless of where we come from, what we look like, how we worship or whom we love, deserves the chance right here, right now, to live a great Canadian life.

That Canada, however, is incredibly fragile, and must be protected from the voices of intolerance, divisiveness and small-mindedness. That Canada must be protected from the voices of hatred.

Let’s talk about Bill C-24, the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, which allows Ottawa to strip Canadian-born citizens of their citizenship if they’ve been convicted of treason, spying or terrorism, if those Canadians have citizenship in another country or are considered able to claim citizenship in another country through a parent. The government can do so even if the conviction takes places in another country – even one that lacks the rule of law.

One of the highlights of being mayor of Calgary is that I get to attend citizenship ceremonies. Every time I do, I cry with joy to be with so many people who have worked so hard to become Canadian and have chosen to take on the great responsibility of citizenship. Sharing in that moment with new citizens, I always talk about how, growing up, I wondered why my father, mother and sister had these fancy citizenship certificates, while all I had was a lousy birth certificate. Only later did I appreciate two things about those pieces of paper: They were the most valuable possessions we had, and they were really the same document.

No longer.

How is it that those individuals I get to watch saying their oath should somehow be less Canadian than others? How is it that we should allow it to be easier for our government to strip them of the privilege and responsibility of citizenship? How is it that I, born at Saint Mike’s in downtown Toronto, could also have my citizenship revoked? One Canadian citizen committing the same crime should be treated the same as any other. They should not be subjected to a different sort of justice.

Most distressingly, the bill allows the minister of citizenship and immigration to exile people from Canada without any Canadian court being involved. That is a degree of power no individual should possess.

How did we allow this to happen?

I am deeply troubled by the language of divisiveness in Ottawa these days. The label of “terrorist” is thrown around with deliberate regularity. It is targeted language that nearly always describes an act of violence done by someone who shares my own faith, that ties violent action to individuals in a religious group here in Canada – many of whom are citizens. It does little to understand the causes of individual acts of violence or the potential solutions. Instead, it encourages fear and division; that’s the opposite of the country we aspire to build and nurture.

Our government likes to warn us of the radicalization of Muslim youth in our communities. But law-enforcement officers and community activists explain that the deeper cause of this radicalization is alienation and isolation – that the kids being radicalized are the same ones who’d often otherwise join gangs. In other words, according to individuals on the ground, the issue is not about religion. It’s about inclusion. Understanding this, we must work hard to make these kids feel part of the community.

But then the government, seeking to appeal to a certain segment of society, picks a fight on a completely irrelevant issue – wearing the niqab to a ceremony. It will appeal two court decisions and spend millions in taxpayer dollars to prevent one woman, Zunera Ishaq, from voting?

And what about those kids – the ones we’re trying to convince that there’s a place for them in our society? Bill C-24 warns them that, no matter what, they can never be truly Canadian. That their faith is incompatible with our values.

All that good work on deradicalization? Undermined.

When we act like this, whether the issue is addressing the extraordinary human suffering of refugees fleeing conflict or the social problems of our own youth, we are failing ourselves, our nation, and the world.

Let it be said: Such failures to become the Canada we hope for aren’t only recent. Far from it. After all, we are the nation that turned back Indian Sikh refugees on the ship Komagata Maru in 1914, the nation of the Chinese head tax, the nation of Japanese internment camps and the “None is too many” policy. We are the nation of provincial eugenics programs and generations of residential schools.

These, sadly, are also our origin stories. Many of us feel a deep, dark discomfort when confronted with them. The truth is not easy. It wasn’t easy for the victims of residential schools to tell their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it wasn’t easy for Canadians to bear witness to those truths. But it is important that we did then, and that we are doing so with the dark truths we see now.

The real answer to crafting the Canada we aspire to build lies in engaging muscularly with both the past and the future. It means undertaking a thousand simple acts of service and a million tiny acts of heroism. It means acting at the community level: on our streets, in our neighbourhoods, and in our schools. It means refusing to accept the politics of fear.

Source: Divided, Canada stands to lose what makes it great – The Globe and Mail