Adam Pankratz: Wokeness is deservedly crashing. Let’s be careful about retribution

2024/08/24 Leave a comment

Good note of caution:

…This is the fear I have harboured for a while now: that the inevitable backlash against the insane and destructive scourge of activist identity politics would arrive and, when it came, the perpetrators would discover that they were a minority and, the majority now coming for them was not in a conciliatory mood. While minorities persecuting majorities is bad (as we have seen via cancel culture), a majority persecuting a minority, whatever they may have done, has the potential to be worse.

The most vehement and vocal adherents and actors in the culture wars of the past years have done enormous damage to both institutions and individuals. They have cost people their jobs, reputations and, in some cases, their lives. It is not unnatural to want to see such bad actors harmed as they harmed others. By doing so, however, those of us who have stood against the tidal wave of woke activism which threatened society, risk becoming the beasts we fought so hard to push back. The Capital Pride debacle demonstrates the societal pendulum is swinging back, my fear is it will bludgeon indiscriminately and plunge us further into extreme societal divides.

Source: Adam Pankratz: Wokeness is deservedly crashing. Let’s be careful about retribution

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John Robson: The progressive backlash against Capital Pride is something to behold

2024/08/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

When even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks your Pride event is too aggressively weird and disruptive, it’s probably time to reconsider. Instead, Ottawa’s Capital Pride doubled down on its berserk anti-Israeli views, because ideas have consequences and bad ideas have terrible ones.

The Liberal Party of Canada is just the latest outfit to pull out of the sort of event it normally can’t get enough of. Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is gone, plus the U.S. Embassy, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), Public Service Pride Network, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and more. Which isn’t exactly like having the Southern Baptists or Sons of Thor give it a pass.

Indeed, when the Toronto Sun reported that “CHEO CEO Alex Munter said they wouldn’t take part” because some hospital staff and citizens “no longer feel safe or welcome,” I had to check whether “they” was just Munter. (No, it’s CHEO generally.) And Trudeau is such a Pride enthusiast, the Liberals are organizing a counter-event “to celebrate Ottawa’s 2SLGBTQI+ communities.”

Yes, plural. All have won and all must have communities. And the OCDSB puts up so many Pride flags, there’s barely room for a times table. So what’s going on?

It’s a seismic tremor along an ominous fault line in modern progressivism. The trigger was an Aug. 6 Capital Pride statement saying:

“Part of the growing Islamophobic sentiment we are witnessing is fuelled by the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic. By portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians. We refuse to be complicit in this violence.”

It’s provocatively, transgressively false. Israel is “portraying” itself as a haven through the devious scheme, typical of the Elders of Zion, of being one. And this “growing Islamophobic sentiment” has nothing to do with Israel respecting human rights and much to do with Hamas and its supporters here and abroad backing genocidal brutality.

The “pink-washing” indictment is hysterically and mendaciously anti-Israel. Capital Pride offers a perfunctory condemnation of Hamas atrocities before going full Henry Ford about Israel’s slaughter, dehumanization, “flagrant violation of international law” and “plausible risk of genocide.” But such demented one-sidedness is driven by a deeper, odious hostility to the people whose historic homeland includes Jerusalem.

The Jewish Federation of Ottawa, after kowtowing to “safe and inclusive,” frankly denounced Capital Pride’s “recent antisemitic statement.” And there’s the nub.

The urge to subvert, to transvalue values, cannot stop with odd hairstyles and lifestyles. It must reach into the depths of morality, and I mean the depths. Thus Capital Pride ranted, “We wish to reaffirm our commitment to solidarity as the core principle guiding our work.” But solidarity with whom? Evidently the whole dang decolonizing family, even the Muslim Brotherhood. How can you not?

Following such dangerous logic part way, the boycotters also babble about inclusion. The Ottawa Hospital said that, “Inclusivity and supporting all communities we serve is very important to us,” while Munter objected that some people “no longer feel safe or welcome.” But surely some shouldn’t feel welcome. The Klan, say. Or Hamas. Such touchy-feely inclusionism promotes unilateral mental disarmament.

Or worse. After the Sun asked Capital Pride about a sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was pointedly constructed where Islamists deny the Temple of Solomon ever stood, calling homosexuality an “abomination,” demanding a Schwulenrein Palestine including Jerusalem and objecting to men and women attending college together, it issued a new statement, “We reject any attempts to marginalize religious and cultural minority groups from the broader Pride movement.” Even death-to-Jews ones, consistently if ominously.

Wokeness may start as a trendy virtue-signalling wrapping you expect to don and doff like the rebellious calf’s leather jacket in that “Far Side” cartoon. But as Queen’s history Professor Don Akenson said, people have small ideas but “big ideas have people.” And if you’re committed to “subversion,” transvaluing all values and making others uncomfortable, you start with blue hair and a rainbow and end with a burqa and inverted red triangle.

The chickens-for-KFC paradox of queer militants supporting Hamas militants is part of the thrill. And this slippery slope is especially vertiginous if officialdom is sliding, too. If every government email lists pronouns, art galleries duct-tape bananas, the Olympics turn the Last Supper into the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and politicians trample free speech to fight “hate,” how do you shock the bourgeoisie sufficiently that politicians recoil instead of leaning in for a selfie?

Well, respectable progressives still draw the line at blatant antisemitism. But sufficiently radical immigration policy and generalized postmodernism may erase even that boundary.

So I applaud those boycotting this transgressively transgressive event. But please check your assumptions because they’re not safe or inclusive.

Source: John Robson: The progressive backlash against Capital Pride is something to behold

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Meeting between Trudeau and Muslim leaders in Quebec called off after many refuse to attend

2024/08/23 Leave a comment

Of note (counterproductive IMO):

A meeting between Muslim leaders in Quebec and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau planned for this afternoon north of Montreal — weeks ahead of a critical byelection in the city — was cancelled after many of those invited refused to attend, CBC News has learned.

“Many members of our community continue to feel angry and frustrated with a government that in their view simply hasn’t operated with integrity in relation to what is happening in Gaza, or in addressing the steep rise of Islamophobia in Canada,” the National Council of Canadian Muslims told CBC News in a media statement.

“While our community is not a monolith, this sentiment is widespread.”

It’s not clear how many people were invited to the event but the NCCM said “many members” who were invited, including “leaders and imams, declined to meet.”

Invitations were issued verbally by the office of Fayçal El-Khoury, the MP for Laval-les-Iles, according to two members of the Quebec Muslim community who spoke to CBC News….

Source: Meeting between Trudeau and Muslim leaders in Quebec called off after many refuse to attend

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Jesse Kline: The Canadian terrorist supporter who Iran loves

2024/08/23 Leave a comment

Indeed. And shameful:

There are some awards that should give recipients pause and make them reconsider their life choices. Like receiving a Razzie Award for worst actor, a Grand Cross of the German Eagle from the Nazis or a human rights award from the Islamic Republic of Iran. But for Canadian terror apologist Charlotte Kates, the Iranian regime’s recognition of her anti-Israel campaign is considered a badge of honour.

Kates is the international co-ordinator of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a registered Canadian non-profit that was founded by members of, and is closely associated with, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which Canada recognizes as a terrorist entity.

Samidoun is also responsible for organizing and funding many of the vile anti-Israel protests that have taken place on Canadian streets since October 7.

Readers may remember Kates as the woman who stood in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery in April, shouting “Long live October 7!” and praising the massacre in which 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were brutally raped and murdered, and over 250 were taken into captivity, where many remain to this day.

Kates was arrested as part of a hate-crime investigation and released on the condition that she not attend any rallies, pending a court date in the fall. But that did not stop her from boarding a plane to Tehran, where she — along with five other individuals, including slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh — received an Islamic Human Rights Award for her “anti-Zionist activities” earlier this month.

A couple days later, Kates appeared as a guest on Iranian TV, clad in a hijab and appropriately spaced from her male host, where she blamed “Zionist organizations and political officials” for her arrest and opined about the “lie of so-called western democracy and concern for human rights.”

Iran, of course, has one of the world’s most dismal human rights records. This is the country where, in 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested and subsequently murdered for improperly wearing a headscarf in public. The government crackdown on the ensuing protests resulted in hundreds of deaths, tens of thousands of arrests and numerous executions….

Source: Jesse Kline: The Canadian terrorist supporter who Iran loves

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , ,

Stephens: What I Want a University President to Say About Campus Protests

2024/08/22 Leave a comment

Essential reading for some of our more “woke” institutions, academics and students. Money quote:

“It was listening to students and faculty whom we had admitted or hired for their intellectual sophistication, their capacity to understand complexity and nuance, reduce their own thinking to a handful of slogans and mantras written for them by others. It was the absence of intellectual humility and its replacement with moral certitudes.:”

…Some of you may have heard the term “institutional neutrality.” It is the belief that universities like ours should avoid taking political positions of any kind, either through investment decisions or political declarations by administrators or by academic boycotts of foreign scholars, except when the interests of the university are directly affected — like when the Supreme Court weighs in on our admissions process.

You may also have heard about the Chicago principles, which make the case for universities to embrace an almost unfettered principle of free expression as “an essential part of the university’s educational mission,” even when the speech is seen by most members of the community as “offensive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded.”

Our university embraces both institutional neutrality and the Chicago principles. We do so not because they are ends in themselves but because they are necessary ways to cultivate the spirit of inquiry. That spirit cannot be fettered by formal or informal speech codes that might stop us from asking uncomfortable but important questions, or by university policies that preclude fruitful exchanges with scholars from other countries. At our university you will find scholars from Israel, China, Turkey, Russia and other countries whose policies you may not like; we do not hold them responsible for their governments, nor do we ask them to make political declarations as the price of belonging to our community.

But necessary isn’t sufficient. If all we accomplish by adopting the Chicago principles is that everyone gets to speak and nobody bothers to listen, those principles will have fallen short. If we embrace institutional neutrality at the topmost level while remaining indifferent to the one-sided politicization of classrooms, departments and administrative offices, we will have done little to advance the pedagogical benefits of neutrality, which is intended to broaden your exposure to the widest variety of views and ideas.

And if we permit protests that inhibit the speech of others, or set up no-go zones for Jewish students, or make it difficult to study in the library or pay attention in class, we may have upheld the right to speak in the abstract while stripping it of its underlying purpose. The point of free speech is to open discussion, not to shut it down. It’s to engage with our opponents, not to shut them out. It’s to introduce fresh perspectives, not to declare every perspective but our own to be beyond the moral pale.

I’d like to add a personal note as a Jew. Many people objected to last year’s protests, with their chants of “from the river to the sea,” as antisemitic. I find that calling for the elimination of Israel — indeed, of any state — is inherently repugnant, since it would almost inevitably entail an almost unimaginable level of violence, dispossession and destruction.

But antisemitism is not what I found chiefly offensive about the protests. I accept that most of the protesters are not antisemitic, or at least don’t think of themselves that way.

What bothered me, rather, was watching members of our community turn off their critical faculties. It was listening to students and faculty whom we had admitted or hired for their intellectual sophistication, their capacity to understand complexity and nuance, reduce their own thinking to a handful of slogans and mantras written for them by others. It was the absence of intellectual humility and its replacement with moral certitudes. It was the substitution of serious political thought with propaganda. It was the refusal to engage with difference and criticism in any way except denunciation and moral bullying.

In short, the way in which these protests unfolded was an insult to the spirit of inquiry that this university has an institutional responsibility to protect and champion. So does this mean we will brook no form of protest? Of course not. But we do expect that protests, so long as they happen on our campus, on our property, conform with the aims of education as we see them.

That means, at a minimum, that we will enforce clearly established “time, place and manner” restrictions, so that the rights of those who protest are never allowed to impinge on the rights of those who don’t. It also means we will invest in serious programming about the Mideast conflict, including by inviting Israeli and Palestinian scholars to campus and hosting moderated debates where you can cheer your own political side but must at least listen to the other. Our goal is never to make you think one way or the other. It’s to make you think, period.

The spirit of protest will always have a place here, as it must in every free society. Our job is to harness it to the task of inquiry so that knowledge may continue to grow, and human life may be enriched.

Source: What I Want a University President to Say About Campus Protests


Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Australia: Modernised Multicultural Grants Program

2024/08/17 Leave a comment

Announcement by the Albanese government. Interesting, that Australia provides core funding support as well as support for non-religious training for faith leaders:

The Australian Government commits to supporting a stronger multicultural Australia through the Modernised Multicultural Grants Program.

This program will:

  • give more consistent and long term funding to multicultural organisations,
  • foster more certainty and sustainability for multicultural organisations, and
  • support longer-term initiatives and lasting results.

The funding will support organisations to:

  • hold local events,
  • celebrate festivals,
  • build and deliver support programs,
  • improve amenities,
  • build facilities, and
  • strengthen their ability to serve both members of their own community and the broader society.

This program will give funding through four separate streams:

  • Infrastructure for Multicultural Organisations
  • Multicultural Grass Roots Initiatives
  • Multicultural Peak Body Funding
  • Faith Leaders Training

These opportunities are currently under development. For more information on when these grant rounds open, including how to apply for these opportunities, see the Australian Government’s grants information system, GrantConnect.

You can subscribe to the Community Grants Hub mailing list to get notifications of new grant opportunities as they become available.

Infrastructure for Multicultural Organisations

This opportunity will fund grants of up to $20 million over 3 years from 2025-26. You can apply for this round in October 2024.

Successful projects will include construction, upgrade or extension of infrastructure that provides demonstrated benefits to multicultural communities. For example:

  • community hubs and centres
  • museums, libraries and art spaces
  • indoor and outdoor amenities, like food preparation areas, dining spaces, bathrooms, play equipment and barbecue facilities
  • meeting and conference facilities
  • stages, auditoriums and spaces to encourage performing arts
  • spaces for sporting and physical activities.

To be eligible to apply, your project must be investment ready (or ‘shovel ready’), meaning construction can begin within 12 weeks of executing your grant agreement. This means you will have:

  • regulatory and/or development approvals,
  • evidence of experience in delivering similar sized projects or have engaged a third party with relevant experience,
  • evidence of your co-contribution from another source (for example state government funding) or your cash contribution to the project,
  • a detailed project proposal, including project plans (designs), timelines and procurement process,
  • detailed budget including quotes and cost benefit analysis,
  • detailed risk management plan, and
  • evidence that you either own the land/infrastructure being built/upgraded upon, or that you have the landowner’s permission to use the land/infrastructure.

Multicultural Grassroots Initiatives

Organisations will be able to apply for grants of up to $100,000 over 2 years from 2024-25 for:

  • Multicultural celebrations, such as festivals and events,
  • Multicultural amenities, such as building upgrades, furnishings or equipment, or
  • Intercultural connections, such as intercultural sports programs or art projects.

You can apply for this round in November 2024.

Multicultural Peak Body Funding

Multicultural peak bodies and community organisations will be able to apply for 4 years of funding of up to $400,000 per year. This will allow them to continue to play a pivotal role in strengthening Australia’s multicultural capacity.

You can apply for this round in December 2024.

Faith Leaders Training

This grant opportunity will provide up to $500,000 per year, over 4 years,  from 2024-25 for organisations to develop and deliver non religious training courses to faith leaders and those in pastoral roles in faith organisations.​

You can apply for this round in December 2024.

Source: Modernised Multicultural Grants Program

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Deborah Lipstadt slams progressive definition of antisemitism

2024/08/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy for monitoring antisemitism, defended a controversial definition of antisemitism Wednesday and slammed a progressive alternative as having been endorsed by “some renowned antisemites.”

In a conversation with reporters at the State Department, Lipstadt said that International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which describes anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism, represented the best language for addressing antisemitism overseas because foreign governments are most familiar with it.

“You need a definition,” Lipstadt said.

How the federal government should define antisemitism in relation to Israel has been a contentious topic since the Trump administration, and even more so as President Joe Biden has sought to make combating antisemitism a cornerstone of his administration.

The release of the landmark national strategy to counter antisemitism last year was delayed for several weeks amid a frantic lobbying campaign between proponents of the IHRA definition, including most major American Jewish groups, and critics who say that it has a chilling effect on legitimate criticism of Israel.

The White House ultimately mentioned in the strategy both the IHRA definition and the Nexus Document, which is meant to complement the IHRA definition and soften some of its positions on Israel. But Lipstadt said on Wednesday that Nexus was not appropriate for international use.

“You say ‘Nexus’ to most Europeans, they have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lipstadt said. “It’s not applicable.”

Jonathan Jacoby, who founded the task force behind Nexus, said that he hoped the group could work with Lipstadt to raise its profile internationally. “Nexus has only been used in the U.S. context, but the principles apply whenever and wherever issues related to Israel and antisemitism intersect,” he said.

Endorsed by ‘renowned antisemites,’ Lipstadt claims

But Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian, reserved her harshest criticism for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was released in 2021 as an alternative to IHRAand alluded to, but not mentioned, in the White House strategy.

“A group of academics signed it, including some renowned antisemites like Richard Falk,” Lipstadt said. “So I don’t know that I’d want to go with that definition of antisemitism.”

Falk, a retired Princeton professor and longtime critic of Israel, has been embroiled in several controversies involving allegations of antisemitism and conspiracy theories, including posting a cartoon on his blog that featured a dog wearing a yarmulke while urinating on Lady Justice. 

Falk, who is Jewish, has consistently denied that he is antisemitic.

The Jerusalem Declaration was drafted by a group of mostly Jewish academics and has been signed by more than 300 other scholars.

Source: Deborah Lipstadt slams progressive definition of antisemitism

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Chris Selley: Gaza makes strange bedfellows — and maybe that’s a good thing

2024/08/14 Leave a comment

Of interest. Interesting type of intersectionality:

…Barely veiled threats aside, there’s nothing surprising about any of the foregoing. Few religions are bullish on things like homosexuality and gender fluidity, and Islam is no exception. When the Environics Institute last surveyed Canadian Muslims’ attitudes about the country, in 2016, it found just 36 per cent of Muslims felt “homosexuality should be accepted by society,” versus 80 per cent of Canadians overall. Just 26 per cent of Muslims felt it “should … be possible to be both an observant Muslim and live openly in a … same-sex relationship.”

And they’re allowed to think that. We put freedom of religion in the Charter and everything.

In some ways this just highlights the absurdity of left-versus-right thinking. Your opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really should have no bearing on your opinions about same-sex marriage or the appropriate age, if any, for gender-reassignment surgery — or indeed vice versa. They are entirely unrelated issues.

I don’t consider myself especially conservative or right wing, so I’m not here to rep “my side” or score any points. But I will note that people on the left are often obsessed with bedfellows: If someone nasty agrees with you on something, that’s somehow a reflection on you. It’s a reason to reconsider your position.

It’s not a judgment progressives would want to invite on themselves, in this case. But if they’re capable of locking arms with social-conservatives to advance a common cause, I’m tempted to see it as a good thing more than a bad thing. We should all be able to look past our differences, even visceral ones, to make a better country.

Source: Chris Selley: Gaza makes strange bedfellows — and maybe that’s a good thing

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Aziz: The Canadian dream is on life support

2024/08/13 Leave a comment

One of the articles attracting considerable and merited attention:

….To make matters worse, immigration − an exclusively federal jurisdiction − has gone unchecked, which is a disservice to both the country and the legal immigrants who have been here for years. Canada’s immigration system used to be the envy of the world − focusing on merit, on the needs of the labour force, and on a generosity of spirit that was practically unrivalled. Canada will always be pro-immigration, but there needs to be a responsible conversation on the subject, not using it to divide people or sing one’s own moral praises.

In Canada, the social contract for years allowed more immigration to grow the economy, but this came with stringent criteria for who should be admitted. Today, there are more than 900,000 international students in Canada, a 170-per-cent increase over the past decade. Some of these students have been scammed by for-profit colleges. Others have been affiliated with fake schools, using their student visas as loopholes in the immigration system. The social system was unprepared for such an influx, though certain institutions benefited: colleges and universities got more fees; politicians touted rising immigration numbers; the landlord class got an endless supply of perpetual renters. Without any housing available, this has left the country unprepared to deal with multiple, overlapping economic and social crises.

Whether for immigrants or those born in Canada, the same reality unfolds. We have created an entire generation of permanent renters, people who will work and struggle and maybe build some limited wealth, but will never be able to own property. Keep in mind that more than half of Canadians are living paycheque-to-paycheque. Many in my generation have been entirely shut out of prosperity − betraying the promise of progress for millions….

The social situation deteriorates. The housing shortage is chronic. Economic stagnation is severe. The political crisis may be even worse. At this moment, there is a backlash building. Evidence for this is everywhere − most recently in the riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s, which just elected a Conservative MP for the first time since 1988 − and it would be wise for leaders in office to take notice. They should admit something went wrong, re-examine old assumptions and pivot. There must be a positive vision for Canadians, bringing in new voices and faces, and grounded in a common purpose that unites all people around the shared values of hard work and equal opportunity. Most importantly, politicians should dispense with their scripts and level with Canadians about the challenges ahead.

Canada is not broken; it is wounded. But the potential inherent in this country is enormous. Its future must be reclaimed and won soon, or lost for good.

Source: The Canadian dream is on life support

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Haan et al: What Does Integration Mean in a Multicultural Country like Canada?

2024/08/12 2 Comments

Interesting discussion on integration definitions. But I think this relationship model, while important, neglects socioeconomic outcomes (income, employment, scolarity etc). Valid to question whether integration into the “mainstream” remains valid but looking at the data indicates still is relevant.

And there is a risk of dismissing pre-existing norms as it suggests an approach of “anything goes” rather than conforming with Canadian laws and regulations, which of course evolve and change as the population and social norms change:

…Although there is evidence to support both segmented and new assimilation theories, it is also becoming obvious that researchers should pay more attention to the demographic realities in immigrant-receiving countries such as Canada. As some native-born populations shrink in proportion to the whole, it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint where exactly the process of integration might occur. The sociologist Richard Alba recommends expanding the definition of the mainstream to include more groups. While this is obviously an important step, it maintains an underlying assumption that there exists a core population group. What happens when a city increasingly does not have a majority group? 

To this end, sociologist Maurice Crul recommends moving beyond thinking about integration as a minority group’s merging into a majority population and having little to no effect on the mainstream itself. His “integration into diversity” theory posits that the notion of a mainstream is becoming less useful and should be replaced with one of a population marked by diversity.

Drawing on results from the Becoming a Minority project, which collected data from several European cities, he provides a matrix to describe nine outcomes of individuals, each focused on different integration attitudes (see Figure 2). The most integrated individuals will exist in a diverse social network that believes immigration-related diversity is enriching, while the least integrated will be at the opposite end of the spectrum, feeling threatened by immigration and favoring a homogenous social circle.

Figure 2. Integration into Diversity Theory Matrix

Source: Maurice Crul, “Integration into Diversity Theory Renewing–Once Again–Assimilation Theory,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50, no. 1 (2024): 257-71, available online.

The strength of this approach is that it does not take into consideration individual characteristics such as skin color or first language spoken. According to this theory, these factors do not really matter because there is no expectation of comparing individual characteristics to that of a mainstream population; neither the characteristics of the community nor the person matter. What matters instead is individual actions and attitudes towards diversity. The more tolerant a person is, the more integrated they are into their heterogenous society.    

This approach is still rather new and, as such, does not yet explain which identity position a person will take. It is, in fact, only beginning to be used to predict characteristics such as feelings of belonging and perceptions of neighborhood security. Crul is clear in that he does not want his theory to replace new or segmented assimilation theory as an explanation of the integration process (he instead refers to it as an update), but the idea shifts the focus away from that of an individual melding into the mainstream. By positing the existence of nine subgroups, it becomes possible to envision multiple mainstreams with multiple attitudes towards integration. In a country such as Canada, this approach seems rather prescient.

Nonetheless, the utility of a new theoretical framework is best assessed empirically. Canada’s General Social Survey asks individuals how many of their friends are of the same immigrant group, although not about attitudes towards diversity. It would be interesting to add this question and find other ways to analyze integration into diversity theory.

Moving forward, immigration to Canada is only increasing. With extensive efforts to bring in more new arrivals every year, immigrants’ influence on the Canadian population is growing—and appears on course to continue doing so even as public disquiet has caused the government to seek to trim some immigration. Traditional notions of integration are becoming increasingly irrelevant in a country where nearly all population growth stems from immigration. New arrivals find their place in society not by assuming pre-existing norms, but by finding their people and their place and creating their own norms. In this way, Canada’s diversity will only continue to grow over time.

Source: What Does Integration Mean in a Multicultural Country like Canada?

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