Election Watch: Attacks on Multiculturalism May Haunt Tories – New Canadian Media

2015/10/17 Leave a comment

Good overview by Phil Triadafilopoulos, Stephen E. White, Inder S. Marwah on some of the implications and tests of the Conservative electoral strategy with ethnic voters:

Verbal and physical attacks on Muslim women, graffiti on Muslim candidates’ lawn signs and the growing sense of unease among Canadian Muslims speak to the costs of the Conservatives’ strategy.

And yet, the response of Canadians to these assaults on fellow citizens has been muted.

Polls suggest that Canadians across the country are, in fact, supportive of the Conservatives’ positions. What does this tell us about the state of Canadian democracy?

Canadians’ support for multiculturalism is limited.

First, it suggests that Canadians’ support for multiculturalism is limited. Intolerant or merely opportunistic politicians can count on a reservoir of such support in advancing their agendas if they play their cards right.

The Conservatives have done exactly this: the relatively diffuse spread of Muslim voters, along with a broad-ranging antipathy toward the niqab, made this a worthwhile gamble.

By making the niqab an issue the Conservatives have harmed the NDP’s chances in the province Quebec, making it much less likely that the New Democrats – the frontrunner at the start of this campaign – will emerge with the most seats on Oct. 19.

The Conservatives’ ability to hold onto ridings in both the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver Area will provide the ultimate test of its strategy.

Second, if such bans become legislated, the ongoing battle between elected governments and the courts will continue.

While Stephen Harper has framed the NDP and Liberal parties’ resistance to niqab bans as being “on the wrong side of the electorate”, they’re on the right side of constitutional laws intended to shield minorities from the potentially unconstitutional preferences of democratic majorities.

We need only recall the overwhelming public opposition to Sikh turbans in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 25 years ago to see how important the courts can be in preserving minority rights in the face of public pressure.

The coveted new Canadian vote

Finally, the election raises questions about the Conservative party’s longstanding efforts to replace the Liberal party as the “natural home” of new Canadian voters.  

The Conservative’s positions on the niqab currently enjoy support from a majority of Canadians, including new Canadian voters. But the extension of the culture wars into the final days of the campaign may be risky.

If the Conservatives’ strategy is successfully framed as an attack on Canadian multiculturalism and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it may come back to haunt the party.

The Conservatives’ ability to hold onto ridings in both the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver Area will provide the ultimate test of its strategy.

Source: Election Watch: Attacks on Multiculturalism May Haunt Tories – New Canadian Media

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Election Watch: Debunking the “Ethnic Vote” Strategy – New Canadian Media

2015/05/04 Leave a comment

While generally correct, this piece by Stephen E. White, Inder S. Marwah, and Phil Triadafilopoulos understates the degree of targeting – and micro-targeting – between and within ethnic communities. The current government’s approach, taking a more explicit side in any number of diaspora politics, is but one illustration:

New Canadians are no less savvy than the rest of the Canadian electorate. While it’s true that recent immigrants don’t have many years of experience with Canadian politics and elections, research also suggests they learn rather quickly.

There’s no reason, then, to think that parties’ targeted appeals to ethnic minority communities are any more effective than the strategies used to win the support of other kinds of voters.

Where does this leave us?  We can be sure the “ethnic vote” will figure prominently in political parties’ 2015-election campaigning. While the success of their efforts can in no way be assumed, the parties will undoubtedly compete for the support of new Canadians.

There’s no evidence that ethnic outreach actually works – but the parties believe it might, and this conviction shapes both electoral strategies and policy making.

Canadian political parties’ ongoing and ever more systematic efforts to compete for the votes of new Canadians helps explain why anti-immigrant discourse is so rare in Canadian elections and why Canadian parties, regardless of their ideological stripe, support robust immigration levels and the maintenance of an official multiculturalism policy.

Put differently, Canadian “exceptionalism” in the area of immigration politics and policy may have less to do with our innate civic virtues than with the strategic calculations of our political operators.

Election Watch: Debunking the “Ethnic Vote” Strategy – New Canadian Media.

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Election Watch: Beyond the “Ethnic Vote” – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/14 Leave a comment

Start of an interesting series in New Canadian Media in the lead-up to the October election by political science profs Inder S. Marwah, Stephen E. White and Phil Triadafilopoulos:

  • What exactly is the “ethnic vote”?  How is it understood and/or defined by different parties, media and researchers? Is there such a thing as an ethnic vote, or are there many different (perhaps conflicting) ethnic votes? Do assumptions about the “ethnic vote” portray widely diverse communities as sharing in a single set of values or interests?
  • What are the key ridings to watch in the lead-up to the 2015 election? How will demographic factors affect local, regional and national voting patterns?
  • What are the issues of greatest concern to new Canadians and/or longstanding ethnic communities? How are the different parties addressing them?
  • Are religious practices being politicized for electoral purposes, as has been the case in many European states? How are new Canadians likely to respond to such efforts?

We will explore how immigration and new Canadian communities are helping to shape the country’s political landscape. Broadly speaking, Canada is an immigrant-receiving success story. In the last few decades, the country has opened itself to a high volume of immigration, provided immigrant populations with relatively easy access to naturalization and citizenship, and maintained its social cohesion, political stability and economic wellbeing along the way. While new Canadians undoubtedly face barriers in accessing social, political and economic opportunities, they fare better in these respects than do immigrant communities in many other countries. New Canadians are, then, poised to profoundly influence the 2015 federal election, and more broadly, Canada’s political life. We look forward to analyzing their influence in the months ahead.

Election Watch: Beyond the “Ethnic Vote” – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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