Multiculturalism has lost its meaning: Michael Bonner for Inside Policy
2025/09/10 2 Comments
Sort of a repeat of the criticisms of the 1990s. I think he underplays the importance of groups like Ukrainian Canadians who didn’t see recognition of their role in settling the West in the English/French narratives and that the original thinking in the Bi&Bi report, reflected in the policy and the 1988 Act, reflected a largely white, Christian Canada.
Most of the accommodation issues pertain to religion which were largely undiscussed at that time. Since then, of course, immigration has resulted in much greater religious diversity.
I think Bonner understates the integrative role of multiculturalism. Objectives like “full and equitable participation,” “equal treatment and equal protection,” “interaction between individuals and communities,” and “strengthening the status and use of the official languages” are fundamentally about integration.
So yes, back to its roots would be helpful as would correction of the excesses of the Trudeau government (which the expected cutbacks will likely impact).
But citing first millennial Britain as an example, where mobility, communications and transportation were limited, not to mention no internet or social media, is odd to say the least:
…We might conclude that multicultural policy has been pushed to an illogical extreme, or that an originally good and well-intentioned policy has been perverted. There is, however, a sense in which any official policy of multiculturalism is inherently superfluous and bound to fail. It is superfluous because all societies everywhere are multicultural in one sense or another. There is no country without local and regional diversity in culture, food, language, accent, dialect, and so on; and these differences tend to be robust over time. It is bound to fail because, in the long run, the general culture of a place will tend to become more and more homogenous.
Those two observations are not contradictory. A demonstrative example is Great Britain: a place repeatedly invaded and settled by various peoples over the first millennium AD, which nevertheless developed a common British identity as well as multiple, subsidiary national and regional cultures long before 20th century mass immigration. Given enough time, a place like Canada would surely turn out much the same: rich in cultural and linguistic diversity, with a blended population of many Indigenous peoples and others distantly descended from immigrants, all united by a common Canadian identity centuries in the making: John Ralston Saul’s “Métis nation” at last. Many would applaud this outcome, but it would hardly resemble the contemporary ideal of multiculturalism.
So it seems that, if we no longer understand the original meaning and purpose of multiculturalism – and if most Canadians object to the outcome of diversity for its own sake – then the concept itself is no longer useful. At the very least, the meaning and purpose of it should be redefined. If multiculturalism is to be of any further use it must be able to tell us both where we came from and where we are now; both who we are in particular and who we are in general. And if multiculturalism cannot do that, then it will not survive.
Dr. Michael Bonner is a former Government of Ontario policy director, a historian of ancient Iran, and author of In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present. He is a contributor for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Source: Multiculturalism has lost its meaning: Michael Bonner for Inside Policy
Multicultural Meanderings 