Multiculturalism and Discrimination

Multiculturalism: it’s a word we associate closely with Canada, a country that is composed, like a patchwork quilt, of various cultures and ethnicities. This is enshrined in the Multiculturalism Act. We are a country built by immigrants and the word “multiculturalism” implies that we embrace each separate immigrant culture instead of forcing new Canadians to abandon their cultures and assimilate. Multiculturalism implies that we want immigrants to feel integrated in Canadian society while being able to comfortably express the culture of the places they came from. 

Immigrants in Canada are protected from many forms of racism in Canada by Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Human Rights Commission, the Multiculturalism Act, and the Employment Equity Act. (Side note: these items also benefit and act as protections for those born in Canada.) Whether or not these protections are used enough, or too much, or not effectively enough, or whether they are manipulated for unethical gains is still very much up for debate.

However, all of this doesn’t change the fact that racism still exists in Canada. Discrimination is part of many new immigrants’ realities in this country. Do you doubt what I’m saying? Look at any news story about immigration in Canada on the web and scroll down to the comments section. You will find it to be full of people who are judging immigrants as a whole based on some stereotype or another. Although everyone is entitled to their opinion, (provided they do not act in a harmful way based on that opinion) when someone judges an individual based on a racial-group or ethnic-group based stereotype that is racism. And racism and discrimination tear our multicultural society apart instead of building it up.

As Bill Nye the Science Guy used to say “Consider the following”:

A 2009 Article by Lesley Ciarula Taylor in the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/634117) discussed a then recent study of immigrants and discrimination. The study of “41,666 people interviewed in nine languages… found skin colour – not religion, not income – was the biggest barrier to immigrants feeling they belonged…” (Taylor 2009) The study determined that the failure to integrate into Canadian society and the entrenchment of ethnic enclaves was not the result of multiculturalism allowing them to not adopt Canadian values if they chose not to, but because of the racism that they experienced. Or as Taylor puts it: “The more discrimination someone faced, the more likely they were to identify with their ethnic group, rather than Canadian” (2009).  That is, new immigrants do not choose to be isolated, but are forcibly isolated by their experiences with discrimination in Canada. Clearly, racism is undermining the multicultural society we like to tell the world that we have in Canada.

You can read more about what the Federal Government is doing on the subject of multiculturalism here:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/funding/index.asp
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/multi-report2011/index.asp