In 1984, Canada admitted only 88,239 immigrants, but the years following saw increased numbers, and by 2001, some 5.4 million Canadians aged fifteen or older were foreign-born — 18.4 percent of the population. This represented the highest rate of diversity in seventy years; in Ontario and British Columbia, the figure reached nearly 35 percent.
The most significant change over the past two decades has been the increase in visible-minority immigration. In 2004, only 20 percent came from Europe, while nearly 50 percent came from China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Korea, or Iran. For the moment, non-white Canadians represent approximately 16 percent of the population. But with more inflow, and with first-generation immigrants raising families, this figure will increase significantly in the coming years.
Recognizing that visible-minority groups faced unique obstacles to integration, the Heritage Department conducted a formal review of multicultural programs in 1996. The result was a more assertive mandate: “to foster an inclusive society in which people of all backgrounds, whose identities are respected and recognized as vital to an evolving Canadian identity, feel a sense of belonging and an attachment to this country, and participate fully in Canadian society.” The new thrust was directed at non-immigrant society, at getting it to respect and encourage diversity. In fact, through the 1990s, the government directed funding to ethnic organizations and insisted that public institutions such as the civil service and the crtc reflect the ethnic diversity of the country through their hiring practices. Whereas the goal of past initiatives was clearly integration, Canada had evolved into a state that promoted hyphenated citizenship.
The changes were controversial. Over and above critiques that hiring quotas inevitably lead to reverse discrimination, there were questions about whether encouraging the retention of ethnic identity would drive visible-minority groups away from mainstream society. Examining the United States, American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote of a “cult of ethnicity” that “exaggerates differences, intensifies resentments and antagonism, drives even deeper the awful wedges between races and nationalities. The endgame is selfpity and self-ghettoization.” Schlesinger’s critique resonates in Canada. Recent settlement trends suggest that so-called “ethnic box settlements” are becoming prevalent.
In the Canadian context, as Ottawa continued devolving powers to the provinces, the sense of nationhood receded in significance. When the issues directly affecting people’s lives — health care, education, cities — are overwhelmingly controlled by the provinces and there is an absence of large-scale, nation- defining projects (to follow the historic examples of the railway, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, medicare), the creation of a coherent national vision becomes difficult in the extreme.
Twenty years ago, roughly half of the immigrant population gravitated to Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver. Today, nearly 80 percent do — and this is 80 percent of a much larger total. Within these growing urban centres, immigrant groups are clustering in tightly knit, ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods partly because, according to the government’s own studies, many ethnic groups feel out of place in Canada. Their first loyalty is to their group, and, against a history of the children of immigrants “moving out,” today there is an increasing concentration of visible-minority groups “staying home,” staying alien to host cultures and having little sense of civic nationalism.
How can this situation change? For multiculturalism to work, the native- born must accept immigrants as equals and new arrivals must demonstrate a willingness to join mainstream society by adopting the fundamental mores and values of the prevailing culture. There must also be cross-fertilization between ethnic groups and civic nationalism has to be clearly defined. According to University of Toronto sociology professor Jeffrey Reitz, recent evidence casts serious doubt that this is occurring in modern Canada. Reitz has spent his career studying the Canadian immigrant experience and, considering data on both income levels and attitudes, he believes that “multicultural policies are simply not working as well for visible minorities.” Despite targeted programs to ease adjustment, Reitz’s research shows that, unlike post-World War II immigrants, Canada’s newest arrivals are not only failing to catch up financially, but the gap between them and non-immigrant groups is widening. Social disparities are most pronounced among visible-minority groups, and Reitz’s data indicates that while “satisfaction with life” increases from the first to the second generation for white immigrants, it actually decreases among non-white immigrants.
Voting behaviour is one of many indices researched by Reitz to gauge rates of societal participation and involvement. A scant 20 percent of firstgeneration immigrants (that is, the foreign-born), regardless of colour, exercise their franchise. By the second generation, however, white immigrant participation rates almost quadruple, while among visible-minority groups it only doubles. Surprisingly, it appears that first-generation non-white immigrants actually enter Canada with a greater sense of belonging than white immigrants, but within a generation that feeling diminishes among visible-minority groups, while white immigrants report a growing sense of belonging and involvement.
Because immigration is most often push driven — that is, homeland conditions motivate emigration — in the main, immigrants are satisfied with their adopted country. Early on, their sense of belonging derives principally from involvement within their own ethnic communities, which Reitz reports is much higher among non-white minorities. But by the second generation, that involvement diminishes, as cultural ties loosen and expectations of their adopted home increase. According to Reitz, it is with the second generation, the same demographic responsible for the London bombings and the riots outside Paris, that ethnic tensions and alienation most clearly reveal themselves.
Unlike Britain and France, however, which began accepting visible-minority immigrants after World War II, Canada did not do so in any real numbers until the 1970s. Consequently, second-generation immigrants represent only 14 percent of Canada’s current visible-minority population. But today, two-thirds of all native-born visible minorities in Canada are under sixteen years old. Their numbers are destined to swell and, given current settlement trends and growing income disparities, Canada may indeed face the kinds of ethnic conflicts that have beset England and France. Instead of having more effective multicultural policies or greater societal tolerance, Canada has avoided these problems to date largely because it got into the visible-minority immigration game a generation later.
