Hey Sebastien. Great idea for a thread, given how often this topic pops up and pollutes other threads.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
Personally as you all know, I oppose multiculturalism. I think this is a very flawed concept to begin with. If you value cultural diversity as I do, you can't logically support multiculturalism. Imagine if we were to blanket the world with the concept of multiculturalism as currently implemented in English Canada and UK notably. It will result in the complete dissapearance of all national cultures and suppression of national identities because every countries in the world would be exactly the same. In other words, if you push the concept of multiculturalism to the extreme in theory, there's no need to have countries because there is no longer any specific cultures, just one global culture.
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I think that's the aim, actually. A globalist agenda.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
That's why proponents of multiculturalism in Canada (Liberals and NDP) are telling new immigrants that there is no definite culture in Canada and that we are all immigrants in this country (That's obviously an intellectual fraud). Indeed, according to multiculturalism in what is known as English Canada, old-stock Canadians are not considered the host society or the historic founding people, they are reduced to the status of an ethnic community among many others. That completely obliterate 400 years of history. When you think about that, multiculturalism is a cultural genocide.
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Well, in truth, Canada did have non-English/French immigrants before the multiculturalism act. But they were expected to assimilate to a WASP/French host culture. This never destroyed the culture of the Ukranians, Dutch, Germans, etc, but it allowed them to compete successfully in the host culture and become fully Canadian (non-hyphenated). Imagine if those immigrant groups were let in under multiculturalism. We'd have a lot more Quebec-like situations around.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
So how does multiculturalism works in practice ? In Canada it's almost as if the federal government was opening branches of foreign countries on the Canadian soil. Since we are telling immigrants to remain what they are and that there is no need to integrate into the mainstream canadian society, most of new immigrants in Canada live exactly as they were living in their country of origins. As a result of that you have as Joe Clark once said, a community of communities that live side by side with almost no interactions with each other.
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Well, there is interaction between communities, but as these communities reach enough critical mass (a la Toronto), there is a declining need to go outside the community for anything.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
Since English-Canada is a community of communities instead of a nation in the classical sense, how can all these micro nations-communities cohabit under one government ?
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Good question. The answer is simple. We're all going to sit under the multicultural rainbow holding hands and singing kum-bah-yah.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
In comparison, integration recognize that there is a definite culture and seek to integrate new immigrants to that culture. This definite culture is shape by the contribution of people of diverse origins and will continously evolve because of the contribution newcomers are making. That's what is known as an integrationist melting pot. That's what the USA and Quebec are among others. Now is integration a flawless model ? Absolutely not as inequalities still subsists. But with integration, we can at least create a strong bond between citizens, we can have a good national cohesion, we can share common values because new immigrants know what are the common values that the host society cherishes.
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I think the key here is that we need do define "Canadian values". What do the majority of Canadians (throughout different ethnic origins) value? What do we want to keep and what doesn't matter so much to us? It'd be nice if a public survey of Canadian attitudes was taken so we could determine this. But that will never happen under a multiculturalist government structure.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
This is possible because in the USA, everybody is American regardless of the race, religion and country of origin. There is no such thing as hyphenated-americans.
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Not true at all. Ever heard of "African-Americans" or "Asian-Americans"? The difference there is that they are PC methods used to describe racial differences, rather than the vast and stringent cultural differences we have in Canada.
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Originally Posted by Sebastien Gauthier
In retrospect no model is perfect. But when you weight the pros and cons of both model, it's pretty obvious to me that integration is a far better and superior option than multiculturalism.
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It just depends how far you take it. Multiculturalism at its extreme results in civil war. Integration at its extreme results in fascism and the suppression of basic freedoms.