[Sebastien Gauthier]

Since the thread on what is your favorite Canadian cities has deviated on a debate on racial segregation/integration based on the Canadian Geographer' s article that furry canuck has provided us, let's discuss these topics in that new thread. This is obviously a sensitive issue so please make sure to make your comments in a way that is as diplomatic as possible without auto-censorship. I'm sure we can have this discussion without creating chaos and mayhem. Please assume forumers are writing in good faith. On a thread like that there will inevitably be many different views. I'm particularly interested to hear what new Canadians/Queberers have to say about these issues as ultimately they are the ones who are the most affected by it.

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. 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.

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.

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 ? In the long term the only way to acheive pacific cohabitation is through a ruthless dictatorship like the Tito regime in former Yougoslavia. My biggest fear for English-Canada is that sooner or later, these communities will start to compete for the control of political institutions. Unavoidably, the better organized and structured communities will seize the control of the public institutions while weaker communities will be left out of the dance. This will create alienation and resentment among many of our fellow citizens. Actually it's currently happening. Remember when the Toronto police foiled a major terrorist plot not so long ago in which Canadian institutions were targeted. In that case, the conspirators were all homegrown terrorists of arab origins but they could have been of any origins including old-stock Canadians. The conspirators didn't plan terrorist attacks because they were of arab origins, they did it because of a strong feeling of alienation. I'm not condoning them, I'm trying to explain their motivations. That's what multiculturalism can do. This ideology of multiculturalism is favourable to the rise of natural selection and by extension, exclusion and segregation. Multiculturalism is not inclusive so people can't share a strong bond with each others, share common values and beliefs and so on. I'm only trying to warn you about the danger of multiculturalism, nothing else.

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. 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. Not surprisingly, Americans have a very strong sense of nationhood and patriotism. That's what we strive to recreate in Quebec.

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.