Canadians need to take leadership role

ENSURING NEWCOMERS KNOW CANADIAN VALUES IS UP TO CANADIANS: FOCUS GROUPS

Newcomers to Canada need to know about this country’s shared values, and it’s up to Canadians to teach them, participants in government-run focus groups on immigration told researchers last summer.

The report into the results of five focus groups held across the country found that many participants were thoughtful about Canada’s capacity to support and educate newcomers on “our laws, values and ‘general way of doing things’” to allow them to fit in.

“Participants were not placing the burden on the newcomer but rather on the local community,” said the Leger report, submitted to the Immigration Department last fall but made public this week.

“Many comments were related to the host population having an individual responsibility or civic duty to be part that socialization process.”

The focus groups were commissioned by the federal Immigration Department last year to help guide the plan for the number of immigrants Canada would accept in 2017.

Even when discussing the challenges of immigration, attitudes about it were positive overall.

“Participants also strongly believed that Canadians have a distinct approach to diversity and a unique sense of openness to difference,” the report said.

“Several times, participants compared Canada to the United States to express how Canada was ‘better’ when it comes to being welcoming and respecting differences.”

The meetings in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and London, Ont., were held in July and August. At the time, the U.S. approach to immigration was under scrutiny as part of that country’s presidential elections, but in Canada the talk had not yet turned to the relationship between newcomers and Canadian values.