There’s no sign multiculturalism is dooming Canada

In 1994, Neil Bissoondath published Selling Illusions, an excoriation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, which at that point was a couple decades old. Bissoondath railed against what he saw as “the superficial and the exhibitionistic” nature of one of the country’s defining policies.

The multiculturalism portrayed in Selling Illusions reduces visible minorities to cultural pastiches — “A dash of colour and the flash of the dance,” as Bissoondath puts it. In his view, it allowed these groups to cling to their past at the expense of a truly Canadian future; the country would become little but a flag of convenience flying over a cabal of hyphenated Canadians.

Stinging and trenchant, Selling Illusions raised the ire of many. And yet, aside from a reissue of the book in 2002, Bissoondath has remained remarkably quiet about his defining work. In 2006, while working on a piece about the 35-year anniversary of the Multiculturalism Act for Maclean’s, I wanted to interview him about Illusion’s legacy. His publicist rebuffed me. “Mr. Bissoondath no longer wishes to speak about multiculturalism,” she said.

Instead, Bissoondath’s argument has been taken up by a string of politicians in Quebec and beyond, the most recent being Beauce MP Maxime Bernier. In a series of tweets this week, the one-time Conservative Party leadership candidate excoriated Justin Trudeau for what he called the prime minister’s “extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity” that “will divide us into little tribes that have less and less in common, apart from their dependence on government in Ottawa.”

“Having people live among us who reject basic Western values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and openness doesn’t make us strong. People who refuse to integrate into our society and want to live apart in their ghetto don’t make our society strong,” he wrote.

Bernier’s apparent suggestion, unburdened by proof, that Canadian society is rife with anti-Western extremists, is both absurd and dangerous — particularly coming from an elected official. It is also the natural extension of Bissoondath’s argument, made fresh for what Bernier evidently sees as Canada’s present-day reality: that immigrants necessarily drag their cultural baggage here, simply because “we” let them, and that this undermines the country. “Cultural balkanization brings distrust, social conflict and potentially violence,” Bernier wrote, leaving readers imagining Canada as cesspool rather than mosaic.

This is hardly the first time politicians have denounced Canada’s policy on multiculturalism. The Reform Party opposed taxpayer funding of multiculturalism, and in 1997, party leader Preston Manning described it as having given rise to “a collection of interest groups.” While Stephen Harper early in his political career decried “official multiculturalism,” he embraced it once prime minister, and for good reason: both he and his Immigration Minister Jason Kenney recognized that many immigrants held conservative views.

Opposition to multiculturalism is particularly fierce in Quebec. Former premier Pauline Marois often denounced it on grounds similar to those advanced by Bissoondath, instead praising the French model of integration. (This would be news to many North Africans living in the banlieues outside of Paris, where unemployment can be upward of three times the national average.)

For his part, Parti Québécois then-cabinet minister Jean-François Lisée used the term “multiculturalists” disparagingly in a 2013 letter to the New York Times.

Yet as compelling as it was in 1994, Bissoondath’s vision of a multicultural doomsday never materialized.

Not only that, immigrants feel less marginalized (and more Canadian) than Bissoondath predicted, something that should also mitigate Bernier’s concerns about social conflict. In 2016, the EKOS polling firm charted more than two decades of polling data regarding identity issues. The result: the collective sense of belonging to the country has remained largely consistent, while attachment to one’s own ethnic group has fallen through the floor. In fact, attachment to country is higher among new Canadians than third generation, according to the EKOS data.

Perhaps this is why Bissoonndath has remained so silent over the years. twitter.com/martinpatriquin