Cultural values are all over the map
Ethno-cultural differences and national character can be discussed reasonably
Our discussion of “Canadian values” couldn’t be more hobbled.
When Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch recommended screening immigrants for “Canadian values,” politicians and pundits mocked her.
I understand their reaction, in part. Leitch may be playing rough politics, since polls show her idea is popular. And it could certainly be awkward, pragmatically, to screen newcomers on values.
But the barrage launched at Leitch, particularly from the socalled “liberal elite,” falls into its own unhelpful ideological pitfalls.
The first mistake that Leitch’s critics make is dismissing the entire notion that most Canadians aspire to certain values. Their second mistake is assuming that talking about Canadian values is out-and-out xenophobic.
Despite the moral panic over Leitch’s proposal in Canada, Australia is getting on with screening immigrants for “Australian values,” such as respect, democracy, freedom and rule of law.
And, believe it or not, reasoned public discussions about national values have already occurred in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and other civilized countries, where citizens do not fear difficult debates.
The fact is, national values are easily measured with social-science techniques.
And I suggest people who are not ready to believe residents of different countries often hold different values are people who are not really prepared to embrace “diversity,” which means “difference.”
How can we appreciate members of a multicultural society if we adopt the mawkish cliché that everyone is essentially the same under the skin?
Or, if we are willing to admit ethno-cultural differences exist, who are we to assume, as many Canadians do in a patronizing way, that immigrants will eventually become “just like us” anyways? How can we learn from members of another ethno-cultural group if we aren’t curious about them?
The World Values Survey can help.
The WVS conducts polls in nations across the planet, probing for core beliefs. The United Nations and the World Bank use it to track diversity.
The WVS has discovered, for instance, more than 83 per cent of residents of France, Britain and Canada take seriously “tolerance.” So do 80 per cent of Taiwanese.
But far fewer people in India, 56 per cent, think “tolerance” is a key virtue.
Even though few Canadians have bothered digging into such rich ethno-cultural subjects, an exception is Ken McGoogan, author of Celtic Lightning: How the Scots and Irish Created a Canadian Nation.
In his unscientific yet credible book, McGoogan considers how the nine million Canadians who claim Scottish or Irish heritage have strengthened certain values in Canada — such as “independence” (exemplified by rebel Michael Collins), pluralism (exemplified by gay writer Oscar Wilde and mixed-race B.C. governor Sir James Douglas) and “democracy” (exemplified by egalitarian poet Robbie Burns and prime minister Sir John A. McDonald).
“Did the ancestors of more than one-quarter of our population arrive (in Canada) without cultural baggage? No history, no values, no visions?” McGoogan asks. “Surely the idea is ridiculous.”
Indeed, it’s absurd many Canadians assume people arrive from Ireland, Egypt or China without both individual and ethno-cultural traits.
So it’s especially worthwhile to learn about values widely held in Canada’s biggest immigrantsource countries.
The top sources of immigrants to Canada include China, India, South Korea, Iran and the Arabicspeaking countries of the Middle East, all of which have had their values measured by the WVS.
How do the values emphasized in these countries play out in Canada’s major cities, where the potential for inter-cultural exchange is high in schools, businesses and neighbourhoods?
We’ll start with Montreal, where one of five residents is foreign born, many from Arabic-speaking countries.
A particularly valuable question the WVS asks parents is: “What qualities would you most like to see in your children?”
As The Vancouver Sun and Province’s online interactive chart shows, it turns out more than 65 per cent of parents from Arabicspeaking countries, such as Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, strongly stress “obedience.”
However, only 30 per cent of Canadian parents name “obedience” as an important quality, suggesting the contrast could make for intriguing interactions in Montreal schools.
What do we discover when we turn to Metro Vancouver and Toronto, where foreign-born people make up almost half the population and two of the largest immigrant-source countries are China and India?
It turns out only 16 per cent of parents in China strongly emphasize obedience. But the stress on obedience rises to 56 per cent among mothers and fathers in India.
What about “hard work?” It can determine success in the competitive fields of education and business, not to mention in whether a potential friend goes skiing.
The WVS found 90 per cent of parents in China say hard work is a crucial value. That emphasis declines slightly among the parents of India. Meanwhile, the proportion of all Canadian parents who want their children to work hard is only 54 per cent.
However, Canadian parents are not too different from the parents of China and India in regards to “unselfishness.” While 47 per cent of Canadian parents emphasize unselfishness, so do 35 per cent of Chinese and Indian parents. That’s unlike South Korean parents, only 12 per cent of whom stress the virtue of self-sacrifice.
The lesson of the WVS is that values are all over the map, literally.
And it’s especially true when it comes to religion.
More than nine of 10 parents in the Muslim-majority countries of Egypt and Iraq, for instance, strongly emphasize “religious faith.”
But fewer than one in 10 parents in Germany and China — and just three in 10 in Canada — care if their children believe in God.
The World Values Survey, like all polls, is imperfect, missing subtleties and regional variations. But it’s a reminder the sooner we take ethnocultural differences seriously, the sooner we become knowledgeable about why people are the way they are.
The implications can be significant. We may start to recognize, for instance, why people with roots in China tend to vote for certain Canadian political parties, while those linked to India are inclined to vote for others.
And — unless we’re utter moral relativists — the sooner we understand ethno-cultural differences, the sooner we might take seriously the values we ourselves are ready to stand for, reject or tolerate.
The fact is, national values are easily measured with social-science techniques.