Time to reframe the immigration debate
Re: Kenney wrong to smack down Suzuki, July 12. Bless prominent environmentalist David Suzuki for daring to question Canada’s immigration emperor’s “wardrobe”, challenging former Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney as the “mass immigration” wolf in “sustainable immigration” sheep’s clothing.
Instead of getting ourselves further and further into how an underpopulated Canada prevents us from positioning ourselves among the world’s most important countries, it is high time indeed to reframe the immigration debate away from predominantly quantitative arguments to its qualitative implications of economic, environmental, social, cultural and demographic concerns.
Proponents of raising our annual immigration intake to achieve the elusive goal of so-called “critical mass” cite such population expansion to be indispensable to form the cultural, educational and political institutions, the consumer markets, the technological, administrational and political talent pool, the infrastructure-building tax base, the creative and artistic foundation necessary to have a leading role in the world.
Before engaging in such population size anxiety, surely what is at stake is nothing less than the conception of what Canada is about and what Canadians want their immigration policy to accomplish within a divisive multicultural setting of government-legislated population diversity, encouraging and perpetuating the cultural differences of new arrivals.
Whether or not “Canada is full” remains to be seen.
A vote of thanks to Suzuki for daring to point to the seeming transparency of Canada’s immigration emperor’s ministerial “clothes.”
E.W. BOPP,
Tsawwassen, B.C.