Diversity crusade ensnares police

The Charlottetown police service has admittedly fell on its own sword after acknowledging a lack of diversity within its organization when an impaired driver was acquitted due to a language barrier. The irony is that the language barrier actually involved one of Canada’s official languages which further exasperates this oversight.

Since the political philosophy and enforcement of multiculturalism took hold in Canada decades ago, Charlottetown has evidently become more linguistically diverse and will continue to do so as long as politicians relentlessly capitalize on the concept of diversity. Multiculturalism doesn’t necessarily require a new Canadian to completely integrate or assimilate into traditional English or French-speaking society, it rather encourages society to reasonable accommodate the newcomer.

Multiculturalism encourages new Canadians to keep their cultures/ languages while allowing them to fully identify as Canadian, thereby creating the concept of diversity that politicians so greatly adore. In theory, multiculturalism should require the Charlottetown police to prepare for a situation where they might encounter citizens who don’t speak either official language, therefore avoiding a repeat of the precedent they inadvertently set.

I suspect, as a result of this inadvertent precedent, there will now be some aggressive affirmative action recruiting within the Charlottetown police as an attempt to ameliorate this discomfiture and create the emanation of reasonable accommodation. Recruiting new Canadians who speak languages other than French or English will allow police top brass and politicians an opportunity to cash in on the diversity crusade and continue with the metaphor of equality through diversity.

James G. E. Mitchell, Charlottetown