“At the top of the Canadian ‘progressive’ {the Orwellian term for ‘reactionary’} pyramid remains a ‘white’ elite pulled from the affluent and proximate urban centers of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. This group considers itself the most aware of Canadian history, law, economics and political institutions, and thus the natural holders of the country’s leadership positions, which they disproportionately occupy.
“This elite is “bicultural” — equally comfortable around Canada’s so-called two founding peoples, the French and English. Fluency in both languages, a rare skill that’s often the byproduct of a bicultural upbringing or a privileged education, is their exclusionary standard for upward mobility.
“Below are monocultural French Canadians, the understood first-among-equals in Canada’s multicultural mosaic. The notion that accommodating the distinctions of the French Canadians should be Canada’s essential demonstration of liberal tolerance stretches back centuries. ‘Liberals’ erected much of Canada’s modern political architecture around the goal of French Canadian accommodation, including the aforementioned bilingual, bicultural ruling class. Correspondingly, every ‘Liberal’ {Party} administration since Confederation has had a large Quebec parliamentary delegation as its backbone.
“A tier lower are Canada’s ‘indigenous’ {aboriginal} peoples, whose importance to Canadian ‘liberalism’ has grown rapidly in recent decades.
“While the prime minister’s father once preached that aboriginal ambitions were best realized through an inclusive Canadian citizenship, his successors champion a less-integrationist ideal {What an understatement!}. Under a new ‘postcolonial’ frame, aboriginals are not considered subjects of the Canadian state but a community equal to it — “a nation-to-nation relationship”, as Trudeau often quips. Born from contemporary ‘progressive’ consensus that the establishment of Canada on occupied land was the country’s defining crime, ‘restorative justice’ for Canada’s more than 1.6 million ‘indigenous’ {aboriginal} residents has become a ‘moral priority’.
“Last in formal importance are ‘immigrants of colour’ and their descendants, the faction of the Canadian ‘progressive’ coalition that’s more often seen than heard. Immigrant communities are useful for ‘Liberals’ to mobilize in the context of the Canadian electoral system, which relies on mass recruitment of Party members to nominate candidates and features numerous minority-majority parliamentary districts. The result has been a rise in minority and immigrant members of Parliament, more than 80% of whom are ‘Liberals’; yet, the lack of power ordinary MPs enjoy means many of these politicians serve their Party primarily as diversity symbols or get-out-the-vote strategists. They remain largely shut out from more authoritative positions, such as the Canadian Supreme Court, which has never had a ‘non-white’ member.
“As with all hierarchies, the rainbow coalition of Canadian ‘liberalism’ can work only so long as there exists internal agreement on the wisdom of its power imbalances.
“Pro-diversity ‘progressives’ must learn to rationalize that their coalition’s goal of encouraging French Canadian distinctiveness often means enabling Quebec chauvinism, for instance. At a time when ‘white’ ‘progressives’ in the English provinces are removing statues and renaming buildings in the {ironic} name of ‘inclusivity’, Quebec just concluded an election in which all parties supported the idea that immigrants should face more pressure to speak French and that those receiving public services be less “ostentatiously religious” in dress.
“Quebecker opinions on social welfare may be Left of the Canadian norm but when it comes to preserving their European identity, the French Canadian center sits in a place that ‘liberals’ elsewhere in the country would not hesitate to decry as racist and xenophobic. As tensions rise between Quebec’s Francophone-dominated government and growing immigrant population, so too will national ‘progressive’ anxieties about whether Quebec’s cultural empowerment remains a worthy objective.
“‘Indigenous’ {aboriginal} Canadians similarly expect to preserve their {imagined} cultural cohesion amid Canada’s growing diversity. This can take the form of policing who is or isn’t a “true” aboriginal, given that aboriginal ‘self-identification’ has been rising rapidly, and official “Indian” status remains a gateway to sovereignty from the state. An exclusionary ‘indigenous’ {sic} nationalist movement with an objective of self-governance and sequestration from the Canadian mainstream clashes uncomfortably with Trudeau’s stated dream of a “post-national” country.
“Danger looms that Canadian immigrants will resent ‘liberalism’s preoccupation with ‘indigenous’ concerns. Like appeasement of French Canadians, aboriginal {one-way} ‘reconciliation’ takes for granted that Ottawa should spend a lot of time adjudicating disputes between descendants of peoples that inhabited Canada centuries ago {less than 5% of the population, including mixed-race}. The result is that {the ironically-named} ‘Canadians of colour’ {‘White’ is a colour, ‘Black’ isn’t} find their own substantial, historically-rooted desires for ‘social justice’ subordinate to this dated schedule of priorities. Efforts to entrench the hierarchy of grievance, such as the Trudeau government’s proposal to make new Canadians swear allegiance to Indian treaties, feel counterproductive in their bluntness…”
–‘Canadian multiculturalism conceals a power struggle waiting to happen’,
J.J. McCullough, Washington Post, November 2, 2018
See also:
‘Tribalizing Canadian Politics’ (Identity Politics) {Jan.10, 2020}:
“The slow and steady ghettoization of Canada’s urban political scene is gathering pace. Ethnicity, religion and tribalism are being promoted…instead of debating competing visions about Canada’s future.”
https://canadiansforlegalequality.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/tribalizing-canadian-politics/
#OneNationOneLaw
Canadians For Legal Equality 