Canada: a pop­u­la­tion of 32 mil­lions… and we are all dif­fer­ent. Isn’t it nice?

Granted, these pic­tures mostly depict Chi­na­town… well, we all have our favorite neigh­bor­hood, right? But the coun­try is truly diverse: tra­di­tional Chi­na­towns and Lit­tle Italy area can be found close by Ukrain­ian, Russ­ian, South-East Asian, Latino and Indian neigh­bor­hoods, and I bet you could find a com­mu­nity news­pa­per in almost every lan­guage on earth in Canada.

As a “new coun­try”, Canada has always been a des­ti­na­tion for immi­grants. Event though the first draft of a Cana­dian cit­i­zen­ship was only cre­ated in 1910, four major waves of immi­gra­tion have already taken place:

• The French set­tle­ment in Que­bec and Acadia
• The Eng­lish and Irish settlement
• A wave of immi­grants from West­ern Europe right before WW1 and after WW2
• A cur­rent wave of immi­grants mostly from Asia and India
  

Since the sev­en­ties, immi­grants are mostly vis­i­ble minori­ties from devel­op­ing coun­tries. Accord­ing to Stats Canada, Canada has 34 eth­nic groups with at least one hun­dred thou­sand mem­bers each and 13.4% of the pop­u­la­tion belongs to vis­i­ble minori­ties. And the trend will con­tinue: between 225,000–275,000 new­com­ers make Canada their home every year and we have the high­est per capita immi­gra­tion rate in the world.

Indeed, Canada has a pretty good immi­gra­tion pol­icy, wel­com­ing skilled work­ers to fill labor mar­ket needs, reunit­ing fam­i­lies under the spon­sor­ship pro­gram and car­ing for refugees with a good human­i­tar­ian program.

The result is a truly mul­ti­cul­tural coun­try with a rich eth­nic diver­sity… and we’re proud of it! Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism was even adopted in Canada as a national pol­icy. For example:

• Canada rec­og­nized dual citizenship
• It sup­ports news­pa­pers, TV pro­grams (like OMNI2) in sev­eral lan­guages (Por­tuguese, Ital­ian, Ara­bic, Chinese…)
• It encour­ages minori­ties rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the work force and in education
• It offers sup­port and help for new­com­ers in Canada (trans­la­tion ser­vices, immi­gra­tion advices etc.)

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, the Cana­dian soci­ety is an undi­vided whole although extremely diverse. Lib­eral immi­gra­tion poli­cies aren’t crit­i­cized much here unlike in some coun­try and both the Con­ser­v­a­tive and the Lib­er­als acknowl­edge Canada’s diver­sity and need for immi­gra­tion. Of course, prob­lems arise, gen­er­ally revolv­ing around the accep­tance of tra­di­tional and reli­gious dress in soci­ety… mixed with the fact any soci­ety is prone to the irra­tional fear that its iden­tity might dis­ap­pears overnight. Igno­rance exists everywhere.

Cana­dian mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism… a model to fol­low? I’d say yes!

Related arti­cles:

1. A Cana­dian Mind­set (8÷10)
2. Nui: From Thai­land to Ottawa
3. Kha­tia Odze­lashvili: From Geor­gia to Ottawa
4. The Two Immi­gra­tion Myths (1÷10)
5. French And Eng­lish (3÷10)