CANADIAN SOCIALIST AND GREEN ICONS CONTEST MULTICULTURALISM

Multiculturalism is Canada’s Ingsoc, a state ideology so powerfully pervasive that few in the media, in the educational institutions or the political parties would dare challenge it. One might think that the left would offer criticism, but apart from journalist and former socialist parliamentarian, Douglas Fisher, and columnist Larry Zolf, none come to mind.



The Liberal Party was able to steal the affections of working class voters earmarked for the social-democratic NDP by appealing to their cultural identities. Running candidates of the same ethnicity as the prevailing group in the riding, and granting federal money for the construction of ethnic centres was a classic Liberal formula for vote-buying. And it usually worked.



The NDP approach has always been to appeal to people’s class identity above and beyond the language they speak and to their sense of solidarity to people who live similar lives but have different cultures. Multiculturalism has not been good for class solidarity.



J.S. Woodsworth, the father of Canadian socialism, founder of the CCF-NDP and described as the “Saint of Canadian politics”, I think knew as much. Allen Mills in “Fool for Christ—The Political Thought of J.S. Woodsworth”, wrote that during his leadership in the twenties and thirties he continued to evince a profound concern for “ the social integration of the alien.” Allen writes that Woodsworth talked “of uniting immigrants into a new Canadian type: he worried that the melting pot was not working and the country would become ‘balkanized’, there was a necessity to ‘absorb’, ‘weld’ and ‘incorporate, immigrants into the Canadian way of life.’p.228



Although Woodsworth was an opponent of immigration in the 1920s and 30s because there were not enough jobs, he also recognized the need for more social cohesion. A higher proportion of newcomers of our own British traditions would mould these incoming armies of foreigners into ‘loyal subjects’.



Greens have been among the most effusive champions of Ingsoc, with Green leader Elizabeth May justifying the country’s absurdly high immigration levels as Canada’s ongoing “multicultural project”. Environmentalists claim that “cultural diversity” is the analogue to biological diversity, the necessary variation found in plant and animal forms. Trouble is, the immigration levels required to sustain these culturally diverse ethnic enclaves is fuelling urban sprawl and crowding out wildlife. Variety is the spice of life, but the human is flourishing at the expense of the non-human. Multiculturalism has not been good for the environment.



But there is a JS Woodsworth of Canadian greens. He is none other than the famous co-author of “Our Ecological Footprint”, Dr. William E. Rees. This is taken from his “Globalization, Trade and Migration: Undermining Sustainability?”



“…there is sufficient evidence to hypothesize that multi-racial or multi-cultural countries are more likely to unravel chaotically in the event of rapid ecological change, resource shortages, or economic decline than are more homogenous societies. Because socio-political stability is a prerequisite for ecological sustainability, we thus have yet another reason for a pre-emptive cautionary approach to large-scale migration in coming levels and adopt explicit ‘melting pot’ strategies designed to facilitate the integration and assimilation of new-comers into the social and economic fabric of their adopted countries. They should also include ongoing public education programs that stress both the need for, and the national benefits of, limited immigration.



The main objectives of this approach are to discourage the development of persistent immigrant enclaves, to accelerate immigrants’ development of a sense of identity with the larger society, and to improve public understanding of the modern role of economic and environmental changes that may be required for ecological sustainability. Immigration policies that favour multiculturalism and that apparently succeed during periods of growth and plenty may not be adaptive in the face of rapid global ecological change of economic decline.”



So while the sheep continue to bleet “diversity”, the wise old shepherds speak of the virtues of integration and cohesion.



Just as Central Asia exported the bubonic plague, and Central Africa exported the Ebola virus, Canada gave the world the ideology of Multiculturalism. It might be cautionary then to heed the words of our brave critics as they spoke them right in the guts of the ogre before the Thought Police could silence them.



Tim Murray,

Quadra Island, BC

Canada

December 23/07