Well I hate to interrupt your tilting at windmills, but I think it's pretty funny that in a thread where we were talking about the need to stop shitting on ourselves, you go ahead and do just that.
My questioning of hackneyed clichés and government propaganda is not an issue of 'shitting' on ourselves as you so elegantly put it.
First however, I'm going to debunk the false claim you put forward about the age of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism in Canada can be traced back at least to Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir in 1935 who promoted it throughout his time in office. It was picked up again by Senator Paul Yuzyk in 1964, endorsed by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in their final report of 1969, adopted as official policy by the Trudeau government in 1971 (the first in the world to do so), entrenched in s.27 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982, and reaffirmed in the Multiculturalism Act 1988. In other words, it's been around far, far longer than you are willing to acknowledge.
Your 'debunking' is more than a bit grasping... Multiculturalism (with a capital 'M') as a specific state-sponsored and funded mandate is recent to 1971, no matter what some GG in the early 1930s 'promoted', so in order to have this dialogue lets not be disingenuous about the terminology, agreed?
As for your lamenting that newcomers aren't
assimilated, well that's precisely the point. Assimilation is monocultural and monolithic in nature, demanding the evisceration of the original culture, language, traditions and beliefs that make each member of our society an individual. It denies the richness of a person's identity and in doing so is fundamentally intolerant and repressive. Sharing a half continent with three founding cultures and immigration from every country in the world, assimilation is not a viable option as there is no dominant culture to assimilate into and it would be contrary to our constitution even if we did. Difference is a healthy building block for any society, and here in Canada it has created a culture that is pragmatic and permeable. And inclusive.
Where do you come off with such simplistic blanket assumptions like assimilation = mono-culture or monolithic?? We already agreed that xenophobia and intolerance are not part of the Canadian identity. This doesn't mean, however, that there is no 'identity' to start with. Moreover there is ample room in Canada for the celebration of individual expression, cultural expression, freedom of speech etc. in all kinds of different contexts, all of which are part of the Canadian identity, but this doesn't mean there are no common central laws, languages (English and French) history and traditions informing the ideals of the 'social contract' we share, our
lingua franca of communication, and the principles and tenets of our social collectivity, including the rights and responsibilities of citizenship thereto. Assimilation is about the duty of educating and acclimatizing newcomers to these very things so that they can be responsible, engaged and fulfilled contributing members of the nation... and this is nothing at all about imposing some dated sense of nationalism to wield over other nations.
You yourself mention the Constitution. Isn't this document a reflection of our values and identity, indeed a very part of that identity? Do we accept cultures or individuals coming here and living in ways that are contrary to those things? No, and this is not an eradication of any rights to self-expression or culture...
Viewing assimilation as some sort of nefarious tool of cultural engineering is so completely incompatible with any real understanding of the Canadian identity and its history that it offers a profoundly weak defence of Multicultural ideology.
Finally, as for your branding people "irresponsible" for being proud of our multicultural country and viewing it as a model for the world, I can think of at least one other "irresponsible" fellow who gives our country precisely the kind of pat on the back that you find so abhorrent:
"Canada is today the most successful pluralist society on the face of our globe, without any doubt in my mind. . . . That is something unique to Canada. It is an amazing global human asset." -Karim al-Hussayni, the Aga Khan
So I really don't know what to say on behalf of us "irresponsible" guys, other than I'm humbled to be grouped with such illustrious company.
I'm happy for you. I also don't disagree with the sentiment. Canada *is* a wonderfully rich, tolerant and diverse place. No question we should be proud of this. The Aga Khan's expertise on Canada notwithstanding it is indeed irresponsible for Canadians to smugly resort to empty boosterism on this issue, and I can't help but feel that your boasting of Canada's superiority in this regard smacks of the very kind of chauvinistic nationalism you claim to reject. At the end of the day we need to look a little deeper into these issues, with a little more honesty and realism. Diversity is a great thing and now the time has come for that diversity to transcend its Multiculturalism (capital 'M' again) in the interest of truly building something bigger and more inclusive, rather than fragmented and deconstructed.