The future of race, identity, citizenship, and ethnicity in Canada

Canada

Shifting immigration patterns has always altered the social, political, economic, and cultural landscape of Canada. Values, behaviors, public policies, and political ideologies shift and sway in response to alternating demographics. Geographical issues and settlement patterns also have a bearing on Canada's diversity. The future of identity discourse in Canada also depends on issues like discrimination and the policies in place that prevent it. Canadians need to remain adaptive, welcoming demographic changes while remaining true to core cultural values such as equality and tolerance. Among the biggest challenges for the future in Canada are those that are related to the changing labor market.

Therefore, no issues currently playing themselves out on Canada's multicultural stage are either outstanding or particularly momentous. All are, of course, meaningful, and yet none are new. Canadians welcome change and in fact, thrive because of demographic and corresponding cultural changes. In a fascinating MacLean's article, Stephanie Findlay and Nicholas Kohler discuss the "enrollment controversy" currently extant among Canada's institutes of higher learning. The article reveals the sometimes humorous level of discourse ethnicity takes in Canada. Findlay and Kohler note the gap between Asian and Caucasian students is widening on campuses and even between campuses in Canada.

My initial reaction to Findlay and Kohler's article was that Canadian universities are doing their job by remaining meritocracies and not fostering some kind of artificial social engineering project on campuses. If Asian students are creating a more competitive academic environment and non-Asian students cannot cope or do not want to cope, then there is nothing inherently wrong with the situation. The Asian graduates will go on to fill increasing numbers of demanding and stressful job positions, while the non-Asian students afraid of working too hard can bow out of the system. It is outright discriminatory to think that there is any inherent problem with current enrollment policies. Increasing numbers of Asian students are populating universities and possibly afterwards the corporate sector, adding to the richness of Canada's socio-political landscape.

What is of concern is the way that religion and politics are infused, to the extent that local churches are instantly hounding new immigrant communities as potential political recruits. In John Ibbitson and Joe Friesen's Globe and Mail article, the authors point out that immigration patterns are inadvertently altering the Canadian political landscape. New immigrants from traditional cultures are being seduced by Conservative Party politicians, who pander to old-fashioned and outmoded values such as abortion or discrimination against gays.

The labor market remains a big battleground for ethnic, cultural, and political issues. One of the most disturbing issues at stake in Canada is the anti-immigrant policies in Quebec that are inhibiting local access to medical services. A Globe and Mail editorial shows what is at stake: Quebec has a severe shortage of doctors and yet continues to overtly discriminate against immigrant applicants to its residency program. The editorial points out, "every doctor who graduated from a Quebec medical facility was offered a residency in 2007, two-thirds of foreign-trained doctors who had passed their medical equivalency exams in the province were rejected." Foreign applicants are asked more intrusive questions that are absent from the application given to Quebec residents. Ostensibly the policy is in place to preserve the imagined integrity of Quebec culture or to ensure quality of care. However, few could defend the anti-immigrant stance on either of these counts -- especially by using empirical data.

The labor market is often the primary battleground for immigrant discourse and issues related to ethnicity and discrimination. In some cases, actual policies are to blame. For instance, white collar workers applying for Canadian residence and later, citizenship are often granted entry under the immigrant point system. The new immigrants arrive, eager to work, often with families in town. The situation they find themselves in is far different from the image they held in their minds. White collar workers, especially in medical professions but also in others such as education, cannot transfer their skills seamlessly.

Unless a new immigrant is hired internally by a Canadian company prior to their arrival, skills are deemed untransferrable. This has forced a number of white collar immigrants to work at blue collar jobs, taking a radical cut in pay and lowering their rung on the socio-economic ladder. The same immigrants find themselves living in low-income neighborhoods with ironically few opportunities for upward social mobility in spite of a wealth of good education and professional credentials. As Wente (2010) points out, "Immigration has helped make Toronto one of the most successful and diverse cities in the world. That's the good news. The bad news is, a lot of immigrants aren't doing well."

Stories like these are heartbreaking and yet, the issue of the enrollment controversy and the restrictions on immigrant medical residents in Quebec show that Canadians may be mistrustful of non-whites encroaching on the labor market. As the immigrant debate has become increasingly volatile in the United States, it is becoming so in Canada as well.

Gender issues are also at stake, as the intersection between gender, ethnicity, and power reveals itself in Canada. In "Failing boys and the powder keg of sexual politics," Carolyn Abraham of the Globe and Mail discusses the growing achievement gap between females and males in grade school and universities. Rather than congratulate the girls and facilitate their holding positions of economic or political power, Canadians are focused only on the boys. The gender gap that has been omnipresent in politics and in the upper echelons of economic power in Canada continues to haunt females, who achieve so much in school but who have a glass ceiling to contend with after graduation. Instead of lamenting the boys' lack of competitive verve, it may be time to recognize that females and non-whites alike are part of Canada's culture -- like it or not.