| The Air India bombing and the firebombing of a Quebec school are the dark side of a revolution that is overtaking Canada. Globalization and immigration are changing Canadian society even more than they did early in the 20th century. In turn, society will force our governments and other social institutions to restructure or be destroyed.
Like any social revolution, what globalization and immigration will do to Canada is not clear to those who are living through it. What is clear is that the changes have reached a threshold where they are taking on a life of their own. They will drive government policy, not the other way around.
The number of immigrants in Canada, old and new, is reaching a threshold of historic importance. Eighteen per cent of Canadians were born abroad in 2001. Not since the 22 per cent of 1911 to 1931 has such a large proportion of Canadians been immigrants. The number of immigrants arriving in any given year has changed little, hovering around 200,000, but the five million immigrants in Canada today equal our nation’s population in 1911.
The proportion and number of immigrants has one effect, the change in the source of Canada’s immigrants another. As old sources of immigrants grew prosperous and racist policies were dismantled, Asia replaced Europe as the main source of new Canadians. China has been a top ten source of immigrants throughout the 20th century, but now immigrants come from all over Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the western Asia once controlled by the U.S.S.R. More importantly, Canada is attracting immigrants from more countries, and regions that once produced few immigrants are moving up the statistical tables. In 1991 to 2001, for example, more immigrants came from the Middle East than all of Western Europe.
Canada’s urbanization and the historic trend of immigrants moving to the largest centres still holds true. Today, however, new Canadians appear and find places in the economy, if not the society, in every growing community. Resource towns in northern Canada have Somali taxi drivers and Lebanese shop owners. Brooks, Alberta, in the heart of cowboy country, is now a diverse community thanks to waves of migrant workers from Eastern Europe and Africa.
Canada has always been a country of immigrants, and our export economy has always made us sensitive to global shifts. Today we are at the front of the globalization fad. As conservative and left-wing critics of the G-word point out, reducing a nation’s control over the movement of commodities, services and money makes the nation vulnerable to economic, political and social changes in other parts of the world. External forces can now affect our labour, environmental and even education standards. The countries of origin for Canada’s immigrants have a growing influence on our lives.
Globalization and diversity are opening up Canada’s open society even further. Cultural differences confront us every day, and social tensions from all over the globe are internalized and forced into the Canadian social fabric. And so conflicts halfway around the world extend their violence to Montreal or Vancouver, and dictators, nations, rebels, freedom fighters and terrorists in every region find friends in Canada to give them support and money.
Immigration is a touchy topic, which is strange for a country that is one-fifth immigrants. The conservatives lay this troublesome diversity at the feet of our social-engineering liberals. Multicultural and diversity programs may temper some of the worst aspects of these changes, but they have not created this revolution, nor can they control it.
Those who embrace or acknowledge the changes might have a small influence on this social revolution, but it will find its own course and create consequences both positive and deeply divisive. Those who wish to stop the changes face a quandary. For reactionary resistance to pervasive social change only pushes the change further and faster. We cannot go back to a mythical golden age of a white Christian society ruled by British law and traditions. Nor should we try, because it requires isolating Canada from the rest of the world – an action that would betray our history, and when tried elsewhere only served to destroy that which the reactionaries most wished to preserve.
Canada has no choice but to ride this turbulent change. Diversity can, and should, make Canada a hub for international economic, cultural and social development. Unfortunately, social forces are never solely benign. Canada will also be affected in the most direct way by the tensions and conflicts of our world. Unlike the U.S., we have neither the money nor the temper to try to prevent these reciprocal effects by building oppressive homeland security, missile defences and invading troubled regions. Canada will be better off for it. If the U.S. persists to the bitter end in protecting its city on the hill, it will be destroyed as was the U.S.S.R.
Top 15 sources of immigrants, according to the 2001 census:
Total immigrants in Canada: 5,448,480
United Kingdom: 606,000
China: 332,825
Italy: 315,455
India: 314,685
United States: 237,920
Hong Kong: 235,620
Philippines: 232,670
Poland: 180,415
Germany: 174,075
Portugal: 153,535
Vietnam: 148,405
Former Yugoslavia: 145,380
Former U.S.S.R.: 133,200
Jamaica: 120,210
Netherlands: 117,690
Statistics Canada: www.statcan.ca, click on Census 2001, click on Data, then Immigration and Citizenship. |
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