Equality and Equanimity

Perhaps it is time to re-think official multiculturalism. In fact, well past time to do so. Introduced by a prime minister who thought to celebrate the multi-ethnic immigrant-quality of the country as a good thing - to make people feel at home, wanted and appreciated - in retrospect, and looking at the country today, perhaps not so much of a good thing.

Canadians used to congratulate themselves about how much more welcoming they were and well-balanced than Americans who subscribed to a different methodology; a melting pot. Canada, on the other hand, was a proud kaleidoscope of cultures, traditions, ethnicities. And, unfortunately values.

Canadian values, culture and history were given a back seat to the greater need to celebrate all those other backgrounds that went into the total make-up of the country. And when people emigrated from countries where political and social unrest was responsible for dislocating them, they were encouraged to emulate here what they left there.

Most latterly, we've had the bitterness of Sikh separatism sowing discord and mayhem in the country, leading to our first terrorist attack, taking hundreds of innocent lives. Then we had another foreign separatist guerrilla war infringe on Canadian values with Tamils from Sri Lanka raising funds to furnish arms for the Tamil Tigers.

And now we've got Palestinians and their Muslim supporters infiltrating radical leftists to unite to squeeze Jewish Canadians into a Zionist box of slanderous accusations. Neither India, nor Sri Lanka nor Israel should unduly occupy Canadians' determination to meddle in the complicated affairs of those countries of whose histories we have but a dim understanding.

Not to mention minorities from countries where gang warfare is a way of life with single-parent families and poverty resulting in a pathology of drugs and guns. Canada has no need for all these anti-social misdirections and malfunctions. There is a prevailing culture, a political system, social mores and values that are diametrically opposed to too many that carry over from abroad; from Clitoridectomy to honour killing, tribal clustering and bigotry.

While conformity to social, political, religious and cultural mores are seen to be too demanding of people originating from other cultures and traditions who don't share all the same values as those of indigenous Canadians, it isn't too much to expect that they be gradually adopted, assimilated generationally into the lives of those who come here to find a new life.

Customs that run counter to those that reflect Canadian values have no place in this country. In a pluralist society it is meet and just that all people make the effort to adjust their expectations of one another - but to a degree. A turban harms no one, but a kirpan might. A hijab offends no one, but a burka does, because we cannot see a face to determine who and what is there.