Abstract
This chapter sketches the historical background to the adoption of multiculturalism as a national policy and as a definition of the Canadian identity in 1971. It emphasizes the place of “official multiculturalism” alongside “official bilingualism” within the overall response of the Liberal federal government led by Pierre Elliott Trudeau to the growing independence movement in Quebec, which in the 1960s and 1970s was posing an increasingly serious challenge to Canadian federalism. “Official Multiculturalism” explains what the term “multiculturalism” meant when it was first popularized by Senator Paul Yuzyk, outlines the practical measures promised by the federal government in 1971, and concludes with brief accounts of the policy’s bureaucratic incarnations and its public reception, in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
In an ideal civilization, nationality as we know it would no longer exist. National sovereignty must ultimately give way to a new unity with its bounds as wide as humanity itself.
Vincent Massey, Being Canadian
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Notes
- 1.
For an overview of Canada’s history highlighting the elements important for an understanding of multiculturalism, see Peter Russell, Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests (University of Toronto Press, 2017). One chapter of the book (Chap. 13) deals with the origins and development of multiculturalism as an official policy.
- 2.
See Victoria Hayward, Romantic Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1922), a traveller’s account with photographs, for an early description of the prairie cultural patchwork. The mosaic metaphor was popularized by John Murray Gibbons, The Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1938), a large and expensively produced volume celebrating the cultural diversity of the Canadian population, with separate chapters devoted to extolling the histories and cultural achievements of 25 different national-origin groups in Canada, all of them European. Gibbons presents Canada as a tolerant and harmonious “sanctuary for displaced Europeans.” The presence of some more exotic migrants (Armenians, Lebanese, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, etc.) is noted from time to time, but they were too small to qualify as tiles in the mosaic, nor did the native peoples on their reserves qualify.
- 3.
The speech is in Senate of Canada, Debates, 1964–1965, pp. 50–58. The speech was published separately, Senator Yuzyk’s Maiden Speech (Winnipeg: Ukrainian Voice, 1964), and widely circulated.
- 4.
Perhaps the most noteworthy of the early advocates of Canadian cultural diversity was Watson Kirkconnell, whose prodigious knowledge of foreign languages and literatures made him an ideal cultural ambassador, but whose cosmopolitanism was shadowed by his Christian evangelism and his tendency to side with some nationalities (e.g., Poles and Ukrainians) in their grievances against others (e.g., Germans and Russians). The first clear, comprehensive, egalitarian cosmopolitan sketch of a multicultural identity for Canada that I know of is Roy A. Matthews, “Canada, ‘The International Nation’,” Queen’s Quarterly, 72 (Autumn 1965), 499–523. This remarkable article proposes “an exciting experiment” that would lead others “to look to Canada as an inspiration in the search for universal peace and human brotherhood.” The heart of the experiment, the author explains, would be finding “a way to broaden and ‘modernize’ the concept of bilingualism and biculturalism, and of the political system that reflects our national diversity, by making Canada into an international state in which English and French would be the principal elements in a many-faceted structure embodying something of all languages and cultures” (523 and 513, emphasis in the original). Matthews does not use the word “multiculturalism” and does not refer to either Senator Yuzyk or Pierre Trudeau, but he was presumably aware of the background to his proposal.
- 5.
Trudeau’s statement and the explanatory document he tabled at that time are in House of Commons, Debates (3rd Session, 28th Parliament), VIII, 8545–8546 and 8580–8585.
- 6.
The problem was apparent more than 50 years ago to Roy Matthews (see above), who suggested “making Canada into an international state in which English and French would be the principal elements in a many-faceted structure embodying something of all languages and cultures” (513). This theoretical ideal would require, he thought, the recognition of “a few major languages … in the federal government, and in such useful places as the railways, airlines and so on” (514). In Volume I of the final report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, The Official Languages (Ottawa, 1967), there is a lengthy Separate Statement (pp. 155–169), written by one of the commissioners, J. B. Rudnyckyj, disputing the assumption that “bilingualism” must mean English and French bilingualism and recommending official financial and other support for “regional” minority languages such as Ukrainian.
- 7.
Federal spending on bilingualism and multiculturalism is very hard to determine, for the amounts shown for these programmes in the public accounts include only some unknown fractions of the total costs, which are spread across many of the departments of government and appear under many different headings. (A cursory examination of the 2018 federal budgetary documents reveals the existence of a Public Service Centre for Diversity, Inclusion and Wellness under the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and a Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics under Statistics Canada.) But both official bilingualism and official multiculturalism are officially the responsibility of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the figures shown for it in the Public Accounts of Canada for 2018 provide a good indication of relative magnitudes. The amount shown for “Official Languages” is CAN$ 364.3M; the comparable amount for “Attachment to Canada” (the closest approximation to “multiculturalism” in the current terminology) is CAN$ 196.6M. These numbers, which may seem large at first glance, are only tiny fractions of total federal spending, which was estimated for 2018 to be about CAN$ 338.5B. Thus, “Attachment” accounted for only about 0.06% of total federal spending (or 6¢ out of every $100.00) in 2018, and it was a small fraction (5%) even of the total spending of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Department’s grants for “community based initiatives” in support of multiculturalism, which sometimes attract a lot of negative attention in the press (as money wasted buying “ethnic votes”), amount to about CAN$ 5M annually or about 0.0015% of federal spending (or about 1½¢ out of every $1000). In short, no reasonable person will think that the major issues raised by official multiculturalism have to do with its direct dollar costs. For a detailed analysis of the grants made to community groups in the name of multiculturalism between 1983 and 2002, see Marie McAndrew et al., “From Heritage Languages to Institutional Change: An Analysis of the Nature of Organizations and Projects Funded by the Canadian Multiculturalism Program (1983–2002),” Canadian Ethnic Studies, 40:3 (2008), 149–169. For a less detailed analysis of programmes and their costs during the early years of both bilingualism and multiculturalism, see Leslie A. Pal, Interests of State: The Politics of Language, Multiculturalism, and Feminism in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993). Finally, it is worth noting that total corporate spending on diversity training, although it would be extremely hard to determine, probably dwarfs the spending by all governments, federal, provincial, and municipal, on multiculturalism.
- 8.
Canadian Multiculturalism Act (R.S.C., 1985. c. 24 (4th Supp.), assented to July 21, 1988). The Act’s one specific requirement is that the responsible minister report annually to Parliament on the operation of the Act for the previous fiscal year. Otherwise the obligations it imposes are much less clear, for example, Sec. 5(1)(e): “encourage the preservation, enhancement, sharing and evolving expression of the multicultural heritage of Canada,” and Sec. 5(1)(h): “provide support to individuals, groups or organizations for the purpose of preserving, enhancing and promoting multiculturalism in Canada.” How exactly the responsible officials are to do this, within the modest budgets they are given, is left for them to decide. Cf. Russell, Canada’s Odyssey, 343: “The Canadian Multiculturalism Act was passed in July 1988 under the Mulroney government. Multiculturalism does not rate a line in Brian Mulroney’s voluminous 1100-word memoir. And no wonder! The Act is basically a little piece of rah-rah symbolism. It does not require anyone to do anything or prohibit anyone from doing anything, nor does it authorize funding for any specific program or group.” The book in question is a 1121-page memoir. Russell’s broader and more disputable point is that “as concrete public policy … there is very little to Canada’s policy of multiculturalism,” which raises a question about the exact meaning of “concrete.”
- 9.
For Bourassa’s letter to Trudeau, see Immigration and the Rise of Multiculturalism, ed. Howard Palmer (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1975), 151–152. See also Kenneth McRoberts, Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for National Unity (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997), 129–130. This exceptionally good book provides the most thorough, detailed, and revealing analysis of language and cultural politics in Canada from Confederation to the time of its publication.
- 10.
The most remarkable example of the relative indifference to multiculturalism in English Canada was Trudeau’s reception at the annual congress of Ukrainian Canadian associations, the day after his long-awaited statement in Parliament. On October 9, 1971, having flown the previous day from Ottawa to Winnipeg, he addressed the assembled delegates, probably expecting them to greet him with lusty applause for having just done what the leaders of the Ukrainian community such as Senator Yuzyk had been demanding for years. Newspaper reports of the occasion suggest, however, that his audience had already moved on to some fresh concerns, specifically, the meeting that Trudeau was scheduled to have with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, the following month. The delegates seemed to have been more interested in pressing him to press Brezhnev to free the Ukrainians in Ukraine than in applauding him for having just enhanced their freedom in Canada.
- 11.
Richard Gwyn, The Northern Magus (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1980), 139. Fifteen years later, Gwyn published a more insightful book, Nationalism without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), but because of its neglect of multiculturalism, the book as a whole does not live up to the promise of its title.
- 12.
As noted earlier, “policy” with respect to multiculturalism has a variety of meanings and extends far beyond the 16 formal recommendations of the B & B Commission and the four points highlighted in Trudeau’s 1971 statement. Cf. Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, “Canadian Multiculturalism: Global Anxieties and Local Debates,” British Journal of Canadian Studies, 23:1 (2010), 52: “Multiculturalism policies have permeated Canadian public life, with ripple effects far removed from their original home in one branch of the federal government. The 1971 federal statement on multiculturalism has initiated a long march through institutions at all levels of Canadian society.”
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Forbes, H.D. (2019). Official Multiculturalism. In: Multiculturalism in Canada. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19835-0_2
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