Sunday, January 14, 2007

Multiculturalism

Lots has been made about multiculturalism recently, with Wajid's decision and with Kenney's appointed as secretary of state for multiculturalism.

Reading an article in the Ottawa Sun by Greg Weston, and you'd swear that the Conservatives were the first government to recognize multiculturalism. Now I applaud the fact that the Conservatives are willing to recognize that there are multiple cultures, but looking it up, it appears that the basic position was first appointed in 1972. Now, as I said, it's good that the Conservatives are finally deciding that minorities are important in our society, but maybe we should think of the fact that they didn't have a secretary of state for multiculturalism in the first year of their government instead of the fact that they now decided that one could be useful to them.

3 comments:

WesternGrit said...

Bravo!

Yes, the conservatives have always been anti-multiculturalism. Check any of Harper's cohorts' statements from the past 10yrs or so. They were all opposed to Canada's "official multiculturalism". Most Reformers strongly feel that multicultural groups are nothing but "special interest groups".

Even though the Reformers swallowed up the Conservatives it's hard to accept a party with members and MPs with such extreme views on society and ethnic minorities.

Devin Maxwell said...

One of the policy bases for the creation of the Reform Party was the elimination of multiculturalism...look it up.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm - Diane Ablonczy was an active member of the Western Concepts group that want/wanted to separate Man/Sask/Alta/B.C./NWT from Canada and retain European/Christian values...