The great multicult mistake

Here's a brief history of multiculturalism in Canada, according to Salim Mansur, political scientist, columnist for Canada's Sun newspapers, and author of Delectable Lie: A liberal repudiation of multiculturalism, a new book soon to be panned by the lamestream media as "unhelpful" and "downright racist".

Canada was the first of the Western democracies to turn multiculturalism — an idea Mansur calls "without philosophical substance" — into official policy. In October 1971, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced multiculturalism as an official policy for Canada. PET told Canadians that they wouldn't recognize Canada after he got through with it. He was right.

In 1988, in a blatant attempt to grab a bigger share of "the ethnic vote", Lyin' Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives enshrined Trudeau’s policy in a new Multiculturalism Act. The ethnics and vizmins kept voting Liberal anyway.

The lesson is that you can't blame official multiculturalism on either the centre-left Liberals or the centre-right Conservatives. Both parties, just as much as the pinko NDP, are unwavering in their support for the cult of multicult, even today. It was not just Trudeau, but Canada’s political elite, supported by the intellectual and media elites of the country -- the Rosedale liberals -- who adopted as the law of the land a dubious and deeply flawed policy, with virtually no questions asked.


Four decades after multicult became not just trendy but politically correct, some of the Western democracies -- Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands -- have openly expressed regrets. Their elected leaders have all publicly admitted the failure of official multiculturalism to secure social harmony or advance national interests.

In Delectable Lie: A liberal repudiation of multiculturalism, Mansur (of Arab origin, please note) analyses why the multicult policy was imposed on Canada in an act of bad faith, and is detrimental to the vitality of Canada or any liberal democracy.

The bad faith resided in the ridiculous proposition that all cultures are equal. This is the keystone of multiculturalism as an idea, and, Mansur says, is untenable.
Individuals are born equal, he argues, but cultures — by definition, culture represents the shared values, beliefs and customs of a collective — are not and never have been equal.

It is absurd, he writes, to say that the culture of the Saudi Arabs — or the Taliban, or Muslims from Pakistan, Iran, Somalia etc. — is in any way equal to and deserving of equal respect as the culture of an advanced liberal democracy, such as Canada before it was smitten by the dogma of multiculturalism.

Late in life, we are told, Trudeau expressed his misgivings about multiculturalism. He was asked to comment on how, as a result of his policy, most new immigrants ranked their ethnic-based cultural identity ahead of Canadian identity. He indicated his sadness, admitting this is not what he had wanted. That's as close as PET would ever come to admitting he made a mistake. Unfortunately, the damage had long since been done. Perhaps it can never be undone.

Click here to read some excerpts from this worthwhile new book. The website is that of ACT! for Canada, which is loosely connected with Brigitte Gabriel's ACT! for America, which has over 150,000 members, close to 500 chapters across America and a full time lobbyist on Capitol Hill.