The New Colony Of Canada: An Ottawa Citizen Columnist Asks Some Basic Questions About The Cultural Effects of Canada's Mass Immigration Policy
Dear Prime Minister Martin and Fellow MP's:
As Canada enters another federal election, you and all Canadians have to be reminded about the dramatic effects of Canada's current mass immigration policies. A number of observers have stated that Canada's federal government has unconsciously begun a neo-colonial phase in the country's history. In a few words, these observers say that our federal immigration policies are giving the populations of other countries the green light to colonize Canada. The result will be that the current majority population will become a minority in its own birth-country.The basic question that these observers ask is this: Should Canada be pursuing such a policy?
Although most Canadians will continue to tolerate some immigration, most would oppose current mass immigration if they knew the consequences of this policy.
Canada's immigration policy continues to be formulated behind closed doors for the good of Canada's immigration industry and for the electoral benefit of a number of federal politicians. The immigration issue has to be brought out into the open and acted on for the benefit of all Canadians. Health care, education and the economy are major issues, but current mass immigration policy is also a very important issue.
The basic questions that have to be asked are these: Why does Canada have an historically anomalous intake of 250,000 immigrants per year? Why does Canada intend to raise this level in perpetuity to levels in the 300,000 to 400,000 range and higher per year? The blunt truth is that our federal government has never provided its citizens with any sensible reasons for this policy. For example, Canadians have been told that immigration in general is good for the economy, but the government's own research has told it that immigration has an almost negligible positive effect on the economy. Secondly, Canadians are told that Canada has a declining population and that it needs immigration to stop population decline. But federal research has shown that Canada's population will continue to grow for well over another 10 years. Third, Canadians are told that we need mass immigration because of our aging population, but federal research has shown that immigration is a poor tool to deal with this issue; using Canada's own unemployed is a statistically and morally superior solution. These are not opinions. They are the results of some basic arithmetic as well as of some more complicated statistical analysis.
Mass immigration is having a dramatic effect on Canada and it is time for federal candidates to look at the consequences of Canada's current mass immigration policy. Most Canadains are sick and tired of the platitudes on this issue that they hear from many of those running for public office.
Most Canadians are also sick and tired of the attitude that no criticism can be made of the immigration issue.
We include below a short column from The Ottawa Citizen. The column focuses on the cultural effects of Canada's current mass immigration policy. (We have previously pointed out to you negative environmental effects. We have also shown very negative employment effects on long-term Canadians.) For your information, the Ottawa-Carleton area ranks fourth in immigrant-receiving areas in Canada.
We invite you to visit our web site: WWW.ImmigrationWatchCanada.org
Best wishes,
Dan Murray
Immigration Watch Canada
Let's Talk Frankly About Immigration
Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen
Canadians are sleepwalking through what's likely the most profound change of our times.
Statistics Canada confirmed this week what we can see every day on the streets of Ottawa. The nature of our country is changing dramatically due to immigration. Residents born outside Canada comprise 18.4 per cent of the population. Just under four million Canadians belong to visible minorities, up from 1.1 million 20 years ago. Visible minorities make up 13.4 per cent of the Canadian population, but that number doesn't properly describe the impact of visible minorities in Canada's largest cities.
In Vancouver, the proportion is 49 per cent, in Toronto 42.8 per cent. In some suburbs of those cities, so-called visible minorities actually make up a majority of the population. In Ottawa, one person in five is a member of a visible minority.
Immigration has helped make Canada a very different country from the one the majority of the adult population grew up in. And yet, this is a subject that one rarely hears discussed. On the day the latest story was presented, Canada's major newspapers thought it more important to comment on the future of the NDP, or next month's federal budget.
One can argue that the immigrant expansion is a good thing, or a bad thing, but surely it's a thing worthy of some kind of discussion.
The situation in Canada is not part of a worldwide phenomenon, but a particularly Canadian story. Our 18.4 per cent of residents born elsewhere compares to 11 per cent in the United States. Only Australia has more foreign-born residents, with 22 per cent.
We are doing something different than most countries, and it has implications. The three million immigrants who have come to Canada in the last decade obviously include huge numbers of high-achieving people who add to our country. But they change it, too.
In the Canadian mind, “multiculturalism” is a warm and fuzzy concept that involves colourful street festivals and better restaurants. Somehow, Canadians don't look ahead to the time when the Western European traditions that most of us would call Canadian are merely another little piece of an ethnic patchwork quilt.
This country was built by immigrants, of course, but the successive waves of European immigration brought together people who were not as dissimilar as those arriving now. Most of the new Canadian immigrants are from Asia.
While we call them minorities here, they are from countries that are vastly larger than Canada in population. They also have rich, strongly-defined cultures and religions.
Canada has never advocated a melting-pot approach, instead encouraging new groups to keep their customs and not merge with the mainstream.
Perhaps we want a country made up of hyphenated Canadians from the widest possible range of races, religions and cultures. Or maybe we don't. We'll never know unless we're willing to talk about it. We need to be able to do this without someone shouting “racism” at the first opportunity.
In Canada, we believe that racism is something that white people feel toward visible minorities. We're terribly naive if we think that people of other races aren't also racist. In its simplest form, racism means that people in one group, whatever it is, tend to think that they have some qualities that are superior to those of some other group. Is there any race that doesn't feel this way?
You aren't likely to find any identifiable group that says “we're no good, but we're terribly fond of the Chinese.”
A proper debate about immigration shouldn't be about the relative merits of various ethnic groups. Let's accept the premise that people of all groups are of exactly equal value. That still leaves the issue of whether Canadians want to see the existing culture and customs of their country dramatically changed.
In Ottawa, we have a well-developed sense of the entitlements of our francophone minority, and it's one that's appropriate to their status as a founding group. But numbers matter, too. Will francophones still get special status when their group is dwarfed by others? This is the sort of thing we need to think about.
The change immigration has made in Canada is neither purely good, nor purely bad, but it affects all of us.
Our largest cities have already been transformed by recent immigrants.
Ottawa is undergoing the same process, but more slowly. We can embrace that change, or argue against it, but let's not ignore it.
Contact Randall Denley at 596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.southam.ca .
