[LINK] "An ideology, not a fact"

[rfmcdonald]

It's common for Canadians to contrast their multicultural cultural mosaic with the melting pot of the United States, we arguing thast our more pluralistic approach allows different ethnic groups to retain their identities. In The Globe and Mail this Saturday past, Daniel Stoffman argues that this is certainly not the case.

The reality is that Canadians talk about multiculturalism but don't practise it. That does not mean we don't embrace diversity. Both Canada and the United States, because of high levels of immigration, are diverse societies, but diversity and multiculturalism are not synonyms. Diversity encompasses a variety of characteristics that differentiate, including dress, culinary and musical styles. An example is Toronto's hugely successful Caribana festival. Such events are hardly unique to Canada; several major U.S. cities have Caribbean festivals too.

Diversity is not divisive in secular democracies that respect individual freedom, such as Canada and the United States. On the other hand, culture is not just about superficial differences but also about core values. The people who were attending cock fights in Cloverdale simply don't understand our tender feelings toward animals. This is a difference in values and there is no room for compromise.

The notion that Canada is a mosaic while the United States is a melting pot does not survive scrutiny. In 1994, a study by two University of Toronto sociologists, Jeffrey Reitz and Raymond Breton, found that language retention of third-generation immigrants was less than 1 per cent in both countries. This was significant. One would expect foreign languages to dissolve into the American melting pot. But Canada is supposed to be a mosaic: a set of separate and distinct cultural entities. If it really were a mosaic, ancestral languages would survive through the generations. But they don't, because the offspring of immigrants are quickly absorbed into the dominant language milieux.

Language is more than a way of communicating; it is a way of thinking, of organizing perception, of looking at the world. When you lose it, you lose the essence of your culture.

Only if there is a critical mass of speakers can the ancestral language survive. The absence of a U.S. policy of official multiculturalism did not prevent Miami from becoming bilingual. It happened because of a massive influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants accompanied by an outflow of English speakers. As a result, a majority of Miami's population speaks Spanish.

It is possible that certain parts of Toronto or Vancouver will experience the same phenomenon, but only an immigration policy of continuous high levels of immigration from the same source countries could make that happen. It won't happen because of heritage language classes promoted by multiculturalism policy.

Polling data over the years debunks the idea that Canadians are more open to cultural differences than are Americans. A Decima Research poll in 1989 found that 47 per cent of Americans but only 34 per cent of Canadians favoured the maintenance of "distinct cultures and ways."

Today, he took questions regarding the article.