The Gazette’s Philip Authier got it wrong. In the edition of August 9, 2019, he wrote: “While multiculturalism is used to refer to a society where people of different cultural backgrounds live side by side without much integration...”
False. Multiculturalism, as vested in Canada’s constitution in 1982, does not isolate cultural minorities. On the contrary, it celebrates their contribution to Canada’s diverse culture. Pierre Trudeau proclaimed it as a national policy in 1971 and explained:
Canada's citizens come from almost every country in the world and bring with them every major world religion and language. This cultural diversity endows all Canadians with a great variety of human experience. The Government regards this as a heritage to treasure and believes that Canada would be poorer if we adopted assimilation programs forcing our citizens to forsake and forget the cultures they have brought to us.
Multiculturalism, as he defined it, was not to be an isolated policy. It was to be “a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework.”
He qualified: Although there are two official languages, there is no official culture, nor does any ethnic group take precedence over any other. No citizen or group of citizens is other than Canadian and all should be treated fairly.”
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