Good explanation from the author on how to move from the US to Canada, along with a reason that I think most, if not all, of us would agree with.
Though I think the author is a bit too nervous on a couple of minor points. FWIW I’m from the US originally and I’m fully into the buy Canadian / buy anything but US brands idea, and I don’t have the same reaction to seeing the Canadian flag everywhere - I think it’s great!
If my memory of grade school social studies doesn’t fail me, the American idea of multicultural identity is different than in Canada. This difference is typically described as the American melting-pot vs. the Canadian mosaic.
It’s less about blending into the mainstream culture, and more about bringing the best parts of our backgrounds and upbringings to the table. If the writer has visited Toronto much at all, it should be readily apparent: From the diverse ethnic neighbourhoods, the food, the festivals and events, to our council are of various racial backgrounds, but we are all Canadian.
What Canadian culture generally asks is to leave harmful parts of other cultures at the door. Caste systems, discrimination, foreign police interference, gun violence etc. (Obviously pockets of it exist and we’re not perfect).
The OPs article doesn’t really touch on the difference of approach to multiculturalism – and I think your take is frankly dated (though true, as I recall hearing it that way in grade school years ago). Trudeau/the Liberals declared Canada a “post national” country around 2015, celebrating that Canada doesn’t really have a cultural identity of any sort, nor any specific ‘thing’ that unites us. So while I agree that minority groups are celebrated, I disagree that there’s a thread connecting us. People are more entrenched in an idea of being part of that minority group, than they are of being part of Canada, or a greater set of ideals that Canada stands for.
For a personal example, it’s true that in school, all minority cultures are praised and the negatives of those cultures are completely ignored/absolved. My Niece has previously come to her parents crying, because at the end of a school ‘lesson’ where they’d learned a bunch of the great things from all her classmates’ cultural roots, there was nothing said about anything great related to third Generation “Canadians” that don’t identify with a specific minority group – or about Canada more broadly. She was just the oppressor / colonial person who was ignored / had nothing special. Other kids take pride, and gloat (as kids do), about their races achievements, looking down on the Canadian kid, which’s why she was crying. As far as I know it wasn’t a ‘lasting’ negativity, as kids move on to other things, but the situation left a definite impression on us adults and our view of the education system. Canadian values, are not a thing. We’re post national.
Likewise our laws and legislation are increasingly skewing in the direction of siding with cultural minority ideals, over broader Canadian values. You can look at the criminal justice system as an easy example, with its mandatory race-based reviews, specifically brought in for FN people. In Vancouver, we had a case where a FN guy literally stabbed an old white guy stranger in an elevator, killing him, and fled the scene. This guy faced zero jail time, as a result of the racial review. Canada no longer adheres to a notion that everyone should be treated equally under the law – we explicitly force the law to treat some groups differently. Cold blooded murder is excusable, so long as the races of victim and perp line up. And the person who implemented the requirement for race based reviews, Jody Wilson Raybould, is a member the groups getting preferential treatment.
This isn’t the only example of racism being excused/defended by our government. Another prominent example is Harjit Sajjan. While our Minister of Defense, he used Canadian Special Forces during the pull out of Kabul, to specifically, and exclusively, target non-Canadian Sikhs for rescue and streamlined immigration to Canada. A Sikh guy, directed Canadian forces, to rescue just his minority group. Our government responded by saying that accusing him of racism, was racism, and would be considered a hate crime… because we wouldn’t think him racist for rescuing just Sikhs, if he wasn’t himself Sikh. It’s an insane argument, as expanding it to other races would absolve all white supremacists from being thought of as racist. So again, the government does not treat people evenly.
Further, many companies are openly racist in the private sector of major Canadian cities. They’ll “hide” behind technicalities, like saying a specific language is required for a job posting – which they can use to filter out any non-conforming race from the list of applicants.
You also see increasing cross-border associations of Canadians with the ethnic identities of people from other regions, more so than with other Canadians. This is partly spurred on by things like the Internet making “staying in touch” with a persons roots, or keeping up to date with the culture of a foreign region, so much easier. For example, Canada doesn’t have a history of slavery (though our TFW program is sorta borderline imo): in Canada, slaves were outlawed long before BC and most provinces joined. In fact, that’s one of the things that we “colonized” out of the FN on the west coast, where ~25% of their population were slaves from other FN groups. And yet, many black Canadians still push a very strong message that we should feel guilty for what happened to them – even though we were literally where the underground railroad ‘went’ for them to have freedom/equal treatment. Drakes posturing as a ‘gangsta’ as an easy silly example. This is in part because of the saturation of our media with US black culture, where this sort of dialogue is far more pertinent. Calls for justice/antipathy related to racism is almost always directed at white people in Canada for a similar reason, as our media is often inundated with the US-centric view of the topic: even though actual events involving racism, such as the VPD cuffing a First Nations grandad for no good reason at a bank, are often committed by one minority group against another minority group.
In times past, if a person of a specific ethnicity, advanced legislation/laws that benefited their own ethnicity, that’d be considered racist / discrimination / wrong. Now it’s considered ‘reconciliation’, or excusable, so long as it’s a minority group promoting its own agenda – calling out such behaviour as racist, becomes a potential hate crime under current Liberal laws. Minority cultural groups are increasingly insular and antagonistic towards Canadian institutions – something like JWR’s legal changes, including the practical removal of Bail requirements for minority groups (which are what caused all the revolving door issues we’ve seen since COVID started), are the very real, and in your face result: it was quite literally a change done for the explicit benefit of a minority group, to the detriment of the general public, carried out by a person in the highest offices in the land, who was a member of the minority group getting privileged. Canada’s moved passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – Section 15(1)(2) were converted into equity employment groups that exclude “just one demographic” (who are increasingly shifting right-wing as a result), and elevated minority interests/group identity above Canadian interest/identity. Gone are our traditions of “Peace, Order and Good Government” that were set out in the Canadian constitution.
The OPs article writer is right to be pensive/nervous in my view. As an American, she/her husband likely won’t fit into one of the privileged minority groups in Canada. And there’s increasingly divisions and conflicts between all of those racialized clusters, who tend to promote their own groups interests over the broader public’s best interests. PP’s popularity isn’t a mirage – and the only reason he’s struggling in the polls at the moment is that pretty well everyone, everywhere in the world, is pissed off / amazed at the crap coming out of Trump’s mouth, which they associated with PP’s style of conservatism. But those issue still remain, festering under the surface – in fact, if the ‘backlash’ against Trump style conservatives causes progressives to go even further on the massively unpopular demographic style politics, as they may take it as a ‘mandate’ to do so, it’ll just make things worse.
Yes. I cited my source as that dated thing, education has since seemed more focused on Indigenous studies which were kind of an afterthought when I was in school. And I’ve had a lot of catching up to do when it comes to awareness of the Indigenous roots of Canada.
I think this credible threat from Trump is giving Canadians the opportunity to pick up this “thread” you mention that ties us together from where we dropped it, which could plausibly be around 2015 with the beginning of Justin Trudeau’s leadership.
Carney is being viewed as a pragmatist, and his words, as a person who puts themselves a little left of center of the spectrum have gotten me cautiously optimistic of his ability to enact real progressive change, and get less caught up on culture war bullshit stuff.
Crime should be prosecuted regardless of race, but there are multiple ways of solving the roots of crime. Locking people up with little chance of building back a stable life is a quick ticket to recidivism, but so is no consequences for crime. There’s a continuous discussion on that and I don’t have a good answer besides to address poverty and provide more non-crime ways for people in communities that suffer from rampant crime to live.
In context of the Ops article, coming to a nation that’s one “thread” seems to be “We’re not THOSE guys”… when you’re quite literally one of “THOSE” guys… is clearly grounds for concern.
And at a national level, to me as a local, having that be our main unifying thread concerns me.
I’m not as optimistic about Carney, though I do think he’s the most practical choice in the running. I fully expect him to capitulate and sell out Canadians, and to take steps to appease the American administration – he’ll just do it with a sad face, compared to PP who’d do it with glee.
To your first point, I don’t think individual Americans like her will take flak from Canadians for who they are (though if the prospect of actual invasion may come things may change). She may face some educational comments about our norms, like I have done.
To your second: It’s totally reasonable to be concerned about Carney. Wait and see a bit, but in the meantime write to your Liberal, NDP, and Green MP candidates about what you would want to see from a Carney government. Since the PM is new to the position, he might have more open ears to listen to what people want.
It’s not really that different, people can say they’re American or Canadian first but their life experiences are pretty similar on both sides of the border as they both mostly hang around people of their original cultural background in their personal life and some of them do continue to practice the harmful parts of their culture like forced marriage, caste systems, racism, female genital mutilation, they might send their kid out the US/Canada to do it so we can pretend it doesn’t happen, but it does.
It’s perfectly normal as well! It’s natural to hang around people who are similar to us and we would do the same thing if we moved to a country that’s completely different to ours where there was a community of people of the same origin as us!
As for the other side of the equation, racists exist everywhere so the Americans flying their flag might be the white power kind or not just like some Canadians flying the Canadian flag might be racists that would want all migrants out… Or not. The interviewee’s concerns about Canadians raising their flag is pretty funny in that sense…
I know that Anglo Canadians really want to make themselves believe they’re super different from Americans and that Canada isn’t like the USA, but it’s mostly the same thing with a different political system and mostly public healthcare. Sorry to burst your bubble guys.
Mm, I might have agreed with you about the American-like use of the Canadian flag at the height of the trucker convoy protests on Ottawa.
But our current situation is a bit of a different movement, that is Canadians taking back the meaning of the Canadian flag from anti-vaxxers and xenophobes.
The same thing happened in the USA during the Harris campaign, people of all political leanings wave the flag with pride in what they believe they’re country stands for.
Sounds like an overly broad brush.
Because in the end multiculturalism is what happens in the USA, it was just never made an official thing by the federal government like in Canada.
They’re still an American citizen. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned if they voted in the U.S. election.
If they didn’t vote, then I’m sorry to say, they’re a coward. Moving up here and then refusing to do your civic duty as an American citizen to keep this guy out of office to the best of your ability as someone abroad would make me furious if they’re sticking around here, so I’m really hoping that that isn’t the case.
It’s quite easy to vote from abroad, and I agree with you…it would have been good for the article to make that small point. I’m also really hoping that they still voted. I don’t think it’s fair to assume they didn’t, most Americans I know in Canada did vote.
For anyone who is a US Citizen living abroad, here is one site some resources for how to vote abroad
I should also note that with local & statewide elections, the next elections you can vote in may be sooner than you think. You don’t have to wait for the midterms. There have been 61 elections since January across the US in just this year and many more scheduled. They typically get less attention but still have tons of impact
LMAO
