Contemporary Racism and Limits of Liberal Democratic Multiculturalism in Canada

• In Event: Race and Politics in Canada

Abstract

Paying particular attention to citizenship and immigration discourses and policies, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the limits of liberal universalism in Canada and the persistence of racial exclusion in an officially multicultural democracy. Since the 1970s, multiculturalism has emerged as both state policy and dominant ideology in Canada to which all political parties seeking to form a government at the Federal level today must pay discursive tribute. However the foundations and many contemporary dynamics of the settler-colonial Canadian state rest upon on racial exclusion and inequality. Like other settler-colonial countries, Canada established racially exclusionary immigration policies with the aim of preserving its identity as a “white man’s country” while frequently employing racialized migrant labour to help build it. Canadian officials also used citizenship policy and regulations to deny racialized groups voting and property rights, and access to regulated professions. With respect to integration, policy would accord with the aim of “Anglo conformity,” whereby newcomers would be assimilated into a white, Protestant, English-speaking mainstream outside of the French-speaking province of Quebec. During periods of crisis, not even Canadian citizenship could prevent some racialized Canadian citizens from being subjected to forcible internment and being stripped of their property and their democratic rights as they, like Indigenous peoples, could be labeled and treated as “dangerous (internal) foreigners” to the country’s nation-building project (Dhamoon and Abu-Laban 2009). After the Second World War, a different social imaginary became hegemonic alongside important policy shifts, though assimilationist approaches to Indigenous peoples continued and exclusion in citizenship and immigration policies have assumed more novel forms. Most explicitly racist policies of citizenship and immigration were discredited and, over time, eliminated and immigrant groups of non-French or English origin demanded and received official recognition that Canada was a multicultural, rather than bi-cultural country.

Yet, any claim that Canada has succeeded in building a post-racist multicultural democracy, premised on the successful application of liberal-universalist principles, is false, as both glaring and more subtle tiers of citizenship remain in state policy and civil society. While we have seen significant changes in immigration, citizenship, and immigrant integration policies, “racialized forms of differential exclusion” persist, leading to vastly differing access to and experiences of Canadian democracy. The continued hold of multiculturalism in the Canadian political imaginary, though, obscures an understanding of persisting racial inequities. There is a troubling disconnect between Canadians’ views of racism and the lived experiences of racialized groups: Whereas 96% of white and non-white Canadians now believe that “racism is terrible,” 65% of non-white Canadians report experiencing racism (Ipsos 2021). Similarly, Canadians’ support for multiculturalism sits uneasily with manifestations of Islamophobia, including negative public opinions on Islam and categorical rejection of Muslim Canadians’ requests for institutional accommodation. More frighteningly, religious and racialized minorities have been subject to intensifying violence. Our paper explores and highlights discrepancies between the asserted promises of liberal-democratic universalism and Canadians’ enduring embrace of multiculturalism versus the lived reality of racialized groups. We do this by employing critical discourse analysis (CDA) and policy studies approaches to examine contemporary trends in immigration policy, citizenship acquisition and increased expressions of hate and violence toward Muslims and racialized minorities. We employ and draw upon scholarly sources, public opinion surveys, newspaper and media reportage, parliamentary documents, and statements by politicians. We end our analysis by reflecting on the continued viability of multiculturalism within an increasingly polarized Canadian democracy, where anti-migrant, Islamophobic, and racist ideas that seek the suppression of racial and religious diversity have become more commonplace.

Authors

• John Carlaw, Toronto Metropolitan University

• Ethel Tungohan, York University

• Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, University of Toronto