Canadian Values Don't Get The Diversity Vote

Father Raymond de Souza: Immigration and values

Posted: November 11, 2009, 9:00 PM by Ron Nurwisah
Filed under: Father Raymond J. De Souza,multiculturalism,citizenship

Jason Kenney, the Citizenship and Immigration minister, told National Post columnist Father Raymond de Souza that one of the factors that encouraged him to rewrite the citizenship guide was a column, titled Immigration and Values, that Fr. De Souza wrote in 2006.

Here is that full column:

Originally published 9 March 2006

Vancouver – The success stories of Canadian immigration are rather easily told here on the west coast, where a massive influx of Asians has transformed this city. There are sushi bars on Robson Street and luxury goods stores catering to newly-arrived wealth. The excesses of success – shocking house prices and bridge-choking traffic – are present too, but there is a palpable sense that mass immigration has worked in Vancouver, creating a leading city at the dawn of what might be the Pacific century.

The family work ethic and emphasis on education that mark the cultures of the Indian subcontinent, Indochina, China, Korea, Japan and the Philippines is everywhere evident. Small business owners seem predominantly Asian, as it seems are the high achievers in high school and university.

Racial conflicts are minimal, and the scourge of Toronto violence seems very far away – though there have been about a hundred killings within a Sikh community that has known factionalism.

Perhaps that general confidence leads a greater willingness to discuss immigration frankly. Martin Collacott of Vancouver’s Fraser Institute did that last week in a paper that is being excerpted this week on these pages. Mr. Collacott’s paper focused more on combating terrorism, but he raise the question of what we expect of our immigrants. He advocates a greater commitment to “Canadian values” – a call that has earned him the usual criticisms. The local paper here had a page of letters, some of which denounced the push for Canadian values as racist.

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