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Multiculturalism: What benefits?

Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 01:07 PM

Comments: 4

 

With regards to the controversy regarding CSIS director Richard McFadden's recent revelation that China is using racial and cultural chauvinism, along with cold hard cash, to recruit sympathizers among the ranks of Canada's elected officials and government bureaucrats, many people seem surprised.
Odd reaction, that.
So many people simply not paying attention.  Oh well.
In any case, The Ottawa Citizen editorial board does not suggest McFadden is wrong.  China is spying, British Columbia is likely the hub of the spying given the large Chinese population, and yes, it's immigrants:

China openly specializes in economic espionage, as Canadian companies such as aerospace giant Bombardier have discovered. There have been recent reports of Chinese technicians stealing secrets at one of Bombardier's Montreal plants, and of Bombardier negotiators being spied upon during trips to China.
While Fadden didn't name names, he did suggest that the problem of foreign influence is particularly conspicuous in British Columbia. The province is part of the Pacific Rim and is the Canadian epicentre of Asian immigration.

But then comes the obligatory warning to anyone who might jump to conclusions:

The danger of Fadden's warning is that it might be used, not by CSIS but others, as an argument against multiculturalism and immigration. That would be a mistake. Canada's diversity is a source of national strength, and has produced far more benefits, economic and otherwise, than costs.

So there are costs, the editorial board admits.  Those could be easy to quantify.  The billions lost to industrial espionage (lost contracts, competition against cheap knockoff products constructed from stolen Canadian designs, and so on), millions and millions more spent on language training and other immigrant services, and then the millions and millions spent on paying immigrants to continue to speak their own language and act as per their old customs through multiculturalism grants.
And that's just the straight up costs.  Let's cut everyone a break and not include costs to the justice system that accrue when we import foreign gang culture into Canada.   To be fair, criminals are criminals, not matter what language they speak.  Let's assume that if a Chinese gang wasn't running the drug and prostitution trade in a Vancouver neighbourhood, some other gang would.  Maybe it costs more for the police to fight a Chinese gang in a Chinese neighbourhood than it does to fight, say, a biker gang featuring native-born thugs.  I'm going to assume the cost is the same.
Not everyone would be as generous in their assumptions as I am being.
But against that, the editorial boards declares that the "national strength" that comes from multiculturalism and the other benefits, "economic and otherwise", not only balance the costs, but produce "far more" benefits.
So I challenge the editorial board of The Ottawa Citizen to lay it out.  Explain a benefit that could only come of official government-sponsored and taxpayer-funded multiculturalism that outweighs the costs. 
Far outweighs, if you please.  I want to see the dollar figures.  You set the bar, not me. 
Explain how our national strength is enhanced by neighbourhoods where no one speaks English.  Explain how our national strength is enhanced when French Canada has jealousy guarded its identity over the past 150 years, while English Canada is embarrassed to be, well, English, for fear of annoying immigrants.
Heck, we don't even call it English Canada anymore.  Now it's the "Rest of Canada".  Like the leftover bits.  I hate that phrase.
Look, maybe multiculturalism is a big help.  Who knows?  I don't think The Ottawa Citizen editorial board knows.  I don't think it has the slightest clue if it helps or not.  It just assumes it does.  More than that, the board is worried at the thought that it does not help.  And below that is the gnawing fear that instead of just being expensive and harmless, official government-sponsored and taxpayer-funded multiculturalism is expensive and harmful.
Harmful?  Like maybe we've set ourselves up to be patsies in the face of foreign powers with our open-door immigration policy and our efforts to make certain people can afford to not feel a sense of belonging to Canada through  official government-sponsored and taxpayer-funded multiculturalism.
If the editorial board of The Ottawa Citizen doesn't want readers to start wondering just how we've actually benefited from open immigration and  official government-sponsored and taxpayer-funded multiculturalism (as opposed to limited immigration on the basis of economic benefit to Canada, and the natural and cost-free process of assimilation of immigrants into a made-in-Canada Canadian culture), then maybe the board ought to just keep quiet about it.
Declaring that we're all far better off, as if it's just obvious to everyone, is just going to draw attention, and evoke questions that I'm certain many people would prefer never get asked (much less answered).