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.But then comes the obligatory warning to anyone who might jump to conclusions:
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.
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.
The Canadian practice of "papering over" any angst about multiculturalism and immigration must be replaced by a frank conversation if this country is to thrive in an increasingly diverse future, experts say.
Jason Kenney is the federal minister in charge of Canada's multiculturalism. But for the last couple of years, he's been wondering whether "pluralism" might be a better word to describe this country's cultural diversity.KAIROS is a social justice group made up of 11 Christian churches and faith-based organizations |
Who could have imagined that the Conservatives would be so successful in hi-jacking the maple leaf as a Conservative symbol
The Queen is in, health care is out. The 250,000 immigrants who apply to become a Canadian each year will see a 'tougher' picture of the nation in Ottawa's new guide
Imagine wandering into a clothing store and discovering that all the labels had been removed. Not the price tags -- just the labels. You would have to make your own judgment on the quality and value of the clothes from touch and feel.
The Toronto Sun has an article today lamenting the flaws in multiculturalism as being one that creates “ethnic ghettos”, instead of the benefits that would come from the mixing of cultures in true “diversity”.
“If ever all these ethnic groups mingle into a single entity”, the writer opines, then Canada would have created a “miracle race”. Unfortunately, the scenario in Canada’s big cities appear to show more of a compartmentalized nation, and the rapid ghettoization is clear in large cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It isn’t real diversity, except perhaps in glowing governmental brochures and high school essays. No, what we are witnessing is the emergence of vast self-contained communities which survive independent from Canadian culture at all. Communities so large that their isolation is self-sustaining because of the relative autonomy they have, represented by their politically elected ethnic leaders, sustained by their ethnic economy servicing others like them, and isolated by a need to keep together in these pockets throughout Canada.
Was this piece written by a white Canadian of European ancestry lamenting the gradual shift to a mosaic of cultures too different from his own to understand? An intolerant bigot, to be written off as nobody more than another standing in the way of the inevitable changes of our demography?
