By Arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
The Dominion Institute, in honour of Canada Day, released its annual survey over the weekend. The poll was conducted by Ipsos Reid and surveyed 3,164 adults between June 14 and June 17, 2007. The survey is considered to be accurate within plus or minus 1.7%, 19 times out of 20.
There weren't too many shockers in this poll. As there has been a general dumbing down in Canada as there has been throughout the West in the last 40 years or so, it was no surprise that nearly a third of respondents (31%) view the Timbit as a Canadian symbol.
Almost 7 in 10 Canadians questioned (69%) believe that Canada is a success because we share a common history and national identity. What does not bode well for the future of this country is that almost a third (31%) believes that a lack of a common history and the fact that newcomers to Canada are not expected to adapt to a national identity is actually what makes Canada strong. It shouldn't be lost on anyone that this latter percentage is the same as those who think that, to the extent that Canada should even have a national flag, it should have a glazed doughnut hole waving proudly in the breeze.
An interesting factor in the survey was that of those respondents who feel a lack of a national identity that people should adapt to makes our country strong, almost 4 in 10 (38%) have a university education. The fact that so many of the interviewees have post secondary educations means that they have successfully been indoctrinated into the belief that multiculturalism is more important than any notion of Canada as a distinct country with a proud history.
As it is often said, we are a nation of immigrants. But the blame for all of the focus on multiculturalism at the expense of a distinct Canadian identity does not rest on those who come to our shores. It lies solely on the elites who have a sometimes visceral hate for the white man, specifically those of French and English ancestry who founded what we now know as Canada. Immigrants often come to Canada wanting to know what they have to do to be a Canadian. Various levels of governments smile at them paternalistically, throw money at them and tell them to act like they did in the old country. And this is what actually happens. I talked to an immigrant from West Africa who told me that when he came to Canada he tried really hard to figure out what it was to be a Canadian. He was told to get some "native" clothing and go bang a drum. While people in small villages out in the boonies in West African countries do sit around and bang drums, undoubtedly for a lack of anything else to do, these are not the people who are coming to Canada – they can't afford to get here. Immigrants from West Africa tend to be those who lived in their countries' major cities. The person who I was talking with told me that he never banged a drum in his life; he was too busy with his white collar job in an office. He did however, go to a concert once and saw a drummer.
It's bad enough that Canada is too often defined not by what it is but what we are not – we are not Americans. But our multicultural policies are coming at the expense of our distinct history and form of government. As the baby boomers (those educated before the 1960s) die off, we can expect more and more Canadians to buy into the notion that our national identity and history are bad things rather than something that should unite us.
And when that happens, the Canada as we know it will be no more.
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