In the Toronto Sun, Lorrie Goldstein delivers a well-deserved smackdown to urban bigotry;
Ibbitson doesn’t understand. He piously lectures: “So, to all the ADQ backbenchers and small-town mayors who disparage the latest batch of new arrivals, this message: Go ahead. You and your prejudices will fade away, and your towns will disappear, unless you can find a way to attract the very people you love to denigrate. And to the urban feminist who echoes their sentiments … woman, look who you’re consorting with.”
Uh, “woman?” Yikes!
For me, Ibbitson’s diatribe was a typical, self-righteous rant from our white-bread national media, stuck in their politically correct little town of Ottawa. So allow me to lecture him.
John, why do you and so many of your colleagues have your heads stuck up your butts about the real stresses immigration puts on a society? Why are you so quick to shout “intolerance!” when Canadians anywhere express understandable frustrations about half-baked policies they don’t understand, developed by insulated mandarins and opportunistic politicians who, rather than rationally defend them, scream “intolerance!” at anyone who voices unease?
I don’t know where John Ibbotson lives, but my instincts tell me he doesn’t rub elbows at the laundromat with Jamaican gun dealers or Mahmoud’s second wife. Change comes easy when it’s the other guy’s neighborhood getting the extreme makeover.
As the champions of the great Canadian multicultural experiment take up rhetorical arms against a sea of redneck hordes, a global village fortifies – “One way to recognize a failing state is to examine the extent to which its cities are subdividing into gated communities.”
In Brazil, the most widespread form of gated community is called “condomínio fechado” (closed housing estate) and is the object of desire of the upper classes. Such a place is a small town with its own infrastructure (backup power supply, sanitation and security guards). Some even have schools for the children so that they will only need to leave the community after the first five years of elementary school. The purpose of such a community is to protect its residents from outside violence. …
In post-apartheid South Africa gated communities have mushroomed in response to high levels of violent crime. South African gated communities are broadly classified as “security villages” (large-scale privately developed areas) or “enclosed neighbourhoods”. Some of the newest neighborhoods being developed are virtually entirely comprised of security villages, with a few isolated malls and other essential services (such as hospitals). A common mode of development of the security villages involves staking out a large land claim, developing a high wall surrounding the entire zone, then gradually adding roads and other infrastructure.
It isn’t just the rich who build walls.
The Poor Man’s gated community is secured by creating a neighborhood watch, often manned by former military men, as happens in Baghdad. The Rio militias that the Washington Post describes are just simply one way poor people pull up the drawbridge around their patch of turf. They chose a local warlord and in some respects transfer allegiance to him, while maintaining a separate relationship to a High King in the capitol.
Read it all.
In Canada, the “gated community community” of the chattering and legal classes prepare fertile ground within our own inner cities, as immigration policies blind to crime elements and cultural abrasion meet “root cause” criminal recycling programs and the intellectual numbing effect of identity politics – our chastizing betters returning to their beds each night in the smug belief that their luxurious vantage points behind high rent buffer zones represent the moral and intellectual high ground.
Robert Kaplan’s book “The Coming Anarchy” should be compulsory reading for all persons interested or working in immigration. Anything by Mr. Kaplan is a must read but especially this one.
super post – I’d hope that chardonnay burping sophist Ibbitson could get his head around some of the arguments here. Trouble is, the Centre of the Universe Media has never failed to surprise me in their reluctance to higher thought.
Ibbitson’s been a shill for the Libs for years. This won’t change soon.
IMHO there is a gated community in Brampton ON, at Dixie and Sandalwood. It’s called Rosedale Village IIRC.
There are lots of gated communities in Canada.One in BC is called Arbutus Ridge,where the lawyers and judges retire and insulate themselves from the riff raff that they have aided and abeted to roam our streets.
A refreshing reflection on the gated community Kate…seems those dwelling in the isolation and white bread conformity of the “gated community” display the most tolerance for the failures of their experimental “diversity” hobby horses.
NIMBY philosophy abounds behind the cloistered gates of the elite big ‘L’ community.
Ibbitson chides anyone who must live with the social fallout of unrestricted diversity tolerance theories and cannot afford to be as “liberal” in attitude as he, yet he has yet to back up his convictions with action. He may hire a Muslim to trim the hedge on his gated diggs but he’ll be damned if if they build a Mosque in Rosedale.
In this context we have to redefine the taunt of “redneck” when it eminates from a clostered elitist NIMBY. When a stilted dork like Ibbitson uses the term it simply implies that he feels the need to denegrate Canadians outside the priory gates to reaffirm his liberal theology when ever it is challenged by real world events.
When an elite calls you a “redneck” for coping with the fallout of their utopian experiments as realities dictate, wear it as a badge of honor….it simply means he doesn’t want you staring at the gaping holes in his ideological armor too long. 😉
Toronto real estate prices are driven by school zones and families with kids.
Starter homes in places like Etobicoke, Scarborough and Mississauga are priced in the “very expensive” to “ridiculous” range , no place you want your kids growing up, though.
So for every family with school age kids it’s time to move out of the starter and into a “good”
neighbourhood.
“Just keep moving north”, is how my friend put it. Sure, and add an hour or 3 to your daily grind.
What was cottage country, is now bedroom community.
Wither “The Oak Ridges Morrain”
Ibbitson does not have a clue as to what he’s talking about. Never did and probably never will.
He is completely convinced that his modern liberal viewpoint is inviolate and that anyone who challenges his assumptions is deserving of scorn.
Complete and utter arrogance!
It’s Good to see him get a good scolding.
Political correctness has consumed Canadian media to the point where mere discussion of immigration policy results and the label of “racism” is instantly applied.
Good on Lorrie Goldstein for his Ibbitson smack down piece.
Racism does exist – no doubt,and it needs media discourse but . . . . . . .
urging assimilation to a host country is just plain common sense.
Perhaps the Ibbitsons of Canadian MSM might also exhibit significantly more concern about important national issues such as the longterm politicization and rot in the hierarchy of the
RCMP and its effect on Canadian justice system and the resulting malfeasance and money laundering that can thrive in governments, as we have witnessed for the past decade under the Liberals.
Only willfull blindness on the part of Canadian MSM allows those things to thrive, even in a free country.
I suspect Mr. Ibbitson will cast his attention elsewhere for a bit, as now we know where he stands on the ADQ and Dumont.
Kate said “Change comes easy when it’s the other guy’s neighbourhood getting the extreme makeover.”
Exactly, and that is one of the things that has always infuriated me with liberals, especially wealthy liberals.
They demand that society to do this and that, but they quickly run back to their little enclaves, their private jets, their private schools, their big bank accounts, and hardly ever conduct their lives in the same manner they expect everyone else to.
They create policies that have little impact on their own lives.
Look at Al Gore. Look at Paul Martin.
Bloody hypocrites, the whole damn lot of them.
Interesting the comparison to the “castles” of old built to keep the unlawful out. Then law was applied, punishment that outweighed the benefits of the crime., then the walls came down, doors need not be locked, and now we have evolved to……..my door is locked,my wall is guarded, and those who force this way of life are free to roam and garner what they wish…all without fear…because we fail to draw a line and call the mess for what it is!!!!!
When you look at multicultural societies, you will see the same thing. Instead of integrating, groups prefer to set up enclaves where they group together. When one group gets more powerful and they are aggressive enough, they will start intimidating the other people around them, much like the Muslims in Europe. If unchecked by properly enforced laws and a properly trained and equipped neutral police force, this will result in race riots and even wars as the citizens of each group attack each other and fight back. Gun control, hate crime laws and other feel-good laws will stop this chaos when it finally happens, like what is happening in Europe right now.
Time to recognize a fact?
If or when the manure ever hits the rotating blades, and the gated communities are rasing their virtual drawbridges, it is the *redneck muthers* with the guns who will implored to keep the invaders from their walls.
Even being “hoisted by their own petards” will not be an option, since they won’t have any.
This adequately-armed, über-rural redneck (and proud of it) understands. The subtle yet pervasive stench of fear is a cloying presence behind those walls.
*
“One way to recognize a failing state is to examine the extent to which its cities are subdividing into gated communities.”
It doesn’t actually have to be a physically gated community to have the same stultifying effect on the demographic of a community.
The heavily Jamaican Jane-Finch area of Toronto, where I actually lived in the 1980’s, is a no-go zone for outsiders… where even the cops travel in pairs – well, actually mostly in platoons now.
Parts of Scarborough are heavily Chinese, the inundation of non-English signage everywhere fairly screams, “Do not enter” to anyone else.
I could go on… the point I wanted to make is that parts of Toronto are, in effect, “gated communities” even without the high walls and security guards.
They simply aren’t merely the product of “white flight” – as the Americans came to term the phenomena – that has racked Detroit and many other US cities.
*
Whether Ibbitson, et al, like it or not. People are waking up in many western countries to hostile and failed immigration policies foisted on citizens. Contrary to the belief that immigration helps the economy, it’s costing Canadians $5 billion a year instead, as reported in the Star.
Ibbitson can throw around all the meaningless insults he wants, it’s not going to change the mounting and reasonable rejection of multi-culturalism.
The movie ‘Children of Men’ is a pretty goulish look into the future effects and backlash of so-called multiculturalism.
When I came to Canada almost 8 years ago, driving was a pleasant contract to the shithole I came from. Two years passed and I started noticing that the trucks were no longer that corteous and avoiding has become daily task. Few more years and driving has become a nightmare of avoiding the speeders and tolerating slow drivers with the perks and goodies of watching for unsignalled lane changes. But the last year has suddenly reminded me that shithole above: people are now driving on the shoulder and other side of the road. This is a road to hell, trust me – I have been there and saw it all. It has to be stopped, but how, when 90% of driving instructors are ‘into your face minorities’ and drive exactly as I described. And then police would dare to pull me over for the license plate not bolted to my bumper, shattered by some crackhead who backed up in the parking lot w/o turning his head once… The fruits of multiculturalism ripening.
Ibbitson is a, let’s say, an ardent, a rabid, a committed devotee of multiculturalism. He’s a product of the 1960-1980’s approach to immigration that insisted on all immigrants maintaing their old culture, rejected any attempts to develop a Canadian identity – and has developed in Canada is a dysfunctional and weakened ‘working dynamics’. I maintain that this ‘division of the population’ into unique cultures has been a tactic of a centralist (Liberal) ideology of maintaining power in Ottawa.
It has done this by dividing the population into ‘subsets’ that are each descriptively unique, closed to outsiders, with hereditary memberships. These subsets operate in competitive and adversarial ways to other ‘subset groups’.
Why are they competitive? Because to maintain their very existence as subsets, they must constantly educate, socialize, and define their members within their unique descriptions. This requires funding for private schools, special events, festivals, after school courses, books, pamphlets, etc etc.
So, they compete with each other for government funding, to maintain the isolation and perpetuity of these subsets.
The result is a population living within a plethora of oppositional groups in Canada, each eyeing the other with hostility.
There is absolutely no process of developing a commonality of identity, a sense of Being Canadian. None.
We call this ‘diversity’ multiculturalism. I call it a Means of Controlling the Population by Divide-and-Rule.
It began in the 1960s- 1980s.
There is first, the basic subset defined by language. That divides the country into two – the ROC and Quebec. Each isolate, adversarial, competitive for funds and power.
Then, the ROC in particular was further subdivided, defined by religion and ethnicity. This was called ‘multiculturalism’.
As I’ve noted – the result of these two divisive actions – is a population that is completely unable to develop any sense of commonality, of shared goodwill, of cohesive future activities.
That is, this divisive framework has divided and splintered the population, such that they cannot coalesce to operate with a strong ‘working dynamics’. They are too busy fighting each other within the descriptions of their subset. Fighting over language, fighting over ethnic privileges and assumed ‘rights’.
Nowhere – is there any sense of a commonality as human beings, of a shared identity as Canadians.
Harper is rejecting this division of Canadians into subsets and focusing, first, on their basic identity as Canadians. As families. As working families.
The centralist ideology, which maintains control by division of the population into adversarial groups, is fighting back. In some cases, it’s due to a brainwashed belief in the ideology (Ibbitson, NDP). In other cases (Chretien, Martin, Bloc), it’s a strategic tactic of ‘divide, bribe and rule’. Dion? He’s a brainless academic utopian, who considers that the abstract is more valid and real than the actual. He has no clue about structures and the effects of various tinkerings with structure.
A wee bit of support sent to Mr. Goldstein. How long will it take for him to be called ‘Islamophobic’ with reference to the fact that he’s a Jooooo!
Great column Lorrie! I picked up on it from one of my favorite reads, Kate McMillan’s ‘Small Dead Animals’. If you haven’t done so, check out the ‘comments’ section to see the support you’re receiving.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/005870.html#comments
Not that you need more ammunition, but here’s an all too common example that reinforces precisely what you are saying: “Muslim sues judge who banned veil”. Note that the reporter describes what is the hijab – just a small step removed from the burka – as a simple ‘veil’.
http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070329/LIFESTYLE04/703290384
John Ibbotson would certainly define me as a ‘bigot’ despite my being a professional, university educated, widely read and perhaps even urbane, 57 yr. old. Ooops. I’m also a white, rural male. My bad.
Nonetheless, the example from the Detroit News and the recent announcement that the six ‘Imams’ from Minnesota will be suing not only the airline but the passenger ‘John Does’ who expressed concern, leads me to conclude that we will continue to see Islamic fundamentalists pushing for weaknesses and then using our own judicial system to attack and enlarge the very weaknesses implied by our much vaunted ‘reasonable accomodation’.
I’m listening right now to the ‘sky is falling’ climate warming proponents on the radio, debating what may or may not be happening while completely ignoring the clear and present danger of radical Islam working to hijack western society from within.
Excellent column – thanks for linking to it. It’s about time we acknowledged what our “multiculturalism” has reaped. Immigration of other peoples was thought a clever and noble idea, but we now know that bleeding hearts will bleed us dry. It’s time to turn off the faucet, and hopefully it isn’t too late to learn from the errors of our past. None was indeed too many. Thank you to Goldstein for pointing that out.
Aaron,
That was amazing! You’ve given the perfect summation of the perils of multiculturalism. I find myself reminiscing over the good old days myself… when a man could drive down the street without having to deal with brown people, or Asians, or blacks. Those were the days…
I’ve often wondered why all of the other races are so much poorer at driving than we are. Why should a good Christian Canadian be forced to endure bad driving perpetrated by you know who… the immigrants? Multiculturalism must absolutely be stopped!
I’m going to go ahead and NOT file that pearl of wisdom among the most intellectual pieces of discourse I’ve ever heard.
Kate,
Something tells me that it’s not you who’s rubbing “elbows at the laudromat with Jamaican gun dealers or Mahmoud’s second wife” either. Who are you defending? Isn’t it true that your pseudo-sociological objection to “multiculturalism,” whatever that really is, is nothing more than a thinly veiled bigotry? Aren’t your supplicants really the same breed of fundamentalists that you claim to despise in the Middle-East?
Are there Jamaicans that aren’t gun dealers? Are there Middle-Easterners that aren’t polygamists? Don’t both of those regions have doctors, and artists, and professionals etc. like every other region of the Earth? I’ve never been to Jamaica or to the Middle-East – then again, I’ve never met a Jamaican gun dealer or a brown polygamist – but I suspect that there are.
Toronto residents who have maintained the same home for years can no longer walk to their corner store and find signs in a language they can read in some cases.
Insulated wealthy Liberals certainly don’t care about these people, Liberals are more interested in selling out minority rights by purchasing blocks of votes from ethnic leaders who whip their communities for votes – as witnessed during the Liberal leadership convention.
Liberal judges prey on immigrant communities for talking points and praise from government funded ‘community activists’ – a thug can get bailed in less than 24 hours after being picked up with drugs and a handgun – thugs will then go back to their ‘communities’ and impose their own form of justice on anyone who may have helped the police, and thugs won’t respect their Charter Rights. It’s no surprise these people won’t talk to the cops – the cops arent’ allowed to protect them.
Forain says to Kate “Aren’t your supplicants really the same breed of fundamentalists that you claim to despise in the Middle-East?”
A little over the top wouldn’t you say Forain? Care to back that statement up with facts?
Claiming that those who object to multiculturalism are bigots is such a tired, worn out and discredited argument.
God truly help us if Forain represents the opinion of the majority of Canadians.
Forain,
A lot of people have fought and suffered so that a man could be judged “not by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character”. Multiculturalism is the deformed offspring of the civil rights movement, in which no judgments are allowed whatsoever.
Part of the problem is that Trudeau started something with multi-culti that Chrétien and lesser minds carried on with even as it became apparent that it had morphed into a Frankenstein monster. I remember reading something in a speech by Trudeau in 1995, which I can’t find, where he elaborated on what had gone wrong. Google only turned up this:
OTTAWA — In the mid-1990s, Pierre Trudeau agreed to a rare appearance at a private lunch organized by the Speaker of the House of Commons and attended by a group of a dozen specially invited MPs.
Each MP was allowed to ask just one question of the former prime minister, on any subject. After a series of relatively routine questions that Trudeau batted away with relative ease, now-retired Liberal MP John Bryden asked about the multiculturalism policy his government had proclaimed 15 years earlier.
“Mr. Trudeau, you were one of the key architects of multiculturalism and now we are in a situation where many newcomers to Canada consider their ethnicity before being Canadian. Is this the outcome you wanted?” asked Bryden.
There was silence around the table as the former prime minister thought before replying.
“No, this is not what I wanted,” he said.
My goal isn’t to defend Trudeau; it’s to get Liberal Trudeau worshipers like Ibbitson to realize that even Turdeau would have changed course knowing what we do today about the problems of assimilation and the failure of multi-culti.
“Turdeau” whoops … Freudian
Great post by Kate, and excellent column by Lorrie Goldstein. John Ibbitson exposed. Awesome.
A guest-post of mine at “Daimnation!”, Jan. 23, 2006:
“John Ibbitson’s supercilious and wrong-headed view of Canada”
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/005594.html
Mark
Ottawa
Ibbitson’s an ass.
“Why Atlantic Canada remains white and poor”
Globe and Mail
August 20, 2004
http://www.triec.ca/index.asp?pageid=41&int=newsite/news-media/inthenews/MediaClippings/GlobeAug2004.htm
Forain, it was not necessary to mirror Ibbitson, unless you were being sarcastic and did it to mock him.
If you were trying to mock Ibbitson, “WELL DONE”, you did a good job of displaying, yet again, the silliness of multi-cultism.
TJ:
Absolutely not. The fundamental causes of comments like Aaron’s and the manifestations of fundamentalism in the Middle East are the same. They are both the products of a very dangerous world view.
Do you agree with Aaron’s comment? Are other races worse drivers than white Canadians? If so, is this proof of the follies of inter-cultural settlement?
Are you called a bigot often? The reason might not be because you’re not, as you seem to suggest.
Surly:
I certainly don’t disagree with you, in principle. Few would suggest that our current system for Multiculturalism isn’t flawed. The results are usually the sorts of antiquated “cultural” freak shows that rear their heads at ethnic pavilions during festivals.
However, what do black gun dealers have to do with anything? The vast majority of people who immigrate to Canada are good people, just like we are. People aught to take pains not to confuse a black criminal with a criminal who is black.
Oh boy, surly…
Yes, that’s true, the people thought so that everybody is treated equally. But those, who enjoy the fruits of that fight most of the time want to be more equal than those who fought.
Oh boy, surly…
Yes, that’s true, the people fought so that everybody is treated equally. But those, who enjoy the fruits of that fight most of the time want to be more equal than those who fought.
Immigration from poorer countries will continue under the Conservatives. If anything, the number of immigrants will continue to go up. Why? Because it keeps wages down especially for low and middle class income earners.
You think the Cons care about the problems caused by the high level of immigration? Of course not, because they serve the same corporate masters as the Liberals did. Don’t forget: whatever increases profits for business is good for Canada.
lberia – your comments are unsupported by any evidence.
Kindly explain how a level of low wage earners keeps other wages down. There is no connection between the two. Because someone is earning the minimum wage does not mean that others, many others, are not earning at multiple other wage levels. There is no connection.
What corporate masters? Sounds like a juicy conspiracy theory. Could you provide some proof for this allegation? Names and evidence would help.
And that has to be the statement of the day – ‘whatever increases profits for business is good for Canada’. Heck, that’s the 101 basics of all economies. Would you prefer that all our businesses operate at a loss? Is that your style of ‘a good economy’?!
So, provide some evidence, please, or your comment is ‘just a soapbox rant’.
ET:
How are wages kept down? Supply and demand. You’re familiar with that concept, right? Google “immigrants keep wages down” and do your own research.
As for corporate masters, are you claiming Power Corp never had any influence over the Liberals? Or that the oil industry has no influence over the Cons? Plutocrats aren’t stupid enough to be seen directly influencing policies, but it’s a fact of life that this is going on…you are being disingenuous (again) by questioning it.
You question the statement “whatever increases profits for business is good for Canada.” Do you have a guilty conscience about something?
lberia–as in “Lavrenti Pavlovich”?
http://tinyurl.com/yr78j6
Have you not noticed that corporations–and unions–now can donate only severely limited funds to Canadian political parties?
http://tinyurl.com/255b76
Are you helping someone build an atomic bomb?
http://www.atomicforum.org/russia/russia.html
Mark
Ottawa
lberia: Why not hhimmler? Just wondering, you know.
Mark
Ottawa
A study by accounting and consulting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers claims Canada could lose up to 75,000 IT jobs by 2010 to offshore outsourcing, but could also *gain* 165,000 jobs through U.S. outsourcing contracts. The trick is, according to this story at IT Manager’s Journal, that while Indian, Chinese, and Russian programmers may cost 80% less than U.S. programmers, the time zone, language, legal, and other problems involved with sending work half way around the world can eat up much of the labor savings, while Canadian programmers are nearby, speak English with nearly American accents, have a similar culture and legal system, and get paid 40% less than U.S. programmers. Might be time to think about moving North, eh?”
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/16/1336214
Mark:
I’m aware that direct funding is limited…something the Libs initiated, as I’m sure you’re aware. That really doesn’t stop the influence peddling though. I mention Power Corp and the Libs, which is a common topic around SDA. Are you saying the Cons are immune to this type of behaviour?
Why not hhimmler? Because that would have been too mundane a choice. Besides, it gives people the opportunity to look up some history. 8>)
lberia: Your view of “mundane” is rather different from mine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrenty_Beria
‘There are numerous allegations that Beria raped women, and that he personally tortured and killed many of his political victims.
Charges of sexual assault and sexual deviance against Beria were first made in the speech by a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikolay Shatalin, at the Plenary Meeting of the committee on July 10, 1953, two weeks after Beria’s arrest. Shatalin said that Beria had had sexual relations with numerous women and that he had contracted syphilis as a result of his sex with prostitutes. Shatalin referred to a list (supposedly kept by Beria’s bodyguard) of over 25 women with whom Beria had sex. Over time, however, the charges became more dramatic. Khrushchev in his posthumously published memoirs wrote: “We were given a list of more than a 100 names of women. They were dragged to Beria by his people. And he had the same trick for them all: all who got to his house for the first time, Beria would invite for a dinner and would propose to drink for the health of Stalin. And in wine, he would mix in some sleeping pills…”
By the 1980s, the sexual assault stories about Beria included the rape of teenage girls. The author Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, who wrote a biography of Beria, mentions in an interview a specific and clearly perverted sexual game Beria is said to have forced upon young girls before picking one of them to be raped. This alleged practice got the name “Beria’s Flower Game.”[2]’
I do not “look up some history”; I know it. If you have a preference amongst police chief mass murderers, I find it odd that you prefer the one who was at least (and that’s a very big least) a good family man–or are you making a point by your choice?
Mark
Ottawa
My mistake: Should read above “you do not prefer the one”
Mark
Ottawa
Mark:
By mundane I mean not as well known.
My point about using this pseudonym…well, if I’m going to disagree with right-wing view points on a right-wing blog site, I might as well post under a left-wing villain’s name. I don’t advocate mass murder or make racist remarks, unlike some commentators with ordinary names.
Are you offended by my choice?
“I don’t advocate mass murder.”
Just the dogma.
Nope, not even the dogma. Just ’cause I’m not a rightwinger doesn’t mean I’m a commie. However, thanks for another example of the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” right-wing logic.
Immigration would be fine if:
1. the Canadian economy produced more jobs(thru lower taxes, higher living standards, freer economy, etc.)
2. law and order were upheld better in this country (no Jane and Finch scenarios)
What we say about the immigrants now is what was said years ago about the Irish, the Ukrainians, the head tax Chinese-Canadians, etc. But these people will assimilate eventually – provided there are meaningful jobs and other outlets thru which they can contribute.
My general belief extends to all ethnic groups – except for Muslims whose backward and totalitarian religion have no place in free, democratic, Western society. Only when the Muslim world changes or its more sophisticated modernizers seek refugee status should these people be let in.
On the one hand Canada lets in 250,000 immigrants per annum. On the other hand, Canada is one of the highest per capital carbon dioxide producing nations in the world.
Forgetting for a moment all the “integration into Canadian society” pros & cons, if we have a general policy to reduce GG emissions and we are in the hole by minus 30%, why do we keep digging?
From a GG perspective, reducing immigration into Canada is a socially responsible policy.
What’s so bad about a failed state if people – both rich and poor – end up living with better protection of their private property and far lower costs assessed for ordinary services? A failed state is also far less likely to conscript its citizens into foreign wars, tax them into ruin, prevent them from opening a business and hiring whoever they want, and imprison them for not enrolling their kids in the “correct” schools.
The negative effects of multicultural policy are all related to the state and not to the lack of a state. Without a state to underwrite and subsidize a massive immigration program with welfare, job quotas, cultural grants, etc. and to divide people with political demagoguery you will find that people of all backgrounds are enormously adaptable and tolerant of each other. It’s only when one group of people gets uppity and calls themselves “the government” – worst of all a “government of the people” that it becomes possible to abuse the many in the interests of the few.
Say this to the next person who tries to abuse your rights: “oh yeah, you and what government?”
Along the same lines, I sent an e-mail to Jim Travers of The Star re his piece on the PM not giving much time to the Grandmother who is the head of Liberia. I pointed out that perhaps the PM was tired of pouring money down the African rat hole and they should consider using DDT to solve the malaria problem. I got a reply telling me that this was almost HATE speech. What ever happened to the free flow of ideas in this country.
Ivan Swan