Citizenship Education and Critical

Multiculturalism in the Canadian Context

Douglas Fleming PhD 

Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

dfleming@uottawa.ca

New France Population1720: 24,5001763: 70,000

1776: 40,000 to 50,000 Loyalists from the U.S.

1800-1850: significant British immigration

1900-1914 immigration: 1,000,000 British750,000 USA500,000 Continental Europe

Large waves of eastern European immigration

Procedures excluded black immigration and restricted it to Nova Scotia

Quotas on Japanese and Indian emigration to several hundred per year

Immigration Acts of 1906 and 1910.Defined immigrants; restricted immigration for certain ethnic and

political groups; gave government power to deport; assessed landing fees.

Chinese head tax:Early 1880s: 15,000 workers for CPRPaid one half to one third of white wages1871: 3,000 Chinese nationals in BC one tenth of non-aboriginal population1878 provincial law struck down1885: Chinese Immigration Act, $50 head tax

1903: $500 ($375 yearly average Cdn white industrial wage; created "bachelor society"

1923: Chinese (Exclusion) Immigration Act

1828: British Emigration Acts

1907: Vancouver Riot

1914: Komagata Maru Incident

1920: Immigration Act

1946: Canadian Citizenship Act

1952: mechanisms put in place for deportation or refusal of entry

1962: removal of race or ethnically-based criteria for immigration; economic criteria introduced

1967: Points System introduced; major demographic shift towards immigrants from Asia and away from Europe and the U.S.

1968- mid-1970’s: American draft dodgers: 30,000 and 40,000.

1973: Refugees from Chile: 7,000

1980: Southeast Asian “Boat People”: 60,000

1976-7: provincial/federal arrangements; caps introduced; cost-recovery; removal of restrictions on dual citizenship; no revocation of citizenship except in the case of fraud; appeal boards set up; visitors allowed to apply; designation of four classes of immigrants: family (sponsorship); other (compassionate); refugees; independent (skilled)

1986-2012: Investor class

1999: temporary laborer program (incl. international students; agricultural, caregiver and domestic): over 300,000 at any one time

2014-15: restructuring and restrictions on refugee and family categories; employer-based skilled worker criteria strengthened; greater abilities to deny or revoke (esp. after 9/11)

currently: Over 250,000 immigrants annually China, India and Philippines greatest source nations (10-15% each); all others less

than 5% Classes:

Economic (20%): skilled workers; business-based Family and sponsored (70%)Refugees (10%)

Since 1971, multiculturalism has been an important aspect of Canadian state policy;

Multiculturalism within a bilingual framework;

As Trudeau argued in 1971, bilingualism is essential for Canadian unity and immigration is essential for the nation’s economic growth;

Multiculturalism is in response to the discontent expressed by immigrant groups to the designation of French and English as official languages (Esses & Gardner, 1996).

1971: Federal policy;

1982: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;

Slightly ambiguous: Section 27. “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”

1985: Canadian Multiculturalism Act;

No subsequent national government has seriously challenged the notion.

Young (1984): the policy assumes that

inequality is based on individualistic prejudices; however, understanding exploitation or oppression is impossible without making sense of them in terms of the nation as a whole;

“national social identity in Canada has been fabricated into a certain nationality through maintaining the dominance of a certain patriarchal Englishness against and under which all others are subordinated” (Young, 1984, p.10). 

Corson (1990) noted that multicultural education is laudable only if it is augmented with anti-racist pedagogy;

Without this addition, multiculturalism "may provide only a veneer of change that perpetuates discriminatory educational structures. It does little to examine the causes of minority students’ academic difficulties nor to mitigate variations in achievement that different groups have" (p. 150).

Critical multiculturalism is a term that was first coined by the Chicago Cultural Studies Group (1992) as a way of critiquing the way in which multiculturalism:

has been dominated by

Anglo-American discourses,shorn of its critical content by corporate

interests, and filled with western-orientated identity politics.

“Teachers! This is the kind of work required of you: You must get acquainted with these people of divers nationalities and interpret to them what our Canadian citizenship means. The solution of the racial problem lies almost wholly in your hands; the future of our glorious country largely depends upon your attitude on this national issue.” (Anderson, 1918, 135).

“Defining Canadian culture and preparing L2 teachers to integrate it in a comprehensive and relevant way in our multicultural classrooms is certainly one of the greatest challenges our profession has faced in the last few decades.” (Courchéne, 1996, 14)

Courchéne draws upon Damien (1986) to emphasize that culture is:

learned, changeable, a universal fact of human life, a network of relationships and values, transmitted through language, and a filtering device.

a new cultural vision should: reflect Canada’s past; be built around a series of commonly held

rights and freedoms; be reflected in common traditions and

symbols; and explain why inequalities exist and what

should be done about them;

“internalize it, transform it and return it to us in a new form that incorporates the content of their first culture” (Courchéne, 1996, 25).