Historian Jack Granatstein has published some thoughts on Discover Canada, the federal government`s new citizenship guide, in the Winnipeg Free Press. He had this to say about the new guide. “It is a vast improvement over the 1990s study guide that was a vapid embarrassment. Presumably, a new citizenship test will flow from Discover Canada. It might even be a real examination that questions applicants about Canada’s liberal-democratic values — and helps entrench those values in new citizens.”
This is a good article, not least because it talks about the Bouchard-Taylor Commission and the Quebec debate about reasonable accommodation and Quebec citizenship. Too many English-speaking Canadians have ignored these issues. I agree that the Discover Canada guide is better than the old guide, but this isn`t saying much. Eating grass is better than eating dirt. I also like how Professor Granatstein said the new citizenship test “might” question applicants about Canada`s liberal, democratic, and secular values. He was right to introduce a note of qualification and caution here. I expect that the new citizenship will simply test a few random facts. It is hard to test someone`s value using a written test, since people can always lie about what they really think.
Moreover, the Discover Canada citizenship guide is largely value neutral and says very little about Canadian values. It is a recital of facts, many of which are correct. Professor Granatstein writes that the guide “even includes a flat-out condemnation of honour killings”. Well, honour killings are such an extreme example of a behaviour inappropriate in Canada that coming out against this category of murder hardly takes much political courage. Honour killings are also rare. Islamic parents forcing their daughters to wear headscarves, on the other hand, is a really common problem in some cultural communities. Adult children being pressured into arranged marriages or being disowned by their immigrant parents for being homosexual are other big problems. Unfortunately, neither of the two major political parties has the guts to write a REAL citizenship guide, one that would condemn such practices. Instead we get a watered-down guide like Discover Canada. It is a sad sign of how overly tolerant Canadians have become that a short declaration that honour killings are illegal was considered a bold move by the government! I kinda like the Dutch approach, which involves showing prospective immigrants a video that, among other things, shows two men kissing.
One last comment. Professor Granatstein said that “we need to consider carefully how we integrate them [immigrants] into our liberal-democratic and secular society…” I note that Granatstein uses the word society here in the singular. It might be appropiate to refer to British society or German society, but Canada is not a nation, as the House of Commons has itself recognized with a 2006 resolution. Quebec is a nation, which means that there are at least two societies, if not more, in Canada`s territory. The values, traditions, etc., of Quebec society are not those of rural Alberta or even Toronto. For this and other reasons, I believe that the integration of immigrants is a matter best left to the provinces. The federal government has little control over what happens once immigrants are admitted into Canada. Education policy, employment law, whether there should be nativity scenes at city hall, etc., are firmly matters of provincial jurisdiction. Most residents of Canada have little contact with federal institutions aside from the Post Office. The provinces are where it is at.
The Past Speaks 