Discuss the Positive Evaluation of Official Multiculturalism as Unifying, Progressive and Effective, and the Critical View That Tt Is Divisive, Regressive and a Hindrance to National Unity.

Yanina Palkova
Intro to Canadians Languages and Culture
f.n 246 37
25th January 2008

Discuss the Positive Evaluation of Official Multiculturalism as Unifying, Progressive and Effective, and The Critical View That Tt Is Divisive, Regressive and a Hindrance to National Unity.

"I want the marble to remain the marble, the granite to remain the granite, the oak to remain the oak - and out of all these elements I would build a nation great among the nations of the world." Wilfrid Laurier's dream of Canada as a Gothic cathedral

Canada has been playing with various metaphors and lofty ideals to give itself a homogeneous   identity while having a heterogeneous society. It has gathered a colourful crowd of peoples beneath a big tent describing it as cultural mosaic, which later on took the form of "level playground field", a "two-way street" and has recently been referred to as a kaleidoscope. This searching for the right word shows to me, an outsider and a person who has never been under the big tent, an uncertainty on the part of the Canadians about what Canada really is. Since it is a country of no unified religion, ethnicity, culture and customs, the only things uniting them are the values which they support: multiculturalism, respect and tolerance towards difference.
This research project aims at identifying the attitudes to multiculturalism in Canada. Many supporters of Multiculturalism, mainly Kymlicka, claim that multiculturalism   "help[s] members of ethnocultural groups overcome barriers to full participation in Canadian society; promote[s] creative encounters and interchange among all ethnocultural groups;" (1 Kymlichka). A great number of people however oppose this view saying that multiculturalism is on a deathbed because it doesn't work in practice, creates ghettos and further isolates ethic groups. They claim it is more divisive than uniting and more regressive than progressive.
It is evident from those two views that people beneath the big tent... [continues]

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