About a month ago, I had a roaring, beer-fuelled debate at a local pub with several friends. I was in the zone on one of my pet peeve topics, and I think the Carlsberg diluted my message. In the end, I couldn’t convince anyone to see my point of view. Let me try again.

My basic point on multiculturalism has always been that it has been falsely mythologized as a Canadian value. There is scarce data to support any assertion that multiculturalism, as an official policy, or as a lip service, has made Canada a more tolerant society – let alone entrench itself as a core value shared by the nation. I presume there are some tangible benefits to having a national multicultural policy. I know it earmarks a bunch of federal spending for cultural projects in Canada. However, I am wary of arguments that suggest Canadians share multicultural values, and ergo, are more tolerant of ethnic differences.

A few points for clarification: It is worth noting that we do have an immigrant society in Canada (to the extent that Canada has a colonial past and continues to embrace immigration – around 160 000 people a year). As well, it should be said that multiculturalism is a noble principle – I do not presume to be offended by the idea of a tolerant or poly-ethnic society. Lastly, I think we are better off having the space for a dialogue on tolerance, even if it goes nowhere.

My key problem is with multicultural rhetoric. The over inflated claims about Canada being inclusive, a mosaic, or an antithesis to the American melting pot because of multiculturalism – that is all rubbish. Moreover, it is the doublespeak of a Canadian political system that hardly reflects the diversity it claims is so defining of the Canadian experience. It is the uninspiring reason that multiculturalism is not a real tool for change.

Shared multicultural values in Canada are at best a campaign slogan, and at worst a falsely ascribed national mythology. The brainchild of the Trudeau era, multiculturalism has been a lingering part of the Canadian political lexicon for a long time. I’m still not sure what it means. Rather, it has become a watered down term that politicians evoke in order to create a false sense of Canadian unity. This is due, in part, to the long legacy of Liberal Party power in Canada, and this Party’s effort to enforce their own policies as naturally shared Canadian values.

I am blown away by politicians who stand with a straight face and say how inclusive and tolerant of difference Canadians are, and how we are blankly “multicultural.” The term is flung around without any care. I find it a bit sophomoric.

Polling data released in the Globe today shows that 7 out of 10 Canadians (in a sample group of 1000) were in favour of abandoning the current “mosaic” approach to multiculturalism that has long been a defining feature of the nation’s identity. This group responded positively to the statement: “Immigrants should be encouraged to integrate and become part of the broader society rather than maintaining their ethnic identity and cultural differences.”

This following a year (2004) when the top four source countries for immigration were China, India, Philippines, and Pakistan – hardly your garden variety of assimilable newcomers.

The same data shows an overwhelming Canadian preference for European immigrants, citing a further expectation that these immigrants would contribute more to Canadian society than non-European immigrants.

It should be pointed out that this data is similar to the situation all the way back to the end of WW2, and into the era of the post-industrial value shift that characterized the 1970s. A majority of Canadians preferred European immigrants then, and they still do now. A majority of Canadians believed in assimilation then, and they still do now.

So my question is: if multiculturalism is such a defining feature of contemporary Canada – why has it failed to change Canadian attitudes towards non-European immigrants; and why, in an era when most new immigrants are non-European, do a majority of Canadians still prefer assimilation?

Multicultural indeed. Face it – it looks better as a campaign slogan!

I subscribe to an email list from dictionary.com that sends me a new, generally uncommon word each day along with a definition and some example sentences. This helps me learn which words not to use if I want anyone to understand me. Which is helpful because I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t know what I’m talking about doesn’t mean they won’t pretend like they do. An acute disconnect in personal relationships is created whenever one person leaves a conversation thinking, “Wow, what a great conversation” while the other person leaves thinking, “What?”.

Today’s word is nugatory, which means “Trifling; insignificant; inconsequential.” It’s pronounced NOO-guh-tor-ee, which I think is pretty sweet. In fact, I can’t think of many cases where this word would not go well with dude. “Nugatory, dude!” just rolls off the tongue. Here’s a (made-up) example of how this word could actually be used:

The CN spokesperson introduced himself as JD. “Seriously, that’s my whole name,” he said. “I had it changed.” I asked him to comment on recent events in Wabamun.

“Here’s what you GOT to realize,” he said, tapping his desk with his pencil. “First of all, the amount of carcina…carcino… you know, cancer-causing chemicals, in the lake…” He trailed off. It appeared as though something on the end of his pencil had taken his attention. He peered closely at it and flicked at the eraser.

“Yes?” I prodded him. His head jerked up. He looked surprised to see that I was still there. “Where was I?” he asked. “You were talking about the amount of carcinogenic chemicals in the lake,” I reminded him.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. Yeah, so, there’s really only 80,000 litres or so that are actually IN the lake. I mean, the rest of it has been taken out of the lake by, uh, local residents and uhhhhh, their kids. I mean, what parent in their right minds would let their children touch a chemical that can cause skin cancer? Like, what a bummer for your kids, man!”

“No one knew there was a carcinogenic chemical in the lake until today,” I reminded him.

“Well, yeah, that’s a bummer too, right? I mean, personally, I’m sorry someone didn’t let everyone know about the carcinogenic pole oil a few days ago when the spill first happened, but like, how are we supposed to know what’s ON the train??? Do you know how long these trains are? And I mean, really, the chances of anyone getting cancer from this stuff are totally nugatory, dude.”

Then there’s parsimonious, a word which reminds me, unsurprisingly, of parsley and parsnips, but that actually means “Sparing in expenditure; frugal to excess.” Par-si-MOH-neeeeeeeee-usssss… The word has a niggling, irritating quality that suits it well, even though it does sound like a leafy green. Here’s another example:

I finally caught up to Larry Lucre, the CEO of CN Rail, on the tarmac at Pearson Airport. He was coming down the stairs of his Lear Jet carrying a bulging black briefcase.

“Mr. Lucre,” I called. “Can I have a minute of your time?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking flustered as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Ever since Canadian National was privatized in 1995, you’ve been laying off employees while increasing the length and weight of your trains. Some people think those polices are related to the environmental disaster that happened in Squamish, BC on August 5. Care to comment?” I asked.

“What you have to realize,” he replied, “is that we care deeply about the environment. And anyone can tell you that humans are bad for the environment. So the first step we took to protect the environment was to lay off people. Secondly, you have to realize that it’s not just the natural environment we have to be concerned with. The business environment we work in is also very important. And when I say ‘very important’, I mean, ‘very, very, VERY important’. In that environment, money is a resource. And it’s a very scarce resource. Very, very, VERY – ”

SPROING! His briefcase burst open. Stacks of $100 bills flew everywhere. “Damnit! Not again!” he exclaimed. “Give me a hand, would ya?”

I started helping him stuff the stacks of money back into the case. “So yeah, like I was saying,” he continued. “Money is VERY scarce here at CN. Here, take a stack for your troubles. Anyway, the business environment we work in calls on us to be parsimonious. Very, very, very parsimonious. Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost to fix that rail car?”

Another great word is malfeasance, which means “Wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior, especially by a public official.” This is one of those words I already knew but never got the courage to use, which is a shame, because it’s a great word. You can practically hear the slimy, official wrongdoing dripping off this word…mal-FEE-zuhn(t)s. Here we go:

CN has expressed outrage that US investigators have concluded that the fatal Amtrak crash in April 2004 was their fault. We asked CN’s Vice-President of Finance – and Safety, Barbara Parsnip, to comment.

“Assigning blame to us is an act of inspector malfeasance,” she said. “As VP of Finance – and Safety, I have have long recommended to US authorities that people living near our tracks take courses in train-dodging. Amtrak’s failure to ensure that Americans have this training, in addition to the standard Cleaning Up Cancerous Lakes course, can in no way be attributed to us. No further comment.”

So there you have it, three great words you’ll never use, unless you enjoy the smile-and-nod treatment. Enjoy!

Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary of Defense, isn’t pleased with Iran. Apparently, weapons from Iran have been found in Iraq. The weapons are “clearly” and “unambiguously” from Iran, although he did not describe them or say how many have been found during his press conference yesterday.

Iran is being “unhelpful”, according to Rumsfeld: “That’s a big border and it’s notably unhelpful for the Iranians to be allowing weapons of those types to cross the border.”

This isn’t just a problem for Iraq, in Rumsfeld’s words:

It’s a problem for the Iraqi government. It’s a problem for the coalition forces. It’s a problem for the international community. And ultimately it’s a problem for Iran.

This past weekend, two more people were killed in shootings in Toronto, the latest in a wave of gun violence that threatens Toronto’s reputation as one of the safest cities in North America. The shootings are attributed to gang violence and enabled by the proliferation of handguns that are being smuggled across the Canada-US border. Premier McGuinty: “I phoned (Toronto Police Chief Bill) Blair last week when this flared up and he told me that easily half of the guns on Toronto streets come from south of the border.”

Mr. Rumsfeld, this is a problem for Toronto. It’s a problem for Canada. And ultimately it’s a problem for the United States. So please solve that problem for us. Or shut the heck up about Iran.

******

It would be negatively nationalistic of me to point out that when it comes to illegal smuggling, America’s biggest problem is Canadian marijuana, designed to make you happy, dopey and hungry, while Canada’s biggest problem is American handguns, designed to kill people. So I won’t.

I want to pen my support for the next Governor General. I want to tell her that her work is important, and I also want to tell her why. More than that, I want to tell her detractors to take note, because they are prone to simple arguments, and I think they often miss the point when they dismiss the need for a Governor General.

Her role is rooted in the past and future of this nation, and in many ways she is helping to hold these realms together. Let me tell you why that’s a good thing.

I’m not a nostalgic person, but there is a simple fact that is irrevocable for all Canadians. We all share the burden of this nation’s history as much as we share the burden of its future. As new Canadians, or those having lived here for several generations, we are attached to the lived reality of Canada past and Canada future. Take a moment to think about that … the notion of a living history. That is how I am approaching this topic.

Our nation cannot sever ties to the colonial past; rather it is our burden to reform and reshape our colonial dimensions – to make them relevant for the present. This is the process of Canada’s living history. I call it a burden, because it often is, but it is also a unique opportunity; and one I believe is emblematic in the changing faces of the Governor General. Her role should be to remind us that our country is a work in progress – to remind us that traditions, which cease to adapt, will become irrelevant. Does Michaëlle Jean’s appointment live up to these expectations? I would argue yes, but to do so I’ll have to deal with the detractors (against the role of Governor General and of Ms. Jean).

The nay-Sayers say: She’s not elected. She wastes taxpayers’ money. She does nothing useful. She’s been appointed to curry Liberal support. She’s a token appointment.

Let me deal with these comments in stride, and I think I should be able to make my point.

No, she’s not elected. And that’s ok. Appointments provide opportunities that electoral politics do not. Ask yourself: who would fight an election to be Governor General? Not the current appointee that’s for sure. Which strikes me as a unique opportunity for Canada – not a problem. Reforming the appointment of the Governor General to accommodate an electoral scheme may at some point be necessary – remember I said: traditions that cease to adapt become irrelevant – but that’s hardly a reasonable argument for doing away with the Governor General.

She does not waste taxpayers’ money. First of all, the Governor General’s 17 million dollar budget is very modest in comparison to the range of annual government expenditures. Second, this is an investment in promoting Canada and causes for Canadians. It is money well spent because it can be freely attached to projects without a political champion in the party system. Which brings me to my next point.

The Governor General does a lot for Canadians, but the benefits are not the same as those gained from party politics. Her outcomes are not tangible policy outcomes, which has led many to declare her role, and her actions, frivolous or useless. This is a shamefully myopic perspective. There is so much more to the national political landscape than governing. The Governor General is free to act on issues and ideas that are not the favor of electoral (party) politics. Adrienne Clarkson’s trade mission to Northern States in Scandinavia would have never been a strong political proposition – but that’s the point. Does it make it useless? No.

Some have suggested that the appointment process makes the Governor General very much a part of party politics; that her appointment is decided to score political points for the incumbent Prime Minister, and that this makes the successful candidate biased (or presumably an agent of the sponsoring party). Some have even accused that Paul Martin’s recent appointment of a former CBC journalist was, by design, a move to keep the national media ingratiated to the Liberal Party. Or, that by appointing a black, Haitian immigrant, the Prime Minister was actively courting ethnic votes, particularly the Haitian Diaspora of Montreal.

While I can appreciate these efforts to unmask political strategy, and to reread moments in Canadian politics with a partisan lens, let’s not get carried away. These arguments are, at best a singular objection to partisan politics and not the role of the Governor General – I might add they are somewhat naive. (I refuse to waste time here debating patronage, and the appointment system that pervades Canadian politics – yes, pervades – in so many more ways than most are able to acknowledge.) To wage a speculative blow at the significant appointment of someone who does, in fact, personify groups sorely unaccounted for in the House of Commons, is not only naïve, it’s counterintuitive to the reality of Canadian life. Basically, it is to say: “Paul Martin is panhandling for votes, by doing something to empower and inspire a group of Canadians.”

This kind of backwards thinking runs too deep. Recently, articles in the Hill Times called attention to the scarce number of blacks in the House of Commons, Senate, and the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Late last week, when it came time to welcome our new Governor General, the headlines churning forth out of this same Press Gallery declared that Ms. Jean was a political slam-dunk for Paul Martin. They could have said that her appointment was a political slam-dunk for a lot of people. But they didn’t.

It should also be noted that Ms. Jean is part of a mixed race marriage; that she persevered poverty, that she has had a tremendously successful career, and that she is brave enough to have adopted a child from her native Haiti. I suppose Paul Martin will also reap the benefits of these inspiring qualities at the ballot box?

She’s a token appointment – hardly. If you are one of the few out there who is seriously concerned with the Governor General being an appeasement to affirmative action, then you need to give your head a shake. She is not, and never will be, a sufficient replacement for the elected representation of women, blacks, or new Canadians in the House of Commons. She can inspire Canadians, and perhaps remind us that we are evolving too slowly in some respects. As I said, the function of the Governor General is to remind Canadians that our country is a work in progress – and that change is always needed.

In this sense, the Governor General is not an anachronism. Her role is far from obsolete. Although her duties are largely defined in the conventions of parliament (a language that is dead to most Canadians), her relevance is not taken from her official duties to the process of Canadian government. The argument against the need for a Governor General in Canada often misses this point.

Please do something inspiring Ms. Jean, or I may be eating my words.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious – Sun Tzu

Yesterday I watched a video shot by someone with US troops in Iraq that was fondly posted on an internet site I occasionally visit to get a handle on how right-wing Americans really feel. (Discourse there runs from intelligent to “turn the desert into glass”.) The brief clip was from a battle in Mosul in December of last year and was shot using night-vision technology. It showed a surreal green-and-black scene with confusing lights and a menacing green searchlight that scanned the battlefield ahead (US forces use infra-red search lights for people using night-vision).

“Here they come,” a calm voice announces, and then there is a sickening spray of cannon fire from what must be a helicopter that is behind and above the person filming. The tracers in the cannon fire appear as bright green globs, but it’s the sound that is the most disturbing. This isn’t the “rat-tat-tat” you’re accustomed to from World War 2 or Vietnam footage, or from action movies. Modern cannons fire literally thousands of rounds per minute, creating an appalling continuous screaming noise, like a macabre buzz-saw. This spew of molten metal is punctuated by several rocket salvos from the same aircraft.

The action stops as suddenly as it began. The green search light, invisible to anyone without night vision (like their targets, presumably) reaches out again like the sickly finger of death. The clip ends. The responses on the site are the usual: “Dang, night vision owns”, “Sweet”, “OMG that is wicked”. It’s another display of overwhelming American firepower – the invincible might of American arms.

Except that the improvised devices used by Iraqi insurgents are proving no less deadly, and their guerilla tactics are rendering the American military ineffective. Fourteen American soldiers were killed today in a roadside bomb explosion. Seven others were killed two days ago in an ambush. The insurgents are picking the times and the places. They seek to avoid situations such as the one in the video clip I described above, because they have increasing awareness of when they can fight and when they cannot.

They are also increasingly sophisticated (according to US intelligence they are more resilient and have better tactics than a year ago), increasingly adept (according to media reports, they are now designing and using shaped charges in their roadside bombs to increase their power and effectiveness), and increasingly bold and persistent (there were 50% more attacks against US troops this July than in last July). Insurgents as well as common criminals have also infiltrated many Iraqi police and army units.

The bottom-line is, they’re winning. Every single independent news source from Iraq paints a very different picture from what the US administration – and the mainstream US media – would have you believe. The country daily descends further into chaos and bloodshed. There are constant and deadly suicide attacks, with bombings on the scale of the ones in London occurring once every few days. Baghdad shakes regularly with massive detonations. Violence between Iraqi factions – such as militant Sunnis and Shi’ites – is on the rise, and civil war is not out of the question.

Worse, from a Western perspective, is what this means for our long-term future. It’s not just an unstable Iraq and an unstable Middle East that we have to worry about. Insurgents in Iraq are learning first-hand how to build car bombs and suicide bomber belts, how to perform assassinations, the tactics and strategies of urban combat. The war itself is radicalizing Muslims in nearby countries, many of whom are travelling to Iraq to take part in the conflict. This is knowledge and willingness to kill and die for a cause that will spread well beyond Iraq. The violence there seems remote, but the Middle East is just a plane flight away from London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, Toronto.

So we see a century of promise turn into yet another century of instability and bloodshed as another legacy of violence is built in Iraq. It was supposed to be a necessary war. It wasn’t. It was supposed to be an easy war. It isn’t. Reminding one of another famous quote, from approximately 30 BC:

The outcome corresponds less to expectations in war than in any other case whatsoever – Livy