This is an Opinion Piece

Background

Multiculturalism policy was officially adopted in Canada during Pierre Trudeau's reign as PM in the late 1970's - 1980's and officially came into law as the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988 and section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and is administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

My family emigrated to Canada from England in 1957. My father had a job as a mechanic in a gold mine and my mother worked as the medical officer. Discovery Mine was located in the NWT just north of Yellowknife. My brother and I attended a one room school house. Although it was a culture shock for us and it took about a year to acclimatize to the harsh winter conditions, us kids thought it was a great adventure.
The one thing I learned from our teacher was that Canada was the melting pot of the world and that we all came to Canada and melted into Canadians.
It is interesting to note that most of the people in the mine were from different countries all over the world. I grew up in this atmosphere where we were all equal no matter where we came from. It seemed to work and we all got along well with the different nationalities and religions. I never thought about the differences between us because I did not see the differences between us.

From the time that multiculturalism became law I saw changes happening in our society. Suddenly we were French - Canadian, English - Canadian, Ukrainian - Canadian and all these other hyphenated Canadians.
The melting pot of Canada was becoming just many different pots we where all placed in and all hyphenated. There was no melting going on at all. Each group of peoples had their own agendas.

In the cities we were seeing each of these groups of people living and congregating in certain areas. Most Canadian cities now have a China Town, Little Italy, French quarter and so on. I can understand this. If you come to a new country you would associate with the people you could communicate with.
Personally, I like the diversity that is Canada. We have many cultures and many different foods and ideas and this is what makes Canada an interesting place to live. However, what I do see, is a society that has become fractured.
It is slowly turning into a country of us and them. Us, being the group you belong to and them as the other groups that live beside you.
I am all for the intermingling of different peoples and cultures. I am for marriages between these different groups and I have no problem with interacting with different cultures or religions. Time does heal all wounds and if the human race survives the next 100,000 years the peoples of earth will primarily be one color through the intermarriage process.

What I see happening now in Canada is that all these different groups are vying for their own power base. Take for example M103 "the Islamophobia bill". M103 is a motion that would make it a crime to criticize Islam in any way and if it is made law would raise Muslim values above others. This is not equitable to any other groups that live here.
We already have stringent anti hate laws in this country that apply to everyone. Why is it necessary to give one group special representation and not others?

Interestingly, the only group you can criticize freely seems to be white and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Jewish.

Something has gone wrong with multiculturalism and the way Canadians see it.

So what does the future hold?

You cannot legislate peoples feelings, speech and thoughts, even though the current government is trying to. It is madness to try because it will never succeed. All it will lead to is a socialist or communist state where we will all be diminished.
Instead of creating more laws, most of which are poorly thought out by short sighted politicians responding to knee jerk reactions, perhaps we should be looking long and hard at the laws we already have. And perhaps we should be repealing a lot of these laws.

The hard reality is that we have two official languages in this country. French and English. The strange thing is that bilingualism is not practiced in most of our provinces. In Quebec mostly French is spoken. In the rest of Canada mostly English is spoken. One of the only true bilingual provinces in Canada is New Brunswick.

I tried learning French in school and that is when I found out I have no ear for languages so I am stuck speaking English.
My wife is Russian and to her credit she has a basic understanding of English. I, on the other hand, only know a few words in Russian. Of course, she still prefers to speak Russian and likes to watch Russian programs on TV and You tube.

And that is perfectly fine with me as we understand and communicate with each other.

We have just recently had an influx of Syrian refugees, about 40 to 50,000 came over. Just over a year later and many of them don't speak either official language. The government has failed these people. Now most are on welfare, don't speak either English or French and cannot get a job. Every one of these refugees should have been forced to go to school and learn one of the official languages. It would have benefited them immensely on their integration into society.
If it takes a year or five years, money should have been set aside to help them integrate by teaching them our languages.
This is another instance where multiculturalism has failed.
I also believe that because of multiculturalism, racism is on the rise. Hate and the death of Jews is taught in many mosques. And because of multiculturalism we have become suspicious of many different groups and this will lead to an even greater fracturing of our society.

I have no answers. I do believe it will gradually become worse before it becomes better.

Time will tell. My fear is not that Canadian society is changing, my fear is that is changing for the worse.

What are your thoughts on this?