One of the best examples for this trend is the Conservative’s party approach to the so called “ethnic” communities (as if some of us are without ethnicity). The media have been occasionally reporting on how active Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship and immigration in reaching out to those communities. When following his activities, one cannot help but conclude that the Conservatives idea of seducing voters from multicultural backgrounds rests on one simple notion: Show up to their events, make some remarks opening with few words in their mother tongue, and voila! expect the audience and their families to automatically support you politically.

This over-simplification is frankly disturbing if not offensive.

Canadians are diverse culturally, economically, socially and politically. They deserve political leaders who demonstrate that they understand the depth and complexity of this diversity. That leaders are aware of the different needs and opportunities that face our country.

Multicultural communities share the same concerns with the rest of Canada. They want a growing economy, an accessible healthcare system, an affordable world class education, a sustainable environment, reduction in poverty, fairness in our society and judicial system and foreign policy that promotes peace and justice. In addition, they seek assurances for equal and full citizenship, respect and understanding for their faith and culture, safe space to practice their faith and culture, protection against stereotyping and discrimination, welcoming political leadership that would stand up for their equal rights and invite them to participate in society as full citizens.

Let’s examine the Conservatives’ record on the issue of multiculturalism:

Those are just examples of some visible practices. I can only imagine what is being done behind the curtains.

Democracy works when political leaders compete for serving the interests of Canadians. Attending celebratory events is important and useful, but it is not an end. Canadians deserve leaders who at their core understand our diversity and aspirations and demonstrate their understanding through policies.

To be fair, Conservatives don’t have a monopoly on having a simplistic and vacuous approach when dealing with multiculturalism or multicultural communities, but the Conservatives are unique in having a philosophical allergy to accepting the evolution of Canada as a truly multicultural society.

Ultimately, I suspect, Canadians from multicultural communities will support leaders who offer ideas for the broader issues. They will also support real policies that protect their rights and identities within our society.

This is yet another example of how the Conservatives have been unabashed about using government resources to either promote their party or silence voices they disagree with. This pattern is alarming.

I have had the privilege of dealing with KAIROS on issues of importance such as combating climate change and promoting human rights on many occasions and found them and their volunteers to be passionately committed to improving the wellbeing of humanity. I am very disturbed by the decision to cut their funding.

Make no mistake about it. This move combined with other decisions such as cutting the funding of the Canadian Arab Federation, other funding decisions, and the vicious attacks against a Canadian diplomat who speaks up against torture will send a profound chill across the NGO sector that the Conservatives have no qualm with blatant political interference if they don’t like you.

Step by step, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are incrementally trying to fundamentally change Canada in a way most Canadians would disagree with. They are, however, doing it quietly and subtly. Some Canadians may not notice the severity of these changes today, but if left unchecked, we will wake up one day where Canada is no longer the country many of us have been accustomed to.

KAIROS has issued a call to action raising awareness about what that decision will mean to the many projects they have been working on and asking all Canadians to write to the prime minister and their MP expressing their outrage with that misguided move.

While innocent people on both sides in the Middle East are living in fear and frustration, the Conservatives are shamelessly exploiting the anxiety of Canadians who care. The Conservatives and Stephen Harper have done nothing to advance peace in the Middle East, yet they are trying from the comfort of their own homes in Canada to politically benefit from the suffering of children in the Middle East. A sad devolution of our political discourse in this country.

Last night, the Conservatives went a step further against me personally and accused me of Anti-Semitism without offering any evidence. I wish I could say that I was surprised. They singled out one of my blog entries where I argued that there’s no military solution to the Middle East conflict and how only civilians pay the price in the process. I argued that Canada must always call on both sides to end military hostilities and encourage them to resort to negotiation. I guess the mere mention of the UN Goldstone Report qualifies anyone for the Anti-Semitic charge.

This irresponsible behaviour of randomly calling people Anti-Semitic doesn’t help the cause of combating Anti-Semitism. It is even worse when the source is a political party that is in government. Anti-Semitism is real and our society deserves an honest effort to deal with it instead of exploiting it for political gain.

I could innumerate my work in society to combat all forms of racism including Anti-Semitism, but I would appear defensive. This type of vicious attack doesn’t hurt my feelings given the source. What bothers me greatly is the cheap attempt to profit from people’s pain and the push to silence any form of mature conversation about the situation in the Middle East.

This type of language is very harmful to Canada’s political and social maturity and to peace prospects in the Middle East. I could speculate on why the Conservatives think I am an easy target for such a smear, but this conversation would then become an ugly race to the bottom and inflame emotions.

As leaders, we have a responsibility to set an example on how to engage in difficult debates without hurling insults. This will only increase my resolve to continue to promote thoughtful policies and to continue to call for a peaceful and just resolution of the Middle East conflict among others.

I could say that the Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves, but I am convinced that they don’t utter any word before making their own political calculations. If in the process their behaviour caused damage to Canada’s interest, they couldn’t care less.

I am calling on all Canadians, particularly Jewish Canadians, to reject this form of cold and damaging form of politics. Not only does it fail to offer any substantive solutions, but it seeks to divide and inflame. I have faith in our ability as Canadians to distinguish between genuine dialogue and manipulative rhetoric.

Update: Rob Silver and Tim Powers have an exchange about this topic on the online pages of the Globe and Mail

It only took me few minutes to find Nigel Hannaford’s views on these subjects:

Climate Change: “Less CO2, less jobs. It’s that simple“.

Canadian military mission in Afghanistan: “To end the mission in 2011 would thus be like Ottawa unilaterally pulling out of the 1939-1945 war in 1943, and leaving the rest of the allies to put the boots to Hitler“.

Multiculturalism: “They erected a shibboleth called multiculturalism, declared all cultures equally valuable, and set about promoting them as part of a so-called Canadian mosaic, lest anyone think we were an American melting pot. But, while all people are equal before the law, all cultures are not equally valuable.”

New Canadians’ right to participate in public policies: “If they feel that that is something that they can’t tolerate and don’t want to live with, then there are other countries that you can emigrate to, I guess, and you won’t have the same problems“.

Canadian Muslims: “So, some 80,000 Muslim Canadians think thuggery is the way to influence politics? That’s not to say they’re about to kill anybody themselves, but there are degrees of support for a cause, ranging from quiet encouragement for the home team, through assistance short of direct action, to full engagement. Frankly, if only one-tenth of one per cent of 700,000 people fall into the extreme category, that’s still 700 people to worry about“.

Those were all excerpts from public conversations; imagine what he says behind closed doors.

To my friends from the Reform movement, if you were worried that Stephen Harper was getting soft, there is no need to worry. He is still the same Harper we have come to know. It’s the majority of Canadians that needs to remain worried.

Warren Kinsella, a Liberal strategist and a popular blogger speaks out against this poison
http://www.warrenkinsella.com/comments.php?y=09&m=03&entry=entry090311-103118

I had an opportunity to share a brief outline of my life story and engage the students in a conversation about overcoming life challenges and difficulties. I explained to students how life experiences have helped shape my values and perspectives. I acknowledged that had I not immigrated to Canada, my outlook on life would have been drastically different from what it is right now.

My journey through both difficult and comfortable times, my interactions with good and bad people, my professional work experiences, my social activism and community involvement, my increased knowledge of various cultures and religions, my endless discussions about policies and politics and my ongoing engagement with average Canadians have humbled me and helped me recognize the richness that diversity creates. I am not just talking about racial diversity, I am referring to learning how to respect and empathize with differing point of views. This variety of opinion is a natural outcome of different experiences.

The private sector uses a term of “sharing best practices” when encouraging each other to benefit from already tested and effective methods of doing business. In fact, it is considered a waste when businesses try to reinvent the wheel when a sister business has already gone through a similar situation.

Learning from our society’s diversity is a social equivalent of “sharing best practices”. We can save ourselves time and pain if we are open to learning from experiences that others may have endured before us.

My most important message to the students yesterday was to urge them to surround themselves with the right kind of friends: friends who work hard, who are honest and who are kind. Being associated with such company will always encourage us to improve and strive for greater heights and accomplishments.

Many Canadians are witnessing ongoing public hearings in Quebec about this issue and how a lot of controversial and sometimes racist sentiments are being aired at those hearings. This week, the Parti Quebecois, the provincial separatist party proposed that unless new Canadians living in Quebec meet certain linguistic and cultural standards they will be denied the right to run for public office or hold public appointments. It has also been reported that federal civil servants prepared a report that is warning the government of this concerning rise of unfriendly rhetoric that might divide Canadian society into “us” and “them” categories.

What is most alarming about this pattern is the exploitation of these emotional outbursts by some political leaders. The Parti Quebecois, the Bloc (their federal cousins) and the Conservatives have been fanning these flames in the hopes of attracting the loyalty of those voters.

Elected political leaders have a responsibility to society to manage any potential divides not exacerbate them. Most of these misguided emotional sentiments are driven by ignorance and fear of the known. This week, the CBC National aired a short documentary where the reporter Mark Kelley spoke with some of those individuals who have been convinced to fear this unknown. It was revealing to learn that most of them have never met an immigrant before in their lives and that most of their conclusions have been based on assumptions that are devoid of facts.

The fear that the Canadian way of life will be under attack if we accommodate other cultural variations is based on narrow mindedness. In actuality, the Canadian way of life has been improving and prospering because of a Canadian history that has been evolving and maturing. The bilingualism of our country wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for Canada’s tradition of respect and inclusion. I would also be curious what an aboriginal Canadian would say about his/her definition of an authentic Canadian culture. The indigenous authentic culture of this land can only be claimed (by) its indigenous people, who have endured decades of injustice throughout our country’s history.

Canadians expect their political leaders to promote accurate facts that reflect the positive result of Canadian society’s evolution and dispel myths of misinformation that create emotional knee-jerk reactions. Unfortunately, we see the separatist parties, under the guise of national pride, fuel sentiments of exclusion and bigotry. We also see the Conservatives who have roots going back to the Reform movement racially and religiously profiling our citizens. The Conservatives ignored many important subjects in their latest Throne Speech that are important to Canadians but had the presence of mind to bring back the controversial issue of veil voting which we now know was never a real issue from the start. Why would they bring up this issue except to create more division?

Unless political leaders act responsibly and resist their desire to exploit short term emotional sentiments, this continued polarizing of Canadian society can increase to alarming and unhealthy levels. I strongly believe that the best way to confront this debate is not by shutting it down but by increasing understanding of each other and reducing fears that are based on misguided assumptions. The more Canadians learn about their diversity – French, English, aboriginal, racial, religious and ethnic, the more united we become as a society.

PS: This week, I spoke in the House of Commons about my assessment of the Conservatives Throne Speech. If you have few minutes, please take sometime to read it.

The notion of “reasonable accommodation” means different things to different people. Allowing a Muslim woman to wear hijab or a Sikh man to wear his turban is not a matter of accommodation. Such practices don’t require any compromises on behalf of others and they are purely a matter of personal choices. There are occasions that may require others to accommodate someone’s cultural or religious requirements, like requesting a prayer room or special dietary needs. Such considerations are very reasonable and don’t cause any significant hardship by accommodating them. They are signs of a mature society that is inclusive of all of its members. A healthy and productive society is one that provides opportunities to all of its members to be full participants so that we end up with a more productive society as well as one that provides a sense of ownership to all of its shareholders.

Undoubtedly, this navigation is not easy and requires thoughtful and respectful maneuvering. There are some with xenophobic tendencies that have been exploiting any lack of understanding or stereotyping that exists out there. Two weeks ago, a radio commentator in Vancouver, Bruce Allen, made some ignorant comments that were unhelpful (see my statement below). Mr. Allen apologized yesterday for his statements. I have also been reading about some negative sentiments from the province of Quebec that are at times very hurtful.

There are of course limits, to any debate, that can never be crossed which are defined by our hate laws which prevent against hate and violence incitement. But in an open and respectful society, we also must accept the reality of this debate and be willing to compete with any ideas that want to promote alienation or marginalization. Education and building bridges are the best methods to confront the fear of the unknown. This is the responsibility of every Canadian who is concerned about this debate.

Unfortunately, there are also occasions when some members of minority communities take this debate too far and expect that they can impose their own values onto others. That only gives ammunition to some of the xenophobes who are advocating for zero tolerance. It must be recognized that if one expects respect for their own culture and religion they must exhibit equal amount of respect for others’ culture and religion.

This process is delicate and difficult. Nevertheless, Canada is well positioned, given its values, history, constitution, multiculturalism, bilingualism, compassion, geography, diversity and economic prosperity, to remain the best country in the world to continue to succeed in its progress and maturity. As we learn to understand these differences, we actually become more united and cohesive than ever.