Name-calling, someone once said, is the last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt. Jason Kenney qualifies for that characterization with his denunciation of environmental gadfly David Suzuki鈥檚 recent contention that sa国际传媒 is taking in too many immigrants.
Suzuki, an elder statesman of the evergreen set, was recently quoted in the Paris-based publication L鈥橢xpress as saying 鈥渟a国际传媒 is full,鈥� arguing, it seems, that to continue to bring in hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year is 鈥渃razy.鈥�
鈥淎lthough it鈥檚 the second largest country in the world, our useful area has been reduced,鈥� he said.
That lit the then-immigration minister up like a firecracker. Resorting to Twitter, Kenney lambasted Suzuki鈥檚 remarks as 鈥渪enophobic鈥� 鈥� the word refers having a morbid dislike of foreigners 鈥� and 鈥渁nti-immigration.鈥� His opinions, according to the Tory minister, are 鈥渢oxic and irresponsible.鈥�
Now, I鈥檓 no fan of Suzuki鈥檚 apocalyptic environmentalism. He may be sincere in his ecological concerns, but, like Al Gore, he also makes a lucrative living as a prophet of planetary disaster. In any case, it鈥檚 Kenney who鈥檚 being toxic.
For decades, Canadians have been instructed about the ostensible benefits of mass immigration. They鈥檝e been told huge numbers of immigrants are needed to keep the economy ticking and provide the tax base to pay for all those social programs we enjoy. In recent years, however, this justification for current immigration policies has been questioned by respectable scholars.
鈥淭he flow of immigration into sa国际传媒 from around the world, and in particular the flow from Muslim countries, means a pouring in of numbers into a liberal society of people from cultures at best nonliberal,鈥� Salim Mansur, a political scientist at the University of Western Ontario, said in testimony before a Senate committee.
鈥淏ut we know through our studies and observations that the illiberal mix of cultures poses one of the greatest dilemmas and an unprecedented challenge to liberal societies, such as ours, when there is no demand placed on immigrants any longer to assimilate into the founding liberal values of the country to which they have immigrated and, instead, by a misguided and thoroughly wrong-headed policy of multiculturalism encourages the opposite.鈥�
Gilles Paquet, an economist and professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa, likewise challenges the intellectual assumptions on which immigration policy is based 鈥� you know, multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance 鈥� arguing that they weaken Canadians鈥� national solidarity.
鈥淏eing solicitous of diversity risks generating silo-societies, tolerance emphasizes the negative leave-them-alone kind of virtue, and multiculturalism further works at maintaining and enhancing cultural differences,鈥� he writes in his recently published book, Moderato Cantabile: Toward a Principled Governance of sa国际传媒鈥檚 Immigration Regime. This isn鈥檛 the kind of thing Kenney and crew want Canadians to hear.
They want us to accept the Potemkin-village notion of sa国际传媒, the comforting fable of Canadians as endlessly tolerant and only too happy to diversify to the point of cultural meaninglessness. (As novelist Yann Martel once said, sa国际传媒 鈥渋s the greatest hotel on Earth.鈥�)
With his irrational denunciation of Suzuki, Kenney demonstrates that those who benefit most from current immigration levels 鈥� surely you don鈥檛 think the Conservatives would bring in so many immigrants if they weren鈥檛 a source of potential votes, or that our productivity-challenged corporate leaders would be happy to reduce a supply of unskilled labour that keeps wages lower than they could be 鈥� are quite willing to throw out ad hominem epithets of 鈥渞acist,鈥� 鈥渂igotry鈥� and, in Suzuki鈥檚 case, 鈥渪enophobic.鈥�
They do so to intimidate those reluctant to accept the fairy-tale view of immigration. Unfortunately, what Kenney and those who adopt tactics for invective don鈥檛 seem to understand is that they are fostering the very conditions of xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes that they oppose.
Certainly, I expect Suzuki is sufficiently tough-minded to withstand criticism, and I doubt he鈥檇 share my skepticism regarding multiculturalism. (He is, so far as I know, a staunch supporter.) But there鈥檚 a requirement for reasoned argument at stake here (heated fine, sarcastic OK, but reasoned always). Suzuki, like any other citizen, is free to express his views, and he should be able to do so without some government minister using the weight of his office, political and moral, to rant against him.
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Robert Sibley writes for the Ottawa Citizen.
