Jack Jedwab is Executive Director of the Association for Canadian Studies in Montreal, and wrote this opinion piece when we asked him about the focus on the ethnic vote in this current federal election.
"It's true, it's true we were beaten, yes, but by what? By money and the ethnic vote, essentially." Many Quebecers recall the words uttered by former Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau after the narrow defeat of the sovereignty option on October 30th, 1995. To this day, his supporters continue to insist that rather than stigmatizing those Quebec voters identifying with minority ethnic communities, Parizeau was simply making an obvious mathematical observation. The observation did not prevent Parti Quebecois leadership from courting members of Quebec ethnic minorities. The lack of success in rallying many such individuals to the sovereignty option partly explains Parizeau’s angry referendum night comments.
Some fifteen years later, the role of voters identifying with Canada’s ethnic groups in the forthcoming federal election has become the object of considerable debate in the country’s multiethnic capital of Toronto. Of course, the context is very different as ethnic voters are unlikely to be held responsible for the defeat of one of the federal political parties But, if such voters have become the object of so much national attention it is because some Conservative party number crunchers are persuaded that they have the potential to play a decisive role in a push towards a majority government. In other words, the same kind of math employed by Parizeau would have us believe that a few Toronto ridings in which many immigrants and their children are concentrated will determine the election outcome.
With the exception of the Mulroney era, for most of the 20th century it seemed unthinkable that the Conservatives could make significant inroads with immigrants and their descendants who identified the Liberals as the party that welcomed newcomers to Canada and repeatedly were told about the value of their contributions to the country. In Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, federal Liberals often worked with leaders of ethnic community organizations to identify party candidates. They worked with the same organizations to help get out the vote, they spoke at ethnic community gatherings to listen to concerns articulated by community members and they translated campaign materials into several languages (indeed elections Canada makes voter information available in some 25 languages). None of these practices were described as pandering to ethnic voters. The Conservatives have taken a page from the Liberal practice book, something they did in the Mulroney era. It’s fair game. It is neither inappropriate for members of ethnic communities to assemble in order to convey concerns to elected officials during a municipal, provincial or federal political campaign nor for candidates to reach out to the groups.
It’s true that asking members of ethnic communities to wear a traditional costume for a photo op is just plain silly (that said politicians of all stripes can frequently be found near cameras at ethnic festivals). To structure a political campaign only around the ethnic background of voters would be divisive and that is not being done by our national parties. But to imply that publicly engaging with ethnic communities during an election campaign means indulging in ethnic politics risks not recognizing the very diversity that is one of the defining elements of Canadian society. Indeed, despite the criticism of engaging with communities as pandering to ethnic voters, candidates from all parties are certainly doing that in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver (in fact in Vancouver there are all party election debates in Mandarin).
Underlying the heated discussion around courting voters that identify with ethnic communities is a bigger debate around multiculturalism in Canada. During the party leader’s debate in English, the Bloc’s Gilles Duceppe suggested that multiculturalism represents an obstacle to immigrant integration. A Quebecer, is a Quebecer is a Quebecer, he added. Duceppe stated that Quebecers reject multiculturalism which he insists leads to ghettoization. Many a Liberal supporter was likely surprised when Prime Minister Harper rightly took Duceppe to task for suggesting that multiculturalism is the cause of ghettoization. Indeed residential concentration of ethnic groups is a reality in Montreal and the cities of the United States a country which describes itself as a melting pot.
Some Liberals might have been further surprised when the Prime Minister articulated a core view of multiculturalism which in his words “allows immigrants to retain their culture while being part of the broader (national) community. For his part, Mr. Ignatieff charged the Conservatives were segmenting the country into ethnic and very ethnic which was a source of enormous resentment among Canadians. He stated that “newcomers that come to our country the thing they want to be most treated as is a Canadian. A Canadian is a Canadian.” But being treated as a Canadian can and often does include some recognition of the ethnic diversity of the population as it is expressed by communities. Many thinkers would see this as a more liberal (small “l” ) view in the expression of the nation's diversity. The contrary vision is more consistent with models of diversity that are less multicultural. Still these are important debates and we can certainly benefit from listening to the views of someone with Mr.Ignatieff’s intellectual stature.
