Thank you for saying what so many of us Canadians see and feel. But in Canada very few people have the courage to be unpopular and have difficult conversations. If we don’t have these conversations and soon we will have a Chinese style social credit system because no one wants to take the risk to be, as our dear leader called us, “a fringe minority with unacceptable views “. WHO gets to label our views “unacceptable “. Especially when there is nothing hateful or threatening about them.
You are 100% correct. Christopher Hitchens said it beautifully: "To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor?"
My take on the current societal situation in Canada is this: we will have these unpopular and difficult conversations, mediated by the ballot box in 2025.
We can only hope. There are many difficult conversations waiting to be had in Canada. Immigration, National security & Defence, Healthcare, Deficits to pay for ever increasing social services, fighting climate change in a country that makes no difference to the ‘fight’ are just a few.
Yes. And these conversations are not going to happen in any substantive manner unless the voters decide to drop-kick the Liebranodips and the Greens into a small minority for at least a generation. For the Conservatives to have majority only one or two terms will not be enough. Also, the Conservatives will have to have their act together exceptionally well. There is a small hope, I will go with that.
Agree with Marcie: «Thank you for saying what so many of us Canadians see and feel ». The topic is so sensitive that it’s risky to post any kind of opinion that deviates from the approved narrative supported by the current government. I personally don’t care about race or colour, and I understand why Canada needs to bring in highly qualified people to help us bolster our needy economy. But integration matters. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like to see a Canada-first attitude from folks who come here. If your religious beliefs are more important to you than the western values we respect like equality (including gender equality), human rights, and religious freedom, then you shouldn’t be here.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all newcomers were made aware of the facts of CANADA; eg Canada is an ally and friend of Israel. We do not discriminate against religions and many other progressive notions.
Cultural background is far more critical than colour, race et al. This government has the Pollyanna outlook that in our hearts we are all the same which unfortunately is just not true.
I agree, except that as a Christian, technically religious, I am far more open minded than my atheist, rational family. I can change my mind. I realize no government will save us but some will uphold more freedoms than others. I “follow “ mostly independent journalists once on the left but now alarmed by the state of the press and democracy. I voted, sadly, for Trudeau in 2016. But my mind has changed as I see the progressive erosion of our democracy
I have found that many of my religious friends are more adaptive and open-minded than almost anyone on the progressive left. I wonder if this is because religious peoples (with one glaring exception) have managed the trick of maintaining a belief system that is continually under attack by a non-religious culture? The progressive left currently have no natural predators to challenge their ideologies. Hopefully this will change.
I am sorry you feel that way. I tried to make the thoughts clear on the situation with the first 5 words and the first sentence of the third last paragraph, where the point is that civil unrest has occurred throughout history- the French, American and Russian revolutions, for instance. Perhaps that could have been more strongly illustrated but would have necessitated a lengthy digression. That said, I will accept the chiding if not the vigour of its language. :-)
I think you were abundantly clear. There was no X on Bastille day, no Tic-Tok in Boston harbour, no Facebook in Russia in 1917. Social media has only sped up the action, not produced the action.
All this “censorship” can only result in serious long term damage, disobedience and divergence which of course means civil strife. God save us from the elites.
Yes. However. We are the ones who have to save ourselves from the "elite". It is our responsibility to give the "elites", such as Troodas and the Laurentians, a firm heave-ho. No one should try to palm off that task onto God.
The most frustrating aspect of trying to have a conversation with anyone who is captured by ideology (a majority, it seems) is that it's like arguing with a religious zealot about their god. One simply cannot penetrate the layers of belief that have been cattle-branded onto their brains.
2) The closing paragraph succinctly touched on the very approach of the Trudeau liberals: as being laser-focused on optics, yet completely indifferent to reality. The whole “diversity is our strength” has proven to be nothing but made-up sloganeering, much as we’ve seen time and again throughout this painful government; including Trudeau’s introduction of his very first cabinet — a cabinet he said “looked like Canada”. Well, I think their record speaks for itself. So you’ll excuse me for wanting to happily trade-in diversity for competency and accountability as primary considerations for any role, thank you very much.
3) The will of the people must be heard and cannot be stifled. When the people feel stifled, unheard, disadvantaged, frustrated and unrepresented — especially en masse — these types of spontaneously social combustions can and will occur as we’ve been seeing in the UK, and has been the case since the dawn of time. It’s basic human nature.
4) Nice to see that stupid Online Harms Act is soon coming into force, just in time to catch-up to the retaliation already felt by social networks adversely impacting Canadian news orgs, digital content production, and the overall Canadian online experience. Now to be fair to the Online Harms Act, (oxymoronic title when you consider the harms it’s very existence created), I would argue big tech and bad actors ruined the internet long before the government helped make it worse. Nevertheless, I’ve long reduced my internet usage over the years since I first logged on ** cough** 30 yrs ago **cough**. Nowadays, I only use the internet to check my email (inclusive of my inbox subscription delivery of this fine publication). Otherwise, I would have absolutely no problem cancelling my internet services entirely. That’s how bad the online experience has become. Thankfully, I’m old enough to remember life before the interwebs became mainstream, and I have largely reverted back to that life anyway — and I can certainly attest to the simple quality of life improvements by making such harsh technological detachment, but I digress.
5) Let’s face it: we have a poorly woven and decaying social fabric within and among western countries, and certainly here in Canada, and I would argue it’s been noticeably worsening over the past decade. Politics, public policy, social media networks, media outlets, unvetted published digital content, overall raw-user engagements, and bad state-actors have all collectively contributed to the problem; manipulating the fragile minds of the public and fostering discontent. Unfortunately, I don’t see enough adults on the world stage or any global corporate interest to change this trend.
I agree that using the U.K. riots, COVID-style 'emergencies,' or any other pretext for the sort of social media 'regulation' that governments and bureaucrats are likely to envision, is a very bad idea, not that this wee detail ever prevented bad policy decisions. That's the message of the article, or part of it; but what's interesting is its foray into sociological analysis and what it reveals about the nature and limits of explanation. Back in 1983 Luigi Barzini (in his book The Europeans) noted the remarkable fact that junior British officers and other subalterns, thousands of miles from the centres of empire, had always known exactly what to do in a crisis, in complete confidence that the King, the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the ale drinkers in any pub, would heartily approve their actions. This kind of national consensus is clearly beyond the U.K.'s reach today...
...and for those who lament its loss it's completely irrelevant to point out that the parents of the monstrous crime that triggered the riots happen to be Christian church-goers, and legally British: as Rwandan imports, they aren't 'British' in the sense meant by Barzini, and never will be. We don't know what motivated their son: it's entirely possible he'll turn out to be too deranged to stand trial. Still, he's their son, the product of their family life; and despite the claim that "there are few acts more likely to inflame passions in any culture" than attacks targeting innocent children, it's much easier to conceive of such attacks taking place in places that authorize beheadings and similar atrocities than in Cornwall or Northumberland.
Barzini's book wouldn't be publishable today, and not just because it's out of date; the project of poking sly fun at national stereotypes, however respectfully and insightfully done, simply wouldn't fly with publishers, for reasons with which every reader of this article will be familiar. If we're going to get at the root of the rioters' grievances, though, we need a more honest conceptual vocabulary than the one public discourse has been relying on. Is it really racial homogeneity today's Brits regret losing, or the shared values and national cohesion they used to take for granted? Would they object to 'diversity' if it showed itself to really be a 'strength,' rather than what it seems to have become, a label to excuse declining standards in education and uncivil, often violent, public behaviour? Is it irrational prejudice and intolerance--even a psychological malady, a 'phobia'--that leads them to avoid certain people; or is it the same inductive logic that routinely informs their decision-making in other areas of their lives? Here in Canada, where it's now impossible to turn on the news without immediately being informed of yet another shooting, can people respect authorities who resort to euphemisms like "at-risk neighbourhoods," because no one dares to say "predominantly black neighbourhoods?" Are evasion and circumlocution signposts on the road to 'listening carefully' and 'speaking truth?'
Of course, immigration isn't the root of all evil (full disclosure: I've been happily married to an immigrant for the past 40+ years), and neither Britain, Canada, nor any other nation can resist change and live in the past. There's no alternative now to multi-racial, multi-ethnic societies: they're the world's future. But without shared values and social cohesion, that future will be missing something vital. Right now, essentially unicultural nations like Finland and Denmark arguably have more robust social fabrics, and inarguably higher educational standards, than does multicultural Canada. So, yes, we need dialogue that acknowledges and addresses our problems, not suppression of it, and certainly not 'regulation' of the information commons by state officials. A mutual hands off approach that leaves people entrenched in their various tribalisms will lead, in the words of Trudeau the Elder (the one blessed with a brain in his head), to a 'confederation of shopping centres,' not a nation. The diversity needed by this dialogue owes nothing to race, ethnicity, or place of origin, and everything to frankness and open-mindedness.
As for, "Endlessly explaining to people that they misunderstand the reality of their own existence," is it possible to think of anything more nakedly authoritarian than depriving individuals of the right and responsibility to create their own narratives, and imposing on them instead an official one that solicits no input and permits no dissent?
I hope people are smart enough to realize governments, far from being the answer are the cause of all this unrest we’re witnessing the world over but ever so acutely in Great Britain and Canada. Common sense needs to prevail and the woke left mentality needs to be kicked to the curb.
The third last paragraph claiming that all of the rioting in the UK would have happened in the absence of social media is frankly complete and utter bullshit. Same goes with all the unrest in the US in the summer of 2020 over George Floyd. On what basis does the author make that claim? We're asked to take it on his advice, essentially. Social media changes and impacts people's beliefs, and beliefs lead to actions. Claiming otherwise without offering a very sound argument is silly.
Government censorship and regulation are not the way to go, but neither is pretending that social media in it's current state is not incredibly corrosive to our society.
One cannot argue a counterfactual, and it's unreasonable to demand proof that something would have happened in an environment absent social media. That is an impossible thing to prove or disprove.
Nowhere did I claim that riots or social unrest started with social media. They are clearly exacerbated by them, and the author simply waved that away.
I applaud The Line for publishing this Overton window-stretching article, but I have to disagree with its premises and implicit conclusions.
I don’t doubt that the UK has serious problems with radical Islam, but we don’t have that in Canada. We may have Hamas fellow travellers but like — stuff mostly stays within the bounds of civil discourse here. The Canadian multicultural integration miracle is frayed but not broken.
The child murderer in UK may or may not be an Islamist (as we know, he had Christian parents). I think it’s far more likely he was just severely mentally ill — i.e. I bet this whole tragedy will turn out to be more of a story of psychiatric deinstitutionalization than of immigration and integration.
But who knows. Maybe the murderer found a community of Islamist Rwandans and got in with them.
Either way, here we have Mr. Menzies glomming onto that tragedy and those riots and saying that Canadians concerned that there are just _so many Indians_ here now and we’re losing our culture are somehow justified in those feelings.
Our issues in Canada are *economic*. Perversion of the international student system and using TFWs/“students” to suppress wages on the request of the big-box stores and restaurants. But we do not have more Muslims joining ISIS than joining the [UK] Army, as the article claims is the case in the UK.
It’s not the same situation in Canada and you’re playing with fire suggesting it is or will be in the near future.
The fire lit by the wishful mirage called multicultural society is here already. The thing called multicultural integration is not happening and will not happen without a MAJOR INFUSION OF ASSIMILATION. Fact of life is that all cultures are not equal. It is not funny you are not seeing it.
There is a couple of substantial comments posted here that describe today's social reality very well. I thank the authors for taking the trouble.
Are you talking about the UK or Canada? I don’t know how you can look at what I call the Canadian Multicultural Miracle circa 1980-2010 and say that it wasn’t largely working. We had multiple religions and cultures but mostly avoided ethnic ghettoes, and other than black immigrants (from Haiti, broader Caribbean, and some of Africa) economic mobility was on the right track. Including a broad class of prosperous South Asians. Toronto is more diverse than almost anywhere and was peaceful and mostly functional.
It’s all gone wrong in the last five years because the rates of immigration (including “nonpermanent” TFWs, students, etc.) were jacked up too high too fast. But before that — we kind of were doing it?
If you really think Canadian immigration prior to Justin Trudeau was a devastating problem I kind of think you’re just a white supremacist?
Peter, I’m not directing that at you (I disagree with the thesis of your article as applied to Canada before JT, but it is well written and not race-baiting). It’s aimed at the other anonymous commenter here.
You’re seeing more and more commentary on the UK murders (which indeed is looking like it’s going to be a case of untreated mental illness) saying that it doesn’t matter if he was British-born to Christian parents, he’s not British, he’s Rwandan, etc.
Democracy dies in darkness and that is where Canada is headed with each new regulation intended to suppress free expression. And these efforts are not done in the interest of public good but in the pure pursuit of power by a desperate Liberal/NDP government.
Thank you for saying what so many of us Canadians see and feel. But in Canada very few people have the courage to be unpopular and have difficult conversations. If we don’t have these conversations and soon we will have a Chinese style social credit system because no one wants to take the risk to be, as our dear leader called us, “a fringe minority with unacceptable views “. WHO gets to label our views “unacceptable “. Especially when there is nothing hateful or threatening about them.
You are 100% correct. Christopher Hitchens said it beautifully: "To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor?"
My take on the current societal situation in Canada is this: we will have these unpopular and difficult conversations, mediated by the ballot box in 2025.
We can only hope. There are many difficult conversations waiting to be had in Canada. Immigration, National security & Defence, Healthcare, Deficits to pay for ever increasing social services, fighting climate change in a country that makes no difference to the ‘fight’ are just a few.
Yes. And these conversations are not going to happen in any substantive manner unless the voters decide to drop-kick the Liebranodips and the Greens into a small minority for at least a generation. For the Conservatives to have majority only one or two terms will not be enough. Also, the Conservatives will have to have their act together exceptionally well. There is a small hope, I will go with that.
I’m with you on that, but I must say it is a wee bit optimistic and certainly not sceptical.
Agree with Marcie: «Thank you for saying what so many of us Canadians see and feel ». The topic is so sensitive that it’s risky to post any kind of opinion that deviates from the approved narrative supported by the current government. I personally don’t care about race or colour, and I understand why Canada needs to bring in highly qualified people to help us bolster our needy economy. But integration matters. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like to see a Canada-first attitude from folks who come here. If your religious beliefs are more important to you than the western values we respect like equality (including gender equality), human rights, and religious freedom, then you shouldn’t be here.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all newcomers were made aware of the facts of CANADA; eg Canada is an ally and friend of Israel. We do not discriminate against religions and many other progressive notions.
The politicians should also take note. 🇨🇦🇮🇱🇺🇸🇺🇦
Cultural background is far more critical than colour, race et al. This government has the Pollyanna outlook that in our hearts we are all the same which unfortunately is just not true.
I agree, except that as a Christian, technically religious, I am far more open minded than my atheist, rational family. I can change my mind. I realize no government will save us but some will uphold more freedoms than others. I “follow “ mostly independent journalists once on the left but now alarmed by the state of the press and democracy. I voted, sadly, for Trudeau in 2016. But my mind has changed as I see the progressive erosion of our democracy
I have found that many of my religious friends are more adaptive and open-minded than almost anyone on the progressive left. I wonder if this is because religious peoples (with one glaring exception) have managed the trick of maintaining a belief system that is continually under attack by a non-religious culture? The progressive left currently have no natural predators to challenge their ideologies. Hopefully this will change.
I am sorry you feel that way. I tried to make the thoughts clear on the situation with the first 5 words and the first sentence of the third last paragraph, where the point is that civil unrest has occurred throughout history- the French, American and Russian revolutions, for instance. Perhaps that could have been more strongly illustrated but would have necessitated a lengthy digression. That said, I will accept the chiding if not the vigour of its language. :-)
I think you were abundantly clear. There was no X on Bastille day, no Tic-Tok in Boston harbour, no Facebook in Russia in 1917. Social media has only sped up the action, not produced the action.
Thanks for your response!
All this “censorship” can only result in serious long term damage, disobedience and divergence which of course means civil strife. God save us from the elites.
Yes. However. We are the ones who have to save ourselves from the "elite". It is our responsibility to give the "elites", such as Troodas and the Laurentians, a firm heave-ho. No one should try to palm off that task onto God.
The most frustrating aspect of trying to have a conversation with anyone who is captured by ideology (a majority, it seems) is that it's like arguing with a religious zealot about their god. One simply cannot penetrate the layers of belief that have been cattle-branded onto their brains.
1) Superb piece by Peter Menzies. 100% spot on.
2) The closing paragraph succinctly touched on the very approach of the Trudeau liberals: as being laser-focused on optics, yet completely indifferent to reality. The whole “diversity is our strength” has proven to be nothing but made-up sloganeering, much as we’ve seen time and again throughout this painful government; including Trudeau’s introduction of his very first cabinet — a cabinet he said “looked like Canada”. Well, I think their record speaks for itself. So you’ll excuse me for wanting to happily trade-in diversity for competency and accountability as primary considerations for any role, thank you very much.
3) The will of the people must be heard and cannot be stifled. When the people feel stifled, unheard, disadvantaged, frustrated and unrepresented — especially en masse — these types of spontaneously social combustions can and will occur as we’ve been seeing in the UK, and has been the case since the dawn of time. It’s basic human nature.
4) Nice to see that stupid Online Harms Act is soon coming into force, just in time to catch-up to the retaliation already felt by social networks adversely impacting Canadian news orgs, digital content production, and the overall Canadian online experience. Now to be fair to the Online Harms Act, (oxymoronic title when you consider the harms it’s very existence created), I would argue big tech and bad actors ruined the internet long before the government helped make it worse. Nevertheless, I’ve long reduced my internet usage over the years since I first logged on ** cough** 30 yrs ago **cough**. Nowadays, I only use the internet to check my email (inclusive of my inbox subscription delivery of this fine publication). Otherwise, I would have absolutely no problem cancelling my internet services entirely. That’s how bad the online experience has become. Thankfully, I’m old enough to remember life before the interwebs became mainstream, and I have largely reverted back to that life anyway — and I can certainly attest to the simple quality of life improvements by making such harsh technological detachment, but I digress.
5) Let’s face it: we have a poorly woven and decaying social fabric within and among western countries, and certainly here in Canada, and I would argue it’s been noticeably worsening over the past decade. Politics, public policy, social media networks, media outlets, unvetted published digital content, overall raw-user engagements, and bad state-actors have all collectively contributed to the problem; manipulating the fragile minds of the public and fostering discontent. Unfortunately, I don’t see enough adults on the world stage or any global corporate interest to change this trend.
I agree that using the U.K. riots, COVID-style 'emergencies,' or any other pretext for the sort of social media 'regulation' that governments and bureaucrats are likely to envision, is a very bad idea, not that this wee detail ever prevented bad policy decisions. That's the message of the article, or part of it; but what's interesting is its foray into sociological analysis and what it reveals about the nature and limits of explanation. Back in 1983 Luigi Barzini (in his book The Europeans) noted the remarkable fact that junior British officers and other subalterns, thousands of miles from the centres of empire, had always known exactly what to do in a crisis, in complete confidence that the King, the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the ale drinkers in any pub, would heartily approve their actions. This kind of national consensus is clearly beyond the U.K.'s reach today...
...and for those who lament its loss it's completely irrelevant to point out that the parents of the monstrous crime that triggered the riots happen to be Christian church-goers, and legally British: as Rwandan imports, they aren't 'British' in the sense meant by Barzini, and never will be. We don't know what motivated their son: it's entirely possible he'll turn out to be too deranged to stand trial. Still, he's their son, the product of their family life; and despite the claim that "there are few acts more likely to inflame passions in any culture" than attacks targeting innocent children, it's much easier to conceive of such attacks taking place in places that authorize beheadings and similar atrocities than in Cornwall or Northumberland.
Barzini's book wouldn't be publishable today, and not just because it's out of date; the project of poking sly fun at national stereotypes, however respectfully and insightfully done, simply wouldn't fly with publishers, for reasons with which every reader of this article will be familiar. If we're going to get at the root of the rioters' grievances, though, we need a more honest conceptual vocabulary than the one public discourse has been relying on. Is it really racial homogeneity today's Brits regret losing, or the shared values and national cohesion they used to take for granted? Would they object to 'diversity' if it showed itself to really be a 'strength,' rather than what it seems to have become, a label to excuse declining standards in education and uncivil, often violent, public behaviour? Is it irrational prejudice and intolerance--even a psychological malady, a 'phobia'--that leads them to avoid certain people; or is it the same inductive logic that routinely informs their decision-making in other areas of their lives? Here in Canada, where it's now impossible to turn on the news without immediately being informed of yet another shooting, can people respect authorities who resort to euphemisms like "at-risk neighbourhoods," because no one dares to say "predominantly black neighbourhoods?" Are evasion and circumlocution signposts on the road to 'listening carefully' and 'speaking truth?'
Of course, immigration isn't the root of all evil (full disclosure: I've been happily married to an immigrant for the past 40+ years), and neither Britain, Canada, nor any other nation can resist change and live in the past. There's no alternative now to multi-racial, multi-ethnic societies: they're the world's future. But without shared values and social cohesion, that future will be missing something vital. Right now, essentially unicultural nations like Finland and Denmark arguably have more robust social fabrics, and inarguably higher educational standards, than does multicultural Canada. So, yes, we need dialogue that acknowledges and addresses our problems, not suppression of it, and certainly not 'regulation' of the information commons by state officials. A mutual hands off approach that leaves people entrenched in their various tribalisms will lead, in the words of Trudeau the Elder (the one blessed with a brain in his head), to a 'confederation of shopping centres,' not a nation. The diversity needed by this dialogue owes nothing to race, ethnicity, or place of origin, and everything to frankness and open-mindedness.
As for, "Endlessly explaining to people that they misunderstand the reality of their own existence," is it possible to think of anything more nakedly authoritarian than depriving individuals of the right and responsibility to create their own narratives, and imposing on them instead an official one that solicits no input and permits no dissent?
I hope people are smart enough to realize governments, far from being the answer are the cause of all this unrest we’re witnessing the world over but ever so acutely in Great Britain and Canada. Common sense needs to prevail and the woke left mentality needs to be kicked to the curb.
The the online harms act and it's UK equivalent will do is drive comments under ground and to anonymous accounts.
The third last paragraph claiming that all of the rioting in the UK would have happened in the absence of social media is frankly complete and utter bullshit. Same goes with all the unrest in the US in the summer of 2020 over George Floyd. On what basis does the author make that claim? We're asked to take it on his advice, essentially. Social media changes and impacts people's beliefs, and beliefs lead to actions. Claiming otherwise without offering a very sound argument is silly.
I subscribe much more to Coyne's view of social media and smartphones: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-to-fix-social-media-force-the-platforms-to-open-themselves-up-to-each/
Government censorship and regulation are not the way to go, but neither is pretending that social media in it's current state is not incredibly corrosive to our society.
One cannot argue a counterfactual, and it's unreasonable to demand proof that something would have happened in an environment absent social media. That is an impossible thing to prove or disprove.
However, it can safely be noted that riots are not unique to the social media era. Human history is fairly rife with civil wars, revolutions, and riots -- all prior to 2008. Amazingly, history does not begin and end with Twitter. Heck, riots aren't even particularly novel in dear old England. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riots#:~:text=The%20poll%20tax%20riots%20were,of%20Prime%20Minister%20Margaret%20Thatcher.
Or:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_South_Wales_race_riots
As for 2020, you may also wish to consider this brief list of historical race riots in the US.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-race-riots-and-massacres-in-the-United-States
This is also a good read and probably a point of agreement, although not directly related: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/the-outrageous-rise-of-neotoddlerism
I don't think it's unreasonable at all when there's so much evidence out there that the rise of smartphones and social media has lead to an increase in the size and frequency of protests (see chapter 3, what's the first root cause they identify?): https://www.csis.org/analysis/age-mass-protests-understanding-escalating-global-trend
Nowhere did I claim that riots or social unrest started with social media. They are clearly exacerbated by them, and the author simply waved that away.
I applaud The Line for publishing this Overton window-stretching article, but I have to disagree with its premises and implicit conclusions.
I don’t doubt that the UK has serious problems with radical Islam, but we don’t have that in Canada. We may have Hamas fellow travellers but like — stuff mostly stays within the bounds of civil discourse here. The Canadian multicultural integration miracle is frayed but not broken.
The child murderer in UK may or may not be an Islamist (as we know, he had Christian parents). I think it’s far more likely he was just severely mentally ill — i.e. I bet this whole tragedy will turn out to be more of a story of psychiatric deinstitutionalization than of immigration and integration.
But who knows. Maybe the murderer found a community of Islamist Rwandans and got in with them.
Either way, here we have Mr. Menzies glomming onto that tragedy and those riots and saying that Canadians concerned that there are just _so many Indians_ here now and we’re losing our culture are somehow justified in those feelings.
Our issues in Canada are *economic*. Perversion of the international student system and using TFWs/“students” to suppress wages on the request of the big-box stores and restaurants. But we do not have more Muslims joining ISIS than joining the [UK] Army, as the article claims is the case in the UK.
It’s not the same situation in Canada and you’re playing with fire suggesting it is or will be in the near future.
The fire lit by the wishful mirage called multicultural society is here already. The thing called multicultural integration is not happening and will not happen without a MAJOR INFUSION OF ASSIMILATION. Fact of life is that all cultures are not equal. It is not funny you are not seeing it.
There is a couple of substantial comments posted here that describe today's social reality very well. I thank the authors for taking the trouble.
Are you talking about the UK or Canada? I don’t know how you can look at what I call the Canadian Multicultural Miracle circa 1980-2010 and say that it wasn’t largely working. We had multiple religions and cultures but mostly avoided ethnic ghettoes, and other than black immigrants (from Haiti, broader Caribbean, and some of Africa) economic mobility was on the right track. Including a broad class of prosperous South Asians. Toronto is more diverse than almost anywhere and was peaceful and mostly functional.
It’s all gone wrong in the last five years because the rates of immigration (including “nonpermanent” TFWs, students, etc.) were jacked up too high too fast. But before that — we kind of were doing it?
If you really think Canadian immigration prior to Justin Trudeau was a devastating problem I kind of think you’re just a white supremacist?
Easy there.
Peter, I’m not directing that at you (I disagree with the thesis of your article as applied to Canada before JT, but it is well written and not race-baiting). It’s aimed at the other anonymous commenter here.
You’re seeing more and more commentary on the UK murders (which indeed is looking like it’s going to be a case of untreated mental illness) saying that it doesn’t matter if he was British-born to Christian parents, he’s not British, he’s Rwandan, etc.
Are we a Volksstat? Is the UK?
Democracy dies in darkness and that is where Canada is headed with each new regulation intended to suppress free expression. And these efforts are not done in the interest of public good but in the pure pursuit of power by a desperate Liberal/NDP government.
A great observation