Feature > Opinion > MULTICULTURALISM BY ZHILA SEMNANI-AZAD
Benefiting Canada?
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Multiculturalism is the cultural diversity among people. After being made official in 1971 by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada has experienced the ups and downs towards this policy [Canadian Heritage]. This policy was made official to bring the people of the country together, learn about different cultures and work with one another. Unfortunately, multiculturalism hasn’t brought all the factors that were anticipated. It has created language and cultural barriers among the people. The minorities do not get heard, as much as they have hoped for, which proves that there isn’t much equality throughout the different groups. Since the cultural diversity has encouraged the people to be different and unique, it has resulted to the lack of mingling with one another. The people of same culture tend to work with each other and ignore others. Over the thirty years or so, multiculturalism has negatively affected Canada in general. In fact it has greatly impacted the rate of tourists, population, created segregated neighborhoods and even affected the communication among the people. This “tossed salad” method has not worked too well and hasn’t attracted many visitors to the country.
Throughout many years, Canada has tried to offer people of the world a taste of different cultures that make up the country. They have created little communities, such as China Town or Little Italy to improve the tourism rates. However from the recent data collection, the tourism rates in the past year has not been doing too well. It was clearly shown that on average, Canada’s tourism rates had dropped 3% during the 2003-2005 polls (Statistics Canada).
Unfortunately, last year alone, Canada experienced a huge decline of 4.1%. It is believed that the main loss of tourism would be from the lack of identity. Since Canada is basically multiple cultures all in one, there isn’t anything that makes it their own. It is difficult to determine the difference with being a Canadian from being any other culture (Calgary Heralds).
The fact that there aren’t many characteristics that makes Canada standout definitely plays a huge role. Another major reason for the low tourism rates would be because Canada is based on a multicultural policy. Those who do not support this policy wont want to visit the country and so it brings down the overall rate. Many people believe that even with lower tourism rates, we can still make a lot of money. According to last year’s data, Canada deposited around $1.8 billion U. S through tourists (Calgary Herald). Even though Canada received a huge amount of money, the lowering percentage of tourists visiting Canada will soon create a loss of money. The money spent for tourism will not be profited and might create even bigger problems along the way. Less people visiting Canada on a tourism stand will create a lower population because there is a lower number of people attracted to the country.
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With Canada’s low population of only 32 248 600 (The sustainability report), it holds over 200 different ethic origins (Canadian Heritage). There has been a huge change from the most frequent ethnic origins (other than the British and French) from 1986 to the most recent census of 1996. During the earlier stages of the multicultural policy at work, the German origin was the most frequent (Day, Richard J.F 203). However, throughout the decade of immigrants and emigrants, the latest census reports that the most common origin that year was the Scottish, bringing Germany down to 6th (Statistics Canada). Although many different people are entering the country, they are entering by very low numbers. An average of only 200 000 people come to Canada yearly (Canadian Heritage). Since the baby boomers are slowly dying off, the population will soon decrease creating many more issues. Although some might say that this allows more job opportunities for newcomers and the unemployed, it also creates the pressure of having to support each other with a low population. Many jobs wont be filled because of the lacking number of people. Throughout the many years, the population has created many segregated neighborhoods that prevent people from working with others of different origin or culture.
Segregated neighborhood basically refers to the separation or isolation from other groups (Princeton). This has been clearly created through the multicultural policy. Overtime, people of different cultural or ethnic backgrounds have started to only stick with one another. Doing this has created borderlin
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