Governance in a Multiethnic State

February 29, 2012

On 22 February, Piotr Dutkiewicz, Director of the Centre for Governance and Public Management Carleton University, Ottawa Canada presented the issue “Governance in a Multiethnic State”.  We are pleased to present a summary of the presentation by Dr. Duktiewicz.

Background information:

Piotr Dutkiewicz is also a Permanent Fellow of the Centre for Civilizational Studies, Russian Academy of Science. He was educated at Warsaw University (LLM) and the Russian Academy of Science, Moscow (Ph.D.). 

He was a Fellow of St. Peter's and Nuffield Colleges in Oxford and a Visiting Professor at Berkeley University, Institute for International Relations (USA) and taught at Warsaw University in Poland (1977-1989) and Queen's University (1990-1993) in Kingston, Ontario. On two occasions he was awarded the AWUS Teaching Excellence Awards at Queen's University (1993 and 1994) and holds four awards for Outstanding Teaching and Research from Warsaw University. 
He was a Director of four large scale, high visibility Projects in Russia funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (on regional development, unemployment insurance, labour market and  social policies).

Imagine you are newcomer to Canada.  And you are not the only one trying to replicate or create your own identity in your own space.  47% of Canadians are not French of English descendants.  This creates set of opportunities and a set of very specific challenges, of course.   Most probably once you are in Canada you will try to preserve your cultural heritage, language, religion.  Then, you are definitely presenting a challenge to the government.  It would need to keep you happy and at the same time would need to keep other 215 nationalities and ethnicities happy.   Some of Canadians you will meet think that theyare better then you, not because of the level of intelligence, well-being, etc., but simply because they live here in the third-fourth generation of British or French descend. Further, come natives that have particular attachment to those places because they were already here before European colonizers came.  They have particular claims to this land and they would like themselves to be called “the first nation”.  Having this pluralism at hand, it is not easy to manage this environment.  We are proud of our multicultural policy, not because we are full of ourselves or selfish, but because we did not have riots as many of the countries around the world and in Europe in particular lately experienced.  We definitely do not agree with statements made publicly by some of the European Union leaders, such as Angela Merkel stating two years in an interview that multiculturalism policies are dead and no longer valid in European culture.

In this environment, Canada has a specific set of measures not only to prevent dramatic situations, but also to build more or less ethnically harmonious society.  To do that, first you have to “divorce” ethnicity from nationalism.  Canadian model presented is quite flexible and elastic.  Canadians in early 1970s started to think how to prevent and manage conflicts that are inevitable in a society where so many different cultures coexist.  So, it was the matter of looking at the issue differently.  It is about not trying to bypass or avoid the conflict; it is about managing the conflict.   In 1982 this thinking was transformed to a legislative act – Canadian “Charter of rights and freedoms”.    This is what we teach all newcomers - that there is a document that guarantees each representative of national minority its own space in this society.  Yet, this act is quite general and without proper mechanisms to implement would have remained quite general and meaningless.    So, the question was how to guarantee those rights and freedoms to all.   It meant that specific regulations had to be integrated in legislation in all aspects – employment, education, health, etc.  The next question is who to implement?   In Canada, the interface is a special ministry called Heritage Department.  This ministry takes care of different aspects of preserving heritage of immigrants, as well as French, British and aboriginal population.  They censor what is published to make sure no national minority’s dignities are offended or sponsor awareness raising actions such as making a video film on Islam.  In fact, this video film was made in comic genre demonstrating small clashes that occur in a community where nobody saw muslims before recently.    Moreover, this ministry controls 5 government agencies and has a right to penetrate the whole spectrum of governmental activities.  Good example here could be a relationship with Ministry of Internal Affairs that is not controlled by Heritage Department – very serious ministry that around the world is usually controlled by Presidents or Prime-Ministers only.  Yet, Heritage Department approached Ministry of Internal Affairs proposing to introduce more policemen of Chinese origin in cities with a big population of Chinese such as Vancouver or Toronto.  So, Ministry of Internal Affairs initiated a project called “ethnic based community police” training Chinese and being able to get access to places where British Canadians or French Canadians would not be able to go.   

Canadian multiculturalism is evolving.   In  1970s the policies were related to recognition of diversity.  The vital question was whether we want only French and British coming to Canada? The certain conclusion was - we do need others.  But not only for economic reasons, although we did need around 200-250 thousand a year to maintain economic development.  The maximum we accepted is almost 500 thousand for 2 years in 1970s.  If not to look at economic reasons, we still need others to keep our society vibrant; we do need others to spread our economic activities around the world via those “agents of influence”.  We need those immigrants to be much more forward-looking society.  Yet, in 1980s another issue occurred.  Government started thinking how to involve minorities and migrants in politics and make them more economically active.  So government started to support migrants in every way possible what resulted in that in 2002-2003 we realized that we did too much – minorities were given sufficient amounts of money and they were simply building shields from the rest of Canadian society as most of their needs were satisfied.  So, in last years, the focus shifted to better integration of the minorities.   Certain barriers and incentives were created to make them know and understand what is it to be a Canadian, what Canadian values are about.  An example of the barrier is English or French language test.  If couple of years ago you would be accepted to immigrate knowing 200 words, now you have to pass a quite rigorous test. 

There are, of course, Canadians that do not like multiculturalism. They say: “It costs too much, because you have to support them. They are ungrateful as we pay them and they send money back to their countries of origin.  Then, they are redeveloping their own culture here at our expense.  Sometimes, some of them are jeopardizing security in the country by being involved with extremist organizations such as Al’-Kaida.  “Still, they are majority that say: “We do not have hate crimes to the extent that other countries have.  We are prosperous, we benefit from migrants.  They bring new sense of the world and connection to the global world.  We have a lot to learn from them.  And the advantages outlet the disadvantages”.   Concluding, Professor Dutkiewicz noted that this is a great example of how ethnicity can be divorced from nationalism and “soft” nationalism could be created out of pluralism. 

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