The Failures of Canadian Multiculturalism

The end result is that each community is entangled to preserve its own cultures rather learning and appreciating the other cultures. The reality about ethnic, racial, and religious diversity in Canadian cities is that the communities are not keen on integrating with other communities to remain fragmented so that each one of them has a distinct identity from others. It appears like all of these diverse communities are jostling for space with fear that integrating will lead their heritage to oblivion. Instead perceiving the policy as an effort to achieve a single identity as a multicultural society that is able to live and work in cohesion, most Canadians, especially immigrants have a totally different perception of the policy. Communities are so fragmented on the basis of race, ethnic, groups, and race that are impractical to imagine that they have a common goal of achieving national identity.
             A multi-cultural society can only function adequately if there is commonality of fundamental values and standards between the various groups in that society (Samuels, Barbara, Craig, and Buchignani 110). If communities do not share a set of common motives, opinions and values there is a high chance of disintegration and clashes or even common disagreements among them. Persistent cases of racial discrimination and intolerance are evident in Canada. There are also other issues such as residential segmentation where every community wants to live in a particular residential place in the cities. Events such as the Toronto 18 are manifestations of the failures of the multiculturalism policy. If indeed the policy is working, then there should be no incidences of religious intolerance where eighteen plan to kill members of other religions in an act of terror. Such events reveal how the struggle to keep the identity of a community can cause the advent of extremist groups once such efforts fail. According to the creators of the policy, multiculturalism was supposed to make it easier for the government and the society to manage the characteristic multi-cultural society in Canada.