Lies, Nonsense & Insults to Canada’s European Majority
Dear Immigration Reformer:
The following letter was sent by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to former diplomat Ian V. Macdonald. Mr. Macdonald is another martyr to political correctness. He was fired two decades ago when he worked for the Department of External Affairs. He was seen to be too eager to promote trade with Arab countries and too critical of Zionism, a political philosophy which clearly had power in high places in Ottawa.
He received this recent response to his letter demanding an explanation of Canada’s open door and dysfunctional immigration policies. What follows, is our analysis of this error ridden, insulting anti-European policy statement of those who wish to displace the European founding/settler people of this country and who seek to redefine it. We mean people like Prime Minister Paul Martin who saw his appointment of Haitian-born Michaelle Jean as Governor-General as a superb move. He hailed her as the model of the New Canada, despite the fact that she was a woman of modest accomplishments, separatist sympathies and a holder of a French passport!
Paul Fromm,
Director
Canada First Immigration Reform Committee
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Subject: Re: Immigration Policy
Dear Mr. MacDonald:
The Honourable Pierre Pettigrew has kindly forwarded to the Honourable Joe Volpe, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a copy of your letter of October 26, 2005, concerning Canada’s immigration program.
I appreciate your suggestions for improving Canada’s immigration policies. As you know, Canada is a country that has been built on immigration and continues to welcome immigrants. Since 1867, more than 14 million people have immigrated to Canada and every year, we welcome over 200,000 new permanent residents. These immigrants and their descendants have contributed to Canada’s growth and social development and have helped to define our country’s collective identity.
Immigration has always played a key role in Canada’s social and economic development and this Government strongly believes that immigrants and refugees have made and will continue to make a positive contribution to the economic and social fabric of this country. In fact, the selection, recruitment and integration of highly skilled immigrants and the fulfilment of our commitments to humanitarian protection and family reunification will become even more critical in the future as we face the demographic challenges of an ageing population and a declining birth rate. Current projections indicate that, within the next 30 years, immigration is likely to account for all Canada’s net population growth and, within the next 10, for all net labour force growth.
Immigration creates at least as many jobs as it takes to absorb new immigrants into the work force. There appears to be a greater degree of self-employment among the foreign-born, which provides a vital mechanism for employing Canadians and developing regional economies. Canada needs these people to help spark the economy and create jobs. Immigration also brings investment to Canada. Skilled immigrants are vital in helping Canada continue its leadership role in the new economy. In fact, newcomers bringing diverse skills and openness to the world have provided Canada with a distinct comparative advantage in the global marketplace.
Immigration – attracting talent from elsewhere – is a powerful force of creativity, innovation and prosperity. The benefits of a diverse society include the flexibility to adapt, a wider range of ideas and solutions, and more personal freedom. Creative and culturally diverse populations are known to be a factor in driving a vibrant economy. International talent is attracted to areas where adjustment and integration into the community is straightforward. Easy access to ethnic grocery stores and restaurants, entertainment, and the arts is an important factor in assisting this adjustment. There is a positive correlation between the number of immigrants and cultural diversity – the top Canadian cities attracting immigrants are known for a profusion of culture. This critical mass of diversity is instrumental in attracting a class of talented immigrants who can contribute to innovation and growth, which in turn benefits all Canadians.
In closing, I would like to add that Canada’s cultural heritage is not defined by one ethnic group or race. Nor is this country reserved for any one ethnic group – although some have often tried to claim it to the exclusion of others. Canada is a nation of immigrants. With the exception of aboriginal people, all of us are in this country as voluntary or involuntary descendants of immigrants. Our ancestors come from every part of the globe and have all shaped and contributed to this country. As descendants of immigrants we can understand the importance of allowing people to make better lives for themselves and their children in this country, and with the help of all Canadians, we can continue to uphold the values that make Canada a destination of choice for all people.
Thank you for having taken the time to share your views.
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OUR RESPONSE
It’s ye olde patented blow off isn’t it? Just send the old crank something and hopefully he’ll be so disheartened his missives will never darken the door again. Club ’em to the ground with a salvo of platitudinous muck.I mean, who do these people think they are? We’re the invincible Liberals for God’s sake.We don’t want to hear from customers presuming to criticize the sheer genius of our immigration policy: we want to hear from people demanding more of the same!
The exemption for aboriginals is so regulation issue as to induce bilious eye-rolling in all but the most junior members of the audience. Does Ottawa really imagine that aboriginals were created in situ by Manitou? Today’s aboriginals, as modern anthropology and discoveries such as Kennewick Man have proven, were not here BEFORE our proto-European ancestors. Indeed, the demise of early Whites, like Kennewick Man may point to a genocide by aboriginals of OUR ancestors. This insult — form letter 15A — invites a far more strongly worded rebuttal, which would undoubtedly provoke an even fluffier anthem to diversity (for us!) but carrying an implicit warning about the kind of diversity of mind expressed in “anti-immigrant attitudes,” and the next thing you know, Brad Love has a new cell mate.
Let’s address just a few the more egregious howlers:
“I would like to add that Canada’s cultural heritage is not defined by one ethnic group or race. Nor is this country reserved for any one ethnic group – although some have often tried to claim it to the exclusion of others.”
— Here Pierre Pettigrew’s mouthpiece plays fast and loose with history. Canada was founded and settled by Europeans, initially by the French and English (and earlier the Vikings). Our Parliamentary system was British; our legal system, except in Quebec, was British; the overwhelming religion of Canadians past and present is Christianity. Our social welfare institutions flow out of compassionate Christianity and the European experience. Bismarck’s Germany was the first to introduce the idea of old age pensions. Canada was settled by Europeans: the Scots, French and United Empire Loyalists in the Maritimes; Germans, UELs and Scots and Irish in Ontario; Icelanders, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Brits, and Americans on the Prairies and B.C. These groups broke the sod, cleared the forests and built the towns. Their language and culture made Canada – the largely peaceful, ordered and somewhat prosperous country that draws people in hordes from the Third World. Canada’s is overwhelmingly a European culture. Pettigrew’s mouthpiece is trying to re-write history.
“…The benefits of a diverse society include the flexibility to adapt, a wider range of ideas and solutions, and more personal freedom.”
— Is that the kind of “personal freedom” that’s overlooked by the proliferating rights commissions, extra judicial tribunals, people’s courts and speech codes that have Canadians nervously checking over their shoulders? There used to be a term for governments that imposed uniform speech and thought patterns on the populace, but the new term is evidently “diverse society.” “Hate Laws” and human rights commission assault on free speech in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity” and compelling acceptance of the immigration invasion have led to a steady erosion of personal freedom.
“…Creative and culturally diverse populations are known to be a factor in driving a vibrant economy. International talent is attracted to areas where adjustment and integration into the community is straightforward. Easy access to ethnic grocery stores and restaurants, entertainment, and the arts is an important factor in assisting this adjustment. There is a positive correlation between the number of immigrants and cultural diversity – the top Canadian cities attracting immigrants are known for a profusion of culture. ”
— Sorry if it sounds ungrateful, but being able to negotiate the purchase of 3-for-1 halal pizza in your native tongue does not immediately bring cultural vibrancy to mind. The March 18, 2005 edition of the Toronto Sun touched on the real issues at play: “a city that bills itself as the third most important theatre mecca on Earth is facing a long, dark summer. … Martin Bragg, artistic producer for Canadian Stage, which plans to run Ain’t Misbehavin at the St. Lawrence Centre into the summer, told Sun theatre critic John Coulbourn it’s “a sad statement” that there’s not a major musicalplaying on the commercial stage in Toronto. … Picking up Mamma Mia! tickets yesterday, patron Robert Barnbridge, a Huntsville shop owner, said it’s going to be a summer of discontent for local theatre lovers. And it’s fans who are now to blame, Barnbridge, 58, said. “Maybe you have to ask why more people aren’t going to the theatre,” he said.” Could it possibly be that a growing majority are more interested in “easy access to ETHNIC grocery stores and restaurants, entertainment and the arts?” Could it possibly be that travellers will not want to attend Toronto theatre when the value added inducement is a bloodbath on Yonge Street?
“…Since 1867, more than 14 million people have immigrated to Canada and every year, we welcome over 200,000 new permanent residents. These immigrants and their descendants have contributed to Canada’s growth and social development and have helped to define our country’s collective identity.”
— And over the past 30 years Ottawa has unilaterally set out to redefine that “collective identity.” No one would argue that immigrants built Canada, but when did Ottawa decide that diversity constitutes a legitimate “contribution”? Did we miss the referendum? It is not immigration that Canadians reject, but the wholesale defrauding of the world’s most generous immigrant and refugee programme — the inability to remove drug dealers, murderers, terrorists, international gangsters, — the supine pandering to the noisiest lobby — the abject failure to demand newcomers be ready, able and willing to work, to sort out their own accreditation problems, to speak English or French(which nearly half cannot, in an economy demanding specialist information skills). Self sufficiency is the immigration model that built Canada and no one rejects THAT. Stop trying to guilt us into passive acceptance of policies that are delusional and destructive (taken as a model of diversity, Toronto is not very much of a showpiece).
“…Immigration creates at least as many jobs as it takes to absorb new immigrants into the work force.”
— No kidding. The taxation chain gang is already wondering why millions upon millions of dollars have been earmarked to bring “highly desirable newcomers” up to speed with resume writing classes, accreditation irregularities, fast track mentoring programmes, pressure to relax professional licensing standards, enhanced ESL-for-the-workplace — in addition to run of the mill welfare, housing, health care, ESL, etc costs.
“…There appears to be a greater degree of self-employment among the foreign-born, which provides a vital mechanism for employing Canadians and developing regional economies. Canada needs these people to help spark the economy and create jobs. Immigration also brings investment to Canada. Skilled immigrants are vital in helping Canada continue its leadership role in the new economy. ”
— Yeah, right. No one would accuse the Toronto Star of being anti-immigrant, this September 28, 2004, item says it all: … “In April, the United Way of Greater Toronto published a watershed report, Poverty by Postal Code, prepared by the Canadian Council on Social Development. It found that the number of poor Toronto neighbourhoods – neighbourhoods with more than 26 per cent of families living below the poverty line – had increased to 130 in 2001 from 30 just two decades ago. (The study employed the low-income cut-off designed by Statistics Canada; using this measure, a Toronto family of four would, for instance, be considered poor if their income was less than $36,247 in 2004.)
Researchers discovered that instead of living in mixed socio-economic neighbourhoods as they did 20 years ago, most poor families are now far more concentrated in low-income neighbourhoods. Those same neighbourhoods also possess other troubling characteristics: they tend to be dominated by immigrants and visible minorities. In 1981, the number of Canadian-born families living in high-poverty neighbourhoods slightly outnumbered immigrant families. By 2001, however, “a major shift had taken place,” the researchers concluded, with immigrant families accounting for 62.4 per cent of the total family population in these communities while Canadian-born ones made up just 36.7 per cent.
The shift was consistent with rising poverty rates among immigrants. In 1981, 14.8 per cent of immigrant families lived in poverty; by 2001, it was almost one in four immigrant families (24 per cent). With more immigrants flooding into Toronto each year, that produced a staggering 125 per cent increase in the overall number of poor immigrants, from 112,000 in 1981 to 252,000 in 2001. …
… Statistics Canada found that immigrants in the country for 10 years or less had a low-income rate of 35 per cent in 2000, nearly twice the overall rate in the nation’s 27 largest cities. The low-income rate for recent immigrants rose steadily from 23 per cent in 1980.
… In Toronto, during the 1990s, the growth in the city’s poverty rate (it increased 1.9 percentage points) was entirely attributable to deteriorating conditions among immigrants. Canadian-born residents actually saw their poverty rates fall during the decade.
… York University’s Michael Ornstein, who analyzed data from the 1996 census, found more than half of Toronto’s visible minority families lived below Statistics Canada’s low-income line. The rate among white families was less than 10 per cent. The study, commissioned by the City of Toronto, concluded Ethiopians, Ghanaians, Afghans and Somalis were the most disadvantaged, with poverty rates ranging from 52.2 per cent to 70 per cent.