Rethinking Multiculturalism In Canada

Look backing on the history of Canada, you may find Canadian Canadian multiculturalism is not accendental. Due to ceaseless arrival of immigrants from all the world since 16^th century, Canada has become one of the major immigrant-receiving nations in the world now, a nation with more than 100 ethnic groups. With the failure of Anglo-conformity and the "melting-pot" theory, as well as the wakening of the aboriginal peoples, multiculturalism emerged in Canada during 1960s to counter the need of each group.Canada is the first country in the world to adopt an official multiculturalism policy, which is not only the symbol of Canada, but also the ideal mode for other western immigrant-receiving counties to follow. The multiculturalism policy adopted by P.E.Trudeau government in Canada in 1971 could be regarded as a reasonable reflection of long-standing ethnic problems in Canada. It promotes recognition of survival and development for aboriginal peoples who have lived in this continent for thousands of years. It is a product of compromise for Francophone communities' requirements from maintaining their French culture to their factionalism for political independence. It is also a kind of concession and adjustment towards the immigrants descendants and new-arrivals who begin to pursuit their own culture and ethnicity as improvement of their social position. In a word, multiculturalism is the peculiar product of Canada, which has a unique history.Generally speaking, Multiculturalism in Canada is fruitful. It has shaped through three periods: compromise between English-Canadians and French-Canadians; reflection on attitudes towards aboriginal peoples and transcending over ethicist and Euro-centralism when dealing with problems involved immigrants in recent decades. As a kind of ideology and national policy, multiculturalism is supported by most of Canadians for its influence on admitting equality between different ethnic cultures and groups. What's more, it prevents the separation trends within Canadian bio-culture structure. It promotes recognition among various ethnic groups, moderates ethnic relations, preserves ethnic cultural traditions, and releases new-comers pressure and fear of being assimilated.Indeed, Canada's multicultural policy has achieved some accomplishments, but the old problem -issue of Quebec nationalism—still remains all the time within Canadian multicultural society, along with wakening of the aboriginals and the third force, which created new problems similar with that of Quebec nationalism. There is no any permanent solution or agreement achieved between the Canadian federal government and Quebec separationists—that's why some Anglophones protested it. Some Francophones protested that multiculturalism was little more than a federal scheme designed to downgrade Quebec's national aspirations to the level of other ethnic groups.Decades passed away, the limitations and expediencies of this policy mentioned above have become more and more obvious. Therefore, many scholars and politicians in Canada proposed their solutions one after another in order to solve these problems. Canada's former prime minister P.E.Trudeau (1919—2000) was a firm advocate of multiculturalism, and it was just under his lead that multiculturalism policy was adopted in Canada. His contemporary, Charles Taylor, proposed his idea of "deep diversity" and "politics of recognition" as a supplement to multiculturalism in order to solve these problems in Canada. There are actually affinities and differences between their ideas. The focus of this thesis is a comparative study of the ideas of P.E.Trudeau and Charles Taylor in order to reexplore the developments of Canadian multiculturalism.As longtime personal friends, both P.E.Trudeau and Charles Taylor were of French and British origin, which influenced them deeply no matter on their political ideas or academic theories, especially on the issue of Canadian multiculturalism and Quebec problem. Both of them favor a unified Canadian nation, a diverse Canadian society with all cultures existing and prospering in equal position. While Trudeau's multiculturalism policy was attacked and doubted, Charles Taylor's idea becomes more and more popular in western society. Because Taylor's idea works as a supplement and continuation of Trudeau's multiculturalism.The first chapter is the introduction which introduces the content and the intention of the thesis. The second chapter analyzes the origin of Canada's multiculturalism. The third chapter surveys P.E.Trudeau and Charles Taylor's ideas on multiculturalism, as well as their backgrounds. In this part, a comparative study of their ideas will be carried out as well. The fourth chapter deals with the influence of P. E. Trudeau and Taylor's idea of multiculturalism on Canadian society.