This may seem a bit petty, but I dislike when people use “immigrant” and “ethnic” interchangeably.
Tom Flanagan, an academic I admire enough to put his book on game theory on my 10 books on politics list, is the latest to do this in print.
I agree with Flanagan's central tenet here: The Liberals are in deep trouble if they continue to take new Canadians for granted.
However, Flanagan does what I have seen a lot of conservatives who are courting new Canadians do: He labels them “immigrants” or “ethnics” and does it as if the terms are interchangeable.
No term is perfect. “Immigrant” includes only those who have themselves immigrated. “Ethnic” I have never really been comfortable employing because it implies a third-generation Chinese-Canadian engineering student at U of T and a first-generation Sikh-Canadian construction worker in Burnaby have some great bond because their ancestors aren't from Britain or France (or First Nations.)
I prefer to use “new Canadian” to mean those who are new to the country and perhaps their children, and then individual ethnicity groups (Chinese-Canadian, Indo-Canadian, etc.) to denote existing sets of voters with a shared and particular cultural community.
The immigrant experience – leaving your familiar home for a far-off foreign land in hopes of a better life – is a very particular and life-changing experience.
It is shared by many people in this country who came from the UK, the Caribbean, Korea, Pakistan, India, China or just about anywhere. Beyond that experience, they may share little in their outlook or political values.
The immigrant experience is also not one that all people of non-British, -French or -Native Canadian origin share, considering how many “ethnics” are born here or arrive as children.
Let me state clearly that no one is being “r-word” here. Not by a long-shot. It's a complicated issue and one that doesn't need that kind of baiting to be meaningful.
But the choice of words used betrays an undercurrent in conservative thought that may prove to be the stumbling block that prevents a successful courtship of Flanagan's “fourth sister.”
If you will forgive my massive oversimplification, conservatives are about preserving the traditional order of society - opposing radical change as a movement going back to the French Revolution.
As new Canadians represent by their very arrival and enfranchisement change to the existing order, their incorporation into the Conservative movement could run aground.
Think of the debate over the first turban-wearing Mountie and consider how difficult it would be to reconcile the Western populist and new Canadian factions of a future Conservative Party when a potent symbolic issue like that is on the table.
Consider the debate over the balance between individual liberty and group security and then reconsider it from the point of view of a 30-year-old Iranian-Canadian target voter in Burnaby-Douglas.
Does the recent fascination of the Conservative blogosphere with running down Canada's Human Rights Tribunals really attract the votes of Chinese-Canadians in Markham?
Flanagan notes that “What they [new Canadians] want is exactly what the Conservative Party has on offer - lower taxes, a favourable business climate and safe streets.”
Valid points all and true of many Canadians, including myself. But culture matters as much as pocketbook, often more.
A party that subconsciously positions those of an “ethnic” origin as “them” against a mythical “us” will continue to find rocky soil as it attempts to grow its majority in a new Canadian firmament.
