Liberal MP Justin Trudeau pauses to talk to the media in regards to his tweet about Canada's hockey team prior to question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday May 3, 2010.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Amid increasingly strident criticisms of multiculturalism, both in Canada and abroad, a group of Quebec intellectuals is proposing an alternative that could save an idea that has become part of the national fabric.
Interculturalism is being branded as a new model for integration and a solution to some of the anti-immigrant backlash that has accompanied the debate in Quebec over the accommodation of minorities.
Interculturalism takes for granted the centrality of francophone culture. From there it works to integrate other minorities into a common public culture, all while respecting their diversity.
Its backers say it can also help multiculturalism weather some of the attacks it has suffered recently.
Those attacks have been most acute in Quebec, where a member of the Opposition Parti Québécois bluntly declared last month that "multiculturalism is not a Quebec value."
Even a scion of the family most closely associated with multiculturalism in Canada acknowledges interculturalism can make certain ideas about diversity more palatable in Quebec.
"The word multiculturalism has become synonymous in the mind of many Quebeckers as being something that is imposed by English Canada," said Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, whose father - former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau - made multiculturalism official government policy in 1971.
"For me [interculturalism]is more of a word we chose to use in Quebec that is acceptable when multiculturalism is beginning to be less so."
Mr. Trudeau's somewhat ambivalent endorsement speaks to the central problem interculturalism has faced so far: Is it any different from multiculturalism?
Interculturalism's leading champion in Quebec argues the two are separate concepts, though he admits they also have some overlap.
Multiculturalism's founding assumption is that there is no dominant culture in Canada, says Gérard Bouchard, a sociologist best known to Quebeckers for co-chairing a government commission into the accommodation of minorities.
"This is a non-starter in Quebec because everybody knows there is a majority culture in Quebec," he said. "It is the francophone culture.
"Any model to manage diversity in Quebec must take into account this major fact."
It is a model, says Mr. Bouchard, that can deliver a certain cohesion to a society that feels its identity is perpetually under threat.
"We have to protect, to shield ourselves from anything that looks like fragmentation," he said.
Interculturalism is itself not a new idea. It was bandied about unofficially by Quebec bureaucrats in the 1980s and began appearing in some official documents a decade later.
But in Mr. Bouchard it has found a passionate advocate. The brother of former premier Lucien Bouchard, he is perhaps the closest thing Quebec has to an academic celebrity.
Mr. Bouchard first argued for interculturalism in the reasonable accommodation commission's final report, which he co-wrote with philosopher Charles Taylor in 2008.
But most of the report's recommendations were ignored by Premier Jean Charest's government.
Concerned that Quebec is still floundering through this high-stakes debate, Mr. Bouchard has taken up the charge once again.
An interculturalism manifesto appeared in Quebec newspapers last week penned by Mr. Bouchard and other leading Quebec academics.
Mr. Bouchard has also been making the rounds of television talk shows. An international symposium on the topic will be held in Montreal in May.
The renewed interest in interculturalism comes at a time when multiculturalism is on the defensive.
Last month, conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared the policy had failed, saying newcomers should "accept to melt in a single community."
Similar comments have been made by his right-wing counterparts in the European Union, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.