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The Enright Files: What does it mean to be Canadian?

As the discourse of diversity has become increasingly complex and heated, The Sunday Edition has grappled with questions of how we define ourselves as a country and what, if anything, we all have in common. This month on the Enright Files, conversations about the changing face of Canada and what it means for the social fabric of the country. 

Are some Canadians more Canadian than others?

CBC Radio ·
Even in welcoming, tolerant Canada, there is a diversity of opinion on the virtues of diversity. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

Even as Canada becomes more inclusive and demographically diverse, the rhetoric and debates remain divisive. What does it mean to be Canadian? And are some Canadians more Canadian than others?

Over the years, the discourse about diversity has become increasingly heated and complex. 

In 2015, Justin Trudeau's Liberals defeated Stephen Harper's Conservatives in an election that was in part a debate about Canadians from non-European cultures. 

Prime Minister Trudeau pointedly made diversity a principle behind a cabinet that was half composed of women, one that included Sikhs, Indigenous people, a Muslim and a disabled person. It looked broadly representative of the Canadian population. 

Because — as the Prime Minister said in the soundbite of the year— it was 2015.

But 2016 didn't get the memo on diversity. Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric won out in the U.S. presidential election — a backlash against immigration helped spur the Leave campaign to victory in the Brexit referendum, and the xenophobic far-right turned European politics upside down.

Politicians help new arrivals put on winter coats.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau helps a young Syrian refugee try on a winter coat after she arrived with her family from Beirut at the Toronto Pearson International Airport, Dec. 11, 2015. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

Meanwhile, in Canada, diversity was embraced as an article of faith on display in our patriotic embrace of Syrian refugees as a multicultural kind of nation-building project. 

But even in welcoming, tolerant Canada, there is a diversity of opinion on the virtues of diversity. 

Michael Enright moderated a panel to discuss what we're really talking about when we talk about diversity, and in it, he broached the topic of shared values. Is there a consensus on what Canadian values are? Why do we have such heated debates over our supposedly shared values?

Do Canadians in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec all share the same values?

Guests in this episode:

  • Cindy Blackstock is the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada
  • Shakil Choudhury is a racial justice educator and the author of Deep Diversity: Overcoming Us Vs. Them
  • Desmond Cole is a freelance journalist, radio host, anti-racism activist and author of The Skin We're In
  • Alia Hogben is a former executive director of Canadian Council of Muslim Women
  • Rinaldo Walcott is the director of the Women and Gender Studies program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto 
  • Michael Adams is the author of Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium.
     


* This episode was produced by Chirs Wodskou.

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