Adult Immigrant ESL Programs in Canada

Abstract

The Canadian government likes to indulge in self-congratulatory and often smug statements about how generous it is to the large numbers of newcomers who immigrate into the country. Individual Canadians do indeed seem to be generous and welcoming to immigrants, but these tendencies should not mask the fact that the national government’s policy developers support high levels of immigration primarily because this is vital to their perception of Canada’s long-term economic and political interests. Canada obtains the full financial benefits of immigration only if newcomers can be integrated into the fabric of the nation’s economic life. In that regard, second language education programs are central to the removal of barriers to newcomer integration, especially the inability to speak English or French, the country’s two official languages. However crucial the economic contributions provided by these programs might be, it is also important to note they play a crucial role in identity formation, both in terms of what it means to individuals and the nation-state. The ability of these programs to foster identity construction is being limited by funding decisions that limit English language learning to basic levels of proficiency and increasingly place greater emphasis on the limited goal of job preparation.

Canadian history and traditions have created a country where our values include tolerance and respect for cultural differences, and a commitment to social justice. We are proud of the fact that we are a peaceful nation and that we are accepted in many places around the world as peacekeepers. As a small population occupying a vast northern land enriched by immigration throughout its history, Canadians have developed a kind of genius for compromise and co-existence. (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2002a) Canada faces demographic challenges. Birth rates are at a historic low, and Canada’s largest age cohort—the baby boomers—is ageing...Immigration will likely account for all net labour force growth by 2011, and projections indicate it will account for total population growth by 2031. For these reasons, ensuring that immigrants and refugees have the skills to succeed in the labour market is key to Canada’s future prosperity. (Citizenship and Immigration Canada Immigration Plan, 2002c).

Each and every form of ethnic, linguistic, religious, racial and indeed national social identity in Canada has been fabricated into a certain nationality through maintaining the dominance of some social identity (a certain patriarchal Englishness) against and under which...all others are subordinated. (Young, 1984, pp. 10–12)

For all its rhetoric about a cultural ‘mosaic’, Canada refuses to renovate its national self-image to include its changing complexion. It is a New World country with Old World concepts of a fixed, exclusionist national identity... Canadians of colour were routinely treated as ‘not real’ Canadians. (Mukherjee, 1997)