Managing Difference, Making a Difference: Multiculturalism as Inclusive Governance in Canada

Abstract

Canada represents one of several democratic societies to have capitalized on multicultural principles as a principled (formal/official/rule-based) basis for multicultural governance. That it has managed to pull off the once seemingly impossible is quite astonishing—namely, to forge a working unity from its disparate parts without compromising its principles in the process (see Saul 2008). Multiculturalism emerged as part of a broader liberalization process for shoring up minority rights by abolishing inherited forms of inequality and capricious patterns of exclusion consistent with Canada’s long-standing self-definition as a “white man’s country” (Kymlicka 2007a). In redefining conventional patterns of governance, multiculturalism sought to establish a new political arrangement based on individual multicultural rights rather than on the tyranny of nationalistic (French-English) group attachments (Lupul 2005). In hopes of harmonizing competing ethnicities without losing control of the overall agenda, Canada’s official Multiculturalism persists for similar reasons—the pursuit of political, ideological, and economic considerations involving state functions, private interests, and electoral survival. A commitment to multiculturalism is reaping dividends: Canada’s reputation in spearheading the concept of multicultural governance has garnered rave reviews—as gleaned from high-flying personalities including Bono of U2, who claims the world “needs more Canadas,” and the Aga Khan, who praised Canada as the world’s most “successful pluralist society” (see Biles et al. 2005:25).