MAKING SENSE OF IDENTITY AS A POLICY GOAL

Ian Donaldson
Multiculturalism and Human Rights
Department of Canadian Heritage

1. Canada's Multiculturalism Program: Multiculturalism in Action
2. Renewed Multiculturalism: Program and Policy Objectives: 1995-97
3. Shifting Approaches to Identity
4. Who Really Relates to Multiculturalism as a Citizenship Identity?
5. Community Critique
6. Identity as a "Process"  

The Canadian Multiculturalism Policy has been implemented through a federally funded grants Program. Therefore, the Multiculturalism Policy and Program constitute what may be referred to as official multiculturalism. In this brief presentation, I will try to illustrate how the goal of identity has shifted, in the context of official multiculturalism. However, it is important not to view multiculturalism in isolation, since it is not the only policy that has an impact on identity. Other influential policies are those that address formal citizenship issues, employment and education. I will begin by introducing the multiculturalism program's areas of concentration. Following this, I will provide a brief outline of the current policy framework and then I will spend more time commenting on the emerging scope of that framework, with a focus on the evolving association of identity, citizenship, and multiculturalism.

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CANADA'S MULTICULTURALISM PROGRAM: MULTICULTURALISM IN ACTION

Multiculturalism program activities include several different types of initiatives related to Research, Community Action, Institutional Development, and Public Education. Through thematic based research calls, policy-research seminars, and partnerships with academic and community organizations, the Program's research staff works to stimulate, generate, and fund research that contributes to our understanding of Canada's diversity and the interplay between diversity factors and social issues.

Community action projects facilitate community development, civic participation, equitable access and informed public dialogue about ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural diversity in Canada. Ethnic and racial minority communities in Canada still face barriers to full participation, whether cultural, social, linguistic, religious or economic. The program assists communities to identify these barriers and develop and implement programs that help find solutions to the problems they face. For example, it has provided assistance to a coalition of immigrant settlement organizations to help internationally trained professionals develop and implement a strategy to gain recognition in Canada for their foreign credentials. In addition, the Program has worked extensively with the Portuguese community to research and develop initiatives to address why Portuguese-Canadian students have one of the highest drop-out rates and lowest level of educational attainment of all ethnocultural communities.

In terms of institutional development, the Program continues to work on projects designed to increase awareness of the needs and the positive representation of diversity in the areas of health, the media, and social services. The Program is working with cultural agencies, such as the National Film Board, which supports the production of documentary films, to identify barriers to equitable access to the industry. Also, the Program maintains a good relationship with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, partnering most recently to bring community leaders and representatives of the Toronto police force together to discuss the problem of racial profiling.

The Program's public education staff continues to run an annual anti-racism campaign and this includes a multifaceted campaign to encourage Canadians, particularly youth, to get active in efforts to eliminate racism. A National Video competition is held to engage youth in making videos that express their views on racism.

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RENEWED MULTICULTURALISM: PROGRAM AND POLICY OBJECTIVES: 1995-97

The current policy goals were implemented during the government's review of multiculturalism, undertaken between 1995 and 1997. At this time, a new project-based funding formula was introduced to correspond with three emerging program objectives; the three inter-related objectives of civic participation, social justice and identity, were designed to illustrate that an inclusive society depends on respect for all ethnic groups and the fullest possible participation of all citizens in the life of the nation. The Civic Participation goal addresses the capacity and opportunity of diverse communities to participate in shaping the country's future through involvement in public policy discussion and decision-making (e.g. electoral participation or membership in NGOs). The Social Justice objective focuses on the need to build a society that ensures fair and equitable treatment; and that respects the dignity, the values and the needs of Canadians irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious or racial origins. The Identity goal aims to foster a society that recognizes, respects and reflects a diversity of cultures so that citizens of all backgrounds feel a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada.

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SHIFTING APPROACHES TO IDENTITY

Of the three key policy goals, it is identity that is the most elusive and at the same time the most important. I now turn to a consideration of this identity goal but in thinking about new approaches, the link between identity and citizenship must be understood because the multiculturalism program has to be understood within the context of activities that encourage greater degrees of civic participation and social justice across Canadian communities so that all Canadians will feel a greater sense of attachment to the country. However, only certain identities are at issue here. Being a chess player may be an important part of someone's identity but it is unlikely to be a barrier to equal citizenship. On the other hand, being a Canadian of African descent might be an identity that does beget the imposition of certain barriers to full participation and it is the link between this type of identity and the elimination of barriers that I am addressing when I speak of shared or equal citizenship.

Now, we can see that in the first two decades of official multiculturalism, the 1970s and the 1980s, the focus was on cultural retention. The goal, explicitly, was to assist cultural groups to retain and foster their identity—meaning their traditional cultural identity. Along these lines, funding was provided for activities expressing folkloric and artistic heritage and the approach to identity was to see individuals as part of a group with a more or less fixed set of customs. Over the years, the Program balanced out these objectives by shifting toward issues of integration, recognition and discrimination, especially in the area of race relations, the media's representation of minorities, and the significance of diversity issues to other relevant areas of institutional change. A shift in the identity goal followed this shift in objectives and the program began to reframe the identity goal in terms of the notion of shared citizenship. Once again, the new identity goal is to foster a society that recognizes, respects and reflects a diversity of cultures so that citizens of all backgrounds feel a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada.

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WHO REALLY RELATES TO MULTICULTURALISM AS A CITIZENSHIP IDENTITY?

Recent public opinion polls demonstrate that a majority of Canadians support multiculturalism policy. Polling results also tell us that multiculturalism is considered, by a majority of Canadians, to be an essential part of a so-called Canadian identity. However, what people understand multiculturalism to mean might be very different from individual to individual and across different communities. This open-ended aspect of what multiculturalism means is especially important to the implementation of multiculturalism policy since program officers, who work with community representatives, need to be sensitive to the concerns that individuals and groups have about what inclusion in Canadian society might require. In this way, individuals and groups may interpret multiculturalism to mean cultural retention only, as that had been the prevailing ethos of multiculturalism for many years. Accordingly, they may see their ethno-cultural or racial identity as the most important factor influencing their participation as citizens in Canada.

Others may feel obliged to give multiculturalism a symbolic nod of approval, whenever called upon to do so, such as in an opinion poll for instance, but otherwise, in most day-to-day situations, their framework for citizenship is influenced by other identities that have, on the surface, nothing to do with multiculturalism. They may understand themselves to be Canadian—full stop—and interpret social justice issues in terms of individual rights only. They may be French-Canadian or Aboriginal and feel that their participation in society is expressed, first and foremost, within these collective identities. Still others may feel that it is their gender, sexual orientation, or disability that defines them as citizens. The current public debate over same-sex marriage in Canada provides an excellent context for this merging of identity and shared citizenship. Gay couples who support same sex marriage feel it is a matter of recognition that is at stake in having the right to be “married”, as opposed to being recognized within a “civil union”. In other words, it is a matter of equal citizenship. Amidst these competing identities a so-called multicultural citizenship identity may fall somewhere in the middle.

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COMMUNITY CRITIQUE

Criticism of the new interpretation of identity has come from groups such as the Canadian Ethnocultural Council (CEC). The substance of the CEC's criticism is illustrated in the following quote from one of its representatives:

The new program design speaks of identity as a process in the making, and, arguably, an end yet to be realized, i.e., to foster a society around certain values so that they feel a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada. In this instance, the identity objective, as yet to be achieved, is a state of consciousness. Multiculturalism, however, as a fundamental characteristic of Canadian society, implies a state of being... Either we accept the argument that a Canadian identity exists, defined here by its essential pluralism, or we do not.

What the criticism reveals is that ethno-cultural minority community leaders, those who had been interacting with the multiculturalism program over the years, had felt well served by the early 1970s and 1980s approach to multiculturalism. For them, the key virtue of multiculturalism was that it was the opposite of a policy of assimilation or anglo-conformity. What they fear from the new approach to identity is that it no longer pursues the goal of cultural retention for its own sake. Interpreting identity as an essentialist concept, one denoting a “state of being” as opposed to a process, served the cause of non-assimilation specifically.

What the new approach appears to serve is the goal of greater integration and unity. This sounds like assimilation to the Program's traditional clients. And the CEC's criticism is accurate insofar as the new interpretation of identity does see identity as a process leading to a state of consciousness more than it understands identities to be fixed for all time. But the idea of process does not mean something mechanical. Rather, it means something fluid and evolving. Understanding identity as a process, in this organic sense, is a more accurate and relevant way of interpreting multiculturalism.

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IDENTITY AS A "PROCESS"

What the new Identity goal provides the program with is an opportunity to link a multicultural citizenship identity with other Canadian citizenship identities by way of a common dialogue that promotes greater degrees of civic participation and social justice across communities. In this way, the process of identity, as it relates to citizenship, might lead to a shared, if not common, consciousness that need not result in some new form of assimilation. Therefore, the new identity goal allows the program some leeway in developing projects that focus on the intersections of identity and how multiple citizenship identities may be implicated in the struggle to overcome complex barriers to participation. An intersections approach also takes into account generational differences within immigrant communities, where the children and grandchildren of immigrants adopt new and complex ways of understanding and expressing themselves as Canadians.

In the parlance of social capital, the new identity goal provides the program with the opportunity to focus on projects that are designed to promote “bridging” (inclusive) forms of social capital across communities, along with its traditional focus on “bonding” (exclusive) forms of social capital. This is especially important because trends in immigration in Canada shift. Newer, more vulnerable communities, including immigrants from Africa, Asia, and South-East Asia, can learn a lot about integrating into Canadian society from older immigrant communities. The newer Somali, Pakistani, Vietnamese, and Korean communities in Canada could benefit from projects that link them with the older Italian, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Japanese communities.

Research also supports the idea of focusing on so-called “bridging” identities to bring people together. Bridging identities could include gay and lesbian identities since these identities are shared across ethno-cultural and racial lines. Being a parent is also a common or bridging identity, and ought to be used more as a way of bringing people together to discuss common issues. In other words, it is more likely that people will connect through their bridging identities rather than their ethno-cultural identities, which are exclusive identities. “Bridging” social capital projects will provide the Program with an opportunity to link more identities to multiculturalism and in this way meet the goal of building a greater attachment to Canada through building a greater attachment to the larger community.

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