|
|
|||
|
||||
|
|
||
|
||
|
The Couchiching Summer Conference 2007
The Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs, Canada’s oldest public affairs forum, organizes an annual conference exploring a wide range of public policy issues from a Canadian perspective. The Couchiching Conference offers a chance to learn and reflect on pressing Canadian policy issues in the low-key atmosphere of a summer camp in Ontario’s cottage country. This year’s edition of the Couchiching Summer Conference brought together a venerable list of speakers to reflect on “The Stranger Next Door: Making Diversity Work”. Michael Adams, Will Kymlicka, Pierre Pettigrew and Tariq Ramadan provided diverse perspectives on diversity but the real energy came from the younger participants. Alden Habacon, who works on diversity initiatives at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, challenged participants to think beyond conventional paradigms. “Technology,” he said, “exerts a greater influence on diversity than demographics.” An example he gave was from his own experience with young immigrants in Toronto: before even setting foot in Canada, these newcomers befriend local Canadians through social networking sites, look for apartments on Craig’s List and have coordinated job interviews online. On the other hand, their integration into Canada unfolds differently from immigrants in the past. The new transnational immigrants use the Internet to keep their feet firmly planted in their countries of origin, while adding Canada as a new home. These observations reflect Statistics Canada survey data which show that immigrants are more connected and spend more time online to communicate with family and friends than native-born Canadians. Habacon dubbed the new intersection of diversity and technology “Multiculturalism 2.0”. It is a context where young Canadians excel because they possess what he called “cultural intelligence”, a term coined in cross-cultural business communication studies. Young Canadians are intuitively familiar with diversity but growing up in a diverse environment does not mean you simply become difference-blind. Rather, he argued, “ethnicity informs our identity but it should not define it.” Young Canadians, in his view, can be great “cultural navigators” because their starting point is to acknowledge their own bias and then move to dealing with difference respectfully. An interview with Alden Habacon can be found here Farouk Jiwa who is currently employed at the Strategic Policy Group at the Department of Canadian Heritage and was speaking in his role as Global Youth Fellow at the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, explored the implications of diversity within Canada for Canada’s foreign policy. As new Canadians increasingly maintain ties with their countries of origin, some might feel (and fear) that our foreign policy is unduly influenced by diaspora communities. Farouk argued, though, that the world within Canada is one of Canada’s greatest assets, and beneficial for its foreign policy. What is necessary, however, is that public institutions such as schools, continue to act as arbiters of values and provide for an understanding of the commonalities of our history and identity. Irvin Studin, author of “What is a Canadian?” raised eyebrows in the audience when he said: “Canadian has no essence but only exists because the Canadian political project exists.” His point was to argue that Canada is not a “thick” nation like European countries with established literary or culinary canons. Not being “thick” can be an advantage, especially in a world grappling with diversity. Canada certainly seems better prepared for it than the more traditional nation-states. “Do we really want or need a thick nation?” Studin asked. The natural beauty of Lake Couchiching cast a soothing spirit over those who attended the conference. At times, I felt that a more lively and controversial debate would have extracted a clearer discussion on the issues and public policy choices currently facing Canada. At least, though, the younger delegates injected the deliberations with a bit of an edge. My favourite remark at the Conference emerged from a group discussion on tolerance: A university student from Trinidad spoke about her experience of looking for a job in Toronto and her surprise in witnessing Canadian firms vaunt themselves as “equal opportunity employers”. Her comment: “Why point that out? You just should be!” Carsten Quell Research Manager Policy Research Group, Strategic Policy, Planning and Research Branch Department of Canadian Heritage |
Printer friendly version|
Culturescope.ca is a service of the Canadian Cultural Observatory and its partners.
|
The Canadian Cultural Observatory and Culturescope.ca do not endorse and are not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in a new window.
Some of the material available in the resource collection originates with an organization not subject to the Official Languages Act and is available on this site in the language in which it was written. |
|
|
|
|||